Would it be in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for us to remove our jackets?

It would not be in order to remove jackets in this Chamber.

At my surgery last Saturday, I was visited by a middle-aged man whom I shall call Mr. Smith. He told me about his elderly parents, both of whom suffer ill health. They have a family living next door to them. The father of that family is in prison, the mother is a drug dealer and the teenage children live by the motto, "No one tells us what to do." The elderly couple suffer music, sometimes until dawn. They have had their fence burned and demolished, they are attacked by their neighbours' dog, they have been personally abused and assaulted and they have six crime numbers arising from police visits next door. They have endured that for two years without relief, despite the efforts of local services to help them. I dedicate this debate to them and to the many others who need our Government to take action on their behalf.

We must start from a position of honesty and say that we are still a long way from defeating antisocial behaviour. It is not foremost a question of lawyers or even Ministers, although we need both. It is a question of normal law-abiding people—our constituents—who are being driven crazy by bad neighbours, kids with no values, verbal and mental intimidation and a daily degraded quality of life. We must do something about that. Technical and legal reasons for standing back and letting people suffer are no longer acceptable.

To their great credit, the Labour Government in 1998 showed their awareness of that serious problem and decided on urgent action. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provided for local authorities or the police to apply to a magistrates court for an antisocial behaviour order if someone over 10 years of age had acted

"in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household",

if deemed necessary to protect other individuals from further such behaviour in a local authority area. ASBOs may prohibit any form of activity for a specific period or indefinitely until discharged by the court. The Government and, no doubt, previous Governments have treated the issue seriously, but the problem is massive and our attempts to pin it down must be constant and permanent.

ASBOs are just one part of the armoury, not a panacea. That said, after six years in government, we should be doing better than the several hundred ASBOs that are imposed each year. ASBOs should be running into thousands per year and should be a permanent part of the armoury of local authorities and police against that small minority who make everyone else's life a misery.

ASBOs are a sophisticated and effective tool for tackling antisocial behaviour, but they have had teething problems and need further work. They are still dependent on witnesses, who are easily intimidated. In white, working class areas and tough outer-city estates of the sort that I am familiar with, as are the Minister and other hon. Members, witnesses are easily intimated, particularly when the antisocial behaviour is perpetrated by younger people, often against older and more established residents.

Bringing a case to court requires immense resources and time from local authority, police, probation and housing officers. They do incredible work, but must set aside a vast amount of time to make an ASBO stick. Often, bail is all too easily granted to ASBO offenders, not least because of the lack of secure places.

Many of the problems might have been avoided had there been proper pre-legislative scrutiny of the whole concept. We could have asked those whom we are now asking to operate ASBOs how ASBOs might work best. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will consider taking the quite imaginative step of having post-legislative scrutiny of ASBOs and of commissioning a parliamentary forum, including colleagues who are present this morning, to take evidence from practitioners on how to make ASBOs better.

The Minister may not agree with my main contention about the confusion surrounding the definition of civil and criminal burdens of proof, but many people may be confused, even if the Minister and the judges are clear about the matter. Perhaps one way to resolve the confusion and to make ASBOs work even better is to have a dialogue in a parliamentary forum or in another forum that the Minister considers appropriate.

I make my comments entirely from a constructive position. I hope that they do not come over as destructive in any sense. My comments follow a long line of efforts by Nottingham to improve ASBOs. I pay tribute to the police in the city and to local councillors and officers of Nottingham city council for their great efforts over many years to promote changes in ASBOs. Many of those changes have been accepted and implemented.

In that context, I also thank a number of Ministers: primarily, Lord Irvine, the former Lord Chancellor; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who used to occupy the position that the Minister now occupies; and our former, lamented colleague David Lock. All those people worked as a team with me and other colleagues from Nottingham to improve ASBOs.

The widespread teamwork that we have brought to bear on the matter was summed up for me when one of our local police inspectors, Jeff Whitmore, whom I will quote later, cornered my right hon. Friend the then Home Secretary, now the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. I will never forget the picture of Jeff talking and my right hon. Friend writing. The outcome, to my right hon. Friend's great credit, was a considerable tightening of the guidance on ASBOs. We have a good, strong, positive record when it comes to improving ASBOs. I hope that the Minister will take my remarks in that context.

Nottingham has not given up and today I want to focus on one key ASBO problem. The potential strength, but also one of the weaknesses, of ASBOs stems from their unusual legal status. They draw on both civil and criminal law. ASBOs are regarded as civil proceedings, but there are two problems. First, to obtain an ASBO can require more than a civil level of proof. Secondly, if the order is breached, proving the breach requires a criminal level of proof, which is "beyond all reasonable doubt". A civil level of proof refers to "the balance of probability".

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the criminal level of proof is right, given that a young person could face a five-year prison sentence, or another strong sentence?

If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will tackle some of those points later. I will make a couple of points that might help her to understand where I am coming from.

In October 2002, the House of Lords, in the McCann case, determined the standard of proof. Much as I hate to do this, for the record I will quote certain parts of that judgment. It was stated that

"given the seriousness of matters involved, at least some reference to the heightened civil standard would usually be necessary.

For essentially practical reasons, the judge in the McCann case decided to apply the criminal standard. The Court of Appeal said that would usually be the right course to adopt. Lord Bingham of Cornhill had observed that the heightened civil standard and the criminal standard were virtually indistinguishable. Pragmatism dictated that the task of magistrates should be made more straightforward by ruling that they must, in all cases under section 1 of the 1998 Act apply the criminal standard."

There are other quotes. There is, in my opinion, a degree of confusion among practitioners that it would be helpful to have resolved one way or another.

No local council will risk public money and days of officers' time gambling on further interpretation of such guidelines. If in doubt, it will have to let those suffering antisocial behaviour stew. When I say "stew", I do not mean for a day or two, or a couple of weeks. The case to which I referred earlier has been going on for months and years. I am not making a straightforward crossover and saying that, if we changed the law today, that case would be dealt with. It is not as simple as that, but people are in such positions for months, and possibly years, suffering and often unable to move.

One problem for the Law Lords is that they have cases but not constituents. That is one of the problems with their lordships in general, and perhaps with the Law Lords in particular. I suggest to the Minister that, as we establish a new supreme court, the senior judiciary must address that problem through training and outreach. As an interim measure, I intend to copy this speech to their lordships the Law Lords and invite them to meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith and many other families desperate for relief. I think that that sort of grounding would be no bad thing for their lordships when they make decisions on matters that appear to be legal technicalities, but make ordinary people's lives unbearable.

There are times when it is difficult to prove harassment, alarm and distress to that high standard to which I referred. The public may not come forward to give evidence, or harassment may have to be interpreted from the actions of a class of people, such as in the case of begging—a big problem in Nottingham—where the public complain about the actions of a class but not individuals. Beggars cause distress, but it is difficult to prove the standard required for an ASBO.

In a recent case in Preston, the police attempted to impose an ASBO on a prostitute, who had prostitution convictions. The magistrates court refused to grant that on the ground that it could not be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that she had caused harassment, alarm or distress. Meanwhile, the problems of used condoms and syringes being left lying around, sex acts in doorways and women being afraid to walk the streets in the area continue, as they do in my city.

All the immense local effort to bolster witnesses, undertake surveillance, produce reports and initiate the case is often wasted, with all the resulting demoralisation that that entails, and glee for the offenders. To prevent that, to enhance the reputation of ASBOs and to increase their usage, the standard of proof required to obtain an order must be clarified, either by the Minister's remarks and getting those across to all who wish to use ASBOs more effectively, or by cleaning up the statute so that we are clear that it is a civil offence requiring a civil level of proof.

I tabled an amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour Bill in Committee, although I was not on the Committee, hoping at the very least that that matter could be openly debated with the then Minister, but it was blocked by the Government. Will the current Minister take a fresh look at it and, if convinced, introduce a similar amendment while the Bill is in the Lords? That is still possible. As I am sure hon. Members will point out, rafts of new amendments have been introduced to the Anti-social Behaviour Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill. I am sure that, if the Minister wishes to look at the matter seriously, as I know she will, it will be possible to table a simple amendment to ensure that the civil burden of proof is the level required, and to make that absolutely clear to everyone.

I would now like to call witnesses. The deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, Peter Ditchett, remarks:

"We feel that great progress has been made with ASBOs but that more can be done, particularly on the burden of proof."

Another witness is Christine Oliver, the solicitor for Nottingham city council who has responsibility for moving cases forward:

"We would welcome further changes to allow ASBOs to be granted on evidence proved on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt. We believe this would allow more applications to be made in both the magistrate's court and county court with broader use of anti-social behaviour orders."

It is not that orders are refused by the courts, but that a vast reservoir of potential orders are never sought because people think that some hurdles are too high. I referred earlier to my next witness, Inspector Jeff Whitmore, who stated:

"We do need the entire burden of proof to be at the civil level to enable all forms of evidence to be submitted and the decision to be made on the balance of probabilities. This as you are aware, will make it far easier for us and the Council to make full use of the legislation."

According to Inspector Whitmore, it is necessary to apply the intention that the Home Secretary has stated in various Second Reading debates and to use antisocial behaviour orders in a way that will help our constituents.

My last witness is the former leader of Nottingham city council, Councillor Graham Chapman, who stated:

"We owe it to the vast majority of law abiding good neighbours to keep the pressure up on the tiny minority of anti-social people by making the burden of proof such that we can actively and speedily take action against them."

My case is not that ASBOs are never granted, but that we need to make them more readily available to the people I have quoted. None is a Rachman. None is trying to kick someone out of a house so that it can be sold. They are all dedicated public servants who wish to use the law as we intended it to be used.

I have been speaking about granting an ASBO, but I shall now deal with the question raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) about breaching an ASBO. I acknowledge openly and honestly to everyone in the Chamber and outside that I am on thin ice. The balance that we are always desperate to achieve in a free society is maintaining good order and decent living conditions for the vast majority of people while in no way compromising individual liberties.

I concur with remarks by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that the balance is tilted in favour of the antisocial person who may hide behind his rights and against the vast majority of law-abiding people in our constituencies. I know that this is a very delicate matter, but, having said that, I shall put on my big clogs and stamp all over it to see what happens and whether there is any room to move forward. I hope that my colleagues will forgive me if I speak bluntly on these matters.

Is it ever right to risk convicting an innocent young person, or any innocent person? In these circumstances, the risk is so high. Such a conviction would certainly destroy that person's life.

There is no intention to convict innocent people, although I admit that innocent people are sometimes convicted under any legal system or system of justice. We should take every possible precaution to prevent that from happening. However, I am equally concerned about the 99 out of 100 innocent people who suffer in their homes because we are unable to find a remedy that will allow them to enjoy their life, privacy and home without being subjected to the antisocial behaviour of young people, bad neighbours or others. It is a question not of innocence or guilt, but of getting the balance right. I am suggesting that perhaps we should tilt the balance a little more in favour of the people who suffer, year after year. Rather than for ever considering the issue in the context of clients who may be represented in court, perhaps we should think of the citizens who have a right to enjoy free association and social life in the way we would all want to enjoy them.

Breaching of many types of orders is a criminal offence. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole rightly said that someone can go to prison for five years in certain circumstances. To digress slightly, however, we must explore, if only to reject, the concept of what I call automaticity. Where an order is breached, might it, under carefully defined circumstances, involve an automatic penalty? At present, we need two trials before a penalty is imposed. We need a trial to establish the order and another if it has been breached. We must consider that carefully, as police, probation and housing officers must go through the time-consuming process of preparing and supporting witnesses for court appearances. Automaticity should apply, especially when the original granting of the order required a criminal or quasi-criminal level of proof, although it may not apply in other circumstances. I will leave that thought with the Minister, and I hope that colleagues will take it seriously rather than merely being outraged, saying that we are going to lock up thousands of innocent people. It deserves to be explored, if only for us to reject it collectively around the table.

There is less confusion over ASBOs. We certainly require a criminal level of proof to determine whether they have been breached. To convict someone who has broken their antisocial behaviour order by reappearing in an area from which they were barred, or intimidating families whom they were banned from approaching, the same level of proof is required—as I understand it, although I am not a lawyer—as for murder, rape or any of the most serious offences. That proof must be beyond a shadow of a doubt, beyond all reasonable possibilities. It may well be the law, but we are here not merely to create or to rubber-stamp the law, but to try to support those suffering in our constituencies. I ask hon. Members to think about the issue not as lawyers, but as Members of Parliament whose constituents need action and alternatives to the existing policy. We should not find more reasons to say, "No, we are going to make it difficult for you. We will allow a process to take place that makes it difficult for you to get those necessary orders."

I say to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole that, normally, by the time we reach that stage, the people are not first-time offenders. They have a track record locally and are at the end of the line. When police, probation and housing resources of that magnitude are committed, it is because the offenders are not casual people whom we are picking up in the streets, but long-term, repeat offenders, many of whom we know through the experiences of our constituents. We are not randomly picking up people off the street and locking them up because we do not like them. Those people have come a long way down the road of antisocial behaviour.

Those are the points that I would like the Minister to clarify. I have been specific, but there is a lot more we can do about antisocial behaviour orders. The Minister will rightly point out the vast amount that the Government have done over recent years, and that effort is genuinely appreciated on the estates in my constituency. The recent developments with the Anti-social Behaviour Bill are welcome. I applaud and pay tribute to those efforts, but they must continue. There are concerns, but whether they are justified is almost beside the point. We need to resolve them whether or not they have any basis. I hope that, in their third and fourth terms, the Labour Government will introduce not only a tax on antisocial behaviour, but a serious and solid campaign to promote social behaviour among young people. I have had discussions on the matter with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. I have had conversations on an all-party basis—Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members must be part of getting the process moving—on ensuring that the national curriculum from the age of five reflects social behaviour.

The concepts of emotional intelligence, personal development and self-discipline must be included to give those young people values. That may sound like the nanny state, which may offend middle class people, but there are many kids in my constituency who do not get it at home. It is vital that youngsters learn how to respect each other and how to operate socially. That concept of social behaviour is probably more valuable than any academic or paper qualification that one can obtain after 11 years of schooling and university. To be a decent human being able to interact with one's peers is the greatest gift our education system could give to young people, particularly if they are from a background where they are not getting that encouragement.

Without being prescriptive, I hope that colleagues from all parties will join us and help the Secretary of State for Education and Skills understand how that is an important basis for education. I would also include things such as parenting skills for people who are not yet parents. Children will one day become parents and need to understand what it is like to be a parent and what the responsibilities are. As someone who became a father at a late age, I can say that it is one of the most daunting things that has ever happened to me. I do not have a clue how I would cope if I were a single mum living with a little child in one of the tough estates in my constituency.

Building in an understanding of how to do those things at school level would be a great gift to our fellow citizens. It is also a matter of engaging young people in opportunities for worthwhile activities and setting personal standards that allow them to make something better of their lives. That means proper support for youth clubs, sporting associations, libraries, centres for training and education, leisure, drama and the arts. It means ending the sale of school playing fields, not having children rotating around parks, and allowing caretakers back on sites so that they can look after them. It means more support for local schools that have to cope with damaged and disturbed children to give them the discipline and social skills that they do not have in their home lives.

I hope that our Government will continue the great work that has been started. I hope that they will enjoy the support and the encouragement of other parties in the House. I hope that the Government will continue their twin-track approach of swift penalties for antisocial behaviour and helping those people in our communities who are tackling such problems by cleaving away much of the legal verbiage that surrounds such matters and allowing dedicated public service professionals such as councillors, Members of Parliament and others to make life better for their constituents. As well as swift penalties for antisocial behaviour, there is a raft of things we need to do, leading to swift rewards for improvement. I look forward to the Minister's response.

rose—

Order. It is advisable for me to remind hon. Members, in case they have not realised, that it is customary in these 90-minute Adjournment debates to commence the first of the three-winding up speeches 30 minutes before termination, which means that we have 31 minutes left for those hon. Members who want to contribute. I ask them to keep that in mind when they make their contributions, or accept and respond to interventions.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing the debate. The antisocial behaviour of a few people has a disproportionate impact on the lives of many of our constituents, and I welcome the opportunity once again to raise their concerns with Ministers.

I recently carried out a detailed survey of my constituents' views on antisocial behaviour, because I was on the Committee that considered the Anti-social Behaviour Bill and wanted their help in getting it right. I promised them that I would use the findings to help with my campaigning, and that I would try my best to make the Government bear them in mind. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister does not think that I am deliberately stalking her, but as she knows after meeting some of my constituents in the House last week, the issue clearly touches a nerve in Mitcham and Morden, and that is borne out by the response to my survey.

Out of about 1,000 questionnaires that I sent out, more than 600 were posted back, an almost unprecedented return rate for a postal survey. I could not get into my office one morning because of the amount of post piled up behind the door, and the results were almost as astonishing. On almost every question, more than 90 per cent. of respondents supported the toughest measures, which include banning the sale of spray paints to under-18s, giving the police powers to move on intimidating gangs of young people and imposing fixed-penalty fines for graffiti on the over-10s. They also want antisocial behaviour notices to apply to troublemakers aged 16 and 17, and possibly to those who are even younger.

My constituents support what the Government are doing, but when one reads their comments one senses their frustration and need for reassurance. They think that we mean well and do not think that we are doing things wrong, but they need reassurance that new laws will be firmly policed, and that there will be a strong chance of the perpetrators being punished. One couple told me:

"Unfortunately, the reported number of prosecutions for any of these offences is extremely low and, in some cases, non-existent. I believe it is pointless to introduce further legislation which will not be enforced."

Another constituent said:

"Although I believe that the measures contained in your proposed Bill will help, the most effective deterrent is the probability of being caught and punished".

Whether it is fair or not, my survey revealed that although people believe that the Government are sincere in their intentions and support our proposals, they are sceptical about our ability to deliver.

Even though crime is falling and many of our measures are having an impact, people hear stories about criminals basically getting away with it, and that erodes their trust and belief in the system. They hear stories about the only antisocial behaviour order imposed in Merton—it cost £20,000—on which the courts were extremely lenient when it was breached. No wonder our constituents think that the criminals are taking the mickey out of us.

In contrast, acceptable behaviour contracts cost about £20 each and have an 85 per cent. success rate. It is no wonder that Merton council's partnership against crime prefers to use acceptable behaviour contracts rather than the flagship ASBOs, which are 1,000 times more expensive and have a track record of, "Tried it once, it didn't work."

Sergeant Reeves, the community sergeant at Mitcham police station, and the ASBO and ABC co-ordinator for Merton, has admitted to me that his work has been hampered because until recently there were no standardised procedures for obtaining ASBOs. He said that he was "making it up as he went along". Fortunately, he is now following the guidelines from Coventry police force that were sent to him by the Met, but it is astonishing that good practice in one area takes so long to filter through to others.

Sergeant Reeves is frustrated because the system seems so bureaucratic and inflexible. He told me that it was an "interminable set of meetings". He has to deal with witnesses, housing officers, council staff, registered social landlords and—this often happens last—the victims. Even then, there is no guarantee that the courts will fulfil their side of the bargain. Steve Brennan of Merton partnership against crime has urged me to use this opportunity to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to tell magistrates in the strongest possible terms that ASBOs are not punitive in themselves. MPAC is about to try to obtain its second ASBO, and it does not want a dispiriting experience. It is not applying for an ASBO on a whim, but at the same time ASBOs are not punishments; they are pieces of paper that do no more than commit individuals to behave themselves. Nevertheless, MPAC still felt that for its first ASBO it would need counsel's advice, and a raft of police, housing officers, witnesses and others in the court. What a lot of hassle for a piece of paper—particularly as it is virtually impossible to get people to attend court to tell on their neighbours, especially if they are the neighbours from hell.

As Steve Brennan told me:

"When people dominate an area through fear, not many people are going to testify against them."

The rules of evidence may be a nuisance but, says Sergeant Reeves, so is the lack of flexibility. He believes that the two-year minimum for ASBOs is sometimes too long. That makes magistrates less inclined to grant them, and the authorities less inclined to seek them. A shorter, more focused period might work better.

Then there is the difficulty of what to do if one manages to serve an ASBO, and it is breached. To be fair, neither MPAC nor the local police blame magistrates alone for the failure to take strong action when Merton's only ASBO was breached. They certainly want magistrates to treat breaches more seriously, and to remember that it is possible to impose heavy fines or a five-year prison term, but they also blame other parts of the system. The need to work to a criminal level of proof—beyond reasonable doubt—rather than the balance of probabilities is a disincentive. Merton's first ASBO breach ended frustratingly because social services persuaded magistrates not to take tough action.

I sympathise with constituents who feel that some authorities believe that the perpetrators, rather than the communities that they terrorise, are the victims. We must send out a strong message that that is not so.

It is not all bad news. The introduction of antisocial behaviour orders and parenting orders in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was a tremendous step forward. It has encouraged local authorities such as Merton to deliver a joined-up response to antisocial behaviour. There have also been outstanding successes such as the neighbourhood warden scheme in my constituency, which on one estate led to a 47 per cent. decrease in the number of call-outs about disorder.

If we are serious, we need to demonstrate to our constituents that, at all levels of criminality, our policies have an impact. That includes improving the framework of antisocial behaviour orders, which not only serve as a deterrent, but, just as importantly, help to reassure people that something is being done. We have to listen to our constituents, one of whom wrote to me:

"I have spoken to various people about this survey who have expressed strong views about the police being asked to enforce measures in the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill … Basically there are a few people in this borough who make life miserable for the rest of us by their behaviour. I feel the only answer is a strong punitive course of action."

ASBOs are an important and useful additional tool for the police and local authorities. Our constituents want the reassurance that they can and will be used, and that they will be effective. On behalf of my constituents, I ask for that reassurance.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on having secured the debate. We have worked closely, along with the Nottingham press, on legislation concerning fireworks. They, too, are used by yobs to terrify communities. I hope that, with the help of those in another place, progress will be made towards ending that problem.

Antisocial behaviour is a major problem in every constituency. I have not run a survey, but the evidence of my surgeries is that the problem is serious and growing. I have heard it suggested that people act in such a fashion for a number of reasons, including poor housing conditions, lack of facilities for young people, peer pressure and under-age drinking. The community should address under-age drinking, as unscrupulous retailers and off-licences allow young people to buy alcoholic beverages. That contributes greatly to the problem.

We also have gang wars—people from either side of a community deciding to have a good dust-up. The police must deal with that more effectively. The drug culture is a major problem. A feeling of belonging, of being part of a team or group, sometimes provides impetus for becoming involved in antisocial behaviour. Parents are often completely helpless and unable to deal with their children's problems.

We must examine how we deal with such problems, their causes and the reasons why people of all ages are often frustrated and angry at what they see as the inactivity of the police, the councils and us politicians. It has been said that aggressive neighbours, loud music, drug dealing and rowdy children all contribute to the hell that people suffer in such communities. The elderly especially feel trapped in their homes; they are frightened to open the blinds or to look out of their windows. However, the problem is not confined to them, and many people tell us of their experiences.

Damage to property is another major issue, but challenges to such behaviour often rebound on the individuals who make them. A constituent of mine heard a noise at 3 o'clock in the morning, went to his window and saw two youths breaking into a neighbour's car. He went to the front door and chased them off, but within half an hour of getting back into bed, a brick was thrown through his front window. That behaviour is totally unacceptable but very difficult to deal with.

The problem is nationwide, and it is important that we examine how we are dealing with it. I hope to signal briefly how that might be done. Antisocial behaviour orders are a powerful weapon, and I trust that all hon. Members recognise their value. If they are not working as effectively as they should, the Minister will need to see whether we can learn from the experience of others, and make the changes necessary to ensure that they are effective.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North highlighted the standard of proof necessary to obtain an antisocial behaviour order. I understand his concerns, but I suggest that changes could be made that would strengthen such orders. Criminal justice in Scotland is devolved. I want to consider the tackling of antisocial behaviour in my constituency. Section 83 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 requires Scottish local authorities to have an antisocial behaviour strategy. I am proud to say that, over the past two years, South Lanarkshire council has worked effectively to deal with the problems experienced by its constituents. It created an antisocial behaviour unit, staffed by four ex-policemen and led by John McKenzie.

Whenever I come across a major problem in my surgery, I contact John. The unit visits the locality, and talks to the individuals. The fact that the unit is in the area often quietens the problems that residents are experiencing. If it does not, the unit gets everyone in the neighbourhood to fill in a diary of the events that are causing the problem. The unit then visits the individuals who are causing the problem. I have found that approach to be very effective.

If no notice is taken of the unit's visit, the council will evict people. South Lanarkshire council employs three solicitors to ensure that its case for eviction is strong, that it is taken through the courts as quickly as possible and that it is dealt with effectively. Hon. Members cannot imagine how the community responds to such action. When successful, it sends out the signal to those who are causing the disruption that their behaviour is unacceptable.

When my hon. Friend speaks on these matters, we all listen, not least because of his great experience in promoting the Fireworks Bill. I thank him for his tribute to the local newspaper campaign in Nottingham.

I am very interested in the Scottish dimension. I am one of those MPs who believe that the presence here of our Scottish and Welsh colleagues, unlike other colleagues whom we could talk about, adds to the richness of our British Parliament. Will my hon. Friend tell us about the tenancy agreement that he mentioned in relation to antisocial behaviour? He may not know the answer off the top of his head, but is the council empowered to evict people using a slightly faster-track process than the one that many English councils have? The process used by English councils is almost as protracted as the antisocial behaviour order process itself. Some of us would view such a capacity, if Scottish councils have it, with great envy and jealousy.

We obviously do not have a perfect system either, but I believe that we have the correct way of ensuring that we are dealing seriously with the problem. The council cannot evict: eviction requires a court order. We do, however, have a dedicated unit that can examine the problems, identify the culprits and the antisocial behaviour, and pass that information to the council. The council then examines it to see whether there is a strong enough case. I should add that members of the antisocial behaviour unit will be the witnesses in the case, not the individual neighbours who feel threatened. That has been successful in several cases, and it sends a very strong signal. I will be delighted to talk in depth to my hon. Friend about that, as I am sure will the council.

Problems with the system remain, and I suspect that England and Wales, not just Scotland, experience many of them. Consideration needs to be given to the legal process and fast-tracking, because the major problem with antisocial behaviour is that people become frustrated if it is not dealt with quickly enough. They feel let down after having been through the whole process, which is why the antisocial behaviour unit has been so successful.

A weakness remains in other areas, which the Minister could address if we changed the system slightly. Interim orders give provision for tackling the problem, but current delays of up to a year are unacceptable. An application that takes that long to pass through the court sends completely the wrong signals. The other problem is that an application is usually made with the help of legal aid, which makes it very expensive for the council to pursue the case.

The Scottish Executive recently proposed how to strengthen the system in Scotland. We can learn from each other. I am a United Kingdom MP and I will vote on UK matters, which I hope people will recognise is important. I also hope, however, that the Minister is closely following the Scottish experience and considering whether it can be applied in England and Wales. I also hope that the Executive will closely follow our discussion today. Many of our problems are the same as Scotland's, and I hope that the ideas that may be piloted, such as fast-tracking antisocial behaviour orders through the courts in less than a month, could be applied widely.

Antisocial behaviour orders are a useful tool for tackling the nuisance behaviour that blights so many of our communities. As such, I believe that the Government can have notable success with them. Weaknesses and teething troubles remain, but I hope that in response to the debate the Minister will commit herself to considering a package of measures that might make the orders more effective in confronting people who engage in antisocial behaviour. I hope that best practice can be examined and implemented. If it is, I believe that it will make a major difference to the people we represent.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen). I might not agree with everything that he said, but it would be helpful if the Minister provided the clarification that the hon. Gentleman is seeking. It is worth establishing where the confusion that undoubtedly exists lies, and how it arose.

I very much welcomed the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. As hon. Members will know, I am committed to the local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. I sincerely believe that we need local solutions for local problems. I will not bore the Chamber with my many views on that, but I am passionate about a problem-solving approach.

Interestingly, The Guardian published a large article on Saturday, as it did on three other days last week, about the war on crime. The article discussed some of the Government's policies. It concluded that there was a shift from preventative measures towards punishment. The Guardian was complimentary about the measures that were first introduced, and specifically mentioned the Crime and Disorder Act. It is important to remember that local initiatives need funding, and local priorities need to be determined locally. That is fair. Although I am in favour of certain targets, it is important that all targets mean something to the people who implement them. That sets the background for what I would like to say.

I want to put it firmly on the record that I am committed to tackling antisocial behaviour. I have been involved in a great deal of work with young people and I am committed to the idea that we must all have respect for and value one another. However, as I have said many times, we need to intervene early enough. One of my greatest fears is that young people will get on to the conveyer belt of crime, and we must try to prevent that. That does not mean that I am not protective of other people, but prevention must be high among our priorities.

I can rattle off a number of excellent Government initiatives, which I praise. I meet many people at my surgeries, and my concern is that people in my part of the world want direct draconian measures to be put in place for relatively minor situations. For example, one of my constituents is continually having his fence damaged. That is an enormous problem for him, but going straight to issuing an ASBO is not the solution. It is a difficult situation.

I want to highlight particular problems in my constituency. In the borough of Poole, there are no street wardens or neighbourhood wardens. In the eastern half of the Dorset county council area, there are no community support officers. Whatever measures are put in place, it is difficult to implement them without people on the ground or a deterrent. Dorset is probably the safest part of the country, so it is not surprising that we do not see police around in large numbers. Many people can go weeks without seeing a police officer. In areas such as my constituency, we need civilian support, particularly as a lot of disorder—if I can call it that—is lower-level antisocial behaviour.

I always think that we have to appreciate that ASBOs are just one weapon in the armoury, not an end in themselves. I always get distressed when I see authorities almost competing with each other to see who has the greatest number of ASBOs. That does not mean that an authority is more efficient and effective at controlling antisocial behaviour. I know that I have quoted the following example before, but it was quoted in the White Paper that preceded the Police Reform Bill:

"In Wrexham, for example, just one order has been made, but the real measure of success is the 1,500 or so incidents that have been resolved through partnership working before an ASBO had to be used."

We must put the issue into perspective. I am in favour of a staged approach with early intervention and warnings. I am exceedingly pleased that it was the Liberal Democrat council in Islington that came up with the idea of acceptable behaviour contracts. They were, of course, a by-product of ASBOs, so everybody can take some credit.

An ASBO must be accompanied by measures to change behaviour. It seems pointless to say, "Stop, stop, stop," particularly with young people. All measures must be monitored and evaluated to see what works in a particular area.

We sometimes ask what on earth antisocial behaviour is because it is such a diverse, catch-all term. Many hon. Members have given examples related to housing, but we also face quite different issues. I am sure that my area does not have as many problems as inner-city areas represented by other hon. Members, but what I see still makes me angry. My local crime and disorder reduction partnership should he in there sorting things out and at least imposing acceptable behaviour contracts, because many neighbours are experiencing great distress, as we have heard.

In my area, there are problems with alcohol. It is a fairly affluent area. Fireworks are a huge problem, because there is plenty of money to buy them. I therefore congratulate the hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan) on introducing his private Member's Bill. It is always a huge success for an hon. Member to introduce such a Bill, but that is particularly true when the Bill is wanted so much throughout the country. The hon. Gentleman deserves the greatest credit for introducing the Fireworks Bill, which I supported every inch of the way. In that respect, I would not like to think that I was described as being soft on antisocial behaviour.

We need effective measures, and I favour antisocial behaviour orders as a weapon of last resort. Of course, they must sometimes be used earlier, and that seems to happen more and more in cases of really bad behaviour. I favour ASBOs over dispersal orders, which I oppose in their current form. ASBOs are targeted at an individual, and specific misbehaviour must be proved. A dispersal order applies to a group, and its use can be triggered by people's mere presence in an area rather than by their behaviour. Leaving aside the human rights issues, such orders can have perverse consequences. Moving young people on makes them think, "No one wants us round here." As a result, they may go off and do even worse things in another area. I therefore have sound reasons for opposing dispersal orders. I would prefer us to use a range of other supportive, positive and diversionary measures as part of a package to tackle antisocial behaviour.

It is interesting that the Government undertook a complete evaluation of ASBOs. I read their report when it came out in January 2002, and it contained many lessons. The conclusion states:

"The overall opinion in the areas visited was generally positive. When used effectively, ASBOs have been successful in curbing unruly behaviour, have helped rebuild the quality of life in communities and cemented good relationships both between partner agencies and between these agencies and the community."

Of course, there were reservations about delays, excessive bureaucracy and, sometimes, the fact that partnership working was not too good. However, we can work on all those things.

Many changes were made after the evaluation, as the Government responded to earlier difficulties with ASBOs, and we now have interim ASBOs. We also have post-conviction orders, although I was rather wary of them, because it seemed that we were giving people two punishments for the same offence. However, my local police have greatly welcomed them. ASBOs have been extended to housing associations and the British Transport police, and other extensions are included in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill, which is coming on stream. I repeat that I would be much happier if all the agencies that could apply for ASBOs were tied into the local partnership, because the wider picture—the quality of the local environment—will not be considered unless everyone works together.

I want to give a quote from the White Paper that preceded the Police Reform Bill to highlight the important point about the debate:

"In the light of these findings, the Home Office will streamline the procedures involved in obtaining an ASBO and develop a national procedure for obtaining, deploying and targeting ASBOs, backed up by the most suitable step by step warning system".

We want to know how good practice is being spread. What plans are in place to evaluate the effects of the changes introduced by what is now the Police Reform Act 2002? We need to consider such issues all the time, because it is not worth having a weapon that is not working particularly well.

To conduct an evaluation, I got my researcher to ring a few councils to see how they were getting on with the new measures. I shall be brief and refer to the councils by their initials, so that I do not embarrass them, but their comments were interesting. Council I has so far issued two ASBOs using the new powers in the 2002 Act; one was post-conviction, the other an interim ASBO. That council welcomes the new powers, which have greatly facilitated the use of ASBOs. The multi-agency approach is important, but the main reason that council I has not used many is because of the success of acceptable behaviour contracts and the successful work with multiple agencies.

Council H was rather interesting—it was referred to in one of our debates on the Anti-social Behaviour Bill. For various reasons, it has to date not issued any ASBOs, notably because it does not have a dedicated antisocial behaviour unit co-ordinator. I thought that councils had to have one; at least I recall reading that in some guidance. However, that council did not have its own housing stock, so there was a less pressing need locally. Again, it is deceptive to quote only the numbers. When, or indeed if, that council establishes a dedicated antisocial behaviour co-ordinator post, it will definitely use ASBOs more extensively.

Did the hon. Lady telephone Nottingham city council? After the Liberal Democrats' vote in Parliament against the Anti-social Behaviour Bill, the Liberal group on Nottingham city council split, and half of them became independent. Did she speak to them?

I certainly would have done so, had they contacted me. They would undoubtedly have understood why we voted against that Bill at that stage in the process. We are opposed to the dispersal orders, but we have never opposed ASBOs.

Briefly, council S is an interesting case. It has implemented 22 ASBOs, plus five interim ASBOs, and used acceptable behaviour contracts extensively—it had 136 in 2002–03. It has a strong multi-agency group that meets to discuss each ASBO and has not lost one yet. Each application is a rock solid case, and that sends an important message. I apologise for taking time on that, but those were quite interesting comments.

Hon. Members have referred to witnesses, and in the evaluation there is a lot of advice about witness protection and alternative ways of getting the evidence presented. What is the Minister doing to spread best practice on supporting witnesses?

This debate is about the level of proof, and I thought that I had got my head around that, but then I listened to the Minister's reply during questions on Monday. There is one issue on which I am not clear, so I would be grateful if she clarified matters. As I see the matter, there are two tests—that the individual concerned has acted in a certain manner, and that the ASBO is necessary to protect persons in that local government area from further antisocial acts. It has been suggested that the burden of proof on the first test should be to the higher civil or criminal standard, whereas the second aspect is an evaluation. However, the Minister said to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North that

"the orders are civil orders, and that the civil standard of evidence is therefore admissible."—[Official Report, 14 July 2003; Vol. 409, c. 12.]

As a non-lawyer, I am now confused and would be grateful for clarification on that point.

As for a breach, I am clear what the burden of proof should be, and I would not favour an automatic penalty—young people often go off the rails for all sorts of family reasons—because the worst scenario horrifies me. I welcome much that the Government are doing to tackle antisocial behaviour, but we need to get the right balance between prevention and punishment. We should involve young people in solutions in the community. For example, when there is a breach, a community sentence is much better than a prison sentence, especially for a younger person. Why not let other young people determine that community sentence and what it should involve?

I will deal first with the points that have arisen this morning. It is clear that great concern remains. Several MPs have made powerful contributions to the debate about the level of antisocial behaviour.

I disagree with the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) that the judiciary is unaware of antisocial behaviour or is cocooned away from it. Antisocial behaviour takes place in the area where I live. I suspect that it also takes place in the areas where judges live, around London or outside it, and affects them in the same way as it affects people elsewhere, although not necessarily to the same degree as it affects the hon. Gentleman's constituents. In many areas of the law, most judges' or barristers' professional careers are spent listening day after day to examples of antisocial behaviour that would make one's hair stand on end. Therefore, I do not think that the problem is that the judiciary is out of touch.

The hon. Gentleman raised a specific and highly pertinent issue. As he knows, the Conservative party was prepared to welcome ASBOs, although we had some grave reservations about how they would work in practice. Is the problem with ASBOs that the test for obtaining them in court is too high? That is the specific matter that he raised, and I will deal with it before making general comments.

I must say bluntly to the hon. Gentleman that I do not think that the Government have any leeway on the matter. They incorporated the European convention on human rights into our law. I do not see how the nature of ASBOs can be reconciled with their being obtained, either initially or for their breach, on anything other than an elevated standard of proof. I do not blame the Human Rights Act 1998 for that elevated standard, but even before it, it had long been the practice that a standard of proof other than the balance of probabilities had to be used in civil court proceedings where the judge made decisions of grave importance to a person's reputation, or made findings against a person that were tantamount to a criminal offence. The hon. Gentleman understands that. He cited the McCann case, in which Lord Steyn made it clear in the House of Lords that, in cases relating to whether an ASBO should be imposed, there had to be a heightened civil standard because of the seriousness of the matters involved. Picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), as I understand it, the heightened civil standard relates to the acts committed by the person concerned, which give rise to the ASBO being granted.

The House of Lords said in the McCann case that the heightened civil standard and the criminal standard of proof are virtually indistinguishable, which is true and was stated previously by Lord Bingham. In those circumstances, therefore, it would be sensible for magistrates to apply the criminal standard of proof, which would be simpler than engaging in a convoluted exercise and would be the best way to proceed.

Surely there is nothing in article 6 to oblige the British courts to adopt the criminal standard of proof in civil proceedings.

I entirely agree, but I am bound to say that it would be contrary to evolving civil practice to deal with a matter of such seriousness on the balance of probabilities irrespective of the Human Rights Act. I think that, although there is nothing to specify it, it would be left open to a challenge because of its nature.

That picks up on the point made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). She said that the ASBO is only a piece of paper. The trouble is that it is not only a piece of paper. If it were only a piece of paper, matters might be rather different. The piece of paper frequently has written on it requirements for observance that are a curtailment of individual liberties. I think of the first ASBO granted in my own constituency after quite a lot of pressure from me, apart from anyone else.

The ASBO was issued to a tearaway 16-year-old girl who terrorised the local inhabitants of Burnham in my constituency. She moved in on an 80-year old and lived in his flat, milking his bank account of some £10,000 in circumstances that gave rise to possible duress. Her misbehaviour and violence were such that when she was arrested by the police they hardly ever took her to the police station: they tended to take her to the casualty department of the local hospital because of the damage she did inside police vans. The ASBO provided for restrictions on where she could go within the locality. That is not just a piece of paper. It may be proportionate, and civil injunctions may be granted in such a way, but it imposed a number of clear and important conditions.

I am conscious that the hon. Gentleman has only a short time, so he is being generous in giving way. He has got to the crux of the issue. The civil standard of proof is applied in cases where no quasi-criminal act is alleged and the penalties for such a breach can follow. Applying the civil standard of proof, one can make injunctions and restrictions on freedom just as hard as one would if one adopted voluntarily the criminal standard of proof. What on earth is the point of making it harder for people to get antisocial behaviour orders? My point applies to issues such as access to children where allegations of domestic violence have been made. Those cases have to be judged on the criminal standard and make a just outcome much more difficult to achieve.

The hon. and learned Lady makes a good point. It is also right that one cannot get a civil injunction on the balance of probabilities against someone under 18. That is part of the difficulty and one of the problems that ASBOs were designed to address.

Protection of the rights of minors is important. The hon. and learned Lady may be right, but I do not share her confidence about the Human Rights Act compatibility.

The hon. Gentleman is saying that we are bound by the evolution of civil law. I believe that statute law and parliamentary sovereignty—if one believes in that myth—would allow this place to make its view clear and influence the direction of law. People will not be impressed to hear someone citing the evolution of civil law. If the European convention can overturn the provisions, let us put that to the test. The Government should be on the right side of the argument by not allowing Europe to do that.

The hon. Gentleman makes another interesting point. Parliament could decide that such orders should be granted on the balance of probabilities. My next question is whether that would make such a difference. We need to consider that important matter. The principal difficulty in obtaining ASBOs is that one is collating a large number of acts, often using hearsay evidence—it is worth bearing it in mind that hearsay evidence can be used—to present a picture to the court of the unpleasant activities of a person, which may not be enough evidence to prosecute them for those acts. Even if that picture were being painted only on the balance of probabilities, it would still require bringing the witnesses to court to support those assertions.

My impression of ASBOs—we warned the Government about this—is that the difficulty being experienced is that they involve a labour-intensive and bureaucratic process that can go wrong because witnesses do not turn up because they feel intimidated, as the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said. However, they will feel just as intimidated whether they are coming to give evidence to satisfy a court on the balance of probabilities, or whether they are coming to give evidence to satisfy the court, so that it is sure that someone has done something. I see the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) grimace and I appreciate the point that she is silently trying to communicate to me. There are grey areas in cases, where the court may feel that there has been sufficient evidence to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities but not to make it sure. That might include cases where some key witnesses fail to turn up, but others are present. I should be very interested in a little survey of how ASBOs are failing in reality, because I am by no means persuaded that they are failing once they get to court with witnesses. I shall be interested to hear from the Minister on that. I think that the problem has simply been that they have turned out to be far more bureaucratic and cumbersome to obtain than the Government envisaged. I do not think that changing the test of the standard of proof would make a difference.

if I had more time, I would tell the Chamber about another point that has clearly emerged: it is all very well having ASBOs, but unless we have the means of enforcement, we will not go far. I believe that the principal problem is a lack of adequate policing. Various examples have been cited of huge improvements brought to areas by neighbourhood initiatives. I am sure that that is right, involving people out on the street. We need to concentrate on that, as well as on obtaining orders against individuals. Without that, the orders are nothing but bits of paper that turn out in practice to do little for the local community.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up and went outside to find that the front door area of my house had been graffitied. That was extremely irritating. I have no idea who did it and have not the slightest means of apprehending them. I did not even complain to the police. It was clear that it had taken place fairly liberally down my street. That is the sort of event that puts people in fear and makes them feel that an area is deteriorating. Unless there is some way of seeing a police officer out on the streets, which in my part of London does not happen frequently, we will not be able to start to make an impact on such problems.

I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments and, specifically, I should like an update from her on how many ASBOs have been granted or obtained. However, I hope that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North understands that, although I am deeply sympathetic to his points and his wish for something to he done, I have a question mark over whether changing the standard of proof would deliver what he wants.

In the fairly short time available, I shall try to deal with the points that hon. Members have made. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing the debate on an issue that resonates throughout the country in every constituency. We all know the depth of misery and anguish that many of our constituents have experienced. Hearing the tale of his constituents, to whom he has dedicated the debate, sets the scene for all of us.

My hon. Friend made interesting suggestions on how he feels about the position. I shall respond to the particular issues that he raised. He suggested that we could have post-legislative scrutiny of how well the powers are working. Although I am not necessarily attracted to that specific idea, as to how the powers have evolved, there is constant scrutiny of where they are working and where there are difficulties—hurdles and barriers—as we try to build knowledge about how to make the orders even more effective in practice.

Hon. Members may know that we have recently established the antisocial behaviour unit in the Home Office, which is a new development. It will receive £75 million in funding over the next three years, ensure that the powers are implemented in local areas and provide a central resource for practitioners, who may be experiencing some difficulties in relation to evidence, proof or practice. It will draw together the good guidelines mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and ensure that people are not reinventing the wheel when they use the powers in their communities. The unit will provide us with a system of measuring and evaluating how well the powers are working.

I certainly do not feel that my hon. Friend, who has a tremendous track record in this area, is putting me under undue pressure and I was delighted to meet her constituents in the House last week. They reaffirmed just how right the Government are to make tackling antisocial behaviour a top political priority, because it is clearly a priority for people in her community. I am concerned that Mitcham and Morden has found it difficult to obtain ASBOs. We now have a support group of experienced practitioners and we can put those people in touch with Mitcham and Morden to provide advice, support and the means of tackling some of the hurdles.

On the cost of ASBOs, it is fair to say that, initially, they were expensive, because people did not really have a full grasp of the range of evidence that it was necessary to collect. I understand that the average cost of obtaining an order is now about £1,000, which makes an order a fairly cost-effective remedy. When people seek more orders, they have standardised documentation and are not starting from scratch. The cost gets cheaper the more orders are used.

I understand that the latest figure for the number of ASBOs granted is 1,112. More than 200 orders were granted between the judgment in the House of Lords case last October and this March. Clearly, there is no evidence that that judgment has had a practical impact and is preventing orders from being granted. Although I have listened to what hon. Members have said about the burden of proof, and although it is a fascinating discussion, the fact that the law is now clear and that magistrates are clear about what they need to find in such cases is not militating against the granting of orders.

There is a case for saying that the messages need to be clearer, that information for magistrates needs to be strengthened, that magistrates need more training from the Judicial Studies Board and that we need proper sentencing guidelines, so that magistrates know how seriously such matters are taken in their communities and what burden of proof they need to look for. However, at this stage, I have no evidence to indicate that orders are not being sought or granted because of the heightened burden of proof that is necessary.

The Minister says that that is not causing a problem with ASBOs. I cannot comment on that, but the matter causes enormous problems in domestic violence cases.

The Government decided that ASBO proceedings should be civil. How do they feel about the judges disagreeing and deciding that proceedings should be criminal?

I take issue with my hon. and learned Friend. The judges did not decide that the matter is criminal. The judgment makes it clear that we are talking about civil orders and civil proceedings. That brings me to one of the points made by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke). What I sought to say in my answer at Home Office questions was that the orders are civil. The burden of proof for the first limb of the application—whether there has been antisocial behaviour—is of a heightened civil level, equivalent to the criminal burden of proof. The second limb of the application is whether the order should be granted. Throughout the proceedings, because they are civil, hearsay evidence and professional witnesses are admissible. That enables us to do the very thing that the orders were designed to do—ensure that local people are not necessarily put in the firing line in those difficult circumstances. We can continue to use civil evidence, such as hearsay, which has proved so vital in ensuring that orders are granted.

I think that the Minister is saying that there is not an issue of substance, but there is perhaps an issue of communication. Practitioners are undoubtedly not seeking orders. Once they seek them, they get them, but they do not seek them to the extent that I or perhaps the Minister would like It is a matter of clarity. Will she undertake to ensure that not only magistrates, but all practitioners receive her clear advice about judges' decisions in those cases? Then, they will seek and take out more antisocial behaviour orders.

I am delighted to give my hon. Friend that undertaking. It is important that there is more communication on issues that apply to practitioners to give them the self-confidence to say, "We have a situation of antisocial behaviour, we have a whole range of tools at our disposal." The tools range from acceptable behaviour contracts to diversionary work. Where an antisocial behaviour order is the appropriate remedy, practitioners should feel confident in making the application and supporting the victim and witnesses throughout the process. That will ensure that they obtain the order and that it is enforced if it is subsequently breached. I accept that we must communicate more, and the antisocial behaviour unit will help us to do that.

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan) on fireworks. He has done a sterling job with tenacity and determination, and I hope that the Fireworks Bill gets a fair wind in the other place. He mentioned the idea of having a dedicated antisocial behaviour unit at a local level. I have one in my constituency and there is an excellent one at Manchester city council. In those areas, the gaining of orders has continued apace. In my constituency, about 16 have been attached to convictions. That is one of the new powers brought in by the Police Reform Act 2002. Increasingly, orders on conviction are proving extremely attractive because there has been a trial. Witnesses do not have to go through the ordeal of a trial again to obtain an order. It can be attached to the conviction based on the evidence heard. That is proving an extremely useful weapon.

We now have the idea of interim orders so, when a situation arises, people can go to court straight away and secure urgent action. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, South said that it takes up to a year to obtain orders. That concerns me, and the powers to obtain an interim order are therefore important. The powers to obtain orders in the county court and attach them to housing proceedings will also make them more effective. All those powers exemplify how the Government have learned from practical experience and recognised the difficulties that communities have had. We have responded by introducing those extra powers.

Despite the undoubted enthusiasm for tackling antisocial behaviour of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, I am disappointed that she and her party were unable to support the proposals in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill. She will live to regret that decision, and I think that her constituents would have wanted her to support its powers to tackle antisocial behaviour. I hope that she and her party will have a rethink as the Bill proceeds through Parliament.

The hon. Lady asked about evaluation. At the moment, the new powers are being used well. A quarter of the 200 orders made in the past year have been made on conviction. The geographical extension of orders across England and Wales has been granted to prevent people from crossing borders to escape the strictures of their order. County court ASBOs were introduced only in April and some have already been granted. Practitioners are taking up the new powers extremely enthusiastically. We are not in a position where the House of Lords' legal judgment has militated against the granting of orders. Improving communication, spreading good practice, ensuring that we do not reinvent the wheel in every community and trying to get orders through quickly are all important.

ASBOs are one of the tools introduced by the Government. The decision to tackle those matters in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was bold and courageous. In response to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who said that we need adequate policing, we now have 132,268 police officers, which is a record. We have nearly 1,400 community support officers and 5,000 more police officers than when we came to power in 1997. That is the Government's record on policing.

We have taken bold and courageous steps to tackle antisocial behaviour. We believe that it is at the top of communities' priorities. We will continue to ensure that people are able to live free from fear in safe communities and to go about their lawful business without the prospect of being attacked and harassed in the way that far too many of our fellow citizens are today.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise an issue that is of great importance to my constituency. Teenage pregnancy is not an easy issue for Members of Parliament or the Government to tackle. There are all kinds of sensitivities around teenage pregnancies, particularly for families and individuals with deeply held religious beliefs, so we must tackle the subject with great care. I welcome the work of the social exclusion unit and the Government's programmes to tackle teenage pregnancy. There is no simple solution to reducing teenage pregnancy rates, but we must find solutions, however difficult that may be.

Teenage pregnancy is both a symptom and a cause of social exclusion, and tackling it may be one of the keys to breaking the terrible cycle of poverty trickling down the generations, which I often see in the area that I represent. In my constituency, we have a problem with teenage pregnancy, and a more worrying problem of teenage pregnancy among asylum seekers from countries of conflict who have been raped.

Younger girls from poorer areas are more likely to become pregnant. In a deprived environment, extra support is required for teenage parents to break the cycle of teen pregnancy. Teenage years should be the time when people begin to fulfil their potential and graduate to adulthood. How is that possible if they have the responsibility of bringing up kids?

Responding to a written question in July, the Department told me that the most recent Government data for 2001 show a 10 per cent. reduction in the under-18 conception rate and an 11 per cent. reduction in the under-16 rate since 1998. I agree with the Government that the signs are encouraging, but we need to do more. We must ensure that proper information and education about sex and relationships are available to young people, and that more support is available, especially for particularly vulnerable groups such as refugee women who have been sexually abused and are pregnant when they arrive in Britain.

Enfield's teenage pregnancy co-ordinator, Debbie Young, with whom I have worked closely in preparing for this debate, informed me that in 1999 the under-18 and under-16 conception rates decreased, but that since 2000 both have increased. There was a 14 per cent. increase in the under-18 conception rate between 2000 and 2001, and a 39 per cent. increase in the under-16 rate between 1999 and 2000. In addition, the proportion of conceptions leading to abortion increased to 60 per cent. in 2000 from an average of 52 per cent. in the two preceding years.

There is a desperate need for a young people's sexual health and contraception service in my constituency, which has the highest teenage conception rates in the borough of Enfield, as well as the highest levels of gonorrhoea and chlamydia. At present, one of the two weekly young people's sexual health and contraception sessions in Enfield is funded with a teenage pregnancy grant, but the local primary care trust is unable to provide mainstream funding to enable teenage pregnancy finance to be directed to new and innovative pilot projects in my constituency. Sexual health is a priority for Enfield PCT, but there is no national service.

framework for sexual health, and funding is not directed at such issues. The PCT argues that although non-recurrent extra funding has been provided, it is grossly inadequate and, because it is non-recurrent, it is impossible to establish new services to meet the demands and diverse needs of the community.

The strain is very obvious. The teenage parents support project in Enfield has had 204 referrals since it started in October 2002, but it has only one outreach caseworker, who works four days a week. Most of the young people seen are 15, 16 or 17 years old. That tells us that many children of school age are far from knowledgeable about sex and sexual health. The image often portrayed that teenagers are sexually active and well informed about the birds and the bees is far from the truth.

The editor of Exposure, a local magazine for young people, recently told me that the principal reason why young people do not access advice services is that they are not usually promoted in a way that is appealing to young people.

I agree with my hon. Friend that education is extremely important. I am originally from the Netherlands. One thing that is different there, besides education, is that parents, families and so on frown on teenage pregnancy. That is an important reason for the rate of teenage pregnancy being so low in the Netherlands.

I shall come to the European experience a little later, but my hon. Friend is absolutely correct in saying that the rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe, particularly the Netherlands, is much lower than in this country.

The editor of Exposure magazine told me:

"Remember that young people have been born and brought up in the information age. Commercial organisations promoting products and services to young people use very sophisticated ways of getting their messages across through film, music, pop-videos and glossy magazines. To stand any chance of getting noticed by young people, government backed promotions on sexual health must compete for attention against commercial communications. What the Government produces must be of an extremely high calibre and equally sophisticated."

He continued:

"The reason magazines like Exposure have any kind of impact on young people is that we are not talking down to them. It's young people themselves, encouraged and guided by adults that are given the freedom to write and produce the magazine to get important messages across to their peers."

Siobhan Phillander, a 16-year-old reporter for the magazine, confirmed that when she said:

"Since coming to Exposure I've made friends, I've written articles about TV shows, crime and teenage pregnancy. I've learnt to write. Before I couldn't be bothered to even write a letter! I've seen young people come in and say what they want to say and how they want to say it instead of being on the streets making mischief."

Responding to a written question in June, the Department confirmed that the teenage pregnancy strategy national campaign, which was launched in October last year, involved advertisements aimed at 13-year-old boys and girls in popular teenage magazines and on local independent radio stations. The Minister said that the early success of the campaign was recognised in the first annual report of the independent advisory group on teenage pregnancy and that since October the free telephone advice line had advised more than 8 million young people and that, importantly, half of them were boys.

The Minister will be aware of the work of the Royal College of General. Practitioners, which is working closely with the teenage pregnancy unit to provide training and resources to support GPs in making their practices more teenage friendly. I urge him to reinforce that important work by including and engaging young people in it.

Involving young people, including their ideas, creativity and personal experiences, in national media campaigns is critical. There is a wealth of initiative and innovative ideas among young people in my area, but their opportunities to have any input to national campaigns to make them more relevant to them are limited. That is particularly relevant locally, where a high proportion of young people come from black and ethnic minority communities, many of which are not represented in national campaign material. I strongly urge the Minister to look carefully at that important issue and would welcome his feedback.

Last year, a UNICEF report told us that the UK had not made enough progress in tackling teenage pregnancy and that the UK had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world. However, the House of Commons Library confirmed that the rate of teenage births has fallen over the past 30 years by almost 40 per cent. Does the Minister agree that we must find new ways to prevent teenage pregnancies and to help young mothers in teenage pregnancy blackspots? Furthermore, investment in new strategies must be directed specifically to tackle the unique issues in each area.

A local health visitor in my area told me about some cases in her current work load, which show her clients' diverse and complex histories:

"C is 16 years old and from Uganda. She witnessed her family members killed. She was raped and fled to England. C attended local family planning se ^vices to request a termination but this was not possible as the pregnancy was too advanced. She remains ambivalent about the pregnancy and at times feels hostile towards the baby. C requires support for all areas of her life, to be given appropriate advice and information and enabled to make informative choices. She is indeed a child in need herself."

Living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation can be extremely isolating for a teenager who has been raped and is an asylum seeker. She is often unable to access crucial advice services.

Such young women have experienced incredibly traumatic situations and require specific services, which current arrangements do not provide. Will the Minister examine new measures to help and protect that vulnerable group and to meet its specific needs? English is not the first language of many such women, and they can expect only one visit from a caseworker once the baby is born.

Does the Minister agree that extra clarity is needed on where the funding and additional support services will come from? Asylum seekers in the UK who are victims of rape are also victims of torture and should be treated accordingly. There is one outreach caseworker in Enfield, who works for four days a week with 204 pregnant teenagers. Does the Minister agree that that is not enough and that we must ensure that new money gets through to the cutting edge of service delivery to increase capacity in those crucial services?

One of the main concerns of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is that teenage parents should receive support and help, which will in turn help their children. Its 2001 report, "Improving Children's Health", found that much work on teenage pregnancy is focused on preventing pregnancies rather than supporting teenage parents. It believes that it is vital to support teenage parents to end the cycle of poverty and misery, which often occurs. It found that teenage mothers' babies are generally vulnerable and that the mothers are more likely to suffer post-natal depression. The NSPCC supports complementary services and a co-ordinated, cross-departmental approach, which the Minister might comment on today.

To sum up, the Government are clearly committed to tackling teenage pregnancy, which is reflected in the significant increase in expenditure from £5 million in 1999 to £21 million in 2002. I welcome their plans on educational advice and the approach adopted by the social exclusion unit, which is working across Departments. We have the worst teenage pregnancy rate in Europe and many such women in my constituency are confused, isolated and afraid. We should be doing more to reach them. Teenage pregnancy is prevalent among the poorest sections of the community. Other risk factors include being in care, being excluded from school, having mental health problems and having experienced sexual abuse. We must try to prevent young people from becoming pregnant, but if they have a baby we should support them. We also need to learn from our partners in Europe, who have much lower teenage pregnancy rates.

The Government's target of reducing teenage conceptions by 50 per cent. by 2010 is ambitious. I share that ambition. We must consider in particular the way in which we respond locally to the needs of individuals. I hope that the Minister will use this debate as the basis for further discussions on the issue. Behind the statistics are the lives of children in their teens whose children risk having children in their teens. It is crucial that we tackle the issue coherently to ensure that the vicious cycle is broken once and for all, and that people from all backgrounds are enabled to achieve their potential.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love) for having raised this important issue. I shall do my best to explain the Government's response to the challenges that he set out.

My hon. Friend asked us to consider new ways of tackling a massive issue that has many implications in terms of health, social exclusion and education. As both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Dr. Vis) have said, it is vital that in doing so we learn from examples of good practice in this country and elsewhere. I agree that it is a key issue in respect of social inclusion: a great deal of the problem is associated with what my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton described as the cycle of poverty. There are varied and complex reasons for the continued high rates of teenage conception. One is the limited aspirations of young people living in areas of high unemployment and deprivation, and another is ignorance. Education would certainly make a difference. A third, the nature of the message, was raised by the young people working on Exposure magazine, to which my hon. Friend referred. I shall return to that in a moment.

The Government's teenage pregnancy strategy was launched by the Prime Minister in 1999. It was the first ever attempt by Government to consider the issue on a cross-Government basis, to deal with the causes and to examine some solutions. As my hon. Friend said, we have had some success. Our latest data, from 2001, which he outlined, showed an encouraging 10 per cent. reduction in the under-18 conception rate since 1998 and a larger fall, of 11 per cent., in the under-16 rate. That is very welcome. It represents a fall from 47 per 1,000 in 1998 to 42 per 1,000 in 2001. However, it still a horrifying statistic: 42 in every 1,000 15 to 17-year-old girls become pregnant. That is the continuing challenge before us.

The fall has occurred in four out of five areas of the country. Enfield, as my hon. Friend said, is one of the exceptions. In that area, the under-18 conception rate has increased. The reasons should be examined carefully. The strategy on the ground is strong and has been widely praised. He described some of its features, not least the emphasis that Enfield has placed on the particular needs of asylum seekers and the partnership between agencies, including those concerned with health and housing. The Enfield example reminds us of the scale of the challenge.

I am interested in exploring whether the areas in which there has been no decline in recent years have any characteristics in common. There does not seem to be a single explanation. The Government are working with public health observatories in the Government office regions to try to identify factors that might explain the trends to get a clearer picture. We cannot be complacent.

There has been good progress in the past three years, but there is more to be done. Our commitment is reflected in the inclusion of the reduction target as a Government public service agreement target. It is also a PSA target for local government and one of the two cross-cutting indicators in the local government best value performance indicator set. We also recognise that prevention is critical, and some prevention targets are shared with Connexions. Its role in that regard is critical, and the Government have invested £98 million to support implementation of the strategy, by funding local work and the work led by the teenage pregnancy unit, including the national campaign.

My hon. Friend referred to the important work of the independent advisory group on teenage pregnancy. I pay tribute to the group, particularly in the light of the recent publication of its second annual report and its recommendations to the Government. We are considering those recommendations carefully, and will provide a response later in the year.

It is vital that we have effective, joined-up action, and that all the agencies work together. That requires effective work locally and nationally. We have recently seen a significant change in responsibility, with the strategy moving from the Department of Health to the Department for Education and Skills. That move was part of a wider change, and work in that area will be led by my hon. Friend the Minister for Children, with assistance from me and the Department for Education and Skills.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton spoke of the excellent work being done in Haringey and Enfield by Exposure magazine. He made a number of powerful points about the need to get the message across in a language, and a tone and style, that are relevant to and can be understood by young people. We have also been running an advertising campaign through teenage magazines and local radio. Through that campaign, we seek to target 13 to 17-year-olds—both boys and girls—using a mixture of media to reach them.

We are advertising in teenage magazines and on local independent radio stations, with the aim of dispelling myths, raising awareness and giving accurate information. We want to use an approach that gets through, so humour is useful and the style is non-authoritarian. We have been assessing and evaluating how successful it has been.

The campaign has achieved high recognition: for example, more than 70 per cent. of young people know of it, which compares well with television advertising, which we have not been able to undertake. The campaign has a free helpline that provides advice and gives details of local services. That has helped a significant number of young people, half of them boys, who phoned as a result of the campaign. Our survey of callers showed a high level of satisfaction.

We are now looking into working with brand names and others associated with young people. We recently received the endorsement of a new girl band called Tommi, who played at a young people's sexual health conference last week. They are keen to support us by taking the message out to thousands of young people as they tour the country.

My hon. Friend raised the important issue of how we can get the message to all parts of the community, but we must recognise that in boroughs such as Enfield there are particular issues for some black and ethnic minority communities. We also have to deal with those from other parts of the world, such as asylum seekers, some of whose pregnancies are a direct consequence of rape and torture. We need to do more to help such people, and I shall ask for further research to be undertaken, as my hon. Friend requested.

We have much to learn from local examples, and some work done by Enfield and Haringey councils with their asylum-seeking communities could contribute to the development of our national thinking. I undertake to consider that, and come back to my hon. Friend with more information.

My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green raised the important example of the Netherlands. If we are to be really effective in our work, we need to engage with parents and the wider family. We need to consider how better to support parents in talking to their children about sex, relationships and the possible consequences. The research that I have seen shows that young people want their parents to be the main source of advice, but that talking about such things causes incredible embarrassment in the family. We are working with Parentline Plus on a "time to talk" campaign to promote better communication in the parents' media, using outlets such as Best, Bella and relevant magazine agony aunts. We are looking at a range of ways in which parents can be engaged more.

My direct responsibility is to do with improving sex and relationship education in schools, which is critical. We have done have a lot of work and listened to young people about how they think sex is talked about in schools, and we clearly have a lot of progress to make on that. What is done is still regarded as too little, too late, with still too much focus on the biology and not enough on relationships. Not enough teachers have the confidence to deliver really effective sex and relationships education.

The Department for Education and Skills issued guidance in 2000 that set out the programme needed to address issues of information and knowledge for boys and girls in schools. Ofsted has reported good progress in schools in implementing the guidance, but has pointed out that a great deal more still needs to be done. I shall work closely with Ofsted to ensure that the reporting arrangements for personal, social and health education are as effective as possible, so that we can monitor progress. In part, there is a need for more specialist teachers who have greater confidence and a wider knowledge base. We are seeking to encourage such teachers and have launched a national personal, social and health education teaching certification programme, which is aimed at developing specialist teachers. About 750 teachers have voluntarily participated this year. We are also considering a similar programme for community nurses, which is being piloted and will be available nationwide from 2004.

As part of that, want to raise awareness of sexually transmitted infections and consider how to reach boys. I have seen some good examples of schools in London and elsewhere that have made a special effort to reach boys as part of their sex and relationships education, which have not only had potentially positive results in preventing teenage pregnancies, but supported boys who become teenage fathers. We want to ensure access to advice in all its senses.

We need services that all young people who need them can trust. Since the launch of the strategy, we have seen an improvement in the number of services that are available to young people. There are all sorts of good examples of using leisure centres, one-stop-shops, mobile units and other facilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton will be aware of the Enfield and Haringey 4YP sexual health bus, which is an excellent model of the difference that those practices can make locally.

We must work more broadly with the sexual health and HIV strategy, because our concern about teenage pregnancy goes hand in hand with concern about the high rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people. Our work on teenage pregnancy will continue to be closely co-ordinated with work on sexual health and HIV, so that we can reduce waiting times for advice, screening and treatment, in both community clinics and general practice.

We want to ensure that we provide proper support for young parents, because, as my hon. Friend said, they are obviously more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed or be unable to access education, training and child care facilities. That is why in 35 areas with high rates of teenage pregnancy we have developed the sure start plus pilots, which include a personal adviser to help pregnant teenagers to make a decision about continuing with the pregnancy, having the child adopted or having a termination. The evaluation of those pilots will be available in 2004. We also want to tackle social isolation via supported housing.

Progress is being made, but as my hon. Friend said, we still have a great deal more to do. It is important that we engage with young people and learn from local and international examples. If we do that, we can continue the progress made in the first three years of the strategy. It is a reflection of the Government's commitment to bring down the rate of teenage pregnancy that we intend to focus on the issue right through the Government, with my hon. Friend the Minister for Children leading.

The Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education has been in post for less than a month but, so far as I am aware, this is at least the third occasion on which he has been called on to respond to a debate on top-up fees. He should certainly be on top of his brief by now. Hon. Members may wonder what the point is of another run-through on top-up fees, because we had two major debates on them in the House at the end of June. Will we all say the same things and go away having achieved nothing?

This afternoon, I want to return to the subject in the light of the publication of the Education and Skills Committee's report, which has obviously contributed new perspectives. I am pleased to see the Chairman of the Committee present. I also want to discuss the particular perspectives that my constituents gave me in a consultation exercise that I undertook with them earlier in the year. They gave me insights that have perhaps not always been emphasised enough in our debates on the subject.

By way of background, I should say that in a previous life I was an academic and a university admissions tutor. That has given me one or two perspectives on the process of applying for university, which I shall try to bring into the debate a little later. Therefore, I hope that our debate will not simply be a run-round of what we have already said, but tries to move things on a little.

In my consultation exercise with my constituents on top-up tuition fees, I consulted roughly 1,000 local residents, a group of people who have opted into being consulted by me by e-mail. They are from across the constituency and across the political spectrum. They include first-time voters, pensioners and everything in between, and supporters of all parties and of none. Although politician surveys are quite rightly treated with some scepticism, I maintain that the basis of my remarks is an attempt at rigour and to reflect the representativeness of my constituents.

I occasionally put questions to that group of 1,000 people in as neutral a way as I can. On this occasion, I asked them about the Government's policy on top-up fees and referred them to the Department for Education and Skills website for the case in favour and to campaigning websites for the arguments against. I invited my constituents to register a vote for or against top-up fees and, if they wished, to give me reasons for their position. When I have undertaken similar consultations in the past, the division of views has been fairly gentle on many issues. For example, when I asked about building new nuclear power stations, the group divided 2:1 against. On genetically modified crop trials, they voted 2:1 against. However, on top-up fees, the view was 4:1 against. Of all the questions that I have asked my constituents, this was the most divisive. [Interruption.] From his reaction, perhaps the Minister thinks that that is a relatively high level of support for top-up fees; I do not know. If he wants, I can introduce him to the supporters. However, there was a clear, strong 4:1 vote against.

The significance of the exercise was not the crude aggregate figures, but the insights that the respondents gave. Some teach at university. Many are young, first- time voters thinking of going to university; others are parents of people coming up to that stage. A whole cross-section of people gave me insights. I want to draw the House's attention to those this afternoon.

Perhaps the strongest single insight that I gained, on an aspect of the debate that I do not think has had enough attention, is the impact of top-up fees on women. Top-up fees are the same for male and female students, but the implications may be quite different. A woman, on average, will expect to earn less. A woman, on average, will expect to spend time out of the labour market for the birth of children and perhaps when children are young. As a result, although she may graduate with the same debt, she will have to pay it back over a much longer period. A young woman considering whether to go to university may be more disinclined to go down that avenue than a male student when she realises that she will be in debt for a very long period.

I quote from a response from a constituent who was in charge of university halls of residence:

"My impression was that the students"—

the current students—

"who were the first generation of their family to be coming to a University were especially worried about the debts they were accumulating."

The theme of debt and its impact on women in particular is one to which I shall return. I must stress that that response was entirely unprompted by me. Nothing in my questionnaire asked specifically about women. My constituent continued:

"Amongst them the women students were particularly anxious because they could not see how they could repay their debts if they should become pregnant … and want to look after their child."

That is a particular issue for women.

Another entirely spontaneous response from another female respondent said that

"it is discriminating against women who will either have to work longer before taking a break to have children (not ideal for the health of the woman, child or family) or will have an almighty debt hanging over her until she can return to high-paid work (assuming she can get it)."

I began to discern a thread in the responses and a concern about the position of women. So as to assess the scale of the issue, I asked the House of Commons Library earlier this week to prepare some fresh analysis for me on the effect of tuition fees and debt on women. I tried to ensure that the example on which we based the figures was as typical and realistic as possible. Complex spreadsheets are available to hon. Members. We assumed that someone graduated not with the maximum possible debt, but with the average debt to which the Government refer—some £15,000. We assumed that the debt rose in line with inflation, rather than at the faster rate that the Select Committee might have suggested in its recommendations, and that real earnings grew as they have in the past. We assumed that the woman earned a typical woman's graduate salary and that her salary followed the profile that someone in a graduate career might expect—in other words, the increments, promotions and seniority that went along with the profile.

We also considered the effect of children, assuming that a woman who has two children would typically have the first child in her late 20s and the second in her early 30s. Clearly, those are generalisations, but they are meant to be illustrative of the scale of the problem. The woman may go back to work full-time and continue her career completely uninterrupted, or she might work half-time or job share until her children are in primary school. We considered the impact of those choices.

The interesting point to come out of the analysis is that a woman with a typical debt who does not have children would pay it back in 13 years. We then considered the case of a woman who has children and goes back to work part-time after her children are born, perhaps on a job share. Assuming that something silly does not happen—she does not go to work on a Tesco checkout but simply works half-time in her previous professional job, then goes back to work full-time when the children are at school, which, in itself, might not be straightforward—it would take not 13 years but 20 to pay back the debt.

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's example. If the universities were funded out of general taxation and the woman went back to work part-time with earnings of about £8,000 a year, she would pay back the money, whether through a graduate tax or through the increased general tax that she would have to pay, whereas under the Kudent fees proposal she would pay back the debt only if she earned more than £15,000 a year. If she earned less than £15,000 a year for the rest of her career, she would never pay back the debt.

The hon. Gentleman raises several important issues. She would not pay back the debt while on half salary. I assume that the £15,000 is price indexed, but I do not know what the policy is on that—I am assuming annual price indexation. Even on half salary, a woman graduate will tend very quickly to go above the threshold, because real earnings grow with career progression and so on.

In a sense, the hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. If there is a period in which the woman is not working or is earning so little that she pays nothing back, it merely postpones further repayment of the debt. She would still have to pay back the whole amount plus nominal interest. The point at which student debt no longer overhangs her would simply be further postponed.

The instance that I have given of a debt being paid over 20 years is based on fairly cautious assumptions. Therefore, the woman will have paid that off by the time she is 41. In my example, she has two children. I do not imagine that she will still want to live with her mum and dad if she is a female graduate who is aged 40 and has two children. It is reasonable to assume that she will want a mortgage, perhaps at 30, which is about the time that she might want to start a family. For 10 years, she will effectively be servicing two mortgages—the mortgage on the house and the mortgage that is the student loan debt, which starts at £15,000, grows a bit and tails off as her salary increases. Some women—I will quote examples later—will think twice about whether they want decades of debt, as it will have a differential effect on them compared with men.

There are two distinct issues with general taxation. With general taxation—that is, the whole tax pot—there is no named debt. If there is no name on the debt, people will not delay having kids until they have paid off their debt, feel that they owe thousands on the house, or know that they must clear thousands on their student loan. The effect is different if they know that they must pay back fees through higher taxes when they graduate. That of course depends on the part of the taxation system used, if at all. For example, a female graduate on a part salary obviously would not repay fees at the higher rate.

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that I substantially agree with his analysis, which is consistent with what we have found out. Does he agree that the long and the short of it is that the student debt of a male graduate under normal circumstances will persist for at least one third of his working life, and, for a woman. it will persist for approximately half her working life? Those are substantial overhangs on anybody's career.

Certainly, the figures that I have just given for a 20-year repayment for a woman with children assume a pension age of 60, which means that the repayment would cover almost exactly half her working life. As a university academic and an admissions tutor, I found that the mature students entering in their mid-30s were some of the best and most committed that we had—we most wanted such students to enter higher education. If they take, on average, 20 years to repay their debt—and, if they enter the labour market in their late 30s, they may not have the career progression of a 21-year-old female graduate—they could, quite credibly, be repaying their debt while drawing their pension. That does not seem to be the world that we want to move towards, because I assume that debts will not stop at pension age. In a world in which recently retired women pensioners are still trying to repay their student debt, they will have probably tried to pay off their mortgage, and we apparently want to encourage them to save for a pension as well. I do not see how we can square all those circles.

I am sure that I do not need to draw to my hon. Friend's attention—although I may need to for other hon. Members—the current Liberal Democrat policy, which is to impose a charge on those earning more than £100,000 a year by raising their income tax. Does he agree that—the unfairness of life being what it is—not many women are earning that sum, and the proposal would therefore be of particular value to them, not only in removing the charge at the level that he discussed, but in imposing a greater charge on those men earning the highest salaries?

As ever, my hon. Friend is perceptive. He makes the point that if one uses funding that is not a named debt against a named person, the impact is bound to be different. Very little of the debate has focused on the differential impact of top-up fees on women. I will pursue that point by considering some other responses on top-up fees in my constituency survey, all of which are from female respondents. One woman, who is subject to the current system, said:

"I face the prospect of finishing the repayment of my student loan just in time to retire."

Even with fees of £1,100—not £3,000 or £5,000 as has been suggested—people are repaying those debts in some cases throughout the whole of their lives. I wonder about the world we want to create if those debts are overhanging people.

Another woman said:

"I came from a background with working class parents who didn't believe in spending money you didn't have."

Such young women will be discouraged from applying for university by the prospect of a £15,000 debt. That is the average figure, but it could be £21,000 or even more if there are credit card debts and so on. People look at those figures and are horrified.

I have two children at primary school, so I have time to save. However, if I do not want them to be blighted with a lifetime of debt, the available strategies are to find £30,000 to see them through university without debt or for them to find jobs when they are at university. When I was a university academic, I was aware of the detrimental effect that having a job had on a student's studies. If we force students to work more and more hours to avoid debt on graduation, they will have hardly any time to spare for their studies. Surely it is wrong, when an increasing proportion of students are desperate and worried about the debt that they will end up with, that they spend so much time working that their studies suffer. Society, and the economy, suffer as a result.

Another female respondent, Nicola, said:

"The thought of being £15K in debt would have put me off from going to university."

That is a first-hand observation. Another constituent said:

"I am looking forward to going to university later this year, and if the payment does rise, I will not be able to afford to go. I do not want a huge bank loan over my head when I leave uni, it will be bad enough as it already stands."

Another person, who has children of university age, said:

"I know many young people are now thinking twice about going to University because of the debts that they will incur."

Debt is a central theme to the debate on top-up fees. It has an impact in two ways. First, the anticipation of debt discourages people from applying. Secondly, there is evidence that it is the principal reason for drop-out among people who have overcome the first hurdle and then find that they cannot service their mounting debts. The Government's policy will surely make matters worse.

A second problem is obvious when it is pointed out. However, I had not grasped it hitherto, but the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) intimated it in his intervention. The system is progressive because the low-paid do not pay much back and the well-paid pay a lot back. That applies in any year but, over a lifetime, everyone repays the same amount for the fees that are not rebated for low-income families. Lower-paid graduates, such as women, repay a fairly small amount if they earn only just above the threshold, but they spend more of their life repaying the debt. They do not have less to repay; they merely repay it over a longer time.

Surely anyone who is earning less than £15,000 a year would not repay any of the loan. The loan is only a small part of the total cost because 95 per cent. is financed by the state. The people who pay higher taxes will repay a greater proportion of the cost of going to university.

In a fair system, the better-off should pay a larger proportion of the total cost of a university education. With fees of £3,000, £1,900 is not rebated even for low-income households. I hope that the Minister will update us on the Secretary of State's thinking on that because he seemed to intimate in evidence to the Select Committee that he was considering whether the whole £3,000 should be rebated for low-income households. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how he views that suggestion. Even the £1,900 is a flat rate. Whether people are rich or poor, they face a debt of £1,900 a year for tuition fees. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde is right to say that if people spend their lives earning less than £15,000 a year, indexed to prices, they will never pay it back. However, typical graduate salaries are well in excess of that when allowance is made for real earnings growth compared with the prices index threshold and the career progression that many graduates will enjoy. Most graduates will pay the money back, but those at the bottom end—those nearer the £15,000 threshold—will pay it back over a longer period. They will not pay less. With progressive taxation, people on lower incomes pay less. That is the fairness difference that I want to draw to the attention of hon. Members.

A range of other issues linked to top-up fees came up in responses from my constituents. One argument for top-up fees is that they enable the Government to achieve their 50 per cent. target for students entering higher education. My constituents stressed the importance of not forcing people into inappropriate courses. They were sceptical whether 50 per cent. of people are fitted for three-year honours degrees at traditional universities, although I know that the Government are not driving towards that. My constituents strongly support the money raised by the top-up fees being used to facilitate vocational training and courses that include academic content and on which people learn trades. The Government should not try to increase the numbers just for the sake of it. I am glad that I am not a graduate in media studies because, judging from their responses, my constituents would not think well of me if I were. They are not great fans of that course.

The Select Committee's insights into differential top-up fees are interesting. What would happen if some institutions charged top-up fees and others did not? How would that affect people? One of my constituents said that

"top up fees will create a two tier University system and this is likely to mean that middle class students will go to the prestigious high fee Universities and others will go to the 'teaching factories'".

That comment is obviously linked with the Government's agenda to separate teaching and research.

If the Select Committee is right and practically every institution charges £3,000, there will not be a differential effect but an aggregate effect, which I discussed in relation to debt. There will not be a differential effect because a market will not be created. I understand the logic of the Select Committee's position—if fees of up to £5,000 are allowed, it may create differentiation and if the Government want a market that is how to do it—but given my remarks about aggregate debt and notwithstanding some suggestions about grants, I would have great difficulty in supporting a threshold of £5,000 for tuition fees.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on the interesting point about the creation of a market, which the Minister, in his last speech in the House, suggested that he wanted to achieve. Those universities that consider themselves to be less prestigious tell me that even if tuition fees go up to £5,000, they must still charge the maximum. The point about marketing is that if a university markets itself as having a lower fee—that may be attractive because students will not have to pay so much—that immediately makes it less prestigious.

My hon. Friend is right. In the luxury car market, if Rolls-Royce were to charge less for its cars, it might well sell fewer because they would not be seen as an elite product. I do not know how far that analogy works, but there is danger that if a university signals that it does not think that the market will bear the full fee, it is signalling that it; course is not popular or that the people who take it will not tell their friends to do so. Prices have a signalling effect, which is a concern.

The flip-side of the top-up fees policy is the access regulator. Only institutions that satisfy the access regulator will be allowed to charge top-up fees. Even my constituents who liked top-up fees did not like the access regulator. Most of their replies are printable, although they are not polite. They referred to "a lousy idea"; "an army of bureaucrats"; and "needless bureaucracy". One mentioned:

"The elimination of this ghastly 'Access Regulator', a function that only a politician of the worst sort could have dreamt up."

The Minister was not in the Department at the time, so it was not him. Another reply said:

"The access regulator is another half-witted way of wasting the taxpayer's hard-earned money".

My constituents are deeply hostile to the creation of an additional quango.

One of my constituents made a more constructive comment:

"I also worry about the access regulator because it may come down to meeting quotas of people, who are not the most suitable for the course but fit the statistics".

That is the danger posed by such intervention.

I shall make a couple more observations. To return to the intervention by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, we are aware that graduates, by dint of being graduates, will, on average, tend to earn more than others. There is clearly an issue for those who go into public service and the voluntary sector, and who do not earn a great amount. They will be in debt for a long period. On average., however, graduates tend to attract a premium, will pay more in tax and will therefore contribute more to the cost of their fees. The Government say that those of us who do not support tuition fees think that graduates should pay nothing, but that is not remotely the case because they will pay extra tax by dint of their being graduates.

There are issues about how the top-up fees will affect people on longer courses such as architects, medics and so forth. The Government are so keen to get graduates into certain key occupations that they will subsidise their fees, but that is not true across the board. The policy will have a different impact in that case.

I am very concerned about the position of mature students. I am not aware of preferential rates being charged to them—I am happy to be corrected about that—but if they are charged the full fees, they really will face a lifetime of debt until retirement. Surely we want to encourage such people to go back into higher education.

My premise is not that higher education does not need additional funding. If we are to compete internationally as a nation we will not do so by paying sweatshop wages. The country in which we want to live would compete not on sweatshop wages but on a value-added basis, and with a highly educated, highly skilled and highly trained work force. That has to be the right strategy—we do not query that. An expansion of higher education—albeit of a more diverse form than we have traditionally seen—is to be welcomed.

It is not cheap keeping our universities at the forefront of research, and I have received representations from my constituents who are concerned about the low salaries for academic, research and support staff in universities. All those things have a price tag attached. My contention is that the top-up fee route of paying for them has very grave consequences that make it unacceptable.

The debt issue is critical, and debt for women is a particular problem. If we are not to expect parents to find tens of thousands of pounds to prevent their offspring from getting into debt, if we are not to expect students to spend their entire university careers working full-time to prevent themselves from getting into debt and if we are not to prevent women—and young people in general—from going to university because of the fear of debt on graduation, the top-up fee policy must be reconsidered. I hope that the Minister will respond specifically on the position of women, and more generally on the effect of debt on the scale envisaged among the people about whom I am concerned.

rose—

Order. I remind the Chamber that it is customary in these 90-minute Adjournment debates to commence the first of the three winding-up speeches 30 minutes before termination. I am giving fair warning that we have only 33 minutes of general discussion left. I ask hon. Members to bear that in mind when making their contributions, and when accepting and responding to interventions.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) for allowing me to speak. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wrote to him and to you I want to be brief because I realise that many people want to speak in this important debate. The Select Committee on Education and Skills, which I chair, was in the final stages of agreeing its report when the two Opposition days—one for the Liberal Democrats and the other for the official Opposition—took place. I took a vow of abstinence in those debates, so it is a pleasure to have five minutes today.

I would like to put a rather different case to the Chamber. The Select Committee listened to many experts when taking oral evidence. We received evidence from around the country in Belfast, Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge. We met the Russell group, and talked to many people, including parents and others. What the report came down to—it is good when one gets to this stage—was the fact that the unique nature of British higher education is quality.

Our universities have a reputation for such high quality that people from around the world still want to come here. They do not want to go to many American universities. They want to go to those in the Ivy League, but there are many universities in the United States that do not attract overseas students. Overseas students are not attracted to the universities of our fellow members of the European Union because they long ago gave up quality and went for quantity, with large classes, little tutorial intervention and poor pastoral care.

Anyone who can do so likes to come to Britain to study in higher education. What is our unique selling point? It is quality and the combination of teaching and research under one roof. In any one institution, research and teaching are carried out by the same people. That does not mean that they do that all the time and that some researchers are not less available than others. However, the principle exists, it is right and it underpins the very nature of our university system. That is the unique selling point of our higher education system.

The problem with preserving that system, however, is that it is expensive, and it will get more expensive as we go on. As the Select Committee report said, it is vital to have a vibrant, expanding and high-quality higher education system to encourage the development of individuals' potential. Most of us came into politics because we believed that the potential of all the people born in our country should be expressed and developed, and that is good for society at large. I still believe that a good society is a well-educated and trained society.

We must be frank and admit that the economic challenges to our country mean that we will increasingly have to invest in innovative products and services and in a range of industries and sectors, some of which have not yet been dreamt of. Such developments will come out of university research, participatory research and partnership research. The challenge facing our country is to stay wealthy and to continue providing good, well-paid employment for the individuals who live in it. That will depend on the higher education sector. I speak to many politicians who still do not understand the fact that the largest employer and wealth creator in many constituencies is probably the university.

By far and away the largest employer in my constituency of Huddersfield is the university, not manufacturing, the big chemical or dyestuffs companies, the wool textile industry or engineering, although they are still around. The real employment of the future is in the university. We can look at Manchester, Birmingham and London in the same way. Let us take the 43 university institutions out of London and see what damage could be done to this great metropolis of ours. Taking the university institutions out of Edinburgh, Cardiff, or Swansea would have the same effect. The universities are so important to our future that we need to spend an increasing amount of the national treasure on developing them. There is the rub. We are taking part in a debate that I think is too centred on the issue of top-up fees.

I want briefly to take us back to the Dearing proposals. Dearing said clearly that we should fund universities on the basis that those who benefit from university education and the university sector itself should pay for it. That includes society, through taxation, because, as I have explained, society benefits from higher education. Individuals, who will have a better life, higher-paid employment and more opportunities, should pay towards their higher education.

The White Paper is weak on the issue of employers, and I hope that the Minister will carefully consider our proposals for a levy on employers of more than a certain size. We propose that, if they do not devote a certain percentage of their turnover to research and development, they should be asked to pay into a levy that will flow into universities. The Government should take that, or a similar idea, seriously.

Those of us in this lower House of Parliament know that, at present, between 15 and 20 per cent. of our constituents, or at least the constituents of those present here, will benefit or will have benefited from higher education. About 80 per cent. of people in my constituency receive no benefit from higher education. Many of them leave school at 16. The state will have invested £45,000 in their education between the ages of three and 16, but they will get nothing more. However, those who stay on get a minimum of £25,000 between the ages of 16 and 21.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Reluctantly.

I am grateful. Does not the hon. Gentleman recognise that all those people will go to doctors for medical services, and that their children will have teachers at school? Those teachers and doctors will all have had a higher education, without which they could not do those jobs and give that help.

I recognise that familiar argument, but we are talking about a £25,000 extra investment in people who stay on for higher education. Some people leave school at 16 or 18, without a university education, and start their own business. Some of our greatest entrepreneurs do not have a higher education. If such people go into a bank and say that they want to start a small factory or an ICT company and therefore need to employ people, the bank manager will not say, "We are going to give you an interest-free loan."

Many people in our country do not benefit from higher education, but they pay tax and, quite fairly, they think that they can look at those who do benefit from higher education and say that Dearing was right. It is important to get the balance right between those who pay contributions and those who receive the benefits.

As we said in our report, the Government have invested enormously in higher education, but it is not enough if we are to have the highest-quality, internationally competitive research throughout the country, not just at a handful of universities in London and the south-east, and if we are to have well-paid university teachers. They have not had a real-terms pay increase for 25 years, which I know because I was a university teacher 25 years ago. There is an increasing shortage of young teachers who go to university and stay there, especially in specialist subjects. It is almost a mystery how we get them to do that on current salaries, and it is almost impossible to get people for certain subjects.

I constantly hear the refrain, "Don't wanna pay," which is almost like a teenage stamping of the feet, or Dario Fo's "Can't Pay? Won't Pay!" As the debate develops over the months and years before the next general election, I hope that the people who say, "We don't want to pay," will advance proposals that recognise the fact that, if they want a high-quality higher education, people have to pay. The Government cannot keep ratcheting up income tax, even for those earning more than £100,000, and I am dubious about how much money that would provide. If the extra money is not going to come from the taxpayer, where else will it come from in a society that believes in equity between people who receive benefits and those who pay for them? I hope that the debate can be a little more sophisticated.

The hon. Member for Northavon made a very good introduction. It is valuable that he has been corresponding with 1,000 of his constituents by e-mail, but they must start to think through what they want for our country in the long term and who should pay for that privilege and investment, so that we can get the balance right over t he coming years.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on securing this debate. He is one of those Members who give the Liberal Democrats a good name, if that is possible. He is extremely serious about social security issues, on which I have had many dealings with him. However, perhaps he knows in his heart of hearts that the picture that he paints of what the Government are doing may not be as multi-dimensional as it might be.

As politicians, either in opposition or in government, we must balance opposition against opportunism, although I am not making that accusation about the hon. Gentleman. The Conservative party has put forward a policy pretending that we should not set the target at 50 per cent., but I think that it knows in its heart of hearts that that is not what the country needs. I have great respect for the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), but he must sometimes find it difficult to defend such things, given his one-nation credentials.

On the assumption that our respect is mutual, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to enlighten us as to the objective basis on which the 50 per cent. target was selected?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing my first question: is the 50 per cent. target arbitrary? In some respects, of course, it is. Why 50 per cent? Why not 51, 49 or 52.356 per cent? The point is that the 50 per cent. target makes clear the direction in which we want the system to head, and those who argue against such a target need to say what direction they want the system to take.

There are already pressures in the system. Improving A-level results mean that more people will want to go to university. Demographic pressures will bring tens of thousands, or perhaps even 100,000, extra students into the system over the next few years. Therefore, the figure is naturally rising towards 50 per cent., even before we take into account the relevant arguments, which are powerful.

The first argument is that more than 60 per cent. of people in the relevant age bracket go to university in countries with economies similar to ours, such as Australia and the Scandinavian countries. Indeed, the figure in most Scandinavian countries is already 70 per cent. Are we saying that the figure in this country will, uniquely, remain stuck at 42 per cent? Are the Conservatives saying that they will bring back a cap, as the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) did when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury? At that time, people were told, "You may have worked hard at school and sweated to get the right A-level results, but we're not going to let you go to university, even though your results would have got you in five or 10 years ago."

The second argument relates to access. At the moment, about 80 per cent. of children from the professional classes go to university, compared with 15 per cent. from the non-professional, manual classes. What are those who are against the 50 per cent. target saying about people from the manual classes? Are they saying that such people are genetically too stupid to go to university? Are they saying that they are doomed to stay in low-class, low-skill occupations? Are they saying that that is a fair reflection of their skills and talents? Those figures brutally show the discrimination that confronts people in our education system. It is often said that fewer than 1,000 people from social classes D and E get three good A-levels each year. We must address that problem, and I believe that the Government are doing so. However, that will not be enough, and we must make a radical effort to increase access so that more people can go to university.

Does my hon. Friend think that his argument is strengthened by the fact that we never changed the 80:20 participation ratio even in the heyday of full grants? Even after the grant was introduced, it seemed that there was a 20 per cent. ceiling, and we did not budge it. That shows that individual finances are not the real issue behind access to higher education.

I absolutely agree. The only reason one could give for not heading in the direction of a 50 per cent. target is that one believed in a 30:30 world. In such a world, middle class people would go to university, graduate and get the good jobs. There would then be some administrative jobs in the middle. Finally, there would be the low-paid section at the bottom, where people would be trapped, never having the opportunity to go to university and, therefore, to get a highly paid job. This may not be true of the hon. Member for Daventry, but people who denigrate media studies courses or those of our universities that used to be polytechnics are appealing to a deeply patronising and conservative tendency, which still exists in parts of our society. I think, however, that they may be slightly embarrassed about that in their heart of hearts.

I am speaking in the debate because my constituents in Hyde would benefit hugely from the proposed policy. At the moment, we broadly achieve the national average for GCSE results, but the proportion of those who go to university is only half the national average. The policy will increase that proportion and allow constituents from families that often earn less than £15,000 or £20,000 to go to university. It will do that because it will make education free at the point of use. The policy will get rid of upfront tuition fees, bring back grants for the very poorest and give them more money in their student loan to pay their maintenance costs. It will make students much less dependent on credit card debt, which has much higher interest rates. The policy will start to allow people in my constituency to have the same aspirations to go to university as people in more middle class constituencies, particularly in the south, and that is why I defend it.

Does the hon. Gentleman share the view that the distinction between the £1,100 top-up fee, which is fully rebated for the poor, and the £1,900, which is not rebated at all, is a concern for his constituents? Would he like to see that £1,900 rebated for the poor?

As the consultation on the White Paper goes forward, we need to think about grants, where the £15,000 kicks in, and getting the right balance between having the right incentives in the system for people to choose which university to go to and making the way in which money is repaid as progressive as possible.

The 50 per cent. target is a crucial signal of the direction in which the Government are heading. It is arbitrary, but, if anything, too low. It is the right aspiration for 2010, but, given the demographic pressures, the improvement in A-levels and the fact that Scandinavian countries, Canada and Australia are already way above the 50 per cent. level, we should go higher than 50 per cent. in time. Anyone who pretends that we do not need to be heading in that direction is doing the country a disservice.

Increasing participation is the first spending pressure. The second is quality. I do not think that anyone pretends that that is not an issue. As the Chairman of the Select Committee made clear, the pay going to teachers and academics is a scandal that has gone unchecked for too long. We are starting to do something about it, but much more must be done.

It is still far too difficult for people to fund graduate courses. Anyone who fails to get a very good first still finds it extremely difficult to stay on at university and do a graduate course. Again, the Government are doing something about that, but we need more funding to address the issue. The Government have increased research funding in a number of areas, but, as Universities UK has made clear, there is still a lot further to go.

The twin spending pressures cannot be avoided. We must increase the proportion of people going to university and consider the spending pressures in terms of quality because, without world-class universities, in 10 or 20 years' time, we will be suffering in relation not just to the accumulation of knowledge but to the development of our economy. It is widely agreed across the House that universities are one of the key engines of economic growth in the 21st century.

We must ask ourselves how we will pay for that spending. Broadly. there are three alternatives. We can pay through general taxation. I agree with that, and we do that. The vast majority of university education is paid for through universal taxation. Such taxation is progressive and reflects the fact that there are great benefits to society. People use doctors and benefit from those who work in research and from general economic growth. Everyone benefits from our universities.

Is it right, however, to fund the whole of the increase needed to meet the spending pressures through general taxation? Even if we were to follow the Liberal Democrat proposal of increasing taxes on people earning more than £100,000, where would we want to spend that money? Would we want to spend it on people going to university, given that such people will, by and large, benefit from going to university, earn more and have their horizons expanded, or on genuinely universal services, such as sure start, nurseries, child tax credits, child benefit, schools and transport?

Even if we could raise all the money by a tax on people earning more than £100,000, which, along with the Chairman of the Select Committee, I very much doubt, higher education would not be the right place to spend it. It would not be fair. It is fair to ask people such as me who went to university to pay back a proportion of that cost. Everyone in their heart of hearts basically agrees with that.

The second alternative is to have a graduate tax.

The argument about whether the money would be spent on higher education if it were raised is interesting. However the money is raised, if the Government spend it on some other service rather than increasing the amount spent on higher education, and decide to go ahead with top-up fees, I presume that they will then reduce the amount of taxation that is otherwise spent on universities and put it into all those other valuable and noble causes to which the hon. Gentleman referred, thus leaving the universities with no more funding than they had to start with.

That is a straightforwardly mistaken argument. People in universities are arguing for tuition fees precisely because they believe that they will have more control over the money. The money is much more likely to go to areas other than universities if it is taken in general taxation. University funding under the Conservatives saw a decline in per-student funds pretty much throughout the 18 years that they were in government. The hon. Gentleman would find exactly that if he ever became a higher education Minister.

If the hon. Gentleman examines history, he will see that precisely what I just described happened when this Government—his party's Government— introduced tuition fees. Universities received the same money as before because, although they received tuition fee money, taxation money was reduced in line with it.

Again, that is straightforwardly wrong. We are increasing the money going to higher education by, I believe, 9 per cent. in real terms. It is, in fact, increasing for the first time in 25 years.

I align myself with the comment made by the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel). The then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, now the Secretary of State for the Home Department, promised that the money raised by the initial tuition fees, which, incidentally, were against Labour pledges, was additional money made available to the universities and was directed towards solving their financial problems, so why did the unit of funding not increase for six years, and why are they now in as bad a financial position, if not worse, than they were in 1997?

The hon. Gentleman knows very well that the unit of funding is now increasing. It did not increase in the first term because participation was rising and money was going into research funding. It is incontrovertible that the amount of money going into universities is increasing in real terms, and people in the university sector want the money raised in that way rather than through general taxation because they believe that they are more likely to see it than if there are arguments over the split between universities, health, primary schools and the NHS. They know that, under this Government, unlike under the Conservative Government, they can be confident about receiving general increases in money. However, they know that that will not be enough, so they believe that some tuition fee system will be the best way of ensuring that that money will be additional.

Could we raise the money through a graduate tax? Again, we could. I am completely agnostic about whether we should have a graduate tax or a tuition fee system. The greatest problem with a graduate tax is that it would have to be levied on everyone by adding it to the basic rate of tax. People would therefore pay it from an income of some £6,500 to £7,000—the hon. Member for Northavon is an expert on these issues, and he may correct me if I am wrong—which is about half the level at which the tax is currently paid. It is clearly much more regressive compared with the Government's proposal. The fairer way of raising money, other than through the basic rate of tax, is through repayments, which are income contingent but kick in at a higher level. If the graduate tax were added to the top rate of tax, the increase would not be 2p or 3p in the pound on the top rate of tax for people who had gone to university, but presumably 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p or 10p. If the idea of an income-contingent debt is a disincentive to going to university, the idea of paying 5p or more extra for going to university as part of the graduate tax if one is a top-rate taxpayer would be a clear disincentive.

An income-contingent loan is a fair way of raising money. If people could persuade me that it was fair to raise it through a graduate tax, I would be open to it, but the facts do not support that. People have advanced this great idea that debt will hang over people for the rest of their lives, but it should be made clear to them that the debt is income contingent. The hon. Member for Northavon talked about the possibility of Rolls-Royce reducing its prices. If loans used for selling cars were income contingent, and people knew that they would not have to pay the money back if they earned less than £15,000 a year, an awful lot of people earning less than that would be popping down to Rolls-Royce and buying Silver Shadows.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned women. I greatly admire the way in which he consults his constituents, and I may steal the idea—plagiarism being the sincerest form of flattery. The biggest issues that face women in my constituency are the lack of universal child care and nursery education. If extra money were made available from general taxation, that is where I would invest it.

I recently met people from Hyde Clarendon, and university students have raised the issue with me. They are extremely intelligent and perceptive people, and they understand the details. If it were explained to students that the debt is income contingent and the small proportion of the total cost involved were made clear, we would be able to move forward with a policy that, in my view, is clearly in the national interest. It will be fair in terms of access, and it will plug the quality gap emerging in our universities.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on bringing this subject to our attention. As he said, it is the third time in the past few weeks that we have had the chance to debate it. For my party, however, the more often we can do so the better. I am delighted to have the chance to put our views to the House and to the public. I am delighted also to have the chance to talk about the policies of the Government and the Conservative party; it is easy to spot holes in the policies of both.

The Chairman of the Select Committee said that he believed that most people did not benefit from higher education. That is an extraordinary thing to say.

Directly.

The hon. Gentleman has clarified what he meant.

The example of David Beckham has been introduced before when talking about the money earned by people who have not had a higher education. His earnings are partly due to the fact that he played as England's captain in the last World cup. However, he was able to play only because someone had mended his metatarsal bone a few weeks earlier. To some extent, his earnings are now dependent on the fact that somebody was around who could do that.

The fact is that everyone who earns that sort of money will, in one way or another, be dependent on those who have had a higher education. Such an education can give people the chance to work for entrepreneurs who have not had a higher education, to provide services for their firms or in one way or another to add to the wealth of the nation and therefore the wealth of those entrepreneurs that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

The logic of the hon. Gentleman's position—that one should pay for whatever part of one's education others do not have—inevitably means that everyone should pay for education beyond the compulsory age of 16. If people have to pay for their higher education simply because not everyone gets it, they should pay also for education between the ages of 16 and 18. So far as I know, that has not yet become Labour party policy. I would be interested in whether the Minister has anything to say about that. Perhaps he will surprise us all by changing policy on post-compulsory education.

I know that the hon. Gentleman had a rather exclusive education, and that he is therefore a little removed from the world, but I was saying that individuals should make a contribution. I did not say that people should pay in full for their post-16 or post-18 education. I called for them to make a contribution for their higher education.

It is interesting that those who have had post-compulsory education but not higher education will not have to pay under the hon. Gentleman's theory, but that those who have higher education will. I do not see the logic of that argument. Those who have education post-compulsory school age should either pay for it all or make a contribution to it all, or make no contribution to either. The idea that people should have to make a contribution for higher education but not for post-compulsory education has no logic.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northavon made a powerful case, and he spoke of the representations that he has received from his constituents. In particular, he is right about the special effect that top-up fees will have on women. He seems to think that no one has been talking about it, but I assure him that when I go to universities and talk to groups of lecturers and students, I invariably make the point that the policy will have a major differential effect on women. He will not be surprised to hear that the response to such remarks is immediate, especially from the women. All heartily agree that the policy is particularly unfair to them.

There is an overwhelming view among students, young people, parents and university teachers that top-up fees and tuition fees have no part to play, because they are no answer to the problems that face the higher education system. However, in relation to my hon. Friend's speech, I should say that the Government are right about the need to widen participation, especially among those from the traditionally under-represented groups. The White Paper admits that the social class gap among those entering higher education is unacceptably wide and has widened. That analysis is confirmed by the MORI/Unite student living report produced earlier this year, which states that the proportion of students from social classes C2, D and E has dropped in the past three years from 20 to 17 per cent. Under Labour, the ratio of ABC1 students to C2DE students has increased from four to one to five to one.

Top-up fees, which would cause debts to soar to more than £20,000 on graduation, would make the situation much worse. We cannot have both a serious policy of widening participation to include students from non-traditional backgrounds and charges for tuition that place serious financial and psychological obstacles in the path of participation. The two policies are mutually exclusive, and the proposals in the White Paper, far from removing the contradiction, merely reinforce it.

I wish to ask the hon. Gentleman two things. First, does he agree with the direction of travel towards a target of 50 per cent. of people accessing higher education, and secondly, given the thesis that he is advancing, why does he think that when there was no charge for higher education and full grants were available, only 20 per cent. from the lower socio-economic classes went into higher education?

I am sure that there are many reasons why the participation rate was not higher, not least the failures of our education system further down the tree. It is a question of how many people progress to the right level in schools. The fact is that tuition fees have made the situation worse and top-up fees are likely to make it even worse. To answer the hon. Lady's question about the target, we should be aiming to make it possible for all young people who have the ability to make good use of a university education to have the opportunity to do so. The question should be not whether we can set a rigid target of 50 per cent. or any other figure, but how many people we can enable to reach a stage at which their education and their ability are such that they can make good use of a university education.

I asked whether the hon. Gentleman was in favour of the direction of travel in increasing participation towards the examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) gave from Scandinavia, Australia and Canada.

I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I thought that I had said that one of the few points on which I agree with the Government is the need to increase the rate of participation. The direction is right, but the Government are going about getting there in an odd way.

I want to concentrate on two areas in which top-up fees might have an impact. The first is university funding, which I mentioned a few moments ago. It seems that all parties now agree that universities need more money—they have been seriously underfunded. The last Conservative Administration presided over a 40 per cent. real-terms drop in funding per student, and during Labour's first term in office there was a further cut of 7 per cent. in funding per student from the taxpayer. Britain now spends less as a proportion of gross domestic product on higher education than it did in 1989, when there were half as many students as there are now. That is a telling statistic.

The introduction of tuition fees did not result in any extra money for higher education. That was confirmed by Professor Sir Howard Newby, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, who told a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on 28 January 2002, at which I was present:

"The grant to institutions was reduced by exactly the amount that. was coming through in tuition fees, so essentially there has been a displacement effect."

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that higher education funding is now growing at 9 per cent. a year in real terms?

I certainly pay tribute to the fact that the Government have in the past year or two begun to increase the amount of money going into higher education in real terms. That is good and has had welcome effects, but it has taken an awfully long time. Moreover, owing to the reductions in past, the level is still not back where was when the Government took office, let alone the position that held when the Conservative Government came to office in 1979, since when there has been a 40 per cent. drop in funding per student in real terms.

Why should the outcome for top-up fees be any different? There really is no logical reason to suppose that it will be. All that will happen if top-up fees are introduced is that the balance between the public and the private parts of the funds that go to universities will change. There is no reason to suppose that the overall amount will be any different from what it otherwise would have been if all the funding came from the public sector and general taxation.

The Government have denied that: the Minister told us recently that the income from top-up fees

"will be additional money going into universities."—[Official Report, 23 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 766.]

However, he has so far not been able to explain what provisions the legislation will include to ensure that, so I hope that he will do so today. Perhaps that is not surprising, since I cannot see any provisions that could possibly do so. If there were such provisions, they would in any case not be consistent with sound financial management, since surely Government must first decide how to split up the cake of our national wealth and then decide where the money for education is to come from.

To decide first how to get the money and then to leave to chance how much for higher education the universities decide to raise from our national wealth would a mad way of proceeding, and I do not believe that even this Government are capable of that. The important point about the impact of top-up fees on university funding, therefore, is that they will have no effect on the total funding.

I should like to concentrate on the effect that top-up fees could have on the credibility of the Conservative party. The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) is an honest chap, and if it were not for the special parliamentary meaning of the term, I would perhaps dare to call him a friend. However, on tuition fees he seems to have difficulties with his own hon. Friends. The new Conservative policy to scrap tuition fees has been much trumpeted; however, the message does not yet seem to have got across to the Conservative members of the Select Committee, not one of whom backed my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) when he produced a minority report last week to outline his opposition to tuition and top-up fees.

Although I hardly dare to think that I could be so honoured, perhaps hon. Members noticed my speech when there was an opportunity to debate the Conservative proposals on 25 June. On that occasion I referred to research by Professor Nicholas Barr of the London school of economics that shows that the Conservative proposals would not only end the proposed expansion, but cut participation from the current rate of 43 per cent. to as low as 36 per cent. by 2010. Since then, Libby Ashton of the Higher Education Policy Institute has shown that up to 250,000 young people who would otherwise be well qualified to take up a university place would be denied one under the Tory proposals. Moreover, those people would be disproportionately drawn from the least well-off families. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found:

"The Conservative proposals would benefit the richest households more than the Government proposals while the poorest households would be worse off."

It is therefore no wonder that Professor Barr concludes:

"The Tory proposals are … offensive to anyone who cares about fairness."

What did Professor Barr say about the Liberal Democrats' proposals? The hon. Gentleman will find his comments in the same document.

Professor Barr has certainly never been in favour of funding higher education out of general taxation, for reasons over which I have had many arguments with him; however, I am referring to what he said about the Conservative proposals. I do not pretend that we are fully in line with each other and never have done—we have argued long and hard about the issue.

The Liberal Democrats, it has to be said, and this is really the difference—

Order. I must bring it to the attention of the hon. Gentleman that he has made many interventions already in the debate. I do not wish to inhibit the flow of the debate, but he is rapidly approaching 15 minutes in making his own contribution, in addition to the numerous interventions that he has already made. I therefore ask him to bring his comments to a close fairly quickly.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall certainly try to do that.

The main difference between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives with regard to abolishing tuition fees and top-up fees is that the Liberal Democrats oppose fees, because we believe that they are an obstacle to wider participation, whereas the Tories want to scrap fees at the cost of participation.

The Government have earned some respect for their commitment to a fairer higher education system, in which more people have an opportunity to take part and from which more people will benefit. I hope that they will take account of the arguments advanced by many on the front line in our universities, in Parliament and on the Government Benches to show that the noble objective of increasing participation can be achieved only if they reverse their policy on tuition and top-up fees.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on initiating the debate and also on the measured terms in which he put his case. That set the tone. This will not be the last debate on the subject, and I hope that any subsequent debates will be conducted with the same understanding of the complexity of the issues.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said, and I am sure that his remarks will repay further study—I welcomed his technique of going out and asking his electorate for views on the matter. I also noted two particular points. He is right to emphasise the differential impact on the position of women. I would say that, because I have three graduate daughters and am sensitive to the issue. I was also interested in the nuancing of what he said about the vocational experience arising from higher education. We all understand that point.

I listened to the views of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) and have debated with him previously on a rather wider compass than we have today. We have differences of view and opinions as to solutions, but I note his conversion to looking towards people's career development. That will be a welcome additional theme.

I do not want to overlook the contribution made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman). He has presided over a useful Select Committee report, which will repay not merely partial quotation this afternoon, but deeper study over the recess. I intend to go through it carefully then. The report has properly brought together a number of issues.

I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) for his contribution. From time to time, he makes an excellent job of defending the indefensible aspects of Government policies: someone has to do it, and I cannot think of anyone who could do it much better.

I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mrs. Fitzsimons) has absented herself after making several interesting interventions, not least because we have "form" on the matter when I was the Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and she was the president of the National Union of Students. I will not say that our positions have been reversed, but I would have enjoyed probing her on her current stance on these matters.

I am conscious of the time, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but none the less will remind hon. Members, before the record is distorted, that the Conservative party—I include myself in this because I was in the Conservative Government of that time—comes to this debate with clean hands. I shall take up the point made by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde on the issue of participation as opposed to access, about which there is systemic confusion.

If the hon. Gentleman's party were to come to power and cut 250,000 students from the total roll, does he not think that both participation and access would decrease?

The hon. Gentleman has leapt to a conclusion with which I do not necessarily agree. Our proposals would make it possible to provide an adequate offer—with the option of progression to higher education—for anyone qualified to do it.

I wanted to put it on the record that a Conservative Government took us from an elite to a mass system of higher education, with participation of young people rising from 8 to 33 per cent. or more. That is a major and historic achievement, which we have no wish to reverse. We did that without imposing tuition fees. The student loans that we introduced and that enabled us to fulfil that policy at considerable speed in the early 1990s were of a magnitude lower than the loan requirements implied by the present Government's policies.

Finally, it is often overlooked that, although there were difficulties with the structure of mortgage-type loans, they did not kick in until 85 per cent. of average earnings was attained. On that basis, a starting figure for the repayment of loans would be a salary of more than £20,000, which is more or less in line with the Select Committee's thinking.

Even in this short compass I would wish to concede that two issues are of continuing concern. First, we all believe that there has been too little participation from the lower three socio-economic classes. In some respects, it has gone back from my days in university. Hon. Members may be interested to know that the first piece of work that I commissioned from officials when I became Minister was an analysis of the situation as it then applied. The lack of participation of those groups is a great loss to universities, which miss able students, and to those individuals who do not take part. The answer, in our view, is to concentrate on the schools. We should get people prepared for university and ensure that they have adequate prior attainments, as that has a big influence on drop-out rates, rather than carry out social engineering at the university level.

Secondly, there is undoubtedly pressure on university funding. In exchanges with the hon. Member for Newbury, we noted the fact that, despite tuition fees, things have not improved and the money, as the Treasury would say, has been taken into account in the overall financial settlement.

The Minister has said that only one fourteenth of the total funding package is provided by student contributions at the moment. It is clear from the Select Committee report—for example, when it talks about higher top-up fees—that the introduction of tuition fees creates instability. There is always pressure to drift upwards to totally unacceptable levels. The figure of £5,000 has already been mentioned.

I should just make three or four specific points on current developments in relation to Government policy. The first is one on which we all agree. I have written to all the vice-chancellors about our proposals. There has been a range of replies, not all of which, I hasten to say, said that our suggestions were anathema. They all agree that they do not like the Office for Fair Access. Its job is one that they think they can properly do themselves.

Secondly, the Minister announced today in a written statement the figures for the new grant. It is lower than the grant that applied until 1997 under the previous Government. The upper income threshold for the full amount will be £15,200. It is estimated that only 30 per cent. will receive the full grant and a further 10 per cent. a partial grant. Given that there is a huge participation in fees relief for 58 per cent., the Government are beginning to shade down the coverage of people who receive support. The position under top-up fees is quite unclear.

I close on our strategic response to the Government's proposals. We object to them for two reasons beyond those that have already been discussed. First, they are unsustainable. Often, policies, including some of our own in government, require so much amelioration and tailoring that they yield little revenue. The Prime Minister appeared to say last week that only £500 million was coming in from the fees package. He was a little more modest than the Secretary of State, who suggested that it might be £700 million. It is still a very small amount, even if it is new money, which we doubt.

It is clear from the Select Committee report that the cost of the fees subsidy is already more than £800 million. A recent written answer suggested that it might be £1 billion. That is solved by cutting the Treasury interest rate. Once we move to top-up fees, the figures become much larger. I cannot see a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the future wanting to draw the cheque for that. There will be some reneging on undertakings if those loans are allowed to escalate.

There is also the issue of indefensibility. In relation to that, I would single out students with incomes just above the qualifying thresholds who, with their families, will be under severe pressures. Those with lower income levels are also, in one way or another, deterred from the process. It is wrong to say that students do not make a contribution. They suffer the opportunity cost of not earning, and they have additional maintenance expenditure through university participation. As the hon. Member for Newbury said, there is also the question of where the fees process will stop. If Governments think that they can charge students, why should they think that they cannot charge people at school?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb). As others have said, he approached the debate in a constructive and rather novel way by describing his survey of 1,000 constituents. He said that I might be getting a bit tired of debating this issue, but we cannot have too many debates on it. In this particular forum, I should like to leave aside yah-boo party politics and deal with the issue in the way that the hon. Gentleman has.

The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of points that I will consider further, but I also have some immediate responses that will allow him to send a copy of the Hansard of this debate to the 1,000 constituents to whom he referred—if he can afford it. His constituents made an important contribution; their prejudices about the Office for Fair Access shocked me nearly as much as their prejudices about students on media studies courses. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) made the point that we want to link university education to industry, and ensure that graduates who come out of our universities make an important economic contribution in today's world. I make no comment on any subjects that might have been studied for 200 or 300 years, but media studies courses make, and will continue to make, an important contribution to today's economy. It is saloon-bar, red-neck language—not that I would accuse the good citizens of Northavon of that—to suggest that, because media studies has become an important topic, it is irrelevant. It is not irrelevant. The higher education sector needs to get that message across.

I have listened carefully to the points that have been made. I remain convinced that the Government's strategy is the only coherent one for the future of higher education. I want to explain why I believe that a variable fee, which is the prime topic of today's debate, is the right approach. I want to deal with the effects and the perceived effects of our proposals, and finally I shall put the proposals in context of the Government's wider agenda. As usual, there will not be enough time to cover all the points raised.

As the hon. Member for Northavon will accept, he has a problem not just with top-up fees, but with fees in the first place. The starting point for any such debate has to be the Dearing report. I am perfectly willing to listen to the views of the 1,000 good citizens of Northavon, but let us not forget what Dearing said. His was a cross-party report, which was supported across party boundaries. It was a national committee of inquiry that produced the most radical and thorough analysis of higher education since the Robbins report in 1963. The Dearing committee was unequivocal in its view, and Dearing himself put it well in a recent speech. Higher education is different from post-16 education where, although too many youngsters are leaving school at 16, they have a right to stay on. Dearing said that, given that higher education is a major benefit that is not available as of right to all our citizens, it is equitable that those who are qualified and choose to take it should put something back in the pot when they become earners. If it is unfair to ask graduates to pay more of the cost, why is it fair to ask non-graduate taxpayers to do so? That is at the heart of this debate.

The hon. Member for Northavon spoke about the effect on women. That is an important issue, and perhaps we have not paid enough attention to it—I shall certainly do so in future. However, the big success story is the number of women going into higher education. They were in the minority in higher education—34 per cent.—as recently as 1996, but now account for 55 per cent. of those going into higher education, so the introduction of tuition fees did not affect that at all.

The basis of the hon. Gentleman's argument was the time taken to pay back the loan. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report said that that would take an average of 10 years under the Government's proposals. We have not analysed those figures carefully but, for women, 13 years—a difference of three years—sounds about right.

The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) said how important the issue of loans is for women, and how onerous the loan might be to them. I am the secretary of his fan club, and all other hon. Members here probably feel the same. However, I remind him that, although it is true that under the loan system of the previous Government—£1 billion of which still has to be paid back—there was a threshold of £20,000, once that threshold was passed by one penny, the debt would be paid back in five or seven years irrespective of whether a person had taken time out for maternity leave or had left the job market. That is a much more onerous burden, and those debts are being paid at this moment. That issue should be the subject of a debate.

The point was raised in debate in the House that we are not talking about debt in itself but about the level of debt, because by and large, under various systems, students have incurred debt. The introduction of tuition fees has not affected the number of women going to university. I repeat that our proposal is that we remove upfront tuition fees and take a purist steering, as it were. No one—not students or parents—pays anything except graduates once they are earning £15,000 a year, and then they pay on an equitable and attractive basis.

This is not credit card debt. There is no real rate of interest building up, and the loan does not have to be repaid in a short period. It is not as though the scheme takes no account of people's earnings—that would be credit card debt. It is 9 per cent. applied to the difference between the threshold and earnings. Someone on £18,500 a year would pay back £5.50 a week.

I am perfectly willing to engage in debate on the time that paying back the loan will take, but we should ask whether the scheme is an attractive proposition if we accept that graduates should make a contribution, and accept all the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde made so powerfully. We must decide whether, considering all the other options, Dearing was right. We are talking about making a contribution, not paying the total amount.

By the end of the current spending review, we will be putting £10 billion of public money into higher education, and that is—as it should be—a real increase of 6 per cent. a year in the next three years. That means that £400 for every taxpayer in the country will go into higher education. If graduates are to make a contribution, is our system the right way to provide for that?

On variability, recent research suggests that there is a 44 per cent. difference in the average returns for graduates at the two ends of the graduate pay scale. Fortuitously, I have the figures for women who study law and architecture, although I did not know that that would be a major feature of the survey that the hon. Member for Northavon conducted. Between 1993 and 1999, the returns for women graduates in law and architecture were more than 40 per cent., while those for arts degrees were below 20 per cent., so there is a big difference. That is a factor if, in trying to bring more money into the system, we ask students to pay the same amount and make exactly the same contribution.

It is unreasonable to insist that students with such different earnings prospects pay the same flat-rate fee. In a speech in February, Lord Dearing said that, with the introduction of the price competition that comes with the discretion of institutions to set fees ranging from nothing to £3,000 in what is otherwise a growth desert in the market for three-year degree students, strong competition will lead to a differentiation in fees. People will not go to the upper end of £3,000.

Order. For the next 30 minutes at least, we must focus our attention on community transport.

My contribution to this debate is part of a cross-party initiative by Norfolk Members. I should mention in particular the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), who cannot be present, as well as the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson), who is here, the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who is stuck in a Select Committee, and the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham). I am also delighted to see that the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) is present—to support the case that is being made, I suspect.

Concerns were first brought to our attention by all the community transport schemes in Norfolk, as well as the two rural transport partnerships in the county. We are all indebted to them, and to the Community Transport Association nationally, for their guidance and hard work.

Before setting out our concerns, it is important to mention that there was some discussion about which Department should respond to this debate. It is clear that the Department for Transport has the main responsibility, but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has responsibility for the Countryside Agency, which provides grants, usually on a three-year basis, for community transport schemes. I hope that this debate will reinforce the need for coordination between those two Departments. The Department for Transport, in particular, needs to be aware of a developing funding crisis that is facing community transport not only in Norfolk but across the country.

The main message that I want to get across is that the Government must be applauded for providing funds to pump-prime new community transport schemes. Those have mushroomed throughout the country, and that is good. It is likely that such schemes will be the most viable model for rural public transport in the future. They are flexible, they are demand responsive and they tend to use vehicles that are small and environmentally friendly. We have all witnessed double-decker buses careering around country lanes, usually entirely empty.

The great danger is that all the good progress could be lost. The CTA—the national body—and others do not want confrontation: that is not what this debate is about. They want to work with the Government to ensure that this exciting development over the past few years is maintained and enhanced. We also aim to be constructive as a group of MPs, and we hope that the Minister will respond in a similar vein.

I wish to say something about the Norfolk schemes. There are four community transport schemes, which have been set up with rural transport partnership—RTP—funding provided by the Countryside Agency. One of them is in South Norfolk—the Diss and District Community Transport Association. It runs a minibus dial-a-ride scheme and a door-to-door service for people in rural areas. The scheme is operated by a small group of employed people, together with drivers. Its RTP funding runs out next year. The North Norfolk Community Transport Partnership in my constituency is a similar operation whose funding also runs out next year.

The North Walsham Area Community Transport Association is also in my constituency. There is a full-time co-ordinator and a part-time administrator. They operate on a low cost base from a rent-free office in North Walsham. The association has funding from the Countryside Agency, which got the whole thing established, at a rate of £18,000 per year. That has already ended—it came to an end earlier this year. It gets some funding from the county council, and the district and town and parish councils. It gets income from fares and from charges for other transport services and membership subscriptions. However, it is now living off its reserves and it cannot carry on like this for long.

The association was founded in 1999. I want to make it clear that that was made possible by Government pump-priming. The association covers 45 parishes and provides regular dial-a-ride services to local market towns, which get people from small village communities into their local town. Secondly, it provides transport to appointments at local hospitals, GPs' surgeries, dentists and so on—that is crucial in rural areas. Thirdly, it provides transport for organised groups that meet regularly for social gatherings, such as lunch clubs for elderly and disabled people.

The association also has a programme of excursions. It uses 10 volunteer drivers locally, so it is a real community effort. It also runs a hospital bus, with a paid driver, from north-east Norfolk to the new Norfolk and Norwich university hospital, which is five miles to the south of Norwich: not an accessible location for anyone relying on public transport. There has been a steady growth in the use of the association's services, and there are now some 420 return passenger trips every month. Users are mainly elderly and disabled people who cannot walk to the normal bus stop and who benefit from the fact that they can be picked up outside their front door. There are other passengers without access to a car. The services are very valuable, and passengers describe them as a lifeline, a godsend, and say that it is important that we keep those services.

The fourth scheme in Norfolk with the benefit of rural transport partnership funding is called "kickstart". It is a really innovative moped loan scheme that enables young people, primarily, to access employment and training. If a person is stuck in a small village that does not have a normal bus service, it is very difficult to get access to employment. The scheme has helped a significant number of people in Norfolk to access employment and training; its funding runs out next year as well.

There are other schemes with alternative sources of funding: a Norwich door-to-door scheme, of which I suspect the hon. Member for Norwich, North is aware. That scheme is specifically for disabled people and those with other mobility problems who are excluded from using traditional forms of public transport. There are other, existing schemes that have used RTP funding to expand their services. The West Norfolk community transport project, an excellent community car scheme, covers six parishes around Heacham. It is primarily used by people who need to get to hospital appointments. There are also the Swaffham rural links and Wymondham flexibus services. There are lots of schemes cropping up all over the place, all with the benefit of that central funding; the schemes tackle social exclusion and rural isolation and they give people independence. Last week, I met a group of residents from Wigston in Leicestershire; it looked like they were going to lose their housing estate bus service. For those elderly people, that bus is a lifeline.

The Government's social exclusion unit recently published a report entitled "Making the Connections: Final Report on Transport and Social Exclusion". The North Walsham association was used as a case study in the chapter entitled "Solutions to the problem". The chapter demonstrates how community transport reduces social exclusion.

The common problem is where to get sustainable funding once the pump-priming ends. Schemes have done an awful lot of work to secure alternative funding. The North Norfolk Community Transport Partnership says that

"We have sought to secure alternative funding through trusts, Town and Parish donations and other funding bodies. However, in the current financial and investment climate, whereby many trusts have seen their stock-market investment funds seriously depleted over the last year, such bodies are unable to offer any substantial financial support. Most Town and parish councils have very limited funds and the most our organisation has ever been offered is a donation of £250, (this being from quite well-off town councils such as Fakenham and Holt), otherwise donations usually amount to something in the region of £25-£50."

That level of funding simply will not support the services that they provide.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this Adjournment debate, which has the support of all Norfolk Members. Following from what he just said, it seems to many of us—I know that the Minister will be aware of this—that sustainable funding is the crucial element. Our fear at the meeting that we attended on 6 June was that as more and more schemes are set up, there is a danger that those set up behind them will collapse because of lack of funding. What we are looking for from the Minister is more suggestions of how we can gel sustainable funding. During the past four years, Norfolk county council has spent from £171,000 to a planned £318,000 on community transport, but that may lead to cuts in local bus services. I support what the hon. Gentleman says.

I am grateful for that intervention, and I entirely agree with the Gentleman's points. The county council has explained to me that the only way in which it can get extra funding for community transport is to reduce subsidies on traditional bus services. That is a difficult process and takes time to achieve. Wholesale axing of existing services is simply not an option, because so many people rely on them.

The problem is that there is a very significant amount of money flowing in from the Countryside Agency to get those schemes started, but because so many started at roughly the same time, they are all coming to the end of their three-year funding period in a narrow time frame. Consequently, there is simply no prospect of the county council being able to take on the full burden following the withdrawal of Countryside Agency funding.

There sometimes seems to be an obsession with funding only new and innovative schemes. That is important, but must not happen to the detriment of other schemes that are already working successfully. There is a danger of organisations straining to come up with some new package simply to attract funding. There is also a danger of spending a disproportionate amount of time pursuing funding, which is an inefficient use of management time. The process of applying for funding, then losing out in the bidding process, can be soul destroying. Uncertainty of funding will also lead to those employed in the sector seeking more security elsewhere, resulting in a loss of the skills and experience that need to be retained in the sector to build on the very successful foundations that have been laid.

One of the local operators in Norfolk has said:

"Such 'short-term' funding has hampered an expansionist ethos for our service and the general feeling with our members and that of many dial-a-ride operators is one of an impending 'shut-down' of the service as a whole."

That is not conducive to an expansion of such schemes.

I am sure that the Minister will accept that the schemes are unlikely ever to be profitable. They provide a public service in some of the most remote areas of the country. They fill the gaps that conventional transport cannot fill. Those running the schemes tell us that they may well be able to survive with tapering funding. They also say that, ideally, they would like to be locally funded, a view that I strongly share, but there must be some transmission mechanism to get from nationally provided pump-priming to sustainable local funding. Three years is simply not long enough to build a strong passenger base and for the county council to reorganise its funding to provide sufficient support for community transport.

Those in the sector feel that they are caught in something of a tussle between central and local government, both believing in community transport but neither coming up with a basis for sustainable funding. The Government's commitment in principle is very clear. The 10-year transport plan declares:

"There will be additional funding for other types of service"

than the traditional sort,

"including those run by the voluntary sector, community projects (such as the setting up and operation of social car and community minibus schemes) and flexible innovative schemes (which could include taxi-based services)."

The Government are there in principle, but the funding situation seems to be less optimistic than that statement of principle might suggest.

The Countryside Agency itself appears to be in something of a funding crisis. We have been told of concerns of

"appalling financial planning, and grossly inadequate communications."

I do not know whether that is true, but that is the concern that has been expressed. An embargo was imposed on applications to the vital villages programme, part of the funding stream for community transport, back in mid-April. Although the embargo was lifted in June, it seems that many transport services due to receive funding will still have to be shelved. That inevitably means that much of the work by voluntary groups throughout the country will be wasted and expectations will be dashed. The Countryside Agency claims that that was because of an over-subscription in applications for rural transport partnership funding, but many believe that it is really because of over-spending on mapping work undertaken by the Countryside Agency.

Will the Minister investigate the situation? I appreciate that it is not his departmental responsibility, but it appears to be putting at risk an important part of the Government's transport strategy for rural areas. Will he also consider calling a summit of everyone with an interest in community transport? It could include the funders, local authorities, operators and service users, coming together with a view to ensuring that existing schemes are given the opportunity to flourish and a second aim of expanding rather than contracting the network.

Finally, as Paul Gray, co-ordinator of the North Walsham Area Community Transport Association, says:

"Quietly, and without too much fuss, community transport does a great job every day. Any community bus driver will instantly recognise the unreserved appreciation shown by his or her passengers on a frequent basis. The message I carry to you is simple: A modest investment in rural community transport would represent a significant payback in the quality of life in a rural environment."

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) not only on securing this debate and providing us with an opportunity to discuss the important role of community transport, but on the manner in which he introduced it. I know that there are concerns and that they are shared throughout parties and different levels of government in many areas, including Norfolk. I shall not dwell on much of what he has already said, but the Department appreciates that community and voluntary transport has a key role to play in all regions of the country, both urban and rural.

As an aside, I should say that the rigidity of the modernisation of the House should be examined. As the hon. Gentleman said, this is clearly a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs debate rather than a Department for Transport debate, but he could have secured a DEFRA Minister to respond only by losing this slot, because of the departmental timetable, and hoping and praying that he got another slot in September, October or the 12th of Never. That point may need to be considered.

Throughout Government, we understand that there are concerns. I should say that I shall render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, so I shall make no promises about chasing up matters that are properly DEFRA's, but ensure that colleagues in DEFRA get notice of the concerns from me as well as simply from reading Hansard.

The hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the social exclusion unit report and the notion of transport as a key factor in overcoming social exclusion in both rural and urban areas. That is important not only for income, gender, race or disability—which are perhaps more relevant factors in urban areas—but for geographic isolation and all that follows from the rural infrastructure.

I shall come on to the specific issues in a moment, but as the hon. Gentleman said, we are talking about, in relative terms, a success story. A lot has happened in recent years, and I commend and thank the many volunteers who work in community transport, as well as those who are employed by the schemes. The breadth of the community transport sector and its activities is important, but we must remember that services are disparate and often run at a local level. When focusing on some of the localised schemes, it is all too easy to lose sight of the sheer scale of the operation in the community transport arena.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Community Transport Association, which represents the majority of schemes throughout the country, estimates that there are some 5,000 schemes in the UK that between them are running some 60,000 minibuses. They do so with the help of a quarter of a million volunteers, and 10,000 full-time paid drivers. They deliver some 5 million trips for almost 2 million people with mobility problems. I do not say that to diminish the problems that the hon. Gentleman referred to concerning the Norfolk-specific schemes, but simply to put the matter into context. By any measure that is an impressive record, and the community transport sector should be very proud of it. It is perhaps all the more impressive when we consider that much of the activity is taking place in the voluntary sector.

We have heard today—and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the way in which he raised the matter—that the community and voluntary sector faces many challenges not least in funding, and I fully appreciate the difficulties to which uncertainty over future funding and the complexities of funding applications themselves can give rise. Any scheme will have at least one or two volunteers, if not an employee, simply looking for funding streams, and seeking to translate and fill in the relevant forms. For a small operation, simply pulling together all the information needed for a funding application can be a daunting and time-consuming task.

I associate myself with the speech math by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). One of the problems is that Norwich is seen as the centre of the universe in Norfolk. It is the cul-de-sac of the nation, and the many elderly people who gravitate into Norfolk—who will increasingly do so during the next few years—demand the right to transport such as buses or rail lines that were closed by Beeching, because they cannot drive cars.

I would not dispute that point either, but the issue of sustainability is key to what the hon. Member for North Norfolk suggests. Having to repeat that time after time for different funders, and then repeating the same exercise, sometimes as soon as the following year, for continuation of that funding, could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Equally, however, we know that community and voluntary transport schemes do not give up easily. With their personal commitment to the people that they serve and their professionalism in providing transport services, they will do everything in their power to ensure that their schemes are able to continue. Indeed, that tenacity and dedication are what has led us to discuss these issues today.

As the hon. Gentleman said, concerns have been expressed about recent funding problems affecting the Countryside Agency's rural transport partnership. The Countryside Agency administers the grant on behalf of DEFRA, not the DFT, and the overall level of funding allocated to the agency as a whole is ultimately the responsibility of DEFRA Ministers. Officials work closely with DEFRA and the Countryside Agency to ensure that the use of the RTP grant is consistent with, and adds value to, the Department's own rural transport programmes.

The RTP received a considerable increase in funding following the publication of the rural White Paper, as hon. Members will know. That includes many community transport enhancements, such as minibuses, and travel co-ordinators. I do not want to introduce a discordant note—I know that some people think that I regard it as my duty to introduce discord where there is consensus—but I do not think that articles such as the one entitled "Bus stops" in The Guardian today by the CTA are terribly helpful or add much to our deliberations on what sustainability is all about. The article is not terribly helpful—it is not terribly accurate—and the words

"Shaving 6 inches off one of the proposed new lanes of the M25 could probably have covered the costs."

are not terribly helpful or useful, either.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk knows that there was a moratorium on the RTP fund for a few weeks, but that has been resolved and £2 million extra has been found. He will also know that DEFRA will review the RTP grant scheme to build on its successes, not to cut it. The outcome of that review will be made available in October and will go through DEFRA's normal budgetary processes to determine future funding. As I have said, I shall ensure that DEFRA gets to learn of the specifics of the Norfolk schemes to which the hon. Gentleman referred. He has kindly said that Norfolk county council has been a major beneficiary of our funding for rural bus services. In fact, Norfolk county council receives the single highest amount of rural bus challenge subsidy grant each year. It is currently over £2.3 million, and it supports 66 services in the county. That support reflects the rural nature of large parts of the county. Norfolk has also been allocated nearly £3 million for eight projects that were successful in the rural bus challenge.

We are studying the regulatory regime and the funding streams that are available because the Department for Transport considers that important. The community voluntary transport schemes are vital in the mix of transport provision. I accept that, in some of the most rural parts of Norfolk, the mix of transport provision is not a mix, but the community transport provision is relied on. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) may regard Norwich as the centre of the universe in terms of Norfolk, but he and others will know that, to all intents and purposes, London is the centre of the universe.

We want to do all that we can to ensure that the voluntary and community schemes thrive. As we have heard today, the funding issue is the key factor in determining how the sector can continue and develop effectively. It is important that all those involved in funding, including national and local government as well as other funding providers, are fully aware of how their decisions can affect the future viability of community schemes. It is important that they can share their experiences, learn from others and develop their funding policies with the broadest understanding of the sector. I accept the important point about the sustainability of the projects.

In August, I shall be hosting a meeting of chief executives of voluntary organisations in the transport sector to discuss the Department's role in support of the voluntary sector, and many other issues. It will include discussion of our direct role as funders of services such as the Community Transport Association's advice service to which we give an annual grant—currently £100,000—as well as other issues that affect the voluntary sector.

My hon. Friend will know that Derbyshire is at the heart of community transport. It was the area that lobbied for the fuel duty rebate to be extended to community transport services. He knows that, a short time ago, I hosted three seminars for the Community Transport Association about transport and social exclusion. In his discussions with transport organisations, will he take account of the points that arose in the seminars about which I shall give him details?

I was about to reflect on that matter. In addition, officials will be setting up a meeting of the key funders of voluntary transport to discuss funding and what we can do to enable the community and voluntary sectors to develop to the benefit of the communities, both rural and urban, that they serve. I have not been told that I have been invited, but I will ensure that I am.

I was about to say, before my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) intervened, that she has asked me to meet a delegation of hon. Members and others about community transport, social exclusion and much of the work that has developed from the seminars to which she referred. I am happy to do so. I am equally happy either to broaden that meeting to include Norfolk Members, although on reflection, it is more likely that I will have a separate meeting with them about Norfolk—which includes Norwich, of course—to discuss specifically the micro and broader schemes. With hon. Members' indulgence, the meeting will not be held before the recess—as that would give us about 16 hours within which to fix it up.

The resolution of local issues might be better served collectively if the meeting were held after I have forewarned DEFRA about the issues that have been raised in the debate, after I have met the voluntary sectors in August to discuss what they are doing for community transport and after the forum or summit with the key funding bodies. There will then be something of substance to discuss in the meeting about the Norfolk schemes.

We are keenly aware throughout the Government, not only in DEFRA and the Department for Transport, that pump-priming and getting in place vital services is one thing, but that we need to work with others to ensure that such matters are mainstream. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for North Norfolk that local transport programmes and local authorities should pick up such matters. I thank him again not just for instigating this debate, the subject of which is important, but for the tenor and the way in which he introduced it. I am grateful for that, and I will see you all in September or October.

I want to raise some issues concerning the demand for labour in the UK economy, which has some important implications for my constituents. I shall relate those to some of the assumptions made by Government policy makers about employment, education and skills, and then touch on some issues concerning labour market regulation.

To put it simply, it seems that much of the debate on public policy has been premised on specific assumptions and data sets concerning future demand for labour, which I think are more contentious than is sometimes assumed. Those assumptions centre on the notion of the new knowledge-based economy, which has been a dominant theme in Government thinking since 1997 and assumes that we are witnessing a profound change in the nature of work, fuelled by globalisation and the revolution in information and communications technologies. It offers a seductive political vision of the future in the development of so-called smart technologies and the new economy overtaking the so-called old economy with its more traditional patterns of work. The assumption is of rapid growth in scientific, technical, managerial and professional work and a corresponding decline in traditional forms of manual labour. Because of the liberating assumptions regarding new technology, Government emphasis is placed on supply-side strategy t o equip people for the new global revolution in work where market failure occurs.

There is a massive amount of literature about the new knowledge-based economy. During Labour's first term, that informed much of the thinking in the Department of Trade and Industry, culminating in a White Paper on the subject. It also seems to inform thinking within the Department for Education and Skills, and I want to examine some of those assumptions and tease out some of the thinking behind the Department's policies.

Ministerial speeches are littered with references to the knowledge-based economy. Much Government analysis seems to presume that future demand is almost entirely driven by high-wage, high-skilled, knowledge-driven labour and that is what I want to consider this afternoon. I want to consider what underpins some recent statements from Ministers. For example, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills stated this year:

"Demand for graduates is very strong, and research shows that 80 per cent. of the 1.7 million new jobs which are expected to be created by the end of the decade will be in occupations which normally recruit those with higher education qualifications."

During a recent debate in the House, the new Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education stated that the Institute for Employment Research showed that 1.7 million jobs will be created in this country between 1999 and 2010 and that nine out of 10 of those jobs will require higher education and graduate education.

I want to ask the Minister a number of questions. First, is that a correct reading of the research? The statistics come from "Skills in England 2001", and as far as I can see, the relevant quotation is on page 7 of that report, which states:

"This rapid growth in the numbers employed in a range of occupational groups where qualification levels are currently relatively high, combined with the decline of several occupational groupings where qualifications are relatively low, will lead to around 4 in 5 of the new jobs being at least at NVQ level 3, or equivalent, by the end of the decade."

Two pages later, it states:

"It is likely that around 8 out of 10 of all of the new jobs may well be at NVQ levels 3 or 4 or their equivalent."

I understand that NVQ level 5 relates to postgraduate degrees; NVQ level 4 relates to first degrees, teaching qualifications, nursing qualifications, HNC, HND and the RSA higher diploma; NVQ level 3 relates to 2 or more A-levels, the RSA advanced diploma, ONC, OND, national BTEC, City and Guilds advanced craft certificate, trade apprenticeship arid advanced GNVQ. It seems clear that ministerial statements that eight out of 10 new jobs require graduate qualifications is not quite the case, in that the 80 per cent. also covers the demand for labour for people with NVQ level 3 qualifications.

Table 3.5 of the research report. which was the basis for those recommendations, states that 55 per cent. of new jobs will require NVQ level 4 or higher by 2010, and not 80 per cent., the other 25 per cent. being the disaggregated figure relating to NVQ level 3 in terms of extra demand for labour. The ministerial statements do not refer to replacement labour demanded by 2010. What would the total demand for higher qualifications be as a percentage of actual jobs in the economy if we took on board replacement jobs as well as the figure for new jobs—1.7 million—by 2010? Again, to quote the "Skills in England" document, page 9 states:

"The volume of replacement demand that is likely to be required, and thus the relevant skills to go with them, may well be around 5 times as great as the volume of new jobs and the skills that go with them."

What happens when we combine that replacement labour with the expanded demand for new jobs? If they are added together—as shown in one of the tables in the report—the five growth categories in the English labour market by 2010 will be clerical and service-related elementary occupations, administrative and clerical occupations, sales occupations, caring personal service occupations—

To recap briefly, I was making a point about replacement labour, in addition to new jobs, by 2010. Once we take on board replacement demand, the top five growing occupations cover elementary occupations, administrative and clerical work, sales, caring and personal service occupations, and managers and proprietors in agriculture and services.

We need to take on board replacement labour and the fact that the estimates for new jobs also cover NVQ level 3. Page 79 of the research report states:

"By 2010, on the basis of a fixed qualification rate assumption, nearly 30 per cent. of those in employment are expected to be qualified to NVQ level 4/5 or equivalent"

So, we are not talking about 80 per cent. When the statistics are broken down further they show that, by 2010, the figure for those in employment required to be first degree graduates or postgraduates will be 22.1 per cent. That is to say, in terms of the demand for labour by 2010, 77.9 per cent. of jobs will not require a degree. That compares with the earlier assumption that about eight out of 10 jobs will require a degree.

All the data imply that growth is occurring at both ends of the labour market. I accept that there are growth areas in professional, associate professional and managerial work, but there are also growth areas in relation to routine, low-waged and low-skilled jobs, many of which are in the service sector and which include work in care homes, sales, cleaning and security, and routine clerical work.

That suggests a growing US-style polarisation between a primary and secondary labour market, both of which are expanding. The primary labour market will cover some 21 per cent. of all jobs by 2010. If there is 50 per cent. participation in higher education, by 2010 two graduates will be after every one job in that primary labour market. Does that mean that graduates—many with significant debts—will have to move further down the labour market? That would shut off opportunities for those with fewer qualifications. How do people without a degree break into an over-subscribed primary labour market? What are the training and education options on offer for that group?

It is interesting to compare the statistics that I mentioned with those for the United States. US Federal Government projections of labour market demand in 2010 suggest that no more than 21.8 per cent. of the entire work force will need a degree or a higher qualification, which is very close to the 22.1 per cent. estimate for this country. It should also be remembered that a US bachelor's degree is probably equivalent to our HND or foundation degree.

The US is often seen as a seductive model in Government policy-making circles and as the classic model of the new, knowledge-based economy. Further Federal Government research indeed states that three of the 10 fastest-growing occupational classifications by 2010 will be at the cutting edge of the new economy: computer software engineers requiring bachelor's degrees, and registered nurses and computer support specialists also requiring associate degrees. However, seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations in the USA by 2010 will require only short-term or moderate on-the-job training: fast-food workers, retail workers, clerks, security guards, waitresses, cashiers, office clerks and the like. Put simply, the knowledge-based economy will not be on the horizon for huge and expanding sectors of the US labour market by 2010.

In the United Kingdom and the US the knowledge-based economy relates to about 21 per cent. of jobs, and it is a much more segmented labour market than one would otherwise assume. The majority of people are excluded from it and they operate in more traditional yet expanding labour markets. That is confirmed by data, rather than projected demand, on the fastest-growing occupations since 1992. In terms of absolute employment growth since 1992, the fastest-growing occupations have been, first, in the four long-established services of sales assistants, data input clerks, storekeepers and receptionists, secondly in state-dominated health and education services, and thirdly in the caring occupations: care assistants, welfare and community workers, nursery nurses and so on.

In short, in terms of the demand for labour in the past 10 years, employment growth has been concentrated in occupations scarcely at the cutting edge of the new economy. For example, the fastest-growing occupation in the past 10 years has been hairdressing, and until 2010, the demand for labour in the knowledge-based economy will be in a small minority of very highly paid jobs for those who are highly trained. At the same time, the real growth—and much future growth—is in low-paid, routine and unskilled employment in occupations that have been pre-eminent for more than 50 years.

I want to consider the framework that underscores some public policy. First, there is the spatial dimension. The Department of Trade and Industry report, "A Regional Perspective on the Knowledge-Driven Economy" shows the enormous disparities in prospects for workers in different geographical locations. The conclusion, which will be no surprise to many people, is that the poorer the community that people live in, the less likely they are to plug into the new, high-wage world of work, and the greater the likelihood of their participating in the growing low-wage, low-skilled economy. Put simply, it is more difficult for my constituents in Dagenham on the east side of London to plug into the changes than for those in Westminster and Chelsea.

My second point, of which the Minister is aware, concerns the very low in-work demands being made on people's basic literacy and numeracy skills in much of the labour market. For example, the massive adult literacy survey of employees in Scotland provides some shocking statistics, and there is no reason to suppose that the figures for the rest of the UK are any different. A sizeable proportion of the Scottish work force are currently in jobs that demand virtually no reading or writing skills. The figures for reading skills are that 34 per cent. rarely or never use information from computers; 26 per cent. rarely or never use letters or memos; 35 per cent. rarely or never use bills, invoices or spreadsheets; and 53 per cent. rarely or never use manuals, reference books and catalogues.

The findings on writing skills are even more shocking: 37 per cent. rarely or never write or fill out letters or memos; 42 per cent. rarely or never write or fill out forms, bills, budgets or invoices; and 51 per cent. rarely or never write reports or articles. Given the demand for labour, there are some uncomfortable questions to be asked about what is achieved by offering adults in those jobs adult literacy training on the supply side without reform on the demand side. A more interventionist role is needed to consider the nature of the jobs being done and the needs of people who do them.

Thirdly, I want to speak about the DFES assumptions about the wage premiums that result from some of the qualifications. The DFES assumes that five good GCSE results produce a financial return of about 20 per cent. to the individual; NVQ level 2, which is what the employer training pilots offer, produces a rate of return that is so low it is not significant, reinforcing the argument that in a huge segment of the labour market, employers are not necessarily looking for employees with even basic literacy and numeracy skills, which is truly shocking for our economy's productive capacity.

I raise all of the above in order to chuck out a few points and obtain so me responses. First, what are the assumptions of the future demands for labour requiring a degree by 2010? Secondly, will the Department accept that here, as in the USA, virtually 80 per cent. of jobs in 2010 will not require a degree, contrary to some of the inferences surrounding the public policy debates that are about to begin? Thirdly, what can be achieved by offering to adults publicly funded vocational education and training to level 2? How will that influence the broader issue of productivity movement? Is the strategy of incentivising training on the supply side workable without changing the nature of the demand for labour? Does the Government's in-work benefits regime reinforce and reincentivise low-wage, low-skilled jobs rather than reform them? How can a voluntary strategy operate without our seeking to regularise those low-wage, low-skilled labour markets more thoroughly, so that it will reincentivise investment in people and technology by choking off the low-wage, low-skilled options for employers?

Overall, is it not the case that the preconditions based on a stylised view, of the world—the so-called knowledge-based economy?—distract us from the real problems around the current and future demand for labour? We should prioritise a more interventionist agenda for those growing low-wage, low-skill labour markets, and seek to alter the demand for cheap, unskilled labour, rather than seeing our labour market problems as market failure on the supply side. That implies regulation, which boosts productivity, rather than deregulation, which reinforces our low-wage, low-skilled productivity capacity.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate. It is an important debate and he raises several significant issues.

The White Paper on skills, "Realising Our Potential", which was launched last week, addresses some of my hon. Friend's concerns about how we prioritise lower-level skills in the same way as higher-level skills. We must be conscious not only of the economic arguments but the social inclusion arguments. People with low-level skills become parents and their attitude towards education often influences the educational potential and aspirations of their children. It is misleading to argue that higher-level or lower-level skills are more important. We need a rounded approach that tackles the fact that by 2010 there will be more jobs requiring higher-level skills. We have a responsibility to recognise that we must increase the number of people who can access adult literacy and numeracy skills and level 2 qualifications.

We should not apologise for our commitment to ensure that approximately 50 per cent. of young people experience higher education by 2010. We also aspire to ensure that by 2010 90 per cent. of young people have qualifications and skills that help them to access skilled employment. It is also important to mention that foundation degrees, to which we have made a commitment, such as HNDs—my hon. Friend referred to them—have always been classed as higher education. They provide the skills that our economy needs. Some people claim that foundation degrees represent a dumbing down. High-quality courses such as foundation degrees ensure that our graduates fit the needs of the economy far more than they have in the past, and that we have an appropriate mix of academic skills and work-based skills.

My hon. Friend raised several statistical questions. It is important to recognise that currently in the UK we have relatively low qualification levels compared with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries: 17 per cent. of the UK labour force is educated to degree level, compared with 28 per cent. in the United States. Of the 2.1 million additional jobs expected to be created by the end of the decade, 80 per cent. will be in occupations that normally recruit those with higher educational qualifications. It is accurate to say that a knowledge economy requires that more young people get up to degree level and we are able to ensure that our competitiveness and productivity are where they need to be in a global economy.

It is also right that we continue to stimulate demand for lower-level skills, which we know will be a major challenge. We must ensure that far more people leave the compulsory education system with at least basic decent qualifications than has historically been the case—various policies should lead to that—but we must also ensure that those people who are at present in the labour market or who are about to enter it also have opportunities throughout their lives to upskill and reskill.

My hon. Friend discussed the need for an approach to skills that is sensitive to individual sectoral and regional labour market priorities and requirements. The proposals that we announced in the White Paper only last week were a real attempt to move away from a "one size fits all" national approach.

The White Paper set out several key principles. We need greater clarity about the rights and responsibilities of key stakeholders, particularly the state, employers and individuals. We need a system of education and training with greater transparency and simplicity for its users, whether individuals or employers, and one that is far more responsive to their needs. Finally, we need a far more sophisticated system that cart respond to the needs of regions and sectors.

Some of the key reforms that were included in the White Paper directly address some of my hon. Friend's concerns about the balance of priorities and investment of public resources. We announced a new universal entitlement to free learning, including advice and guidance for a first level 2 qualification—a very important step forward. We also said that in cases of proven market failure, whether regional or sectoral, the level 2 commitment would be extended to level 3. We said that we would make available a weekly maintenance allowance to support young people, particularly post-19 students, who want to participate in full-time further education vocational courses.

In addition, we designated information and communications technology as the third essential skill for life alongside literacy and numeracy. My hon. Friend said that 7 million adults in this country lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, but we have made significant progress on that problem. By 2004, 750,000 people who do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills will have them, and we expect that figure to increase to 1.5 million by 2007. By designating ICT as an essential skill alongside literacy and numeracy, we acknowledge that it is not a luxury but an essential requirement for employability and social inclusion in the modern world.

The White Paper also reiterated the Government's commitment to the expansion and development of modern apprenticeships. People say that it is a shame that we no longer have apprenticeships in this country, but in fact some 234,000 young people are participating in modern apprenticeships. We expect 28 per cent. of young people to be undertaking some form of modern apprenticeship by 2004. It is vital, in terms of stimulating demand, to reform the adult information and guidance services.

We also announced in the White Paper the introduction of the sector skills council project to replace national training organisations. By next year, some 90 per cent. of the work force in the public and private sectors will be covered by sector skills councils. That should ensure that decisions about education and training strongly reflect the needs of particular sectors. We want the sector skills councils to be more effective, more employer-led and more strategic, and to have better labour market information than the national training organisations ever did.

The White Paper also proposes sector agreements. If sectors can make specific agreed proposals about how they will meet their labour market requirements, the Government will facilitate the implementation of the agreements over a period. The White Paper also contains the announcement of the employer training pilots to which my hon. Friend referred. We said that we would use the lessons of the successful pilots to inform the development of a national employer training scheme aimed particularly at those who are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises and do not have access to the necessary training.

We have also committed ourselves to a new employer-friendly qualification framework, which will support unitisation of qualifications and credit transfer. Modern apprenticeship is not the province of young people alone; we have committed ourselves to lifting the age cap so that there is no artificial cut-off at 25. That is particularly relevant for those who reskill or upskill and need access to apprenticeship later in life. We are committed to ensuring that, in every region, our approach to skills is far more holistic than it has been. By bringing together the regional development agencies, the local learning and skills councils, Jobcentre Plus and Business Link we shall be in a better position to stimulate demand than we have been.

One of the reasons for the White Paper is the fact that the skills delivery agencies are fragmented. Lots of organisations wish to make contact with business and to stimulate demand from both business and individuals, yet until now we have not had an effective, strong and cohesive approach. For the first time, we also have a commitment at national level to a social partnership that will drive forward the skills agenda. The TUC, the CBI and the Small Business Council are working with key Departments to give the same messages and to ensure that we achieve the step change that is needed on skills. That is an important development; for the first time, we have a national structure that brings together all the organisations charged with delivering on the skills agenda in an effective way.

All of that should demonstrate to my hon. Friend that our passion about basic skills and level 2 qualifications equals our commitment to higher education. Our objective should be to ensure that we create a compulsory education system in which far more young people stay on and progress—some of them into higher education via the conventional means or perhaps via a modern apprenticeship, and others via a high-quality vocational route into a modern apprenticeship. The curse of the education system, which we cannot afford to ignore, is the fact that too many young people drop out and blight their life chances.

We have to create more ways for young people to progress, develop and achieve within the compulsory education system. We also have to make lifelong learning a possibility for those who are already in the labour market or close to it. In order to do that, we must take a smarter approach. We must have clear national priorities in relation to basic skills and level 2 qualifications, but we must also have a system that is sufficiently responsive to the needs of regions and sectors.

I hope that I have demonstrated that our approach is more sophisticated than is sometimes articulated. We are as passionate about people who are not going to go into higher education as we are about those who are. Both are essential if we are to create a society that is both fair and economically successful. We must continue to raise the standards in our compulsory education system, but we also need to raise our game in a significant way when it comes to adults who are already in the work force and those who are close to the labour market.