It is a delight to be in the Chamber speaking on this subject. I extend my thanks and gratitude to Mr. Speaker for selecting the subject of regional development agencies today.

This is an interesting subject, and as RDAs have been in existence for a number of years, it is timely not only to take stock of their performance, but to offer the Government an opportunity to hear about the changes that might be implemented in the near future.

The regional political landscape has changed significantly in the past eight years. We have seen the evolution of the Government offices for the regions and the RDAs, and the growth of the dreaded regional assemblies. I shall do my best not to wander down that road and talk too much about assemblies, but those bodies are undemocratic, unaccountable and unrepresentative. Unfortunately, when talking about RDAs, it can be difficult to dissociate them from regional assemblies, because they are expected to work so closely together.

In preparing for the debate and in speaking to colleagues in local government and in businesses throughout the south-west, a constituency of which I am honoured to represent, it was interesting to find out how little people know about the role of RDAs. That is not to say that they are necessarily in favour of them or against them, but I was surprised by the level of ignorance. It is surprising, considering that RDAs were based originally on the 1997 White Paper, “Building Partnerships for Prosperity: Sustainable Growth, Competitiveness and Employment in the English Regions”, which was followed by the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998.

Although the debate is entitled “Regional Development Agencies”, I shall focus on concerns in the south-west. Other hon. and right hon. Members will want to pitch in to discuss their corner of the world. RDAs have a common mission statement, no matter where they are:

“To transform England’s regions through sustainable economic development.”

The south-west has added to the statement that its mission is

“to increase sustainable prosperity and productivity for the region and all our people.”

It has three simple objectives:

“To raise business productivity. To increase economic inclusion. To improve regional communications and partnership.”

It is useful to take stock of how the regions are faring. Conveniently, the Department of Trade and Industry published RDA output results only last week. The data show the progress of RDAs between April and September last year.

The hon. Gentleman may be surprised to hear that our constituencies are in the same Government zone; I represent west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. He keeps referring to regions, but could not he refer to them as Government zones? “Regions” implies internal integrity and a community of interest, and although we all love Bournemouth and Cornwall, I am not sure that Cornwall feels any more association with Bournemouth than it does with Bradford, Basingstoke or anywhere else.

I am grateful for that intervention. The hon. Gentleman illustrates one drawback of regional government: what happens in one neck of the woods does not necessarily apply to another. Whether the issues in his constituency compare with those in Bournemouth, they are different and perhaps that is one pitfall of regional government; one size does not fit all.

Looking at the core output targets that the DTI has imposed on the RDAs, and looking back at some of their achievements, we see that four RDAs throughout England have achieved less than half their minimum annual employment creation targets. Two RDAs achieved less than half their minimum annual employment support targets, and two RDAs achieved less than half their minimum annual business creation targets. Only one RDA achieved more than half its minimum annual public and private generation infrastructure investment levered target. I do not even know what that target is, but the fact that it is listed as a target and we are debating it shows that it is obviously of concern to someone.

Somebody has produced those targets, but I am not sure how many people in Bournemouth or in Cornwall are aware of the amount of money that has been put into those organisations, or indeed what they are supposed to achieve.

In support of that observation, is my hon. Friend aware that when the South West of England Regional Development Agency bought the Morlands site at Glastonbury, it turned down applications by local businesses to move to the park on the ground that they were not high-tech enough, even though one firm made automotive parts in a very competitive environment? Does not that completely undermine the claim of regional development agencies to support local enterprise and to boost local employment?

My right hon. Friend makes a valid point and illustrates one pitfall. We should promote certain unique aspects of the south-west, but the problem is that one blueprint, written centrally, has been imposed across the board. Where initiatives are taking place in the south-west, they should be promoted, and I should be curious to know who made the decision not to support my right hon. Friend’s concerns.

Returning to the stock-check of the regions, we see that business employment fell between 1998 and 2005 in the north-east, north-west, west midlands and London, despite RDAs spending £5.5 billion in those five regions. In five northern regions, the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber, the east midlands and the west midlands—no net change whatever was measured in business employment, again despite £5 billion being spent by the respective RDAs. I could go on illustrating other targets that have not been met.

We could say that, had the money not been put in, the measurements would have been even lower than those I have just illustrated. Astonishing sums of money are being spent, however, and are the Government, local government, businesses, stakeholders and all those interested in how the money is spent able to scrutinise where it goes?

If we consider the range of stakeholders in RDAs, we see that there is a blurring and a dilution of RDA accountability. The Government are a stakeholder, but myriad Departments—not only the DTI, but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and even the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—give money to various RDAs. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us as to how they account for the money,

The Government offices for the regions, in my case the Government office for the south-west, are other bodies whose decision-making local government and MPs find difficult to influence. The regional assemblies influence the role of RDAs and I mentioned how unaccountable the assemblies are. I have attended regional assembly meetings and I have found them very unproductive. A number of councillors from throughout a region are brought together under one roof, they often do not know each other, they lack knowledge of the subjects under discussion and decisions often go through on the nod without a full appreciation of their scale.

Is not the truth about regional assemblies that they are a jolly good day out? Councillors enjoy a Thermos and a sandwich all together, they have a chat and they cost the council tax payer £2 million or £3 million a year. Is not that a good idea?

My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. I did not have such a good day out as he suggests. To me, it seemed like a huge talking shop and I would like such regional bodies to be disbanded and power to be returned to a more local level where decision making is more manageable.

The accountability of RDAs is important and I draw a line between my view of regional assemblies and RDAs. The jury is still out as to the contribution that they can provide to regions. I would like the Minister to explain how they can become more accountable—I really do question that. We had a meeting in the south-west, at which my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) was present, with representatives of the RDA for the south-west and it was very productive, but it was acknowledged that there is little accountability. It was also acknowledged that we are not able to fight the Government and press our case in a unified manner, which is something that we decided to try to rectify. It is very difficult, however, when there is no formal structure other than simply saying, “Let’s have a gathering of south-west MPs with members of the RDA.”

Since 2002, all RDAs have received their money from a single budget, but that comes from several sources to which I have alluded: the DTI; the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as it formerly was; the Department for Education and Skills; and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Once allocated, it is available for the RDAs to spend as they see fit, unless they want to pay for something that costs more than £10 million, in which case they need to get approval from the Government.

I am pleased to say that we live in a unique and beautiful area in the south-west. We are the most popular region in Britain for tourism, with 26 million visitors a year, and we are the largest region, with a population of more than 6 million. Our economy is worth £18 million a year and we have 171,000 businesses. It is the most rural region in England, and 25 per cent. of our businesses are involved in the aerospace sector. Unemployment is well below the national average. That is a unique set of data, but I am afraid that if we look at the objectives, plans and strategies of the RDA, we find that they are far too similar to those of the eight other RDAs in the country. For me, that shows exactly the drawbacks that we face with the whole RDA structure. We are duplicating initiatives and priorities.

How can it be, for example, that eight out of the nine regions labelled biotechnology or health sciences as priority areas? Where does that leave us when we are trying to compete in a global market with the growth of places like India, China and so forth, when eight out of nine of our regions are all putting their hands up and saying, “Choose me”? That is not a unified approach, it is not working together and it is not cohesive. The regional economic strategies are also far too similar with no recognition that certain areas of the country will focus on some subjects and other areas will focus on others. We should be complementing each other, not competing against each other on the scale that we are at the moment.

Speaking to local government, representatives of business and MPs in the south-west, I find that there is a single priority for our region: transport. We have one of the most appalling public transport systems in the country and one of the most appalling road systems. If we had any large-scale sums of funding to invest, the unanimous opinion is that we would invest it in our road structures to help businesses. Of course, there are other initiatives and individual cases that we would like to continue promoting, but in general it is the lack of transport infrastructure that prevents businesses from developing and prospering in the south-west. I have a problem with the regional development agency’s position because it is prevented from spending money, whether it is European or UK funding, to help key hubs, ports or businesses to expand their footprint.

I question the Government’s strategy in the south-west, and I know that the problems I have with it are reflected across the country. In the south-west, targets have been placed on us to build a phenomenal number of houses, which has followed on from the various reports relating to the Barker review. Houses are being built, and there is then an aim to place businesses in the area as well, but no consideration is given to infrastructure. I mentioned that unemployment is low. We would like businesses to grow, but the order in which we are doing things and the structure that we are pushing forward makes no sense whatever.

The cost to the south-west is phenomenal. The cost of RDAs in the whole of Britain has increased during the past five years from £81 million to £194 million a year. The average cost of regional government offices has gone up from £95 million to £132 million and the average cost of regional assemblies has risen from £5 million to £17 million. To put it another way, we are spending more than £1 million a day on regional government. That is a huge amount of money considering what we are trying to do or our current achievements.

I question the caveats that are placed on the RDAs. Why do they not have the freedoms to exploit the challenges unique to the individual areas? I mentioned the European funding that comes through, and there are structural programmes. The Isles of Scilly is one of the beneficiaries of that funding; I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes has some comments to make on it. There is objective 1, 2 and 3 funding, which comprise the various scales of European funding, but it all comes with caveats. Countries such as the Czech Republic are free to spend the money as they like because they do not have to deal with such caveats, but we have them in the UK because the European Union feels that the money should be ring-fenced, and that the UK Government should come forward with money for certain projects.

I worry about the duplication, overlap and confusion among the myriad organisations that exist. Myriad bodies have been created in relation to the RDAs, or were already in existence, such as: Equality South West; an organisation called RISE, which is the voice for south-west social enterprise; Sustainability South West; www.oursouthwest.com, which provides news, information and environmental data; Culture South West; Beacon South West; Business Link; Expert Solutions South West; the Federation of Small Businesses, with which we are all familiar; the Institute of Directors; Dorset Business; the various chambers of commerce and industry; UK Trade and Investment; the Small Business Service; the South West Ventures Fund; Foresight; the Defence Diversification Agency; EUREKA; Gate2Growth; www.innovation.gov.uk; the innovation relay centre; LINK; and “Make Your Mark—start talking ideas”. I have no idea what the last one does, but it is something to do with enterprise and enlightenment.

Myriad operations and organisations receive funding from RDAs in the south-west. I am not going to deny that they probably add value in some way or another, but I put it to the Minister that there is a phenomenal amount of overlap and money wasted. Can we not reconcile some of the organisations and bodies that are designed to support business to provide a more cohesive and cost-effective way of getting our message across and promoting business?

In conclusion, I ask the Minister to take stock of where the regionalisation project is going. The UK has not only internal markets, but external ones. We had a very interesting debate on UK trade and investment in this room only a week ago, when my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) made the point that we are falling behind nationally. A glance at the recent table issued by the International Monetary Fund shows that Britain is the only country in Europe where exports have fallen consecutively during the past five years. We have a huge challenge ahead of us and it is now time to take stock of where the regionalisation project is going. I hope that we can simplify the process and simplify government, and in that way we can support our businesses in the south-west, and the country as a whole, much more efficiently.

rose—

Order. I have nine right hon. and hon. Members seeking to catch my eye. I remind the Chamber that it is the Chair’s responsibility to call the first of the three winding-up speeches at 30 minutes before termination at 11 am. That leaves us only 40 minutes to get those remaining hon. Members into the debate, so I appeal to all to make their comments pertinent and as brief as possible, to try not to accept too many interventions and not to take too long in answering those interventions that are accepted. I hope that I make myself clear.

Thank you, Mr. Cook, I shall curtail my remarks. I offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing this important debate. I have not had the pleasure of hearing him speak before, but he is clearly a moderate man. As part of the jury on RDAs and unelected regional assemblies, I do not think that the jury should be out; it should be in and say that those bodies are pretty worthless and ought to be finished.

The genesis of those bodies was in two papers that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister produced in 1982, while in opposition, when the understanding of the economy was completely different. The ideas behind those papers went through the 1998 White Paper, the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998 and the referendum in the north-east a couple of years ago. At that point, when 80 per cent. of people voted against devolution in the north-east, which was chosen for the referendum as the strongest supporter for regional devolution, the Government should have taken that on board and the whole of the regional agenda should have gone out of the door.

One of the reasons that that has not happened is that the Government have always had an ambiguous attitude to local democracy and local government. Is it part of the solution or part of the problem? I do not accuse my right hon. Friend the Minister of that, because she had a distinguished career as the leader of Islington council, but that runs through the rest of the Government.

We are left with the regional development agencies, which spend a huge amount of money, as the hon. Gentleman said. They are wrong in principle and what they do in practice is often not very helpful. In principle, most of the funding for regional development agencies came from other programmes in local government. That money and those resources have been removed from local democratic control, which is a mistake. Regional development agencies meet behind closed doors, and they accrue more and more power.

In principle, the task that regional development agencies have been given is almost impossible to achieve. Not only do RDAs not represent the economy as it is now—they are modelled on bodies such as the Greater London enterprise board and similar bodies that many of the old metropolitan counties put forward—but they are rather arthritic. They do not respond quickly, in the way that the economy responds now. They have been set up to increase regional wealth and to close regional disparities, but we cannot have all the regions trying to do that at the same time. It is intellectually impossible to follow both those aims together. That leads one to conclude that there is an absence of serious thinking on such matters at the centre of Government. One sees those contradictions coming out in the policies.

Those are the general reasons why I am against RDAs, although I cannot resist going through one or two specifics, because it is not just that there are problems in principle. When the RDAs try to come to decisions without a democratic forum, they come to lowest-common-denominator solutions. There is no real understanding of where the engines of the regional economies are and where money needs to be spent because areas are poorer.

The two engines of the economy in the north-west are the centres of Manchester and Liverpool. About 43 per cent. of gross domestic product in the north-west is produced within a small circle around Manchester city centre, and there is a similar process in Liverpool. Between them, the two areas produce about 75 to 80 per cent. of the gross domestic product. However, when it comes to marketing the north-west, the regional development agency suppresses the Liverpool and Manchester brand. It believes that people in north America or Japan will have some understanding of what the north-west is, but they clearly will not—to them it is a point on the compass. Liverpool and Manchester are very well understood as cities that compete internationally, but there is a suppression of that.

I am aware of your advice, Mr. Cook, but I should like to finish with three quick points. The first is about the casino decision by the independent advisory panel. That is an area where angels fear to tread at the moment, given that there is to be a vote in both Houses on the issue. The Northwest Development Agency did a disservice to Blackpool, Manchester and the whole north-west. I wish Blackpool well and I want it to develop. It has had a bad time over the past 25 to 30 years and it needs conference facilities, but what did the regional development agency do? It said, “We will basically decide where the best place to put this huge casino in the north-west is.” What arrogance. What mattered most was where in the north-west was most likely to beat the dome or Glasgow, not the RDA saying, “It will be Blackpool.” The RDA chose the wrong town, which was not going to win, but not only that—it made its decision on the basis that Blackpool was going to be a conference centre. At the same time, the RDA was putting a second conference centre in the north-west in Liverpool.

Where is the intellectual coherence in an RDA that does that? The people who do that are playing games. They have odd views about the world that simply do not stack up. If I were the chairman of an RDA that had made such a profound mistake—trying to suppress investment in Manchester, while making a huge error with Blackpool—I would consider my position. I would be off—I would be resigning today. The episode has done a disservice to the whole north-west.

That was not the first time, however. The Northwest Development Agency has tried to pick winners and said, “We need to subsidise air routes out of Carlisle and Blackpool.” What the north-west needs is more international routes to Japan and China, to compete with Heathrow, so that business people in the north-west can get out of the north-west as easily as people in the south-east or in Denmark can get out of their areas. But that was not a priority.

I could go on for a long time, but I will not. Our regional development agency is undemocratic and is trying to suck the lifeblood out of local democracy. It is doing badly and not serving the people of the north-west very well at all.

rose—

Order. There are 32 minutes left and eight bidders for the time.

Briefly therefore, in an intervention on the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), whom I congratulate on securing the debate, I made the point that what we are talking about is government zones, not regions. A region implies internal integrity and a community of interest, but the regions in question were created for bureaucratic convenience, not to reflect areas with any internal integrity. The only region for Cornwall is Cornwall.

The Standing Committee on Regional Affairs was set up by the Government in 2001, apparently to deal with the problems that the Government perceived to have been created as a result of devolving powers to Wales and Scotland, and to ensure that the House of Commons had an opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s regional policy properly. The only times that the Committee sat, it discussed relatively flimsy and rather unimportant issues that the Government had tabled for debate. Interestingly enough, since the result of the north-east referendum two and a half years ago, the Committee has not met. I have requested, on the Floor of the House and of various Ministers, that it should meet to ensure that the Government’s policy is properly scrutinised—particularly at this time, as it is clear that their plan to establish regional assemblies has fatally failed. Surely the support of right hon. and hon. Members is required to assist the Government in trying to find a way forward in the vacuum of policy left as a result of the failure of the north-east referendum.

I seriously question the role of RDAs in relation to planning. I have been corresponding with the area manager of the RDA for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly about conversations that it has had with ING, which owns Hayle harbour in my constituency. The RDA strongly recommended that the company develop 1,000 houses on that site. The developer was proposing a lower number, but the RDA decided that about 1,000 houses would be a jolly good thing.

Of course, in providing that advice to the developer, the RDA was entirely usurping the democratic process. It gave that advice without consulting Penwith district council or its councillors on whether the proposal was at all sensible. I have closely questioned the RDA about the assessments that it has made about the impact of the proposal and the rationale for it. It has not been able to give me anything other than the most flimsy assessment and basis on which the advice was given and the decision taken.

In a letter to me dated 18 August 2006, the regional manager stated:

“We suggested to ING that higher housing numbers might be appropriate with the idea that this could give the town a greater critical mass and help make it a more sustainable community as a whole.”

I asked him for reasons why that assessment had been made. No discussion has taken place with Penwith district council. If the councillors so much as catch the eye of a developer, they find themselves fettered. Yet in this case, the RDA is effectively usurping the development process by deciding—as a statutory consultee, ultimately—that it is able to dictate, over the heads of local democratic decision makers, how the whole thing should operate.

I have serious concerns about the role of the RDA in respect of the future of objective 1 and convergence funding. It has been given a significant role, but it is not democratically accountable. As far as the future of convergence funding in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is concerned, it should recognise that it can provide some professional assistance and secretarial support, but that executive decision making is not a matter for the RDA. It is there to advise and support, not to do anything else at all.

Apart from creating problems in the Government zone of the south-west, the fundamental question that needs to be addressed today is what added value RDAs bring.

Twenty-seven minutes remain. There are seven contenders. I call Linda Gilroy.

Thank you, Mr. Cook. I welcome the opportunity, created by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), to talk about RDAs. Arguably, in our region of the south-west, we face one of the greatest challenges in addressing regional disparities. Such disparities are greater internally, within our region, than between our region and others. On average, the gross value added per head is 93 per cent. of the UK average. Devon’s is only 82 per cent., and Cornwall’s 69 per cent. Bournemouth’s is above the regional average at 96 per cent. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) and I inherited some of the poorest wards in England. In fact, I inherited the poorest ward in England from my Conservative predecessor.

I was present at the launch of the South West of England Regional Development Agency in Exeter in 1998. The idea was to get every region’s economy firing on all pistons and that that should be business-led. Others have made it sound as if RDAs were large unelected local authorities, and they have talked of their confusion about all the organisations that the RDAs sponsored. I was a little confused about the arguments of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East because that sponsorship is a response to a strong agenda that our regional development agency has set out.

In the early years, I had criticisms of the agency. People in Plymouth felt that it was not engaging with the big challenges that we faced because of the reasons I outlined. However, the hon. Gentleman is probably aware of December’s National Audit Office report, in which our regional development agency was assessed to be performing well. The report particularly noted that our RDA had “good vision” for developing the regional economy and had taken a “bold step” in articulating how the region can work together to make sure economic growth takes place within the very important environmental limits particular to our region. In reaching its findings, the NAO assessed the agency under a number of headings: ambition, prioritisation, capacity, performance, management and achievement. As I say, the agency came out of that very well.

Perhaps that is not surprising. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman had the same briefing from the RDA as I did; I was pleased that he was able to attend the meeting hosted by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport last week. The briefing lists exactly the RDA’s added value that Members were saying they could not see: strategic added value and influence in developing the regional economic strategy and making a powerful case on our behalf in respect of the comprehensive spending review 2007.

The hon. Members for St. Ives (Andrew George) and for Bournemouth, East had an exchange about how they could not see what bound our region together. I should like to mention our strong coast; we probably have the strongest geographic identity outside Wales and Cornwall. There is also marine engineering and marine science, and we have the largest defence industries of the whole United Kingdom outside the south-east. The hon. Member for St. Ives said that there was no distinct identity. In fact, our region takes the lead on defence issues in relating the interests of the various regions to national Government. I should also mention that we have the marine skills network. The Plymouth marine centre supporting skills and development in that key regional sector opened in December and the agency is investing about £3 million in it. Given the money available to the regional development agency, the list that it provided for us in that briefing is impressive.

I should like particularly to mention the Tamar science park in Plymouth, which the RDA has consistently supported from the beginning. It is recognised as one of the leading science parks in the country, on both health and marine sciences. Furthermore, SWRDA has built links in China. It has an office in that country, which is one of the most important markets in the world and is developing rapidly.

The one-sided picture given by Opposition Members so far has been a poor reflection of their understanding and reading of the briefings provided for us. I shall finish on this note. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East on his choice of topic, which is important to all our constituents’ prosperity and quality of life, particularly at our end of the region. As I say, I inherited the poorest ward in England from my Conservative predecessor. The hon. Member for St. Ives and all Members with constituencies in Cornwall inherited great poverty after virtually 20 years of Conservative Governments. We will not take any lessons from the Conservatives on regional regeneration.

Twenty-one minutes are available. There are six contenders. I call David Heathcoat-Amory.

Thank you, Mr. Cook. I very much support the observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). I find regional development agencies incredibly old-fashioned. They remind me of the National Enterprise Board, for which I briefly worked. In those days, people thought that Governments produced economic success, but surely we have moved away from that. The concept of picking winners and giving certain sectors privileged access to Government funding belongs to another age, but the attitude is alive and well, certainly in the South West of England Regional Development Agency, as I found over the issue of Morlands business park, which I mentioned in an intervention.

The site was nationalised—in other words, we all own it now, in theory at least—some six years ago, and the press release at the time was encouraging. It stated that the site would be

“brought back into beneficial use for the local community…this site will meet the needs and demands of local businesses.”

That turned out to be completely untrue. The RDA said that it wanted the site for high-technology businesses. Several local firms wanted to relocate to the site but were told that they were not good enough. Such a snobbish attitude towards local employment is absolutely repellent. All right, some of the firms are not in the top league, but they provide valuable local employment.

I took the matter up with the RDA and was told that the problem was that the firms did not fit into certain key sectors such as emerging environmental technologies, creative industries or aerospace. Of course, Glastonbury would love to have a rocket factory, but we are a little more modest. However, we did have—and still do, I am glad to say—a plastic extrusion company that makes products for the automotive industry. I call that high-tech, but it was not thought good enough. I understand that the RDA has had a rethink, but it did not give an inch in the initial correspondence. It was absolutely adamant that it knew what was best for my constituency and the region.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons for that attitude is that the RDA exists to distribute cash from the European Union, and the causes that it espouses are decided in Brussels rather than locally? That means, for example, that south-east Dorset gets nothing from the RDA under its current programme.

My hon. Friend makes a telling point. In other words, the decision making is getting further and further away from the market. In my case, it moves right away from Glastonbury up to the RDA, then probably to Brussels. The officials and officers think that they know best, and we must fit in with their key sectors rather than their fitting in with what market signals tell us about future investment priorities.

All that is reflected in the reports that we get, which are all about strategic catalysts, scenarios, partners and stakeholders. This is a quote from one report:

“The Agency will continue to work with all funding stakeholders in the region…to build an integrated cohesive business support infrastructure”.

I do not know what that means.

On funding, perhaps the Minister will explain what happened to the regional venture capital fund, which was set up by the Treasury. We never hear about it now. I understand that it has very few viable projects, and that a great deal of public money is being wasted. I gather that the one for the south-west is run from somewhere in the north of England. That Government money is supposed to be part of the integrated, cohesive business support network, but no businessman that I have spoken to is aware of it.

In conclusion, we need rather less of the old-fashioned approach and rather more attention given to cutting taxes and reducing regulation. My positive suggestion is that we shut down all the RDAs and use the hundreds of millions of pounds that they are spending to reduce corporation tax and at least halve the burden of business rates on small businesses.

There are 16 minutes available and five contenders.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing this debate. I would like to make a contribution in support of the work of the nine regional development agencies in England.

I am perhaps in the unique position—I am sure that someone will put me right if I am wrong—of being the only Member of this House to have served as an RDA board member.

No.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for putting me right. There are now two of us. It was an honour to have been a deputy chairman for the East of England Development Agency between 1998 and 2001. Indeed, it would have been an honour to have served the further three-year term that the Secretary of State had directed, had I not been elected to this place.

What also gives me a key insight into the work of RDAs was being there at their establishment, and seeing what they replaced and the progress that has been made since their creation. It was enormously helpful that the Government set it out in primary legislation that the purpose of RDAs was to effect regeneration and regional development within an overall context of sustainability, that the social, economic and environmental dimensions of developing our regions were to be wedded and that the composition of RDA boards was to reflect that. Boards were to be business-led, and include local government representation and other stakeholders such as those from the voluntary, trade union, ethnic minority, rural and other communities.

The diversity of board membership was a strength in its representation of the region’s communities, but it could also be a source of tension. Business board members had their prejudices about other sectors and vice versa. I sometimes felt that it was the local authority members of all parties who felt that it was their role to bridge the differences of perspective and to ensure that progress, albeit at times compromised, could be made.

While the agency was being established, I took it on myself to visit the pre-existing work forces that comprised the Rural Development Commission, English Partnerships and the single regeneration budget team within the Government office for the east of England. That was hugely informative in identifying that the agency with the smallest budget had the largest staff and vice versa. However, it was also interesting to discover the cultural isolation within which Government agencies had existed, and the lack of leadership. Indeed, I was positively encouraged that some civil servants were looking forward to working for an agency that had a board with a purpose. That purpose would be set out in the regional economic strategy and would frame the work that they did in allocating support to businesses in communities, but which until that time had had no coherence or direction.

Clearly, it was right to bring physical and social regeneration perspectives together as part of the purpose of establishing RDAs. As EEDA set about establishing itself in an organisational sense, the regional economic strategy was the board’s primary focus. The east of England is a significant area with a rapidly growing population of some 5.5 million and a gross domestic product of more than £81 billion. The region has a significant concentration of internationally important businesses that are engaged in research and development, and it houses more than 30 of the world’s leading research centres. The region is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. It boasts high wages and skill levels in the counties nearer London, but wages are lower in the former agriculture-dominated areas.

That is the varied and complex environment in which the RDA must develop its regional economic strategy, which is a comprehensive plan for the economic development of the region. The plan risks being everything to everyone, but at the same time it must be bought into by as many as possible in the region. Is that an impossible task, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) suggests? Perhaps, but that may be why not every MP is universally taken with RDAs. As the saying goes, they cannot please everyone all the time—nor should they try.

If the first RESs were imperfect, I think they can now be seen only as having improved. Most have been through at least three iterations. The basis for developing a RES is core to the ethos of every RDA: it must be inclusive. Even the RDAs with the largest budgets—those with several hundred millions of pounds at their disposal—cannot directly drive the regional economy from their own spending. Their power comes from their ability to influence through their programmes the mainstream spending of others in the public and private sectors in a coherent and planned approach consistent with the objectives of the RES.

Development of the RES must be an open and consultative process, and EEDA’s engagement has been open and consultative. There are of course key relationships such as those with the voluntary regional assemblies, which are indirectly accountable and largely made up of elected councillors. The East of England regional assembly has played its role positively through periods of differing political leadership, and is crucial in working to align the RES with other statutory plans for which it has responsibility, such as the regional spatial strategy and the regional transport strategy.

EEDA’s RES is based on a robust analysis of the region’s strengths and weaknesses. The regional observatory, established in the early days of EEDA’s existence, supplies much of the data to provide evidence for policy formulation, and sub-regional partnerships enable the RES to be fed with local sensitivities. The board’s policy of holding board meetings in the headquarters of various regional businesses and other organisations gave its members the wider perspective necessary to engage in preparing such a wide ranging and important document, and all the board papers were publicly available on EEDA’s website—it was open and accountable.

As I suggested earlier, it was critical that the Government placed the sustainability criteria at the heart of what the RDAs do. I am encouraged that that has led EEDA to support a number of sustainability objectives. EEDA can rightly expect, resource and support the best of sustainable development in spatial development, it can encourage green industrial development and it can promote energy efficiency through the projects it supports. I would have talked about a couple of those, but I do not think that I have time.

Let me bring the role of the RDA up close and personal and talk about its contribution in my constituency, Ipswich. Our global economic competitiveness sits close behind global warming as a priority for our nation and our region, so that our businesses can work smarter and be competitive on the strength of the intellectual value that can be added to goods and services we market. We recognise that we lack a university in Ipswich and that is something that I have worked to correct for the past decade. EEDA, with its role in setting a skills agenda for the region, has rightly supported the campaign for University campus Suffolk—I believe it did something similar in Cornwall. Its £18.7 million contribution to a new £150 million campus located on the Ipswich waterfront has been catalytic. The facility is a joint venture between the university of East Anglia in Norwich and Essex university in Colchester, showing a truly regional role of the RDA that I am not sure could have been achieved by efforts at a more local level.

University campus Suffolk will be on the Ipswich waterfront, aiding its regeneration. That regeneration has already been supported by £5.5 million of EEDA investment, including the purchase and decontamination of the Cranfields Mill site, which kick-started the multi-million pound investment in the area that will see 330 apartments, an 80-bedroom hotel, restaurants, bars and a dance house for the regional dance agency DanceEast. That can be added to the investment of £8 million in IP-City, a high-tech incubator for start-up businesses, and £1.25 million in the Centre for Integrated Photonics at nearby Adastral park.

I unashamedly end on the role that our RDA has played in leading and co-ordinating regeneration in my constituency. I may be biased, but it has recognised that Ipswich has deprivation and potential and has invested in dealing with both. In conclusion, RDAs have demonstrated a strategic overview that provides a context for the investment of regeneration activity and coherence in that investment. Physical and social regeneration have been brought together to improve the quality of life for all in our region. Different regions have different needs and that is why it is right we each have our own RDA.

RDAs have developed their own approach. They have sought to be dynamic and responsive, and that is why they are business-led. In the east of England, EEDA was able to react rapidly to major employment restructuring in Luton following the closure of the Vauxhall plant and to respond to the needs of local business following the fire at Buncefield. RDAs are a different breed of agency and the Minister should encourage them to stay so. I could have made the case for more investment in RDAs through the comprehensive spending review 2007, and in EEDA in particular, but I shall rest the case as self-evident and only encourage the Government to continue to support RDAs wholeheartedly.

There are only seven minutes left, with four contenders.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing this excellent debate. Although some hon. Members have taken advantage of the time that they have had, I hope to finish within three minutes.

I have had few dealings with the South West of England Development Agency, but I am having dealings with it now. I shall tell the Minister about it, and I want her help. Dartington college of arts has been on the Dartington estate for 45 years, and the agency is funding a report on its future and paying one third of the cost. The report, which will be out by the end of February, will deal with whether the college, which has 700 students, teachers and postgraduates, should stay on Dartington or whether it should move to Falmouth, where it can get objective 1 money, Plymouth or Torbay. That is because the buildings, which are owned by the Dartington Hall Trust, are at the end of their life and a sum of about £15 million or £20 million is needed to renovate the whole place for the college. It is one of the best colleges in the country, and one of the most innovatory—everybody knows the Dartington college of arts—and it is at a crisis point.

I want to ask two questions, and I would be grateful if they could be answered, even though I might not be here to hear those answers because I have to go to the Electoral Commission. First, in view of the fact that the regional development agency paid for a third of the report on the future of the Dartington college of arts, will the Minister ensure that since public money is involved, the report will not be kept secret and will be available to the public? The director of the college has indicated that he will keep it secret, that it will be given only to the college governors and that no one else will see it. Bearing it mind that I chaired a meeting last Friday of some 300 concerned people in Totnes who were shouting from the rafters that they wanted to be involved in the decision-making process, there is no point in a regional development agency giving money for a report that is then kept secret.

Secondly, is it correct that the Government give the South West of England Development Agency some £110 million a year? Is it within their terms of reference to give £5 million a year for the next four years to ensure that Dartington college of arts stays in Dartington and is not forced to go to Falmouth because of objective 1 money? I am now involved with the regional development agency, and this is its chance to prove to me that it is worth while and should continue. It is up to the Minister to help me to find a way to save the art college for Dartington and to ensure that whatever the RDA does is kept public and not private. That took three minutes.

There are four minutes, and three contenders.

I shall be brief. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing the debate. I am glad that the official Opposition are warming towards RDAs, although I am seriously worried if he is still wedded to the idea of road building, which is a concern of mine.

I wish to make just one point. To me, the key role of an RDA is site compilation. In my area, that includes the Littlecombe site in Dursley and Cam, and the work that the agency has done in acquiring sites for the Cotswolds canal and the Stroudwater canal. If the RDA was not there, who would take those sites on? My worry is that although the sites would be taken on, it would be by avaricious developers who would come and put market-oriented housing there. With the Littlecombe site, I am pleased to see that we have kept to the line of providing jobs, affordable housing and environmental improvements. I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister well in ensuring that the RDA delivers on its commitments and, in the case of the canal, that we work in tandem with British Waterways and the voluntary sector to deliver results. If we can do that, RDAs will have proved their worth.

We have three minutes and two contenders.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing the debate. I did indeed serve as a member of the London Development Agency board for four years.

The one thing that has struck me about the setting of national targets for regional development agencies is that they are often irrelevant to the areas concerned. In London’s case, targets were set for national vocational qualification level 2, when London needed the provision of basic and higher skills training, reflecting the great division in the London economy when it comes to job opportunities. The job targets that were set were often the responsibility of other organisations, such as the Learning and Skills Council and Jobcentre Plus. I would like to hear what work is being done to give development agencies more discretion to set their own targets.

I am pleased that the Government are giving European social fund discretion to London government, but there is a complication in that there is a reluctance to take on responsibilities because of liability risks and to let go, which means that European social funding in London is overseen by the European Union, Departments, the Government office for London, city hall, the London assembly, the London Development Agency and sub-regional partnerships. I am surprised that money manages to get down to those who need it when so many people have oversight.

I have concerns as a south London MP about the amount of money that comes to south London. In many ways, the LDA could be dismissed as the east London development agency. My constituency is 14th in terms of the number of lone parents seeking benefits claims, which raises some issues when the LDA has delivered only 94 child care places across the whole of south London.

My main concern is to ask what the Government are doing in the comprehensive spending review to give RDAs more discretion. Perhaps London is different and sits in some sort of democratic accountability that is different from the obscurity that many hon. Members face when dealing with their local RDAs.

I shall make a modest speech, Mr. Cook—a view from God’s own county. A speech that I gave on this subject to the Selby Labour party—it is the highlight of my parliamentary career—features in the House of Commons Library briefing, so hon. Members can read that. I make one point to the Minister.

I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) in praising city regions. Yorkshire and Humber saw their rise. Selby is a member of the Leeds city region, which deals with economic development, transport and skills development. Indeed, one of the great drivers of economic development in the north-west has been the strength of the Greater Manchester city region. If city regions are successful in Yorkshire and Humber, should not they be making decisions on the spending of £300 million for the Yorkshire and Humber regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward?

I bring news to the House today that, following my modest speech to Selby Labour party, which was reported by the Yorkshire Post, the agency decided last Friday to consult on whether councils should restructure the single pot, and instead of doing it for West, North and South Yorkshire, to use city regions. The local authorities have to respond by 23 February. If they say yes, should they not be deciding how the money is to be spent? The logic is that city regions would be best because democratic decision making is better than bureaucratic decision making.

I thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr. Cook, and I finish on this point. I have a great deal of time and respect for Mr. Tom Riordan, the chief executive of Yorkshire Forward. I tipped him for the top many years ago, but in his heart of hearts I think he realises that he should be accountable not to Ministers in Whitehall once or twice a year, but to local politicians. The quality of his decision making would be so much the better if he were to be so.

I am grateful, Mr. Cook, for your excellent chairmanship, which has secured me such an abundance of time. I am aware that other hon. Members have had to make do with much less time than me, so if there are points that they have not had the chance to make and they wish to intervene on me, I would welcome it. I shall also seek to ensure that the Minister has as much time as possible to sum up and to answer the questions that have been raised today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing this important debate. We heard a wide range of views across all parties on how well individual regional development agencies are working and whether the project has been a success. The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head when he said that the accountability and scrutiny of RDAs is fundamental—something that I am sure we all agree should be addressed. We heard many different views, including from my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), to which I shall return.

The Liberal Democrats have long supported the work of regional development agencies. Indeed, we are far more supportive of the concept of regional organisations than Conservative Members are. RDAs are more accountable than some quangos, their administration costs are minimal in comparison with those of the average county council, for example, and they have the potential to deliver strategic change at a regional level. However, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East said, those costs are rising.

Perhaps arbitrarily, given the RDAs’ significant role in many areas, but especially planning, their responsibility to the Department of Trade and Industry has meant that although the business voice is clearly represented, other organisations in local communities feel that they are not fairly represented on RDA boards. The Liberal Democrats support the current system of a 2:1 ratio of non-elected and elected members, as far as it goes, but the composition could be looked at more carefully.

The viability and credibility of RDA boards is also undermined by a perception among those in the community that because the agencies represent such large areas, as we heard from Labour Members, they have to reflect communities of interest within those regions. As my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives said, that can cause conflict. It does so in the area of Cornwall that we represent, about whether the south- western area is a recognisable region.

The systemic considerations and problems about which we have heard ought not to detract from the very real achievements of RDAs. For example, in the south-west, the regional broadband access project has ensured that 99.8 per cent. of exchanges in the region are enabled for broadband internet access. That, of course, is a vital lifeline, as has been echoed in the work done in Cornwall by actnow under the objective 1 programme.

Other success stories from the South West of England Development Agency that I have been discussing with local government colleagues include the Royal William yard at Gloucester docks and the science park in the Bristol area, which I understand is progressing. The agency has also taken the subject of challenges to the environment as one of its main driving forces for the coming years. With that in mind, it has taken the brave step of investing in research and development for a wave hub alternative energy project off the north coast of Cornwall. If I am not careful I shall be accused of focusing too much on Cornwall, but I should also mention that the RDA rather than the Government office for the south-west will now deal specifically with the delivery of the Cornwall convergence programme; it is crucial that we monitor closely how it delivers that new role.

The work of regional development agencies is too often undermined by a combination of factors. First and foremost is credibility—or the lack of it in terms of make-up and lack of democratic accountability. As to their relationship with local government, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives how that can impact on planning matters, and how relationships that ought to be positive and driving forward economic regeneration for their regions can be soured by the introduction of different agendas. Local authorities consult widely and heavily, and have democratic accountability when determining their strategies; it could be argued that the lack of an elected form of scrutiny affects RDAs in that regard.

Regional development agencies have a vital role in delivering big-picture projects and other such initiatives that do not fall neatly into the remit of other organisations, including projects such as that mentioned by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). RDAs are taking steps to invigorate regional economies and communities, but all too often they are thwarted by an understandable lack of faith in their democratic accountability and sometimes by a lack of transparency in their aims and objectives on particular projects. To deliver regional objectives, we desperately need bodies that have real power because they are constructed along democratic principles.

I add my congratulations to those given by other right hon. and hon. Members to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who kicked off the debate extremely well. I hope that the leaders of the regional development agencies were listening, because although some positive points were made, language such as “arthritic”, “old-fashioned”, “unaccountable” and “remote” will not, I trust, have passed their notice.

This is a timely debate. It comes as concerns are increasing about widening variance in the national economy, not least between the greater south-east and the rest of the United Kingdom. Although some less competitive regions are becoming more prosperous, the gap between the most and the least successful is growing. The most recent figures show that that gap widened by 25 per cent. between 2004 and 2005. Numerically, that means that the London economy, at £165 billion, is now worth five times that of the north-east of England. That is not good for the north-east, and it is not sustainable for the UK economy. Our goal should be to understand why that gap is so large and still growing, and to consider why, after nearly 10 years, the Government’s policies are failing.

A welcome contribution to the debate came only two days ago, when the Local Government Association published a report entitled “Prosperous communities”. Some hon. Members alluded to the fact that it has analysed the sub-regional markets in goods, labour and services. It found that all too often the regional boundaries and agencies do not reflect those markets. I know that a number of colleagues are concerned about that issue.

The Local Government Association has suggested that it is now time to consider the issue in the context of the devolution debate. Hon. Members from all parts of the House share that agenda, apparently, and it is important that we debate the issues raised in the context of the agencies themselves. It is clear that local communities and authorities want to play their part, and that is why the LGA report is an important contribution. I hope that the Minister will set out the Government’s view and response to that report and their view on the role of sub-regional economies.

As hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned, the nine regional development agencies of England were established in 1998 and their original aims, to quote the Department, were to

“co-ordinate regional economic development and regeneration, enable the regions to improve their relative competitiveness and reduce the imbalance that exists within and between regions.”

Over the past nine years, however, the RDAs have increasingly become the Government’s primary vehicle for an ever-widening range of different economic functions, such as economic regeneration, business promotion, employment, skills and sustainable development. However, established Government agencies are already engaged in many of those functions—for example, urban regeneration task forces or the sector skills council—and there is a genuine danger of overlap, duplication and confusion. That is something that hon. and right hon. Members have referred to in this debate. Can the Minister tell me how many different executive agencies in Departments are engaged in the skills arena and are independent of RDAs?

Duplication and waste are not the only problem. By constantly widening their remit, RDAs can become unfocused and lose sight of their original role. The South East England Development Agency, for example, wanted to tackle social exclusion, which seems a reasonable idea until one discovers that it set a target of reducing coronary heart disease by 40 per cent. in its region. However worthy or desirable reducing coronary heart disease may be, it is not the job of an RDA. It is the job of the NHS. I hope that the Minister will respond to that concern.

The most important yardstick in measuring an agency’s performance is what it does for businesses and jobs. The RDAs have claimed that they have managed to lever in roughly £2 billion for the £2 billion that they spend, and that the result is the creation or safeguarding of about a quarter of a million jobs. If that is true, it is something that we should and can celebrate. However, many economists are beginning to question the basis of those claims and have pointed out that the evidence is not independent empirical data, but is based, in part, on subjective consumer surveys. Given the importance of that information, which will be used to debate the issue, will the Minister explain how figures relating to RDAs are calculated? When she quotes the results of their work, as I am sure she will do, can she tell us what proportion of that information is based on consumer evidence and not on measurable facts?

It is equally important that performance figures are measured against what the RDAs spend. For example, since 1998, overall private sector employment in this country has risen, although only slightly. The Minister will be aware that in four regions private sector employment has fallen. That is despite RDA spending in those four regions nearly doubling; it is now at 178 per cent. Given that, why does the Minister believe that a spending increase has failed to work in those regions? What, if any, correlation can she show between the RDAs’ spending and local private sector labour markets?

Alongside the issue of performance is that of value for money. Overall, RDAs have spent roughly £12.5 billion since their inception—thousands of millions of pounds rather than hundreds of millions. Indeed, last year they spent £2,157 million. What proportion of that money goes on front-line services and what goes on administration? I looked at the figures before this debate, and found that the average spend on administration is said to be about 8.48 per cent., but within that there is considerable variance. Some agencies are spending at 6 per cent., but the South West of England Development Agency—about which we have heard a considerable amount during this debate—manages to spend 13 per cent. Why is there such a wide variation when agencies carry out the same function? Has the Minister discussed that with the agencies and is she satisfied with their performance? I appreciate that it is a tricky question for her because the Department of Trade and Industry’s own central administrative costs are 17.9 per cent. of its entire budget. I understand if that is an issue that she might wish to avoid, but I hope that she will respond to it in this debate.

A classic example of the disparity in the way that agencies are run is how money is spent on producing and publishing corporate plans. Since 2002, Yorkshire Forward has produced its corporate plans without any extra publishing costs by using the internet. In London, the picture is very different. Since 2002, the London Development Agency has spent more than £100,000 on publishing such reports. Why is that the case? If that method of publishing is good enough for businesses in Yorkshire, why does the LDA feel that it can waste that money when there are thousands of small firms that need help in London? Does the Minister agree that the LDA needs to get its house in order? I understand that figure may be a small proportion of its total budget, but to many people in London it speaks volumes about the LDA’s priorities.

In conclusion, ensuring that all parts of the UK have a healthy economy is vital to the national picture and to millions of people on the ground. We need to recognise the gap in job and wealth creation within and between the regions and to be honest about what is working and what is not. I look forward to hearing the Minister explain why the gap between the regions is growing and what she plans to do about it. I also hope that she will tell us how the RDAs’ performance is measured, what reliance is placed on survey information as opposed to facts and why there is often little correlation between what the agencies spend and their achievements. The Government have had nearly 10 years in office and it is time that they explained why the economic gap between the regions has widened and not narrowed as they have claimed.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) on securing this timely debate. As he will probably know, we are, as part of the comprehensive spending review, having a sub-national review of all our structures to ensure that they are appropriate and fit for purpose as we move into a period of greater globalisation and technological change. We are considering whether the incentives, governance and accountability are right.

This has been a good debate in which important issues have been raised; some are tougher to grasp than others. I will respond to some of the issues and, if time permits, will then move on to our wider objectives. The right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) has reflected the old Tory attitude. When we set up RDAs the Conservatives opposed them; in their 2001 election manifesto, they said that they would scrap them and by 2005 their policy was a bit vaguer and they suggested that RDA powers should be reduced. In today’s debate the majority of hon. Members from all parts of the House—with the exception of a couple of hon. Members from our side—understand and appreciate the role of RDAs. We have come a long way.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

No, I will not give way because I am short on time.

I say to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) that he is mistaken in suggesting that the moneys that the RDAs dispense come from Europe; they do not. However, the decision that we have taken is that from 2007 onwards in the next period of the European structural funds those moneys will be managed at a regional level. That is because we want to decentralise to a more appropriate tier the decisions on how to dispense that money.

I say to the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) that the report will be made public and will be available to the public. I wish him well in his battle to ensure the continuation of Dartington art college.

My hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Chris Mole) and for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) know that I visited both RDAs. I will discuss in more detail the issue of city regions and their role in relation to RDAs. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) talked about site reclamation, which is very important. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) also made a point that is important to the RDA debate. She emphasised the role that the RDA is playing in the defence industry down in the south-west region. That shows the difference between regions, which is one reason why we have gone for the sub-regional structure. This is not old, Stalinist, central Government prescription, as one or two Opposition Members suggested; it is a decentralisation of power and of implementation of economic policy, which I think has worked.

Let me deal with one of the points made by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk). He is just wrong on the figures. I do not know which figures he looked at, but he is wrong to suggest that the gap between the regions—one of the tasks that we set the RDAs was to narrow that gap—has widened. It has not. The most recent statistics that I have show that the employment rates in every region have increased and the gap has narrowed.

I was not talking about employment; I was talking about gross value added.

These are Office for National Statistics—

Will the Minister give way?

No, I will not, because I am very short of time.

On a point of order, Mr. Cook. The Minister is citing a different statistic. I made it clear that the value was the differential between the most successful and the least. The Minister is now talking about employment. They are two different things. Do you agree?

It is not up to me to agree, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. The point is part of the debate, which is ongoing.

The statistics that I am citing are the figures from the Office for National Statistics. We can examine employment rates across the piece. I do not want to go into the broader statistics, but any statistic on the economy demonstrates a massive improvement. That includes employment, inflation and productivity. It covers the whole range, and certainly the gap between performance in the regions has—

GVA? Not employment.

The gap between the—

GVA?

Yes. GVA. The gap between—

No, we are not talking about employment; I was talking about GVA.

The gap between the performance of the regions has narrowed. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman finds that a difficult fact. He ought to be joining the rest of us in celebrating an achievement in the regions.

May I deal with some of the broader issues that have been raised? Regions are different. We cannot respond quickly or sensitively to regional differences and variations if we try to do all that from central Government. The range of issues that are best addressed at regional level is a matter for debate. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East raised transport infrastructure. That is something that we are considering. Extending the impact of the RDAs could be considered, because the effect that they could have on regional logistics and transport infrastructure could be enhanced by decisions taken at that level. That is one area that we are considering.

Another issue is technology transfer and innovation, and I come now to the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley. Interestingly enough, one of the achievements by his local RDA is the bringing together of the universities in Manchester to develop a much stronger capacity that can challenge some of the other centres of research excellence, which have tended to be concentrated in the south-east. There are also the combined universities in Cornwall, and in Cumbria there has been another attempt to establish a centre of academic excellence and innovation. That is something that the RDAs have done well.

Skills have been talked about a lot. The RDAs oversee the regional skills partnerships. There is a plethora of agencies and voluntary organisations that try to tackle the skills challenges that we face, but all those bodies are brought together under the skills partnership. Can we do more to make that simpler and more coherent and to achieve better joint working? Yes, and that is one of the challenges that we are considering in both the sub-national review and the structures that we put forward for the future.

Catalysing sustainable environmental regeneration projects of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud alluded to is another important function that is best carried out at regional level. Attracting investment to the area is another function. A number of regions have been extremely successful at attracting inward investment, particularly from the Asian economies.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

No, I have only five minutes left, so apologies to my hon. Friend.

Since we set up the RDAs, their responsibilities and functions have increased. That shows that their performance is becoming ever more effective and that we have growing confidence in their ability to deliver for their regional economies. They now have greater flexibility with the single pot of money; they did not have that when the money was much more tightly controlled by the various Departments from which it came. The regional economic strategies are much better. They are more evidence based, there is more buy-in from all the partners in the region, and they are much more focused. I do not accept the argument that they are all the same. Compared with the South West of England Regional Development Agency, the RDA in the north-east has to deal with a very different environment—it is raw, an ex-industrial economy. There is nuclear energy up in the north-east. That is not an issue for the south-west, so the two areas are very different.

Business Link is now administered, appropriately, at regional level, as are housing allocations. That is one of the areas that we devolved most recently. The regional housing allocation budgets were determined through the RDAs, which I think was a very successful exercise in decentralisation. As we reflect for the future, of course we want more simplification of business support. A number of hon. Members raised that issue. I agree also that we need to streamline and simplify some of the existing regional strategies, to try to bring them together. Again, those are some of the challenges that we are considering.

May I deal quickly with the relationship between cities and regions? That issue was raised in particular by my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Blackley and for Selby (Mr. Grogan). Cities are utterly crucial to the economic well-being, prosperity and growth in their regions. That is why we have done all the work that we have on developing the role of city regions in economic activity, but cities are inter-dependent. If we put all the authority, power and economic drivers into cities, we would find that cities alone would not succeed in increasing the potential and prosperity in regions. Even Manchester and Liverpool, two huge cities in their region, have some inter-dependencies and specialisations. If we are to compete globally, we must ensure that that inter-dependence is well realised, whether it is on transport, innovation, academic excellence or regional skills needs. Those are all issues on which city regions, working together in their wider regions, will be best at closing the gap in economic performance between the regions.

My final point relates to the accountability of RDAs, which is often raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The RDAs are accountable to Ministers and Parliament. Indeed, much of the information used by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East came from the RDAs’ annual report and accounts, which are audited by the National Audit Office and then laid before Parliament. The figures that he chose to use were the half-year figures. Had he chosen last year’s total figures, he would have seen that the targets were met.

RDAs do hold public meetings. Regional assemblies have their friends and their foes, and we are considering whether and how we can strengthen that capacity for democratic accountability without introducing massive bureaucracy, which inevitably arises given the number of, for example, local authorities or MPs in every region. However, we have had the independent performance assessments done for five of the eight regions outside London. The performance of all those regions was in the top two categories. All were seen to be fit for purpose and to be maturing as agencies. All were felt to have the ability and the capacity to secure real economic prosperity for the UK, focused on the regional strengths and regional challenges that every region has.

The water industry is one of our most successful industries, and has made major strides in recent decades in improving quality and providing decent first-class services. It has a problem, however, in the large and growing bad debt that impinges on its ability to continue making environmental improvements, and increases the amount paid by bill payers, some of whom are not as well off as those who do not pay.

I have been aware of this growing problem for some time. Just before Christmas, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) and I were briefed by the managing director of Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water, Tony Cooke, who raised the issue and drew our attention to the very good House of Lords report, chaired by Lord Selborne, that reviewed the water industry. I also thank the other people who have given me briefing material for this debate, including Phillip Mills of Water UK, Michelle Lewis of Yorkshire Water and Colin Skellet of Wessex Water.

So what is the problem? According to the Office of Water Service, the outstanding household revenue in this industry was £814 million in October. In 2005-06, the industry had to write off more than £103 million, and 4.4 million households have revenue outstanding. That is about 15 per cent. of all bill payers. Some £400 million of that debt has been outstanding for more than 12 months. The industry has a high operating expenditure on collection—well over £70 million. The cost of bad debt to the average UK household bill is about £10 or £11, which is a considerable sum. The £814 million that Ofwat reported in October was up from £760 million in the previous year, so the problem is growing. I hope that the Minister will at least acknowledge that there is a problem.

When the Government came to office, they brought in the Water Industry Act 1999, which removed the right to disconnect. I do not argue that we should go back to those days. Indeed, the vast majority of the water industry does not want the power to disconnect, but it wants several areas of public policy to be improved so that it can have a much better chance of bearing down on bad debt and being fair to its customers.

The Government’s decision to stop disconnection, combined with a 1999 High Court ruling that ruled out the use of prepayment devices and restrictions in the water industry as illegal, has given the industry a difficult hand to play on bad debt. Since then, the status of water charge arrears has dropped down the priority list for citizens advice bureaux, money advice centres and customers. I must admit that when constituents of mine have come to me with financial difficulties, the first thing that I have told them is, “Don’t pay your water bill,” because I know that that they can get away with it. I am sure that we all do that, but it puts the industry in an unfair situation. Data protection changes might have added to the problem because they make it difficult for the industry to trace absconders, who are responsible for a quarter of all the debt.

The water industry is a unique case because it has a statutory duty to supply water irrespective of whether payment is received. It has no contract with customers, and hence limited information on them, and no ability to share information or impose special conditions for bad debt risk. Indeed, it is the largest user of the courts, with more than 180,000 claims in 2004-05. In comparison with other utilities, the level of bad debt over 2 per cent. is significantly higher than in the gas, electricity and other industries.

The situation is different in other sectors. If one does not pay one’s council tax, the ultimate incentive to pay is the threat of prison. If one does not pay one’s television licence, one receives a large fine, and if one does not pay one’s vehicle licence, one gets a £1,000 fine. The water industry faces certain difficulties in that regard.

Some 20 per cent. of debtors owe 70 per cent. of the total debt, and 34 per cent. of debtors live in areas with average earnings. Total debt levels are highest in single female households. Debtors have low involvement in the credit market, and 46 per cent. of debtors are in the highest 10 per cent. risk category. Other interesting considerations have been found in research. Sometimes affluent singles and couples in exclusive urban neighbourhoods feature disproportionately among debtors, so debt is not a problem only for people who have problems paying their bills.

The industry is very aware of debt and is pretty good at finding innovative ways of dealing with it. There are helplines so that customers can discuss payment problems, flexible payment plans, charitable trusts and hardship funds. Sometimes it offers free water meters to reduce customer charges. It helps people to apply for direct payments from benefit via Water Direct, gives advice on the vulnerable groups tariff—metered customers on benefits who qualify can receive a reduced bill—and promotes debt advice agencies. Yorkshire Water sponsors local citizens advice bureaux, and has special tariffs and the Yorkshire Water Community Trust for customers who have problems paying bills. Wessex Water has a new tariff to help people who have special problems, and has various charitable and other schemes to help those in real difficulty.

So there is a problem. The industry is unique, with its statutory duty to supply, no contracts and limited information on customers. It has limited sanctions for non-payment and debtors continue to receive service, and data protection issues limit the tracing of non-payers. The problem with affordability is increasing with the increasing debt and the deprioritisation of water charge arrears.

What does the industry want? It wants more ability to share information on debtors and customers so that it can trace absconders and differentiate between debtors. It wants changes to do with Water Direct so that it is not a measure of last resort, including changes with benefits and the widening of application to non-debtors. It also wants—I have mixed feelings about this—responsibility for charges to be extended to commercial landlords, because there is a particular problem with houses in multiple occupation. That certainly affects Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water—no doubt my hon. Friend is aware of those problems in his patch.

The industry would also like there to be changes to the tax credits and benefits system to link water benefits to council tax rebate. I repeat that it does not want to go back to the days of disconnection, but there are various ways in which water flow can be controlled, as the House of Lords pointed out in its report. I believe that in Australia and other countries, companies use various methods to restrict people’s water flow rather than cut them off.

I think that we all accept that it is fine to provide water for basic needs such as flushing lavatories and for washing and cooking, but people who do not pay their bills can also run dishwashers, washing machines and sprinkler systems, and fill swimming pools, because there is no restriction on what they can receive, even if they can afford to pay their bills. That seems odd. I would like the Government to acknowledge that there is a problem and to consider introducing legislation to make it a little easier for the industry to control this growing debt problem that is causing higher bills for ordinary payers and that makes it far more difficult for the industry to deliver the environmental improvements that we all want and expect.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is necessary to focus on people who have the ability to pay but deliberately do not in the full knowledge that they cannot be cut off and effectively have a free supply? Those who cannot afford to pay are in a different category, but surely those who fall into the first category should be the subject of some constraints—possibly collection through benefit agencies if they receive benefits, or through restricted supply.

I agree with my hon. Friend. As I have illustrated with my examples from Yorkshire Water and Wessex Water, the industry is alive to and aware of the fact that some people have problems paying, and they have various schemes to reduce debt. Of course, if they had more information, they would be able to differentiate between their various customers. It is true that the sharp and the smart get away with taking foreign holidays while not discharging their responsibilities to others—by paying water bills, for example. That is a problem because some people realise that they can get away with things. Several public policy options must be considered to assess whether we can give assistance to the industry so that it can differentiate between the genuine customers in hardship and others, and so that it can bear down on the growing bad debt.

I do not intend to speak for much longer, because I know that the Minister wants to respond to some of my points. This is an important issue. If the Government do not respond to my points by telling us not only their intentions but what they are going to do about the situation, the subject will keep returning. There is currently £800 million outstanding. I suspect that if we do not consider the public policy implications of the industry, it will not be long before the debt is more than £1 billion. The burden will then really be falling on people, many of whom struggle to pay their bills as it is. Why should they pay for others, some of whom are wilful non-payers?

It is always a great pleasure to have you presiding over our debates, Mr. Cook; the phrase “firm but fair” comes to mind.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) for rightly raising this important issue. He asked the Government to acknowledge that there is a problem, and I am happy to do so in a straightforward way at the outset.

The importance of water supply and sanitation, and the regulatory arrangements put in place to reflect that, means that dealing with debt in this sector is not a simple process. The hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the fact that there are different categories of those who are falling behind in their payments profile and that it might be right to look at them in different ways. I must confess that I was no less than astonished to hear him admit and boast to the Chamber that he advised indebted individuals who came to his surgeries not to pay their water bills. I do not believe that such an approach should be a model of good practice for hon. Members, and I am sure that his local water companies will not be best pleased to find out that although this morning he may be championing a solution to the problem, in other modes he is actively part of it.

All customers are liable to pay their bills, and the overwhelming majority do so. In 2004-05 the percentage of revenue owing to companies was 7.6 per cent. after 12 months compared with just 2.5 per cent. after four years. So, although people fall behind over a 12-month period, two thirds of them catch up and make good their indebtedness.

As the hon. Gentleman outlined, bad debt is not solely a problem for the water industry. Arrears on utility and other household bills are quite common, particularly among low-income groups. Domestic gas and electricity prices also rose in 2005-06 and average debt rose in the light of that.

Every year, the Government publish their report on tackling over-indebtedness. Since the first report in 2004, we have made considerable progress in putting in place measures to help people avoid becoming over-indebted and to provide support for those in difficulty. We believe that those measures will, over time, bring about a substantial reduction in people’s vulnerability to over-indebtedness.

The hon. Gentleman was right about water being essential to public health. That is the reason the Government banned all forms of disconnection in 2000. Critics sometimes point to that decision as the reason for high levels of bad debt. Of course, there are some customers who cannot pay and others who do not or will not pay, but vulnerable customers must be protected. I am mindful of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) on that issue, and I will discuss it in a moment.

How can companies deal with those who will not pay? How does one identify those people? How does one ensure that one is not penalising the genuinely vulnerable? No one in this House would seek to penalise such people. The recent House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology report on water resource management proposed partial disconnection through trickle valves as a way to encourage households that will not, but could, pay their water bills. The hon. Member for Poole mentioned such approaches.

We are aware of the possibilities for restricting water flow. The option was discussed during the review of water charging carried out between 1997 and 1999. At that time, the Government concluded:

“We believe that the prohibition on domestic disconnection is vital to protect health and hygiene. Anyone who agrees with that statement must agree also that devices which reduce the flow of water available for use to such a small trickle that it can take up to a quarter of an hour to fill the kitchen sink to enable washing-up to be done should be banned too.”

That was the conclusion of a review carried out eight years ago, and the Government have not resiled from it since then.

We take seriously the problems of customer debt and debt collection, and we are keen to see debt well managed throughout the industry. Companies need to manage their bad debt effectively otherwise it may cause costs to other customers, but there must be a fair balance between customer protection and the ability of companies to recover their debts.

Some companies are clearly managing their debt more effectively than others, and there are big variations in debt between company areas. For example, there are two companies with similar customer profiles in the south of England that have totally different levels of debt. We believe that there is scope for those companies lagging behind to do more.

For those customers already in debt to water companies, there is the option of paying through the Department for Work and Pensions third-party deductions scheme, but we must look for ways to prevent households from getting into arrears in the first place.

Some customers have problems affording their bills and it is right that they do not have to fear being disconnected because of an inability to pay, but we continue to look for ways to help them. We are following up the recommendations of the cross-Government review of water affordability. We are examining a range of tariff structures, their impact on low-income households and their effect on company debt. We are carrying out a pilot study in the south-west, looking at how a range of measures can help low-income households with the water bills.

Some companies have taken their own initiatives on those issues. The south-west is the region with the highest bills, but it is also a region with relatively low average incomes. South West Water is expanding the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs-funded affordability pilot in its area, at its shareholders’ expense, to households with debt problems across the region. Those households will have benefit-entitlement checks, meters installed as appropriate, and water-efficiency devices installed. I welcome that new approach.

DEFRA does not have an active role in managing companies’ debt levels, although it participated in the steering group for a research project on the problem involving the industry, Ofwat and Water Voice. The industry regulator, Ofwat, monitors the debt situation, and where water companies’ customer debt increases greatly, Ofwat may take that into account in setting companies’ price limits. That allows the cost of a company’s bad debt to be spread out over the wider customer base, but—this is an important caveat—Ofwat does not allow companies to pass on the costs automatically. It needs to be satisfied that the company is already using the enforcement methods open to it as efficiently and effectively as possible. I hope that that goes some way to allying the fears of the hon. Member for Poole that the overall costs of indebtedness were simply being passed on to other customers willy-nilly and that the rest of the water-consuming public, who pay their bills, were automatically then bearing the load for those who were unable to pay their bills or those who were less responsible in doing so.

One conclusion of the cross-Government review of water affordability was that Ofwat should review its debt guidelines to promote companies’ good practice in debt management. Ofwat consulted on amendments to those guidelines, and we understand that new guidelines will be introduced in the spring.

Debt is a problem, but not one that affects only the water industry. We must ensure that a balance is struck between the needs of companies and the needs of customers, and we look to the regulator to ensure that companies manage their debt in the most effective way.

The Government have taken indebtedness seriously since coming to office in 1997. In real terms, the incomes of some of the poorest people in the population have risen as a result of personal tax and benefit measures that we have introduced. In October last year, families with children were, on average, £1,500 a year better off, and families with children in the poorest fifth of the population were, on average, £3,400 a year better off. Other vulnerable groups include pensioner households, which were, on average, £1,350 a year or about £26 a week better off, and the poorest third of pensioner households were, on average, £2,050 a year or about £39 a week better off.

Yes, we can look at the indebtedness faced by water and utility companies. It is right and it is required often that those companies look at their portfolio of indebtedness, and try to use all methods available to them to help customers in the first instance, but to ensure, when they can, that they make those who are not prepared to pay, rather than those who are unable to pay, stump up and meet their obligations. The Government have tried to operate at both ends of the spectrum in not only looking at levels of indebtedness, but trying to ensure that those who are most vulnerable do not get into debt in the first place. I am confident that the hon. Member for Poole, who spoke so eloquently, agrees that it is much better for society to avoid people getting into a situation where they cannot afford some of the essentials of life, rather than waiting to see what can be done when they are in trouble.

I sought the debate so that hon. and right hon. Members, who, like me, have serious misgivings about the plans of the Department for Constitutional Affairs to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regulations, could explore the arguments with the Minister before the consultation ends on 8 March.

The Government have a proud record of having introduced freedom of information legislation; however, they propose to put it at risk, and for what? To change the rules that allow public authorities to refuse FOI requests on costs grounds would be mean-spirited and certainly unworthy of my party, and of my Government, of whom I am immensely proud. The DCA’s proposed changes would allow authorities to refuse requests that they must currently answer. That would inevitably reduce the Act’s effectiveness, limit the scrutiny that it provides and undermine the important progress that has been made towards more openness and accountability.

The promise of a freedom of information Act featured in six successive Labour manifestos from 1974 to 1997, and I well remember these words:

“A Freedom of Information Act is not just important in itself. It is part of bringing our politics up to date, of letting politics catch up with the aspirations of our people and delivering not just more open but more effective and efficient government for the future.”

That was the argument advanced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he was Leader of the Opposition in 1996. The argument was right then and it is right now.

The Act was an important step forward, but I fear that the DCA’s proposed changes will take us in the opposite direction. The Act is widely regarded as a success. In a report, the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs says that the Act has

“already brought about the release of significant new information and…this information is being used in a constructive and positive way by a range of different individuals and organisations.”

I had the privilege of serving as a Minister in the Wales Office and in the Ministry of Defence, and I confess that there were times when I found the demands for information under the freedom of information legislation irksome. Governments and local government do, and we must recognise it.

My right hon. Friend is right to emphasise the Labour party’s long and honourable commitment to freedom of information. I am a former Minister like him, albeit a former Minister in the Cabinet Office, who dealt with FOI legislation when it first came before the new Labour Government. Does he accept that strands in the broader context of government, including the higher reaches of the civil service, the quangocracy that surrounds it and leading members of the Government, were always dead set against freedom of information from the word go?

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Like many colleagues in the Chamber today from all parties, throughout my political life as a councillor and as a Minister, the one thing I was a told was, “If you do that, it would be setting a precedent.” If we had not set precedents, we would still be living up trees.

I am proud of the fact that the commitment of my former Department, the Ministry of Defence, has impressed many observers. Information that the MOD has released includes anonymised details of investigations of alleged offences by soldiers in Northern Ireland, the types of boot used by the armed services, the number of service personnel failing drug tests and information about complaints of discrimination and bullying. On a lighter note, the MOD has also released its recipe for curried meatballs, and disclosed reports of UFO sightings in Wales, including a black object hovering over Rhyl, a flying disc over Newport and a spinning craft with legs flying over the valley where I live.

Spinning?

Yes, spinning.

In the response to the Constitutional Affairs Committee’s report, the Government said that they welcomed and shared the Committee’s assessment, adding:

“While the government is pleased by the significant success that FOI represents it will continue to build on that success.”

To me, that it is a commitment. The Government also went on to propose two significant restrictions to the Act’s right of access, but people have generally coped with them.

In general, freedom of information requests are answered free of charge, although applicants can be asked to pay for photocopying and postage costs. However, a Department can refuse to process a request if it estimates that the cost will exceed £600. Local authorities, national health service bodies and other public authorities can refuse if the estimated cost exceeds £450. The expenditure that can be taken into account are the costs of establishing whether the requested information is held and, if it is, of locating, retrieving and extracting it. Staff time is charged at £25 an hour.

The DCA proposes to include the costs of reading the information, consulting other authorities or bodies about the request and considering whether to release it—three more hurdles, all unnecessary.

The more time officials spend discussing a request, the more likely they are to feel entitled to refuse it. The more inefficient or long-winded a public body’s procedures for reaching decisions, the less chance a request has of being answered under the proposed new rules. I have grave fears that the proposed new regulations will invite abuse. Authorities will realise that by deliberately extending the hours that they spend, or estimate that they will have to spend, on a request, they will be able to ensure that a request for information is rejected.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there are two significant perils in the Government’s proposals? First, there is the aggregation of requests. Hon. Members—I assume this applies to all hon. Members present—often make a series of requests to the same authority, and certainly within a three-month period. We would all fall foul of the new regulation straight away. Secondly, and even worse, if one includes an aggregation of requests, one will have to notify the deciding officer about the individual making the request.

The principle of freedom of information is that requests are considered blind and that they are not aggregated. The senior officers in, for example, a police authority about which I am concerned in North Yorkshire, would be able to find out who the individual was and deny their request simply because the individual had made a number of requests within three months. That would be nonsensical.

I rarely regret accepting an intervention, but that is the rest of my speech just delivered for me. I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I shall refer to it as I develop my argument.

The more people the authority decides to invite to a meeting to discuss the request, the easier it will be to reject it. Instead of just bringing in the officials directly involved, the authority might decide that it would make sense to bring in line managers and departmental heads. A two-hour meeting involving six people at £25 an hour each automatically adds £300 to the cost of the request. A few additional hours will usually be needed to find the information, then there is the time needed to read it and to extract the relevant passages, and we see how we move very quickly towards the cost limit. That work could easily bring the request up to the £450 or £600 threshold without much having been done. If there were any doubt, and the authority did not wish to release the information, it could add an extra few hours by consulting its legal department.

If the issue were important and involved a Department, a Minister might become involved. Is the Minister’s time and that of their private office also to be aggregated and added to the time that it takes to provide the information? That would take the risk over the cost limits. In theory, applicants would have a remedy: they could complain to the Information Commissioner. However, the commissioner, Richard Thomas, already has a substantial backlog of complaints.

The possibility that the time spent on requests might be deliberately inflated is not my main concern, however. Even if authorities are scrupulously fair in their estimates, requests that require officials to spend significant amounts of time considering or consulting on a decision are likely to be refused in any event. Requests that involve complex issues would be an obvious casualty and any request that raises a new issue for the first time is bound to require significant research and consideration before a decision is taken.

Politically contentious requests will also be hit. Inevitably, authorities will spend longer considering such requests, particularly if the consequence of disclosure may be to suggest that the policy the authority is pursuing is a mistake or is not working as intended. The mere fact that the request is contentious and the disclosure could have serious consequences for that authority could lead to it being refused under the new proposals. Secrecy would replace scrutiny in very critical areas and we should resist that.

When a request is refused on cost grounds, that refusal is absolute. The applicant cannot argue that the public interest in the issue is justified if the cost limits are exceeded. As long as the hours have been properly calculated, that will be the end of the matter. In its consultation document on the proposed changes, the DCA argues that the effects of the proposals will not be unduly severe because authorities will still be required to advise and assist applicants who reformulate requests to become more targeted and focused, and I certainly had experience of that when I was a Minister. Where a request is refused because too much information has been requested, the problem can be overcome by helping the applicant to narrow the request—of course it can. However, where a request has been refused because of the time needed to consider the issue, such an approach will simply not work. The DCA argues that the draft regulations will cap at £400 the costs attributed to consideration time or consultation time by a Department. It contends that it would not be possible for consideration time alone to take a request over the £600 limit. However, a combination of the two could take the request over that limit.

The draft regulations contain a second proposal. In some cases, all the requests made to an authority on any subject by an individual or organisation could be aggregated, a point referred to by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) a moment ago, and they could be refused if the costs exceeded the limits of £600 and £450.

Let me give my right hon. Friend an example of that. In Newcastle and Gateshead, there is a housing market renewal pathfinder scheme, which is run by Newcastle city council and Gateshead council. Newcastle is Liberal Democrat controlled, and Gateshead is Labour controlled, but they run the scheme together. The meetings of the organisation take place in private, and I have asked to see the minutes of those meetings. I have been told that I can make a request for them, but it must be made under the Freedom of Information Act, and I must make a request for each meeting separately. I have now, therefore, made about 12 requests simply to get the minutes of a public body. I would fall into precisely the trap of aggregation that he has set out.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is very difficult for us as parliamentarians to find ourselves frustrated when Parliament has clearly expressed its will on the matter.

As an afterthought, it is not just parliamentarians who are frustrated. I have had conversations with the editors of the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Daily Post, and they are extremely concerned about the effect the measures will have on investigative journalism. They do a good job in holding local bodies to account. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the proposed measures will inhibit them from doing the job they do so adequately in so many parts of the country?

I was about to come to that point in response to my hon. Friend. If the aggregation provisions are included, they could be used against a newspaper, which could then find that the requests made by all its journalists to a particular authority during a 60-day period were refused once the cost limit had been reached. The same would be true of any campaigning organisation or a Member of Parliament. Such requesters might find themselves allowed to make no more than a single request to a political authority during a period of three months.

Authorities would have to show that it was reasonable in some circumstances to aggregate requests, but the consultation paper suggests factors that should be taken into account in reaching such decisions, and I am not convinced that there is a case for them. I find two of the four factors set out to be particularly disturbing. The first proposes that authorities take account of the identity of the applicant. That undermines the basic principle of the Act: it should be applicant-blind. Decisions should depend on the consequences of disclosing information to the public at large, not the identity of the applicant.

The next factor is even more alarming. Page 14 of the consultation paper proposes that authorities should take into account the volume of requests made by an applicant in the past and whether the applicant has been “unco-operative or disruptive”. I am sure that nobody in this room would ever be unco-operative or disruptive in seeking information, but that measure appears to be a direct invitation to authorities to discriminate against applicants who have not shown them sufficient deference. I am sure that time and again, hon. and right hon. Members have had to be awkward with Departments or local authorities to secure information on behalf of their constituents. If the regulations come into force, that provision would be a reason to refuse information to a Member. That cannot be right, and certainly was not the intention of the Act when Parliament agreed it.

The applicant who regularly appeals against refusals may be made to pay a price for doing so. A campaigning newspaper like the South Wales Argus in my constituency might criticise the local council’s handling of its freedom of information requests, or use the information it has got under the Act to express disapproval of a council policy. It may be punished for its temerity by being refused further information on the grounds that it has been unco-operative or disruptive. Who will make that subjective decision? Who will decide whether a person has been unco-operative or disruptive? That causes me considerable concern. Those policies should have no part to play in the operation of the Freedom of Information Act.

Last May, my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor made a speech in which he said that

“our FOI regime is blind to both the identity and purpose of requests. It is rightly blind. The decision whether to disclose must be based on an objective application of the principles to the information requested, irrespective of who has asked, and for what reason.”

He went on to say:

“The information released must be evaluated against how it promotes empowerment, and how it improves good decision-making.”

For the life of me, I cannot reconcile those views, which I entirely endorse, with the proposals now being put forward by his Department.

My right hon. Friend is cogently outlining the problems and what I hope are the unintended consequences of the proposals. I am sure that we shall hear the Minister say that the Government have a duty to safeguard taxpayers’ money. Does my hon. Friend have the impression that the Government have done all they can to save money in implementing freedom of information legislation? They could use more efficient electronic record management, for example, rather than reach for these proposals, which will have the unintended consequences that my hon. Friend so graphically outlines.

I believe that there has been progress and there are opportunities to make further progress along that particular avenue, through greater efficiencies, using IT systems and so on. These regulations are not needed as far as that process is concerned.

What is the driving force behind these so-called reforms? The DCA says it is attempting to reduce the burden on public authorities imposed by more time-consuming and therefore costly requests. Is that aimed at a small number of people who use the Act regularly such as journalists? Only 10 per cent. of the requests come from journalists, with 60 per cent. coming from the general public and 20 per cent. from business and industry.

The Government have published a report that they commissioned from a consultancy called Frontier Economics on the costs of the Act. It showed that the total cost, across the public sector, including the cost of the Information Commissioner and the information tribunal, was around £35 million annually. That is not a large sum when one compares it with the whole spend of Government throughout the country. Indeed, the Minister is quoted in last week’s Press Gazette as saying that the £25 million that central Government spend annually is “money well spent”. I agree with her as far as that is concerned.

The report costed the savings that might come from two proposals in the draft regulations at about £12 million a year. It calculated that taking account of reading, consideration and consultation time would allow authorities to reject about 8,100 requests that they have to deal with now, and that the aggregation proposal would allow 12,000 requests to be refused. It is not clear whether there has been double counting of those two options, but cutting out 20,000 requests to save less than £12 million annually strikes me as blunt and brutal, and quite contrary to whole intention of the Freedom of Information Act. If my hon. and learned Friend the Minister or any of our ministerial colleagues want a few tips on how to save some money, I can buy them a cup of tea in the Tea Room and tell them some of the things that we discovered on Select Committee on Public Accounts that would make people’s hair stand up. I am quite happy to make that offer to any of my ministerial colleagues.

Finally, I have a high regard for my hon. and learned Friend. She has a distinct and quite definite independent streak, and she is not slow to speak out. I certainly found that out when I was the Minister taking the Armed Forces Bill through the House and she was serving on the Committee as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to another Minister. She gave me some grief, and rightly so, because she was not happy with some of the things that I was saying and proposing. We disagreed, but I respected her powerful argument and the passion with which she employed it. I cannot believe that my hon. and learned Friend is too comfortable with the proposals. I hope that I and others who might catch your eye, Mr. Cook, will persuade her to reconsider and leave the consultation document where it belongs—on the shelf, gathering dust.

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Order. Hon. Members may be wondering why I am pausing, but I am trying to see how many want to contribute to the debate, yet some individuals are reluctant to stand. So, I am going to sit down and invite hon. Members please to indicate whether they wish to speak.

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Thank you. The reason for that is that the Chair is required to commence the first of the three winding-up speeches at 3.30, which gives us 38 minutes. I would ask hon. Members who seek to contribute please to bear that in mind when they make their contributions, and also when they accept and respond to interventions.

I quickly congratulate the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on initiating this debate on an incredibly important issue.

If one thing signified a change of Government and a change of spirit in the nation, it was when new Labour held out as one of its flagship initiatives its freedom of information legislation. The right hon. Gentleman referred to a quotation by the Prime Minister from before he was the Prime Minister, and I shall do likewise. In 1996, the Prime Minister expressed his personal commitment to freedom of information by saying that

“information is power and any Government’s attitude about sharing information with the people actually says a great deal about how it views power itself and how it views the relationship between itself and the people who elected it.”

I gave a cheer for that, and I would still give a cheer for any Prime Minister who maintained that high standard in their view of the relationship between Government and the people.

Freedom of information has always been about one thing: accountability. Freedom of information raises the level of informed public debate, enabling individuals outside to judge matters of public policy on the basis of that information. I long ago came to the conclusion that it is not ill informed debate that Governments fear; it is informed debate, understanding and the facts that relate to the debate that they fear.

The extraordinary thing is that the law on freedom of information has been fully in effect for only two years. What is behind the drive to introduce, propose or set out for consultation new regulations? Like many of us, I regard the cost argument as very curious. We are talking about a very small sum of money in the general scheme of things—about £30 million a year as it stands. The Government seek to reduce that, but I think of their other schemes. It does not take much imagination to give a catalogue across 10 years of some of the schemes and the waste, which runs not to tens of millions of pounds, but to hundreds and even thousands of millions. The scheme that perhaps most caught the imagination early on was the dome.

I am therefore concerned about the Government’s proposals and the two significant changes that they hope to bring about. The first is, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, that authorities could take account of the costs of the time spent reading the information, consulting other bodies about it and whether to release it, in deciding whether the £600 or £450 limit—depending on whether the request was to local government or central Government—had been reached. The time spent searching for and extracting the information would be included, as it is at present. My second concern—this is the damaging thing—is that authorities could also aggregate unrelated requests made within a 60-day working period by the same individual or organisation, if it were reasonable to do so under the circumstances, and refuse them all if the combined costs exceeded the £600 or £450 limit.

That strikes at the very means by which we learn much information. I see in this packed Chamber a representative of The Guardian, which brings to the public’s attention information that it has sourced through freedom of information applications. The right hon. Gentleman referred to his local paper. For us in the west midlands, the local paper is the Express and Star. I think of the extraordinary role played by the Yorkshire Post in giving ordinary people knowledge about some of the costs of local government structures and the police and how money is spent, and in discovering whether policemen who had been disciplined were still on the force. Those might seem like little things, but the construct is true. How can we judge whether something is appropriate unless we have access to the information?

There is another great organisation called the House of Commons, but many hon. Members now have to resort to freedom of information legislation. I see to my left the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who is well known for pursuing details that are not easily available through our processes of tabling parliamentary questions.

So what is behind the proposal? It is, in fact, an endeavour to cut off the public’s wider access to information. I cannot see any other rationale among those that have been put forward to support the decision. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) and the Minister know my position full well—it is the position that many, many Labour Members of Parliament held when they were first elected on that bright sunshiny day, 10 years ago.

I hope that this debate will focus our consciousness. How can we have accountable Government and accountable local authorities if we cannot have access to the information that informs judgments? Why are the regulations coming into force—or, from the point of view of the Executive, why do they hope that the regulations are coming into force? How can this be if we assert ourselves and argue that the Government should stand fast by the intent that they first expressed so long ago?

rose—

Order. There are five contenders for the 31 minutes available. Hon. Members should please bear that in mind.

I shall be extremely brief, Mr. Cook. As you say, other Members want to speak, but I must also apologise because I shall not be here for the end of the debate due to a Select Committee commitment. I am therefore obliged to be extremely quick.

Most in this Chamber have form on the issue of freedom of information in one way or another. We have lived with it for many years and taken pride in delivering for the first time a law on freedom of information. Naturally, we want to protect it. So we are concerned at proposals to restrict the 2000 Act so soon after its implementation. Let us be clear: the only intention of the proposals is to restrict the operation of the Act. It is worth asking about the underlying rationale. Well, there must be two: first, the Act is costing more than we want to pay and we would like to reduce the cost; and secondly, it is proving so onerous and irksome that we would like to restrict access to it. A way has been found to achieve both those objectives in one set of regulations.

Why should that happen? It is extremely puzzling, especially when the regulations are set alongside the other bizarre development—an attempt, through a private Member’s Bill, to remove the House of Commons and Members of Parliament from the orbit of the Act that they themselves passed. You couldn’t make it up. Furthermore, I gather that there is all manner of usual-channels collaboration to ensure that that happens.

This must be utterly bewildering to the outside world. We have done something that we are proud of, and it is beginning to operate—unearthing information and improving the quality of our democracy. Then we say on the one hand, “Oh, by the way, we’d like to remove ourselves from it,” and on the other, “We’d like to introduce some restrictions so that it does not work so effectively.” It is utterly bizarre.

The Public Administration Committee, which I chair, considered the legislation. We looked at it in draft and spent a lot of time making sure that we could improve it—and we did, in a number of ways. At the heart of the arguments was public interest. Where did that lie in particular cases? Should certain information be withheld or disclosed, and who would decide where that public interest was to be found? That is at the centre of the whole approach to the issue and of the legislation.

The question has arisen recently in respect of decisions being taken about which Post Office branches may or may not close and whether a list exists. One of the excellent media sources in the south-west, the Western Morning News, made a freedom of information request on that topic. The answer came back that, if such a list existed, it was not in the public interest for it to be in the public domain at this stage. It will be crucial for all communities that may well be under threat of losing their post offices to prepare their campaigns to keep them. How does the hon. Gentleman respond to that?

The examples being given are telling. I could extend the hon. Gentleman’s point to the press generally, which hon. Members have mentioned. One of the great advantages of the freedom of information regime is that instead of simply making up stories, at which they are traditionally rather good, the press now have a discipline of finding the facts about cases. Then they can make up stories about them. It is a great advance and it is utterly puzzling that we should now want to go into reverse.

The point that I am trying to get at is that the public interest argument was central to the whole basis of the legislation, yet it is entirely absent from the proposals before us. They do not answer the fundamental question: what value do the Government put on freedom of information? Is it £35 million? Perhaps it should be double that. How do they know that £35 million is too high a value? How do we evaluate the examples that hon. Members are giving? That is the question behind the issue. I would put an extraordinarily high value on the contribution that freedom of information makes to the quality of our democracy and society. The Government must be able to answer the question about what value they put on it. Again, that is at the heart of the issue. In making the proposals, they have not even attempted to make that balancing, evaluative test, which is at the heart of the legislation itself.

I love the passion that the hon. Gentleman brings to his argument. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) mentioned the Yorkshire Post and the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) has just mentioned cost saving. The reality is that many freedom of information requests made by the Yorkshire Post have pulled out from local authorities, particularly police authorities, huge expenses that have been squandered—£28,000 for a shower for the chief constable, £65,000 for a 4x4 BMW, £6,000 for—

Order. The hon. Gentleman should be brief.

All that came out, and only because of freedom of information.

So that we do not get a consensus that we do not really want, let me extend the hon. Gentleman’s argument a fraction further. One of the reasons why it is not a good idea to exclude Members of Parliament from the legislation is that we have to produce the same kind of information—the list of expenses that we all have to claim. Of course we find that irksome, but an exclusion would have an effect on the pattern of claims—exactly the same effect to which the hon. Gentleman points in other areas of public life. We should not fool ourselves about that.

I conclude by saying that public value is completely absent from what is proposed, yet it was completely central to the legislation. My conclusion, which has been hinted at already, is that the fundamental reason for wanting freedom of information has not yet entered the bloodstream of the Government. That is the truth of the matter. When we were passing the law, we always knew that unless it produced that culture change and entered the bloodstream of every public body in the land, it would not be doing its job. What has happened tells us, unfortunately, that it has not yet entered the bloodstream of the Government.

I know that that law has entered the bloodstream of my hon. and learned Friend the Minister. She is a believer, although she will have to defend the indefensible in a moment. We know that she does not believe in it; she is too principled. One of the penalties of being a Minister is that they have to read out things that they know are not true. That is a considerable quality, which some of us have not managed to achieve. That goes to the heart of the issue. Parliament passed and believes in the legislation, which is producing lots of good effects. It would be absurd and bizarre if we started rolling it back.

rose—

Order. One of the previous contenders has slipped his moorings and appears to have left port. My previous anxieties about getting everyone in have somewhat eased. We now have 21 minutes and only two Members are seeking to catch my eye. I call Tim Farron.

Thank you, Mr. Cook. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on securing this debate, which is extremely important, as has already been said. He made excellent points in his speech, although I do not entirely agree with the lavish praise that he heaped on the 2000 Act. Many of us felt at the time that the Act was far too weak. Indeed, Lord Clark of Windermere, who is a constituent of mine, ostensibly resigned because the Act was not made of the stuff that he wished it was.

It is all the more depressing, therefore, that we are having this debate about potentially narrowing the Freedom of Information Act, rather than expanding it or widening its scope. Liberal Democrat Members would certainly like to see it expanded and the limitations on access to information reduced. One complaint that I have about the Act as it stands is that public bodies can refuse freedom of information requests on cost grounds, because that already permits them to give allowable, but nevertheless spurious, reasons for refusing access to vital information. Now, of course, the Government propose to allow agencies to take account of areas of work that could increase the overall cost in each case, and such powers are bound to be abused in some quarters. Even if they are exercised without malice, they are bound to increase the number of requests that will not be properly answered.

To follow an earlier line of argument, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) talked about costs and asked what price the Government put on freedom of information. What are we saving? The proposals have ostensibly been introduced to save not quite £12 million. Is it worth it? The Government are curtailing the liberties of every citizen in the country to save £12 million. However, they are preparing to take away our liberties under an identity card scheme that will cost 500 times that amount, at a conservative estimate. We could scrap that scheme and have plenty of money to ensure that we had much wider access to information.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his point not only applies to the Government, but goes back to the culture of secrecy in this House, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) referred? We often apply for information through the House, but we are told that the cost of providing it is disproportionate. I have found that out to my cost many times over the years. If we ally that with the inability to elicit information through the 2000 Act, what price the essential function of every Member of this House of holding the Executive to account?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right, and I sympathise with him. I, too, have been given that reason for not having many of my written questions answered. As he suggests, the issue extends to other bodies beyond the Government, such as national park authorities, local councils and a variety of other quangos. We have to drag information out of those bodies, and it is important that we can do that.

Of course, we have to ask what the motivation is for seeking this £12 million saving. If the figure is just £12 million, it is a rather odd and relatively small saving to seek. Have this supposedly reformist Government gone native?

Is not one possible answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about motivation that a Government who started off with great hopes and intentions on that bright, sunny day—to borrow the phrase used by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd)—have progressively gone into a bunker and forgotten their principles during eight or nine years in government? In effect, they are trying to do a U-turn because they regret the right thing that they did earlier.

Yes, I was just getting to that, and I am sorry that I did not see the hon. Gentleman trying to intervene earlier, because I have half made his point. I fear that the Government have, as he says, learned the lessons of their reforming and have decided to go native. They feel pressured by a monster than they cannot control, even though that monster is not nearly as scary as it should be.

Let me briefly run through some examples of how the Act has worked and been of great value in my constituency. We have a good, campaigning local newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette, which is pretty famous. It made a freedom of information request to the local police authority about the impact of new speed cameras. Whatever one’s view about the impact and usefulness of speed cameras, it was only by using the Act that the newspaper discovered that new speed cameras had led to a 753 per cent. increase in the number of speeding tickets. That valuable information is of use and interest to the public.

I mentioned national parks a moment ago, and there are two in my constituency—the Yorkshire Dales national park and the Lake District national park, which has just gone through the interesting experience of losing its chief officer. Various issues were not revealed at that point, but they all related to the good and proper use of public money. They would not have been revealed at all had the newspaper not been able to use the Act. I am sure that the authority did not want to answer the newspaper’s irksome and difficult questions and that it would have taken every opportunity not to do so, had it been able to. However, the proposed changes could present authorities with that opportunity in future.

I am pursuing an issue that alarms me greatly. I discovered that social services departments are increasingly forcing people who are going into care to cash in investments that they had taken out partly to pay off mortgages, which could put their partners and families at the risk of losing their homes. I am trying to find out what flexibility there is out there for discounting such investments, and the Act is my only obvious route for securing that information. It will be very difficult for those involved to find and produce it, so it is all the more important that the scope of the Act is widened, rather than narrowed.

To conclude, the proposals are a fundamental threat to the relationship between the individual and the state. From the perspective of public bodies, freedom of information requests are no doubt irksome, embarrassing and potentially dangerous, but any move that makes it less likely that they will be put in an irksome, embarrassing and dangerous position should be resisted at all costs.

I am particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) for being clever enough to secure this badly needed debate. He introduced it admirably and set out the issues very well.

I am interested in the issue because I introduced the Right to Know Bill—a private Member’s Bill—in 1992. I inherited it from the then Labour Opposition, who had drafted it in the naïve assumption that they would be elected at the polls that year and who therefore had an excellent, fully drafted Bill in their hands. Thanks to the great amount of advice that they received from bodies such as the Campaign for Freedom of Information, they learned—as the world had done over the previous 10 years from Australia, New Zealand and Canada—which parts of freedom of information legislation were good and which were difficult. Having learned those lessons, countries around the world generally conceded that we had, in anticipation of being in government, drafted a state-of-the-art Bill with plenty of teeth, plenty of thought and plenty of learning from bad experience.

Of course, we were not elected then, but when we were, I was fortunate enough to be on the Cabinet Sub-Committee that looked at translating our policy and our original Bill into a formal Government Bill. That was a salutary experience, in that one saw a good policy and a good Bill gradually weakened, despite the extremely good leadership of Lord Clark of Windermere, or David Clark as he was then, who was the Cabinet Minister responsible for the issue. He fought a subtle and clever campaign to salvage what he could and he got a better White Paper than one would have expected had one looked around the table and seen the various Cabinet Ministers who were prepared to undermine it.

Will the hon. Gentleman name them?

In the interests of freedom of information, let me say that those people are well known. They know who they are, as does anybody who has taken an interest in this subject. However, the issue was not the individuals; some of the Ministers around that table, like the Minister with us today, had long, honourable and interesting records. None the less, the Government’s overall attitude was ambiguous, to put it politely, and the legislation that we passed was much weaker than it should have been. The comparison was with the legislation of the Irish Government, who, like us, had learned from the experience of the 1980s, but who had done a much better job and introduced a much more forceful measure.

So the Government have form on the subject; they have always had mixed, ambiguous views. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn noted, there are plenty of Ministers, such as the Lord Chancellor, who would give the measure warm and sincere words; and there are probably good Departments doing good work individually in relation to it. I was interested in what my right hon. Friend said about the record of the Ministry of Defence.

Most particularly to the Government’s credit, they selected or appointed an excellent Information Commissioner in Mr. Richard Thomas. Without him the Act would have been far less effective. He is the one thing keeping it—and hope—afloat. It was a brave appointment by the Government, but the Act should be stronger, and we need it to be stronger. If we are interested in good government locally or nationally we need freedom of information; it makes for better decisions. It concentrates the mind, in all government bodies at every level, if the information that they have can be shared with the public. The more information there is, the better government is.

We need to strengthen the legislation rather than weaken it. The proposals, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, will undoubtedly have a weakening effect. The idea of incorporating the timing of consultation and consideration, and the aggregation—the bundling together—will inevitably weaken the legislation. It will do so not in itself, because the sums and timings concerned are small, but because it gives any authority, Minister, local government department or public agency that wishes not to reveal information a perfectly respectable, wholly legal and unchallengeable way of refusing any request. That will completely sink the legislation.

There are several things about freedom of information that are very important, including empowerment of the individual. Most of the individual requests—the 60 per cent. that have been referred to—are fairly uncontentious. However, they are very important for enabling the individuals concerned to get a grip on their lives, by finding out what is on police or Army records—the things that give a person a sense of identity or of participating in their own life. Those aspects of the matter are important and probably will not be affected by the regulations often or much; they will not be used in relation to them. They will be used in the public sphere of journalists, politicians and people who are crusading on an issue; it is their activities that will be caught, easily, without the need for the relevant bodies even to break step. They will sweep up, if they wish to; many of them will not, and it is not right to make a doomsday speech, claiming that this is the end of the legislation. The Act will continue to be applied throughout the country, but anything that is painful for the Government or contentious—the cutting-edge issues that make the Act so important—will not even be at issue. It will be possible to ignore them, and that is wrong. It will make for worse government, at local and national level.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have asked the reason for the change to the regulations, and I am sure that the Government believe—under pressure from the Treasury, with the new spending round—that it is to do with cost. However, that is laughable. We have always under-financed the Act, from day one. We should have spent a huge amount of money that was comparable, say, to what went into advertising the delights of the national lottery. If we had had that sort of advertising campaign, about the potential of the Act and the relevance of freedom of information to the lives of people and communities, it would not have cost a huge sum but it would have changed public awareness and use of the measure. We have never put money behind it, and the idea of cutting a few million pounds by reducing the number of requests is shameful. Hon. Members have rightly complimented the Minister on her integrity, but I hope that she will swallow the part of her speech that argues the change is being made on financial grounds. That is an appalling and laughable argument that bears no scrutiny. The sums involved are nugatory compared with the political and democratic benefits flowing from the Act.

On the financial side, which is of course only one narrow aspect of the matter, does not the Freedom of Information Act, properly applied, save public money by revealing excesses and improper expenditure, thus improving central and local government?

Of course; the hon. Gentleman is completely right. The Act can do that, although not invariably or inevitably. It saves money by helping Government to understand and properly debate important decisions, and avoid those that would be wrong, misguided or costly. Indirectly, it can have the effect that he mentioned. We see examples of that happening all over the world under other regimes, and it is certainly true here.

Money is not the explanation of what is proposed, and it cannot really be that our wonderful civil service or local authority officers are so burdened that they cannot deal with a few requests; the numbers are small, and in a really participatory democracy the legislation would be used much more, which is perhaps what the Government fear. The idea that we should not welcome that effect is nonsense. It is a question not of price, but of value: what value do we put on our democracy and the scrutiny of it? That is what we are discussing. Behind it, we are discussing a yet bigger issue. In the current generation, Parliament is getting weaker and weaker in relation to Governments who are growing more and more mighty. We have almighty Government and a Parliament that in its recent manifestations over the past 20 or 50 years—certainly over the past 100 years—has been getting weaker.

The imbalance between the Executive and the legislature has reached a critical point. If we pass the regulations they will be only a small drop of water in the balance, but that will tip it in the wrong direction for Parliament and the public realm, and the investigative press. Heaven knows, with a few honourable local and national exceptions, we do not have a rigorous investigative press that fights on our behalf to scrutinise and call to account local or national government. Thank heavens for the few journalists and titles that do so, but we can never say at the moment that we have a rigorous press or Parliament. If the regulations go through, it will be much easier to neuter Parliament and anyone in the public realm who wants to ask difficult and pertinent questions. We would be fools to allow them to be passed.

I am sure, as every other right hon. and hon. Member who has spoken has said, that the Minister does not believe in the brief that she has before her. It will be difficult for her to present it. I hope that she will persuade her colleagues quietly to bury the regulations. They are not important financially, but they are very important to the quality of our parliamentary democracy.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on his introduction of the debate. Several eloquent speeches have given good reasons for opposing the regulations. It is heartening to find the spirit of ’97 alive and well among Labour Members; it is only a pity that that spirit appears to have been dampened in the inner circle of Government. I hope that the powerful speeches, particularly from Labour Members, will have some influence on the Minister and her colleagues. The arguments have considerable merit.

There were, in 1997, the year of reforming zeal, several constitutional changes, but my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) was right to say that before the Freedom of Information Act was even formalised there had been a process of rowing back from its original state. I remember talking to David Clark, who was a very good Minister and seems to me to have been the first Cabinet Minister to be sacked for attempting to implement his party’s manifesto too successfully. Nevertheless, the Act is in force, and works. Change is proposed not because it does not work, but because it does.

That represents a fundamental threat to those who now believe that information needs to be suppressed rather than released. It may be inevitable after a long time in government that people find more reasons to suppress information than to release it, because the information is about their record rather than that of a previous Government, but that is very sad. As Members have made clear today, releasing information is good for accountability, and it is a fundamental democratic right.

It is also the case that releasing information leads to better government and, as a matter of fact, to cost savings. I very much agree that worries about costs are secondary to the principles involved, but even on that narrow ground, releasing information can lead to cost savings. If we in this House do not have the ability through parliamentary questions or freedom of information to scrutinise Ministers and the decision-making process and to discover the facts that will lead to informed debate, what are we here for, and what possible incentive is there for the Government to behave in a way that is responsible, that gives good value for money and that bears in mind issues of accountability? Asking Ministers of any party or any Government to behave with absolute integrity when there is no proper way of finding out what they are doing is asking a great deal of them.

Why were the proposals made in the first place? Several reasons have been suggested. I shall refer to the one in the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs report of 13 June 2006. Baroness Ashton had been asked to elaborate on why the review was considered necessary, and she told the Committee that staff apparently

“are spending huge amounts of time simply finding files before we even get to the point of reading them”,

and that staff spent

“weeks and months…trying to find all of the information that is relevant.”

The Committee rightly concluded:

“We would be concerned if there were cases where public authorities were spending weeks finding information. Since authorities may already include this time within their calculations of chargeable limits, we do not consider that it would justify a review of the fees regulations, but it would demonstrate a serious shortcoming in some public authorities’ records management systems.”

That is drily but pertinently put. It succinctly demolished Baroness Ashton’s argument.

The Select Committee demolished Baroness Ashton’s argument, and it is up to the Government to demolish the arguments of those who are opposed to the regulations. In a letter to Lord Falconer on 11 December last year, the BBC stated:

“The BBC believes these proposals would dramatically curtail the ability of BBC journalists and others to put into the public domain material which merits disclosure in the public interest. In this way the proposed changes would actually obstruct the aim of increasing openness and transparency in public life that lies behind the government’s introduction of FOI.”

That is a succinct summary of what Members have said in this debate.

Of course, the BBC would be caught by the aggregation proposal as well. Presumably, if one BBC journalist were to submit a request that took the organisation to the limit, the BBC, our primary investigative organ of the media, would be prevented from putting in further requests for three months. That is what the regulations suggest, and of course it is completely ludicrous. It would put the BBC’s ability to submit FOI requests on a par with an individual who may wish, quite properly, to look at their Army records. No one wishes to restrict that in any way, but to compare the two is, frankly, not sensible. The BBC has an entirely different role, as do the rest of our media, our campaigning organisations and, dare I say it, Members of Parliament and others in public life who hold the Government to account. That is part of our role, and it should not be compromised.

The ease with which requests could be rejected if the proposals go through unamended is bizarre. I believe that that is the word that the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) used. “Insidious” is the word that I would more readily choose. There is already a £600 limit—a so-called appropriate limit—for requests made of central Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, there is a question whether that is an appropriate limit in any case, but even if it is, we are now told that the costs attributable to considering a request will be capped at £400, and the costs attributable to consulting will also be capped at £400. Therefore, a request that is simply considered and consulted on could exceed the limit before its merits are even considered. I am sure that if a request is particularly difficult, there will be no difficulty in consulting a large number of civil servants and Ministers, all of whose time will add up quickly to £400.

Let us be in no doubt as to what the proposal is. It is a method of stopping any freedom of information request that is embarrassing or difficult from getting off square one. That is what it is about; that will be the result. Other Members were generous in saying that that is unintentional. Unfortunately, I do not agree.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Government insisted on their regulations, they could constructively allow appeals to the commissioner on applications that are turned down, and allow a public interest defence to be raised? Without those, the whole thing would be a disaster.

That would certainly be better than nothing, but it would be dangerous. First, the Government have shown no commitment to a proper public interest test. We saw that when the original Bill was watered down. Secondly, the commissioner, for whom I have tremendous respect as a matter of fact, is already overawed by the amount of work that he has to undertake. The hon. Gentleman’s suggestions would be the best of a bad job, but by no means a satisfactory consequence of the regulations.

I am afraid that the pendulum has begun to swing back against freedom of information. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase put his finger on it exactly: it is not in the bloodstream. That is a good way of putting it. The pendulum has swung back as far as the Government are concerned—some civil servants and Ministers never wanted freedom of information in the first place. It has swung back, dare I say it, in this House with the absurd proposal to exempt Members of Parliament from the Act. That came to notice thanks to David Hencke of The Guardian. Nobody else had picked up on it, and I intend to oppose it all the way through—it must be resisted.

The swinging back of the pendulum is shown by the fact that the House of Commons Commission, which is supposed to represent us, resisted for two years a modest freedom of information request of mine to break down the travel costs of MPs. It fought that at vast cost to this House in barristers’ fees and so on, and it lost. Next week—by Valentine’s day—it is required to produce the information, but it fought for two years against that modest request.

Unfortunately, people are resisting the basic culture of freedom of information. I had hoped that we had changed in 1997, but we are rowing back. Those who are in this room are well known as defenders of freedom of information. We must ensure that those outside this room, elsewhere in this House, feel equally strongly about it.

Before I sit down, let me make a plea directly to the Minister. I served with her on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I have tremendous respect for her. I say that genuinely, not as a debating point. Members will know that I do not say such things unless I mean them. I do not believe, knowing as I do where she is coming from, that she can possibly believe that the regulations are the correct way forward. Whatever else she has to say today, I hope that she will be able to convince her colleagues in the Government that the proposals are indefensible. They will do the Government no good in terms of their standing with the public, and they will ultimately lead to worse government. I believe that she knows that in her heart of hearts. The proposals are an attempt to kick the legs from under the Freedom of Information Act, and the Liberal Democrats want no part of that.

I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on opening the debate so ably. Obviously, open government is less secretive. It is better government, and there is more public involvement and public trust. Decisions taken in secret that remain secret hardly lead to good or better public services and better value for money for the taxpayer. Open government actually costs much less.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) mentioned the millennium dome, which was a total disaster financially. One could add to that the foot and mouth crisis, the NHS information technology fiasco, the Child Support Agency meltdown and the Criminal Records Bureau problems, all of which have cost large amounts of money. Much of that expenditure could have been avoided if there had been more open, less secretive government. Extra scrutiny of public expenditure through FOI can result in big savings in public money, and that point was made by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) a moment ago.

The Act is working reasonably well. I would not say that it was working perfectly—the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) was right when he said that quite a lot can be done to try to improve the legislation. There are delays at every stage. Whitehall Departments continually extend their original consideration beyond the 20-day deadline, and continually extend their internal reviews. When requests have been made and turned down twice, they go to the Information Commissioner and often sit in a six-month queue in Warrington before they are even considered. I urge the Minister to devote Government energy to tackling some of the problems to strengthen the public’s right to access public information, rather than finding ways to restrict that right.

A number of hon. Members have made it clear that the legislation is not costing a great deal. The report by the consultant from Frontier Economics came up with a figure of £35.5 million for the cost across the public sector, including the Information Commissioner and the tribunal. That is not a vast amount; in fact, it is a small sum. Let us compare that with what the Government spend every year on the Central Office of Information: it is about 8 per cent. of the cost of the COI. That puts that into perspective. The National Audit Office, in a report on 14 December, pointed out that the Government could save £660 million by completely restructuring their office supplies procurement. When we consider the cost of freedom of information in that context, this is a small sum, as was made clear by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher).

The upper limits of £600 and £450 are not often reached. The Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs has recommended that no changes be made. The Information Commissioner stated that the fees regime was working reasonably well. He went on to say that it had

“all the advantages of being simple, clear and straightforward and not being a deterrent.”

Why change the system? Why, indeed. Of course, the Government have to bear down on costs. I understand that the Department for Constitutional Affairs has received a pretty miserable settlement from the Chancellor for the next financial year. It has to have a beady eye on areas of expenditure where costs can be driven down—we accept that. However, a saving of roughly £12 million—just 4 per cent. of the cost of the COI—means that I do not think that we are talking about cost. Are we talking about abuse of the system? Manifestly, we are not. There is evidence that some commercial organisations have been getting carried away, but that could be dealt with separately. Is the system delivering what it is meant to deliver? It is working reasonably well, despite the flaws.

If one looks at various local newspapers and how they run campaigns to try to extract information from local bodies, one comes across a lot of examples. Indeed, a number of hon. Members have pointed out examples already. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills referred to two local newspapers, while the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale referred to his local newspaper. I have had a look at one of the newspapers from my part of the world, the Cambridge Evening News. I asked for some examples of news that has broken thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and there have been a number of interesting stories.

In November 2006, the Cambridge Evening News ran a story about how 30 police officers and 26 members of civilian police staff in Cambridgeshire were on long-term leave due to illness. In June 2006, a story was run, again based on FOI, about the cost of interpreters to the Cambridgeshire police: it was more than £700,000 a year, the equivalent of 35 extra bobbies on the beat. In May 2006, through information that had previously been refused, the newspaper discovered:

“Stop-and-searches by police led to almost 200 arrests in Cambridge last year, with nearly a quarter of those in the city centre.”

The paper has run various campaigns that are linked to the health service, and in March 2006 it discovered:

“Hospital bosses raised more than £1 million from their car parks last year at Addenbrooke’s and the adjacent Rosie Maternity Hospital.”

It also ran a story in February 2005 about violence and intimidation being part of daily life for staff at Addenbrooke’s, with more than 170 incidents of aggression against those staff, with many being punched, bitten, kicked and spat at.

All that information would not have come out were it not for the Act. Hon. Members have given numerous other national examples of how the Act has been used. The right hon. Member for Islwyn pointed out that there are dozens of examples in his former Department, the Ministry of Defence, of how the Act was used by members of the public and outside organisations to access information.

So, if we ask, “Why change the system?”, the answer is simple. Ministers want to curtail the flow of information. Maybe they are embarrassed that too many revelations have been coming out of Government. Surely the changes in the regulations will transform the working of the Act. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills pointed out, the reading, consideration and consultation with lawyers proposals will mean that many more requests will hit the limit. Ministers will effectively be able to stop any request that they feel is inconvenient. It will be, as the right hon. Member for Islwyn pointed out, a charter for public servants who want to be obstructive. Tens of thousands of requests will be removed from the system altogether.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central mentioned the Irish example. Ireland introduced various amendments to the Irish Freedom of Information Act in 2003, which included the introduction of a range of fees. In her annual report for 2004, the Irish Information Commissioner reported that following the introduction of fees and changes similar to those proposed here, requests for non-personal information declined by 75 per cent. She said that the decline in the use of the Act went far beyond what the Government intended when they decided to introduce fees and called for a review of the scale and structure of the charges. That is what happened in Ireland after similar changes to those proposed by the Government.

Let us consider the impact of aggregation. A number of hon. Members have mentioned it and its impact on specialist reporters. They have also discussed the impact of the new acting in concert rule, which would mean that the whole staff of a newspaper would be aggregated and the newspaper could be restricted to one FOI request a month. If the newspaper in my region that carried out the campaigns I mentioned earlier had been restricted to one request a month, many of those stories would never have been brought to the attention of the public.

The Society of Editors has been outspoken on the subject. It has made it clear that it believes

“that the proposals on charging and attempts to reduce the level of information requests are fundamentally flawed. They would undermine the ideas behind the legislation and interrupt valuable progress.”

The inimitable Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom of Information has used language that is far stronger.

The 12-week consultation has been ridiculously short. I understand that after the process ends on 8 March, the regulations will be introduced on 19 March—an even shorter period. I join with other hon. Members in urging the Minister to think again. Any legislation that is virtually brand new needs more time before any worthwhile assessment of it can be made. We need much more time for a proper, mature assessment of the workings of the legislation. The regulations would effectively neuter and destroy the Act, and I urge the Minister to use all her persuasive powers as an eminent, learned QC to talk to her colleagues and to tell them that the Government must think again.

I am grateful for the personal comments made about me; I am also glad that this excellent debate has taken place.

Let us remind ourselves that the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) is a member of a party that has not brought in any kind of freedom of information legislation. The measure has been six manifestos in the making, and there was no doubt an internal struggle to get it through. It is now law, and it has been in force for about two years. It is utter nonsense to suggest that there has been any kind of summersault after that length of struggle. It is incorrect.

For the first time ever, a full statutory right to know was introduced. We must recognise how far we have come from the situation under the Tories, when the public had no right whatever to request information held by a public authority. The Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs was right to compliment the Government on a measure that has been what it called a significant success. I agree.

Will the Minister give way?

I apologise, but I do not have the time.

Individuals wanting to find out about the performance of the local NHS trust can do so; local newspapers wanting to know how their council is allocating money to local services can do so; and national journalists searching for information about the most embarrassing things—payments made under the common agricultural policy, or whatever else it might be—can do so. The Freedom of Information Act has contributed hugely to healthy debate. It covers 100,000 public authorities, and it takes in myriad bodies that affect our constituents’ daily lives in a tangible way. It is fully retrospective; 63,000 pieces of information have been released; and 60 per cent. of all applications are allowed and answered in full.

In an Adjournment debate recently secured by a Conservative Member, the House heard of failures in more than one health authority. My Department went out of its way to ensure that those health authorities knew that we intended those queries to be answered. That is how committed we are to the legislation.

When the fees regulations were debated in Committee, it was announced that they would be reviewed within 12 to 18 months of their implementation to see how they were working. That was right and sensible. Good governance requires us to review the practical operation of legislation and to make changes if appropriate. I am very much in favour of a great increase in post-legislative scrutiny, of which this is a good example.

The review, which was of course independent, was undertaken by Frontier Economics. The entire findings were published, which included suggestions of a far more draconian nature than the current one. If the changes were about enabling central Government and the wider public sector to avoid high-profile, contentious or difficult requests, we would impose a charge. That had a destructive effect in Ireland, which saw a 75 per cent. reduction in the number of applications, and we calculated that it would cut by about 44 per cent. the time spent by officials on these matters if we were to do that. Clearly and obviously, what is proposed is not about restricting the operation of the Act. It is about targeting the approach; a tiny minority of requests impose disproportionate burdens on the Government, some of which, frankly, take weeks to deal with.

Let me deal with some of the detail. We intend to increase the number of activities that will count toward the appropriate limit of £600 for reading, consultation and time. If that happens, it will be subject to guidance and a framework. It will be subject to principle, and the application of those principles will be subject to appeal. It is not a situation in which public authorities can cook up some means of extending the time that they take over an inquiry to obfuscate the progress of information that they want to conceal.

Cases will be fully appealable, and the framework will be totally transparent. It would take a huge leap of imagination to link that transparent way of considering the value of work on dealing with requests with trying to get rid of the most embarrassing, contentious or high-profile cases. There is no connection. I repeat that it is all subject to appeal. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) is wrong—he will be glad to hear it—because there will still be a duty on the public authority, even in those situations, to try to help individuals to refine their requests so that they come within the time limit.

Another argument was raised about ministerial time, as if what is proposed is the thin end of the wedge to ensure that we do not give answers when we should. Ministerial time is frequently involved, but I have not heard a shred of evidence that it is abused. It is charged at the ludicrous rate of £25 an hour when it is really worth zillions. Truly, either there is evidence that we are abusing the use of ministerial time or people should simply accept what has been happening since the Act came into force, and that there will be no change in how it will function because it is part of the process.

It is mad that we do not charge for reading. All hon. Members ask parliamentary questions. There is no guidance to say that reading time should not be included when we come to the time limit on answering parliamentary questions. It usually is included. Why, all of a sudden, is it important to exclude reading from freedom of information requests? It lacks logic.

With aggregation, the applicant is pursued blindly—I mean that people do not refuse something because of who is asking. It means nothing more than that. Under existing legislation, public authorities have the right to aggregate similar requests. To do that, they need to know the identity of the requester. There is no new principle here as to identifying the requester.

The public sector is right to expect top-rate research skills from those whose jobs depend on them. The careers of journalists, professional campaigners and researchers are based on being able to ask clear, unambiguous and precise questions, but they do not seem to do it that often in freedom of information territory. I shall not give specific examples, but a reasonable analogy is a question about all the information since 1066 on the use of the wheel, when what the inquirer—the professional journalist—is really driving at is how many grants were given to car manufacturers in certain years. Such deliberately wide inquiries can take weeks of officials’ time, which is priced at £25 an hour.

Will the Minister give way?

I would, but I have very little time.

Of course, such activity costs the Government infinitely more than £25 an hour. Such open-ended trawling and unspecific and unfocused inquiry are the problem.

I have freedom of information in my blood—my blood group is not AO; it is FOI—but my blood gets hot when I think of my constituents in Redcar having to subsidise, on my Department’s estimate, the BBC’s research budget by about £1 million a year. That is the result of open-ended questions being asked in that trawling way. I get hot about the fact that the legislation was introduced with the intention of the Government being very open. Abuse is too strong a word, but it is not far from the truth when it comes to some requests. We are having to take the blame for trying to restrict the impact on public finances. That is completely the wrong approach. Our intention is to do no more than tailor how the legislation works so that it gives the best value to the most people in freedom of information terms, instead of concentrating a disproportionate cost on a few people who could get the information from anywhere else or could perfectly easily, by consulting the public body or working on their own, narrow the focus of their inquiries rather than take huge and disproportionate swathes of officials’ time.

We have had an excellent debate, which I welcome. The consultation process continues until 8 March. I would be furious with my staff if they had not fixed a date for the regulations, but that is no indication that the Government do not intend to take seriously into account everything that is put forward in the consultation. I have it in writing—I shall say so to put it beyond doubt—that the terms of the consultation are what they are, but the Government will take into account all that is put forward in the consultation process. We have so far received a rather small group of responses to the consultation—by 1 February, there was a total of 21. I fervently hope for a larger number. The responses so far are fairly evenly split, although that may not be the eventual outcome. I glad to have had this debate. Let us make the consultation hear everybody’s views, so that we can come to a measured decision.

By way of some background information, my interest in this subject was prompted largely by an appalling incident in Swadlincote in my constituency. In broad daylight at midday, an armed gang attacked a security delivery replenishing a cash machine at a Tesco store and in the course of committing their crime shot the security worker who was delivering the cash twice. Thankfully, gun crime in South Derbyshire is extraordinarily rare. The impact that that incident had on the local community can only be imagined. Looking further at that incident led me to learn a great deal more about the issue. First, I learnt that there had been a number of other incidents—not with the same level of violence, but nearly so—in other stores around my area. I had noted them, but had not taken them as seriously as I certainly should have.

As an example of the violence used in such attacks, someone who observed an attack at Measham in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) stated:

“When the courier placed the cassette in the vehicle hatch, she saw two attackers and ran into the store. Armed with a handgun, one of the attackers ran after her, knocked her to the ground and dragged her by the neck back to the vehicle. She was made to stay down on her knees with the gun pointed at her head while the attackers demanded money to be thrown out. The courier was kicked in the face during the attack and sustained seriously facial injuries. Her jaw was broken in three places and she had to undergo surgery.”

That was a few miles away from the incident in my constituency. It was the same type of crime and, I am afraid, was clearly committed by the same gang responsible for the incident in Swadlincote.

Such attacks are increasingly common. Last year, 1,033 attacks were made on those who replenish cash machines, which is an increase of 24 per cent. on the previous year. In 206 cases, firearms were produced and, in some instances, used. Often, other crimes were clearly linked to the offence. Predictably, the theft of a vehicle was often involved, as were firearms or knife offences and other matters relating to the laundering of money collected during the crime.

There is increasing anxiety in the security industry about the appalling prevalence of such crimes against people who are simply carrying out their lawful activities and providing support for part of our normal lives—I will come to that again later—and I give credit to the union that represents many security workers, the GMB. The scale of the cash transit business is £1.4 billion a day. An increasing number of machines are needed to fulfil our needs as customers. There are more than 58,000 in this country; the number has gone up by 4,000 in the past 12 months. The average machine dispenses between £5,000 and £20,000 a day. It is no surprise that they have to be so frequently replenished to meet our need as customers for cash to spend on the goods that we want to buy.

This subject has attracted interest before in Parliament. There was a useful Adjournment debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin) last April and there have been two early-day motions on the subject, including one tabled recently, which I urge hon. Members to sign.

As I mentioned, the Tesco store in Swadlincote was the target. I asked Tesco what measures it has taken in relation to the issue and it provided a useful note. I also asked about the prevalence of attacks on stores. In 2006, 50 Tesco cashpoints were attacked and since the start of this year—in only one month—there have been a further nine attacks on Tesco cash machines alone and three injuries during that month. Like many other retailers, cash machines form an important part of Tesco’s business and it is increasingly concerned about the risks to its staff—many of whom are caught up in those crimes—and to customers who are visiting stores. Of course, it is also concerned about those who provide that critical service and allow its stores to operate cash machines.

What has been done to date? Useful operations have taken place at a local level in some parts of the country. In Merseyside, Operation Matrix focuses on the protection of those delivering cash and on intelligence activity. The operation has yielded a reduction of 60 per cent. in these appalling offences. There has also been some improvement in the technology of protective responses. Cartridges full of blank paper or notes are used to persuade criminals that they might catch something that is in fact valueless. Dye-stained cartridges have also been used, which contaminate the criminal who opens them and makes the cash unusable. Those measures have some by-products. There is evidence in the Swadlincote incident that the immediately preceding attack yielded a negative for the criminals and, as a result, they used additional violence against the guard in Swadlincote to make absolutely sure that they got a cartridge that contained real cash, which is what they were after. Those attempts at protection can yield additional violence from the criminals involved.

In my own area—I will turn to some of the actions that I want us to take—there has been a focus on the use of cross-force intelligence activity. The east midlands special operations unit has been set up partly in response to the O’Connor review on level 2 policing provision in the east midlands. My hon. Friend the Minister will be familiar with the O’Connor review, which showed all the east midlands forces to be lacking in capability in that area. That unit has recently been set up and one of its first initiatives was to participate in steps to track down the criminals involved in the appalling incident in Swadlincote and others in the area.

I have long shared a common constituency border with my hon. Friend and he will agree that our areas are particularly vulnerable to cash-in-transit crimes because they are at the nexus of the midlands motorway system: the M1, the M69, and the M42. Does he agree that in relation to the cross-border co-operation that he is describing, it would be helpful if the finance for that unit could be extended beyond when it is due to expire, which is during next year? The unit is making progress and it would be helpful to have a longer period over which it could make plans.

My hon. Friend intelligently anticipates one of the points that I will be putting to the Minister and one of the actions I will be asking him to take. It is certainly true that the unit, which has only just been set up with Home Office funding—let us give full credit to the Home Office’s assistance in establishing the unit—has funding guaranteed only until 2008. The valuable work that it has already undertaken in dealing with organised crime of that nature might be harmed if its funding is terminated or significantly reduced. We are talking about a collection of east midlands police forces that are already stretched for cash. Therefore, turning the unit’s needs back on the forces involved and saying, “Well, you fund it on your own,” would certainly place its extraordinarily important work in jeopardy.

Let me turn to what we can do about what is an increasingly prevalent criminal activity that has recently had an effect on a number of hon. Members’ constituencies. The first point has already been mentioned. We are talking about organised criminal activity. The gangs involved are not speculative criminals, who look around for an opportunity to collect money. They are organised and operate across a wide area, and the police response needs to be both protective and intelligence led. The intelligence activity requires dedicated specialist resources.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and I echo his comments on the excellent work done by the GMB in the area that we are discussing. Although I appreciate that the police can do much to solve the crimes, many preventive measures could also be taken. We should not put all the onus on the police. For example, the financial services industry has its part to play. Many shipments are made at the same time each day, every day. Does my hon. Friend agree that that gives criminals a perfect opportunity to plan their attacks?

I clearly have a collection of extremely wise colleagues present, who are picking out points that I shall make later in my speech and identifying them themselves. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend says. That point came up in the Swadlincote incident and I shall touch on it in a moment.

The first point relates to intelligence-based policing and a focus on the resources that that needs. Secondly, in today’s age we can do better in technical terms in linking the security business with the police for incidents of the type that I have described. The vehicles have global positioning systems in them, which allows people to map precisely where they are. They have an alarm system that links the vehicle back to the headquarters of the organisation and allows people there to say, “This vehicle is being interfered with. An operative is being attacked.” What is needed is a relationship to a local police force that can respond in such instances. I do not believe that it is beyond wit to devise a communications system that makes direct communication quicker. I am not saying that that would have prevented the incident in Swadlincote from happening. Swadlincote police station was about 45 seconds’ drive from the store where it happened. Swadlincote is a small town—nowhere is very far away—but the police station was very close. Of course, if we could short-circuit the system whereby a call is routed back to Group 4 and then to the local police and make it possible for the police—in this case, the Derbyshire force—to be aware of an incident happening and respond rapidly, that would make the window that the criminals have a little narrower.

The other issue is cash-protection measures. I have touched on some of them. Again, I think that there is scope for co-operative work between the security industry and the Government to identify tools that are particularly useful in nullifying the value of cash that is taken through the criminal activity that I have described.

The third area is planning controls. People put in a cash machine where they think that it is most convenient for a shopper. They do not think about the needs of the people who replenish the cash. That is an important criterion that should be insisted on. If people are installing a machine, they need to place it very close to vehicular access, so that someone can load the machine safely, without having to walk halfway across a car park, exposing themselves to the possibility of attack by a criminal who has planned that. Again, if we could narrow the window of opportunity, that would be excellent.

I have to say that I have been disappointed by the responses that I have received on the issue to date; I have raised it previously. Thus far, it is felt that it is not necessary to give clear guidance that says exactly where a cash machine should be placed. I think that the industry itself could take action by insisting that, if a company is going to replenish a machine, it should be safely located at a point where its operatives can reach it efficiently.

Clearly, there is also an opportunity to install closed circuit television. Tesco, in response to the incident in Swadlincote, invested in CCTV. Obviously, the men involved were disguised and masked. Nevertheless, CCTV would make it a little more likely that key clues in an incident could be identified so that the miscreants could be pursued afterwards.

On that point, my hon. Friend might be interested to know that one of the three such attacks in Brighton and Hove last year—in one of which a handgun was used—was taped only because a public transport vehicle passing by managed to capture it, which was of great assistance to the police. Does he agree that local authorities should do their bit by installing more CCTV in such places?

Again, I agree entirely. There is obviously a role for the retailer. Tesco has decided to invest in additional CCTV at the relevant locations. That is necessary, but other agencies could assist.

Now I want to touch on the point that my hon. Friend made earlier—randomising delivery arrangements. In Swadlincote, the Tesco staff told me that they could set their clock by the delivery of the cash. Unfortunately, if they could do that, so could the criminals. I have suggested, and Tesco took the initiative with Group 4 to suggest itself that they alter the routines and make the time when the cash turns up less predictable.

Randomising is of course a huge step in preventive terms, but in some cases there has been evidence of internal collusion involving members of staff of large establishments. That still needs to be tackled, does it not?

Sadly, that is undoubtedly true. I must admit that it did occur to me when I saw how frequent attacks on Tesco were in my own area that there must be some collusion in one organisation or another. I am assured that that was not the case but, obviously, internal intelligence, from within large organisations, can be a source of criminal activity.

My last point is that the criminal activity that I have described is clearly a matter for the Serious Organised Crime Agency—SOCA. One of the issues that causes many campaigners to despair is the continued classification of the activity as, in effect, a business crime. It is not a business crime. These are often violent, always organised criminal activities, which are based on criminality beforehand, in the sense that they normally involve the theft of a motor vehicle at the very least to facilitate the crime, and spawn further criminal activity afterwards. There has been a tendency to regard these as crimes against a business—a little akin to shoplifting or something of that type. These are serious crimes, committed by evil people, who, as I have tried to show, put at risk the lives of the workers, customers, shop staff and others who may be bystanders at the time. The issue should be one of the dedicated SOCA priorities. I hope that on that and the other points the Minister can give me some reassurance.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing the debate and on the customarily clear way in which he presented his points. It seems to me that we are becoming good friends in Westminster Hall on a variety of issues. I also welcome my hon. Friends the Members for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) and for Hove (Ms Barlow) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), and thank them for attending the debate.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire stated, this is not the first occasion in recent times that the issue has been raised. As recently as the middle of last year, the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who was then an Under-Secretary in the Home Office, addressed the issue in response to a debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin).

I know that the deep concern that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire expresses on the issue was prompted by a vicious attack in his constituency. I understand that the villains who perpetrated that particularly nasty attack have been arrested and charged, so that is one good point. We want to ensure, should anyone commit such a crime, that they are arrested and charged, so I am pleased about that. I would like to make it clear to my hon. Friend from the start that the Government find any crime that involves violence or guns unacceptable. We are sending out a strong message that crime of that nature has no place in the community or on the street, and perpetrators can expect to receive considerable custodial sentences. On the specific point about SOCA, if there is evidence of links to organised crime, SOCA will take that into account and support local police forces where appropriate.

I pay tribute to the British Security Industry Association and its chief executive, David Dickinson, for the excellent work that it and its members are doing to raise the profile of the problem of cash-in-transit attacks, and for the initiatives that they are developing, such as the safer cash initiative. I had the pleasure of opening its new headquarters in Worcester, and when I was there I saw that initiative in operation. I have no doubt that it is a valuable tool with which to tackle CIT attacks.

Like my hon. Friend, I congratulate the GMB union on its work to raise the profile of the issue and on its representation of its members. I understand, however, that there is frustration within the security industry community, which feels that insufficient priority is given to the issue. That concern is shared by my hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who recently met representatives from the security industry, the GMB union and the BSIA. As a result of that meeting, he wrote to the chief officers of police forces in the areas where such attacks are most prevalent to establish how they are responding to the issue. We have received responses from all the forces concerned, and my officials at the Home Office are analysing them to outline what the next steps should be and how we can take a strategic approach to reducing the incidence of such attacks.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire that GPS technology could be deployed to enable improved contact with and response from the police. That is an important point: the greater use of technology would enable us to tackle the problem more effectively. The liaison between the GPS on vans and local police forces is being looked into. The responses that we have had from police forces suggest that there is now more scope than ever for the industry to make use of tracking technology to improve the capture of offenders, recover cash and deter people from thinking that they can commit this kind of offence and get away with it. My officials will discuss all that with representatives from the industry when they next meet to ensure that the Government play their part. I reassure my hon. Friend that we very much take on board his points about GPS technology and that we are working with the industry and the police to implement them.

I am glad to hear that my hon. Friend regards the work of the east midlands regional intelligence unit so highly. There is no doubt that the capability of the unit has contributed greatly to the response to organised crime. He asked about funding. In the 2005 Budget, the Chancellor made available £10 million for each of the periods 2006-07 and 2007-08 to tackle the gap that has been identified in the police’s response to level 2, or regional, crime—crime that falls between volume crime and serious organised crime.

In consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers, we agreed that the money should be used to create nine regional intelligence units around the country. As the east midlands region has a particularly acute problem with level 2 crime, it was agreed that a regional operational capability should be developed there as well. The funding allocated to the unit was initially £2.5 million for 2006-07, and ACPO proposes expenditure of £3.5 million for 2007-08, with additional funding to be provided by regional forces. My hon. Friend will know that funding after that will be subject to the spending review, so no longer-term funding decisions have been made. However, I have heard my hon. Friend’s point.

Bearing in mind that the comprehensive spending review has been made in the Home Office, unlike in many other Departments, is not there scope for a longer-term commitment to be made?

All I can say to my hon. Friend is that, whatever overall budget allocations have been made, there is always room for discussion on these issues. The point of these debates is to listen to what is said and to reflect on it. That is what I am saying to him without giving any commitment to future spending.

My hon. Friend also talked about how we could use the planning system to reduce the areas of vulnerability for CVIT—cash and valuables in transit—crews. Planning is a key area that we need to consider closely. In supermarkets, docking stations can be integrated into the security measures to provide a secure and safe environment for the delivery of cash.

Will the Minister comment on parking spaces outside outlets and the importance of local authorities in their provision?

That is a good point. I know that the issue of parking spaces to deliver the cash is often raised. We are discussing that with local authorities to see whether we can reach a more satisfactory solution that will benefit local parking arrangements and give greater security to those who deliver cash.

There are 55,000 ATMs in a variety of places that often require security personnel to move large amounts of cash over pavements and through shopping precincts. Obviously, those personnel are being put in vulnerable positions. We are trying to use the planning system to address the vulnerability of cash in transit. Designing out crime should therefore be central to the planning and delivery of new developments.

The Department for Communities and Local Government and the Home Office jointly published “Safer Places: The Planning System and Crime Prevention”, which provides the guidance that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire mentioned on the layout of buildings and spaces to reduce the risk of crime. Local authorities and others involved in new developments should take those considerations into account to design out crime.

Surely the advice should be absolutely specific. The document, although welcome, is a general one, and we should focus clearly on the location of cash machines and safe access to them.

Police forces themselves include specialist crime prevention design advisers. One of the points that the guidance makes is that crime prevention should be a key part of any new development. Many authorities that have good practice will involve the specialist crime prevention design advisers in their work to try to secure the outcome that my hon. Friend seeks.

Has the Minister seen a press release that many hon. Members have received from a company that discovered a technical breakthrough: the use of dyes? Will he reiterate, for the benefit of everybody, that there is no single, simple, technical solution? The problem with dyeing can be seen by considering the example of £20 notes. They say:

“I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of”.

Many banks, including the Bank of England, are replacing dyed notes with proper notes, so there is no single solution. What the Government are doing with the BSIA, the GMB and others is to show that the problems are complex and that only complex solutions can deal with them.

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. As he says, we are working with the BSIA and we are talking to the GMB and everyone involved because there is no single solution. The use of dye or other technical methods might help, but there is no one particular solution. All of us need to work together to try to find a reasonable solution.

In conclusion, we are working hard to reduce robbery. This is an important area of work. There are ongoing discussions to try to reduce the risk of attack for ordinary security personnel who are going about their business delivering cash. We live in a society where cash moves around much more than it did before. All the points that have been made are important. We need to design out the problem and to work together to solve it. In addition, we must put out the clear message that people who perpetrate offences such as those that occurred in Swadlincote will be arrested and dealt with severely by the courts. As I said, I am pleased to report that those people have been arrested and charged, and we hope that they receive the sentences that they deserve.

I am pleased that this topic has been selected for debate so soon, because it is of outstanding importance. I had better hurry, because I believe that there will be a Division in the House at some stage. [Interruption.] In fact, here we go—

Order. Indeed, you spotted it before I did. A Division has been called, so I shall suspend the sitting.

As I was saying, I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for granting this debate on a matter that is of fantastic importance. What seems to have happened is that a nightmare in Zimbabwe has produced administrative and moral chaos in the Home Office. Letters have been sent to people threatening them with deportation when they cannot possibly mean that. We have in this country hundreds of thousands of illegal people, about whom the Government seem to know nothing and can do nothing. People from Zimbabwe who should not be here are allowed to stay, and people who have 100 per cent. British ancestry are being denied any right to stay here. They are being sent back to a country that has descended into tyranny and lawlessness, and from which they have severed all links.

As I hope the Minister knows, this debate arises from a letter written to me by one of her colleagues, in which he confirms that the brother of one of my constituents, Natasha Samways, of Goring on Thames, must return to Zimbabwe. He is called Mark Coleman, he is 28 years old, able-bodied, law-abiding and willing to work, but he is prevented from doing so because he is a failed asylum seeker. The letter that the Minister’s colleague sent to me concludes:

“In all circumstances we prefer that those with no basis to stay leave voluntarily, but should Mr. Coleman refuse to do so then his removal may be enforced.”

That seems to be a threat. We gather from the letter that if Mr. Coleman fails to leave, the intention of the British state is that he may be arrested, taken to an airport and returned to Zimbabwe by force.

Mr. Coleman is not alone in receiving that message about what the British state intends to do to people in his position. The Home Office has placed advertisements in The Zimbabwean, a London newspaper much read by the expatriate community, saying exactly this: “If you don’t have the right to stay, then you will be deported.” Before we turn to what the Home Office might mean by that threat, let us consider, without being too histrionic or dramatic, the fate that awaits people such as Mr. Coleman, and hundreds of others who find themselves in positions like his or even worse.

There is nothing left for Mr. Coleman in Zimbabwe. It is not only a murderous tyranny where journalists and opponents of the regime are arrested, beaten and jailed, as the Home Office immigration guidelines amply attest, but an economic disaster area. Thanks to Mugabe’s catastrophic policies, the Zimbabweans have inflation running at 1,218 per cent., and shortages of bread, medicines and other essentials, not to speak of an AIDS rate at 25 per cent. of the population. It is no wonder that Mr. Coleman’s immediate family have been forced to abandon their furniture manufacturing business and flee to Costa Rica. He had some more distant relatives, cousins who were farmers, but they, too, have been forced to flee. Thanks to Mugabe’s insane and arguably racist policies, they have been deprived of their land, with appalling consequences not only for white farmers like them, but for many black farmers and their employees.

I remember seeing the devastation in 2004 when I went to Zimbabwe with the indomitable Peta Thornycroft of The Daily Telegraph, one of the last foreign journalists still sending dispatches from Zimbabwe. I went to a farm outside Harare, and I remember interviewing an old couple as they were besieged by thugs from ZANU-PF. It was deeply moving talking to that elderly couple and seeing the old boy go to his cabinet where he kept treasured family heirlooms and things that connected his family with their roots in Essex. He brought out not just the medals that his father had won fighting for the British Crown, but his own British passport, which he held by virtue of being born in the British empire. He was very old by then; he died shortly afterwards and the farm was stolen. His children then died in tragic circumstances, too, and I remember his bewilderment at Her Majesty’s Government doing nothing to protect Her Majesty’s subjects, of whom he thought himself one.

I think that the Minister would agree that, when all is said and done, we stood by when Mugabe launched those pogroms. We did nothing. We allowed him to take away the livelihoods of thousands of farmers, including many British subjects and their descendants. Having stood by in such a way, I think it is extraordinary that we are telling the descendants of people who were driven out of their farms that they must now go back to Zimbabwe, when those farms have been ruined and stolen. It is a complete disgrace, and to use a phrase that the Prime Minister has used about our relations with Africa, it is a scar on the conscience of the Government. It is an act of apathy and betrayal that stands in ghastly contrast to our deluded intervention in Iraq—a country richly endowed with oil, although not, of course, with British farmers and their descendants.

I do not want the Minister or anybody to run away with the impression that this is purely about white farmers. Although they face persecution, all opponents of the Mugabe regime have faced persecution. Indeed, it is possible to argue—I am sure that the Home Office would make this case—that a returning white Zimbabwean might well be in huge danger, but he might be in less danger than other opponents of the Mugabe regime returning to Harare. There is clear evidence, of which I am sure the Minister is aware, that when Zimbabweans return to Harare airport, they face intimidation, abuse and even torture and jail. Of the 200 failed asylum seekers who were forcibly returned between November 2004 and July 2005, we know the identity and fates of about 20.

In several cases, there is evidence, which I think the Government accept, that there was torture. At least four individuals left Gatwick never to be heard of again and several ended up in the notorious and disease-infested Chikurubi jail. It is a measure of the seriousness with which the Government take human rights problems in Zimbabwe that of the 18,000 people from Zimbabwe who have applied for asylum in this country since 2000, between a third and a quarter have been accepted. Those who have been rejected have mainly vanished into the undergrowth and started to work illegally, but in pursuance of their targets and their desire to return failed asylum seekers, the Government have tried to repatriate some by force.

I should stress at this point that that is not always the wrong thing to do. I do not want the Minister to think that I am against repatriating anybody to Zimbabwe, because it is right that we should keep out, for instance, people from the ZANU-PF elite. It is crazy and disgusting that Mugabe can still go around the world, have his hand shaken by the now Leader of the House and go on shopping trips in western capitals.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the only people who can afford to come to this country legally from Zimbabwe tend to be people who are linked to the corrupt regime that runs that country? Because of the state of the economy, they tend to be the only people who can afford, through the strict rules we apply through our high commission, to apply for their student visa, work visa or whatever. The legitimate people who we want to come here simply cannot afford to.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people who are likely to come here will have access to considerable funds and are far more likely, therefore, to be linked to the regime. We have to do more to keep them out and discriminate against them. However, there will be people who face a real risk of persecution when they get back and it is quite rightly against British law to send them back in such circumstances. The difficulty with forced deportations to Zimbabwe—it is a very difficult problem—is that too often there have been reports of abuse.

On 18 October 2005, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal found that the procedures in place for enforced returnees at Harare airport exposed them to a real risk of ill-treatment at the hands of the CIO—the Central Intelligence Organisation—which is a secret police far more brutal and corrupt that the Securitate or the Stasi. The Government stopped forcible repatriation after that ruling, but they then contested the ruling and appealed against it. We are now awaiting the outcome of the Government’s appeal against the Asylum and Immigration and Tribunal ruling that asylum seekers cannot be forcibly sent back to Zimbabwe.

The AIT ruling still stands, and the Government have not yet come up with a better way back into Zimbabwe than via Harare airport, which is a problem. What will happen if the CIO spots people coming in, intercepts them there and subjects them to abuse? Can the Minister explain, in the name of all that is holy, why her colleague is sending out letters to people saying that they may be forcibly repatriated in circumstances in which the AIT has said that that must not happen? I would like to know how that is legally possible. When the Government say that

“his removal may be enforced”

in the letter I have here, dated October 2005, do they mean, “It may be enforced if we in the Home Office get our way in the courts.”? Is that what the Minister’s colleague means? If so, why does he not say so in the letter? Why does he not say to the person who is the subject of this deportation order—it seems to be an order—that it may be enforced subject to the winning of the case?

Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems, perversely, that the Government have it in for people from Zimbabwe? Last year, we had the bizarre experience of people legitimately coming to this country through the ancestral visa route and having their papers held up, sometimes for well over a year. They were not able to travel back to Harare to bury dead relatives. Many of us in the House came across this unbelievably cruel situation when people came to our surgeries saying, “What have we done? We are being persecuted in this country. We have come here under an established ancestral visa route and the Government are holding us on the basis of some fraud that was never proved.”

My hon. Friend is absolutely right again, and I congratulate him on the work that he has done on behalf of his constituents in securing their right to ancestral visas. I shall come to that point in a moment, but while the Minister consults her civil servants—quite rightly, in order that she may avail herself of the answer—I want to ram home this question: what did her colleague mean by his letter?

If I understand the position—and surely it must be true—the Government could well lose the case in the Court of Appeal, in which case, unless I miss my guess, a removal from this country might not be enforced. Or was the Minister involved saying that a removal could be enforced even if the Government lose the case? Is that what the Government are saying? Are they going to ride roughshod over the Court of Appeal? I would be very interested to know. Would it not be more honest to say that Mr. Coleman’s removal may or may not be enforced, depending on the outcome of the AA case before the Court of Appeal, and to add, “If we lose, we do not have a clue what we are going to do.”? That would be a more honest approach.

I cannot remember when I started, Mr. Cook. Did we start at 5 pm?

The hon. Member who brings the topic to the Chamber may take as long as is necessary to elucidate, but the termination time for this debate—if that is the hon. Gentleman’s query—is 5.26 pm.

I am grateful for that, Mr. Cook. I shall rattle through my final point to give the Minister plenty of time to reply.

Even if it were right to send Mr. Coleman back—this is the point on which I hope to concentrate the Minister’s mind—against the clear finding of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that forcible returnees can face torture, abuse and persecution, and to say that no account whatever should be taken of his legitimate fears about what would happen to him upon his return, there is another reason why we should look with favour on his case. That reason is the saddest and most difficult part of his case, but it could be easily rectified, because it affects such a tiny number of people. I know that hard cases make bad law, but I cannot believe that there are many people in exactly the same position as the brother of my constituent—that is to say, Mr. Coleman.

I do not know whether the Minister has had a chance to read some of the media coverage of the case.

indicated assent.

It is clear that the Minister will know what I am about to say. As has been widely documented, Mr. Coleman is of British ancestry. He has four British grandparents, yet he cannot claim an ancestral visa because all four grandparents were born in what was the British empire—three in India and one in South Africa. To give a flavour of their contribution to Britain and the British empire, I shall read out what Mr. Coleman’s sister wrote to me about her family history:

“Our father was born in the British Colony of Southern Rhodesia, while our paternal grandfather, a British citizen, holding a British passport, served the Crown in Southern Rhodesia during the Second World War. Our paternal great grandfather was commissioned by Queen Victoria as a surgeon and retired as a Lt. Colonel in India….our mother who was an Innes Pocock can trace her British ancestry back to 1160. Our mother was born in India in 1942, after our maternal grandmother was evacuated from Singapore when the Japanese landed. Our mother’s birth was registered with the British Consul in Bangalore. Her father, and our maternal grandfather, Eric Innes Pocock was born in British India, and his birth registered with the British Consul. His birth certificate clearly states that he was born of British parents, in British India and therefore a British subject by birth.”

They were people who served the British empire and the Crown. The truly extraordinary feature of Mr. Coleman’s antecedents is that all eight of his great grandparents were British, yet strangely, he does not qualify for British nationality or British citizenship.

As we look at the sweep of history and what has happened regarding Britain’s relations with Africa and the people whom we sent out to colonise Africa over the past 100 years, it should be possible to reflect the extraordinary circumstances that have left Mr. Coleman washed up on the beach, as it were, as the tide of empire has withdrawn. As the tide of Britain’s involvement with Africa has gone out, we have ceased to look after such people. We quite rightly supported majority rule, but then we did absolutely nothing to protect British interests and British farmers and their livelihoods when they were taken away by Mugabe. It seems extraordinary and very hard hearted that we can do nothing at this stage to protect someone who must be in a tiny minority. Mr. Coleman has a much more organic claim to British citizenship than many people who are here legally or illegally. I wonder whether the Minister can find it in her to discover some means of granting Mr. Coleman—through some compassionate device, which is surely available to her—the ancestral visa that he surely deserves, so that he can settle in this country, work and be a part of the economy, which is all that he desires to be.

I am grateful for this opportunity to explain the Government’s position in relation to both the case to which the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) referred and the situation on returns to Zimbabwe more generally. I congratulate him on securing this debate. It is clear from his presentation of his case that he feels genuinely and deeply about the matter. I assure him on behalf of the Government that we feel strongly about the situation in Zimbabwe, too, as I hope will become clear from my remarks.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the case to which he referred in this debate, but the position was set out in a letter that my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality sent to him on 15 November 2006. His comments on that letter will be a matter for the record. I realise that he may be disappointed that I cannot comment on the individual case that he has put forward so strongly, but I am sure that he was aware that that would be the situation.

With regard to the question of UK ancestry, one of the aims of the British Nationality Act 1981 and related legislation is to restrict eligibility for British citizenship—and thus for the right of abode in the United Kingdom—to persons born in, or otherwise closely connected with, the United Kingdom or one of the current British overseas territories. The legislation therefore makes a basic distinction between citizens by descent, who cannot normally transmit their citizenship to a further generation born outside British territory, and other citizens, who can.

We of course recognise that some families have a tradition of service overseas that spans several generations. British citizens who work abroad in that way make a valued contribution to the United Kingdom’s economy and international standing. It would be unfair if the children of one family member who happened to be born abroad when his or her parents were temporarily overseas were permanently excluded from British citizenship. The legislation accordingly makes a number of exceptions to the general rule that citizenship cannot be transmitted to a second generation born abroad. One such exception relates to British citizens who are in Crown or similar service that has been designated as such by the Home Secretary at the time of their child’s birth. Another exception concerns those in the service of a European Community institution at the relevant time.

Where neither of those statutory exceptions applies, the second generation born abroad will be entitled to registration as British citizens if either the British citizen parent has previously resided in the United Kingdom for any continuous period of three years, or the family returns to the United Kingdom and remains here for at least three years after the child’s birth. Registration is subject to an application being made within certain time limits. Further provision is made by the 1981 Act for such issues as the avoidance of statelessness.

The immigration rules provide for Zimbabweans with a UK-born grandparent to be granted entry clearance under the UK ancestry route of entry, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. That allows them to live and to work in the UK for five years, after which they can apply for settlement. However, we do not allow switching into that category; if someone wished to make an application for entry clearance in that category, he or she would need to return to Zimbabwe and apply for entry clearance from there.

On the more general question of enforced removals to Zimbabwe, on 15 and 16 January this year, as hon. Members may be aware, the Court of Appeal heard the case of a Zimbabwean failed asylum seeker known as AA. It was the latest stage in protracted litigation, at the heart of which is the question whether a Zimbabwean who has claimed asylum in the UK and whose claim is refused would, if forcibly returned to Zimbabwe, be singled out as a failed asylum seeker and be at real risk of mistreatment by the Zimbabwean authorities on those grounds.

In a moment, time allowing, I will set out some background on the issues in that particular case, but first I should like to explain that the Government’s position on the question of enforcing the return of failed asylum seekers and other immigration offenders to Zimbabwe is that it is solely about operating a robust and fair immigration system for the UK. It is a domestic issue. Our deep concern about the political crisis in Zimbabwe, and the economic crisis that it has generated, remains undiminished.

The Zimbabwean economy continues to be grossly mismanaged, leading to substantial outflows of people seeking opportunities in Britain and elsewhere. In particular, we categorically condemn the appalling human rights abuses perpetrated on those who actively oppose the regime. We continue to work with international partners to press for an end to such abuses, for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law, and for a full set of economic and fiscal reforms. We work closely with our European Union and other international partners to address the issues. It is not correct to say, as the hon. Gentleman did, that we stand by and do nothing. I absolutely refute that assertion. We have taken action through European Union sanctions, the travel ban and isolating the Mugabe regime. However, we want to be careful about sanctions because we do not want ordinary Zimbabwean people to suffer any more under the regime than they are already.

I ask the Minister two quick questions. Is she in favour of having a look at the rules, so that if someone had eight great-grandparents who were born in this country, they might be entitled to an ancestral visa? A tiny number of people would be caught in that category, and doing that would be one way to help people such as Mr. Coleman.

Secondly, can the Minister explain why, given that the Court of Appeal has yet to rule on the question, her Department is sending out letters saying that people may be ordered back to Zimbabwe?

No, I am not willing to look at those rules. I looked at them before I came to answer this debate; that is why I referred to the 1981 Act. I am satisfied that the rules are appropriate and should stand.

On the background, about which I think the hon. Gentleman is asking, on 18 October 2005 the independent Asylum and Immigration Tribunal held that the particular way in which we were enforcing returns of unsuccessful Zimbabwean asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to Harare airport put them at risk of mistreatment. On 16 November 2005, the AIT issued a further determination in which it concluded that the effect of the 18 October determination was that any Zimbabwean citizen who would not return to the country willingly was a refugee.

We appealed those findings, and the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment on our appeal on 12 April 2006. It found that, in the earlier case, the AIT had erred in its approach to the evidence before it in finding that the particular way we were enforcing returns of failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers to Harare airport put them at risk of mistreatment. The Court of Appeal also found that a person who can safely return to their country of origin voluntarily is not a refugee. The Court of Appeal therefore set aside the original determination and asked the AIT to look at the matter anew.

A panel consisting of the AIT president and two senior immigration judges reconsidered the case on 3 to 7 July 2006 and issued a fresh determination on 2 August. The AIT found that the evidence did not establish that failed asylum seekers would be at real risk of mistreatment on return simply by virtue of an unsuccessful asylum application. That applies to enforced returnees, as well as to those who return voluntarily.

AA, in turn, appealed the AIT’s August 2006 determination on a number of grounds, the essence of which was that it has again misunderstood or misinterpreted the evidence. The Court of Appeal heard that appeal on 15 to 16 January, and we await its judgment. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the details at issue in advance of the Court of Appeal’s judgment, but that does not prevent me from reiterating the Government’s commitment to providing protection to those who genuinely need it. We know that the Zimbabwean authorities are capable of persecuting those who oppose them or those whom they perceive to be a threat—

It being twenty-six minutes past Five o’clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.