It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Taylor. You normally sit next to me on the Back Benches, but it is nice to see you in an appropriate place. I thank Mr. Speaker for allowing us to have this important debate, which is timely given the circumstances of the past few weeks.

I wish to place on record my appreciation of the unsung heroes who did their bit to show, to use local Glasgow parlance, that the UK will not be messed with in circumstances such as those at Glasgow airport. That goes for police, on or off duty, baggage handlers and of course the obligatory taxi driver, all of whom served the occasion extremely well.

I also wish to record my appreciation of my own airport, Glasgow Prestwick. The management and staff immediately swung into action and put in place what later became the guidance given to them by the airport security directors by blocking off all the car routes into the airport and to the terminal buildings. It is only right for me to congratulate them on ensuring that that was done without any delays to scheduled flights, despite their having to put up with a number of diverted planes from Glasgow airport.

The Government need to address airport security urgently. Over a great number of years, there have been major incidents such as Lockerbie and the one that caused the most concern to the industry, that of 11 September 2001. We must be careful about what we say, because the last thing that we want to do is to give any information to anyone who is likely to use it for all the wrong reasons.

As a Member of Parliament from north of the border, I travel frequently on airlines. One could almost describe me as a seasoned traveller. By using airports twice a week, I have got to know the system pretty well, although perhaps not all of it. In addition, I have used airports regularly as a member of the Select Committee on Transport for some 14 years. We regularly examine security at airports, and as a consequence I have picked up something about the system. From that, I recognise that there are four areas of responsibility in airport security: that of the passenger, who in turn expects the airport authorities and airlines to be well versed in their areas of responsibility. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, there are the responsibilities given to the Government and, through them, to agencies such as Transec.

The passenger has been affected over the years by increased restrictions, which have been in place for a considerable time. Some of them have regularly created chaos at a substantial number of airports, and at particular airports it has become the norm to have chaos. The question for the passenger is whether they perceive the restrictions that have been imposed as being over the top. One thing that passengers certainly have to put up with, and that I have had to put up with over the years and particularly in the past few months, is the inconsistency of security. In addition, they have to watch other passengers who are travelling through airports for perhaps the first time in their lives and do not have a single clue about how to deal with security, thereby cluttering up the approaches to security areas.

One faces other problems. I do not know whether it is parliamentary to show them, but I have with me a knife and fork that were presented to me by a constituent after he had collected them airside at Glasgow airport. He had been to Spain and was refused permission to carry a set of cutlery on to the plane as a wedding present. He went through security and came out the other side, went for a meal and was presented with the knife and fork that I have with me. Now, tell me that they could not damage somebody. The inconsistencies of the system need to be examined better by the Government and their agencies.

By virtue of the fact that the airlines have had additional costs, passengers’ fares are being loaded to the extent that they are becoming out of the reach of many of my constituents and, I am sure, those of many of my colleagues. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic tell me that one issue alone is costing them millions of pounds a month: items of hand luggage, on which there is a discrepancy between the UK and the rest of Europe. That has meant that business travellers in particular, instead of coming through Heathrow to interconnect and come back to God’s country, Scotland, are going through Schipol, Charles de Gaulle or Frankfurt airports. That is nonsense, and for too long it has been left as part of the review that is taking place. It needs to be addressed more urgently.

Baggage loss in interconnections is another factor. The amount of baggage lost must have security implications. Every time I have interconnected at Heathrow in the past year, I have lost my bags for at least a day and on one occasion for a week. What concerned me on that occasion was that nobody seemed to know where my bag was. Nobody had a clue. They tell people that there is a website on which you can see where your bag is and what the state of play is, but from day one to day seven the information was exactly the same—absolutely zilch. That needs to be examined seriously, because it is clear to me that there are major security implications.

Why, at some airports, do passengers who are reconnecting have to go through a second round of security checks? I have never understood that. They come off a plane that has flown from across the Atlantic, where security is tight. They come to Heathrow to connect to a flight northwards and have to go through the security system all over again. That seems to be using unnecessary manpower and should be examined. Surely it is time to consider what is known in the industry as “reasoned selection”. It is plainly folly that passengers go through the exercise of security twice, which causes long queues and is often responsible for considerable delays in aircraft taking off. I have even had some constituents complain that they have missed flights as a result of such delays. Unless those issues are dealt with, the industry, which is already suffering, will continue to suffer.

Let me turn from passengers to the airports themselves. Airports are required properly to resource the security element, and that is right. Although at times there has been a marked improvement—I have to admit that there have been times when such queues were not normal—it is also the case that passengers can guarantee that if they hit Heathrow at a certain time of the day there will be queues out the door.

In addition, I understand from discussions about what is happening behind the scenes that, because there are still problems with giving clearance to staff, catering and baggage handling are affected. That is all down to the fact that the airports do not seem to have a grip on the situation. Those are factors that delay airlines and aircraft in doing what they are there to do, which is, of course, to fly. I believe that it was my good friend Michael O’Leary who once said that planes do not make any money when they are sitting on the tarmac. It is clear that frustrations are building up, and many of them are partly caused by airport inefficiencies.

It is perhaps unavoidable that I should cite one particular airport owner, given that it controls the great bulk of passenger miles undertaken in this country. The company is BAA. We are told by Mr. Nelson, its chief executive, that it plans to put another £40 million into security, but that it still expects long queues on occasion while it is doing that. That is not good enough. Nor is it good enough to suggest that there is to be an extra 1,400 security guards. That in itself will not help the position greatly unless and until the company starts paying its staff at appropriate rates. In my 15 years of regular plane travel—and, before that, another 15 years of travelling just within Scotland by plane—I have never seen the same security guard at Heathrow twice. That suggests that there is enormous turnover of security staff at Heathrow. The company may be training them, but it is not paying them, and as long as it does not pay them, it is not providing the security that I and, I believe, my constituents require in order to feel safe as we move through airports.

Mr. Nelson promises that he will cut queuing to five minutes or less. I cannot envisage that happening in the foreseeable future unless there is an enormous change of emphasis.

Finally, on airports, baggage is still going missing. I have already dealt with that in part. I was told that at one time 40 per cent. of the baggage was missing. That is a ridiculously high level, but that was the figure on one day. That is unacceptable. The fact that the companies do not seem to know where bags are at any given time is a clear indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the organisation as it stands.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about baggage. Indeed, the newspapers are always full of stories about how many bags are still in storage because they have not been given to their owners. Does he believe that the announcement yesterday by British Airways that it is considering electronically tagging bags so that it will be able to find them more quickly may help the situation?

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is correct. It is issues such as that which the Government and their agencies should be looking at and enforcing, if need be, because, as I have already said, there is clearly a security risk if baggage is not known to be in a certain place. There must be implications for security.

My final point about baggage is that I have been on planes when the bags have been loaded but passengers have gone AWOL. In one case just last week, the plane was delayed for three hours. First, we were told that the passengers were in transit and then, because they could not be found, that their bags would be taken off the plane. However, because of the system on that plane and because the bags were at the very front—they had been the first to be loaded—all the bags would have to be removed to get the missing passengers’ bags off. Believe it or not, by that time the passengers had turned up and the whole process started all over again. The situation is absolutely nonsensical, but that is what is happening in our airports. It does nothing for passenger safety.

On the policing of airports, I have to declare an interest, in that I am a member of the British Transport police and walk the beat now and again on the streets of London. It could be said that I have a degree of responsibility in that sense, but I also have experience that is not available to other Members. Regardless, I believe that we are now required—and, given the events of a few days ago, even more so—to consider having a dedicated police service for our airports such as we have at present for our train stations. I argue that it would be sensible to have such a service for our airports.

It is clear that airports have become a terrorist target. As a consequence, we require people who have specific experience to be able to deal with terrorism. At the very least, the issue needs more attention. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police said that we can have all the new technology that we like, but, just as in this place, it will never be a substitute for a dedicated police service that knows precisely what it is about. He said that

“new technology is not a substitute for a distinct presence at airports. Officers should be used to create a hostile environment for terrorists.”

That is a fundamental point, and it needs to be addressed by the Government.

Airlines themselves also have a responsibility. A spokesman for BA, which pays BAA £360 million a year for the benefit of flying in and out of its airports, recently said that it wanted Heathrow, its landlord, to be more efficient. It has called for a supervisory committee that includes airline representation to be set up to oversee BAA’s investment. I believe that the Government should support that common-sense proposal. Perhaps we should consider including on such a committee somebody to represent passengers—I am not bidding for the job—because it is clear that many of the elements that passengers face are not taken into consideration by anyone responsible.

The US Air Line Pilots Association believes that the focus on banned objects rather than behavioural patterns or passenger profiling leaves aviation unnecessarily vulnerable to future attacks by terrorists. I agree with that. Because of terrorists’ ingenuity, it is difficult to predict accurately the form of a future attack on an airliner or, for that matter, on an airport. Such a proposal may take some work, but there is no doubt whatever that suicidal hijackers and bombers exhibit behaviour patterns that can lead to their detection prior to their arriving at the airport or boarding a plane, even if their tools are not detected. That is surely the route that the Government and their agencies should take.

I turn to the Government and their agencies. It is good to see the Minister in his place. I should have said at the outset that I welcome him to his new role as Minister in the Department for Transport. The Government have announced several reviews over the years. I was fortunate to be given a briefing by the Library on this subject a few days ago. It is obvious that there have been several reviews over a considerable number of years, but that very little action has actually taken place, other than that which frustrates passengers and for which no explanation is given. We need much greater consistency in the decision-making process; that must become a priority. Dealing with passenger fatigue with sometimes incomprehensible instructions must also be a priority.

A considerable reduction in the number of people travelling by air has resulted from the restrictions. I know Members of Parliament who now travel by train from Glasgow and Scotland in general, and more and more business men are doing the same because of the restrictions associated with air travel. Without giving ideas to the terrorists, it might well be that because of the number of people who travel by train, they will turn their attention to that mode of transport. It does not take a degree in terrorism to work out that as many people travel by train as by plane. Someone can turn up at a train station, and get straight on a train that departs in seconds, but it takes hours to get through the system at an airport. The Government need to consider that issue.

I make a special plea to the Minister: as a matter of urgency, systems for dealing with hand luggage must be harmonised across Europe. The UK must be brought into line with the rest of Europe in that respect, otherwise our airline industry will continue to lose substantial revenue. As I have already mentioned, the issue of specialised policing should be considered. The British Transport police are after all the responsibility of the Department for Transport. The Government could easily apply their mind to that subject.

More emphasis should be put on watching potential terrorist bombers. In technical terms, border security and passenger data should be seriously considered as that would enable the screening of passengers for security and immigration purposes. The advancement of technology has created far more opportunities to streamline and to enhance the passenger travel process, rather than treating passengers like cattle, as we do now. Passenger name record—known in the industry as PNR—should be employed as a matter of urgency. I am told that there are indications that the PNR might be omitted from the UK’s e-borders programme. That could seriously undermine the effectiveness of any scheme introduced in the UK and requires immediate rebuttal by the Government.

The issue of “authority to carry” also requires immediate attention. We need the relevant information to check against a “watch list” of undesirable passengers and the Government must be proactive in securing that. Some 95 per cent. of passengers create no problems at all; it is the remaining 5 per cent. who cause all the problems. However, 95 per cent. of passengers are affected by security measures, while the remaining 5 per cent. go undetected. It is obvious that we have not had much success in dealing with that 5 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. The central issue is that we will get the measures that he has talked about only when we use existing off-the-shelf technology, which focuses on the ticketing process. Instead we currently have expensive Government-led IT projects based on flight manifests that by definition are too late; the aircraft has taken off by the time the search has been done.

The Opposition spokesman is absolutely right. I have received a briefing from an organisation that is employed in that sector. Why try to invent something when we have something that can operate as a system and that has proven itself in many countries? It is clear that that is another issue that needs to be looked at.

As I have said, if the Government intend to kick into touch the passenger name record, that will affect airport trade and aircraft travel for many years to come.

Biometrics is another issue that the Government should consider. It is a technology that already exists and automatically confirms the identity of a person by comparing patterns of physical characteristics. I do not understand why we do not use it more widely. Presently, I think that biometrics are used at Heathrow in terminals 2 and 3, but not in terminals 1 and 4. I understand that it is to be used in terminal 5, but not at this stage in terminals 1 and 4—the two busiest at Heathrow.

The hon. Gentleman makes another powerful point. I went to Armenia in April to monitor its elections and on my return journey, my fingerprints were checked and a copy of my passport was made. When I got to the boarding stage, I had to put my finger in something to ensure that they knew it was definitely me getting on the plane. If I had destroyed my passport for any reason, there would have a been a link. Such a system should be rolled out widely to ensure that the level of security is heightened.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Again, that is something that we should seriously consider. We are adopting a number of such systems and there are other systems that we would love to adopt but cannot possibly afford. We would all like to fly in Israeli planes because they are so safe, but putting such high numbers of passengers—some 90 million—through that process on an annual basis in the UK would be virtually impossible. We must be realistic about that.

The Government must hasten the development of ways of enhancing security. It is also important to speed up clearance and to alleviate delays at airports. As a frequent flyer, I think that more could be done and I speak on behalf of a growing band of travellers, when I say that I do not accept that making our lives better would compromise safely. I am not opposed to using biometrics or any other form of individual identification, such as fingerprints, if it smoothes the frustration of getting to my work and getting my fellow business men and travellers to work. At present, what we must face is quite unreal.

Following the recent terror threats in the UK, security measures have impacted greatly on the aviation industry because of immediate costs caused by the cancellation of flights and because of the impact on consumer confidence, which has been reflected in forward bookings. We need worldwide standards not only to ensure the safety of passengers, but to provide a clear and coherent message to the travelling public.

All that passengers want is to feel safe when they travel, and to get to their destination at the scheduled time. Every individual connected to air travel believes that passengers understand the need for enhanced security, but only if measures are well communicated, efficient and consistent. That is what I need to hear from the Minister this morning. Airlines, the Government and their agencies, and airport operators need to work together to ensure that that goal is achieved. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to other contributions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) on his success in initiating this debate; it could not come at a more appropriate time. Perhaps we should refer to him as Sergeant Donohoe now that he has declared his interest. I congratulate him on personally contributing to the safety of people who travel, and I also congratulate all those who were involved in defeating the terrorists at Glasgow recently; they did an amazing job. The public worked together with the security forces and demonstrated that we will not be cowed by those who wish to terrorise us and make our lives more difficult. I sympathise with the Ministers who have to introduce policies to ensure that everybody will be secure when they travel. However, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we must also remember that passengers are customers, not cattle. People should not be prodded around and made to feel that travel will be impossible or incredibly difficult for them.

I was at Heathrow airport in August following the security scare of that time and the queues were enormous. Terminal 4 was an absolute circus and people were turning up and being told that they could not even enter the airport until the flight was announced on the Tannoys. People could not hear the Tannoys in the car parks and no one seemed to know what was happening. I am sure that many people missed flights on that day and indeed over the following days. It took considerable time to sort things out. Of course, people wanted to ensure that they were travelling safely, but the way that security checks were carried out on the day that I travelled seemed to show that there could have been a little more urgency in dealing with passengers. The attitude almost seemed to be that passengers at the airport were an irritant and that the airport would perform more smoothly if they were not there. Clearly, that must not be the case.

The hon. Gentleman made an important point about airports in the United Kingdom having to compete with a number of airports throughout Europe. A lot of passengers who use Heathrow or other UK airports as hubs can choose from other hubs. If Schiphol, Frankfurt or Charles de Gaulle are more efficient, they will choose those airports, so we must get this absolutely right. Furthermore, he talked about the fact that passengers can use trains in the UK. Terrorists have shown that they look for the weakest link. We know that they do that, which is why they moved from airplanes to airports, and, of course, security around airports is now being tightened. The other day, I was at Manchester airport, where they have stopped vehicular access to terminal 1 to prevent the ram raiding tried at Glasgow. As I said, terrorists look for the weakest link.

This week, I received a letter from a constituent, Mr. Andrew Moore, who used Manchester airport. On Sunday 17, he travelled from Manchester to Faro, but it took him a considerable amount of time to get through. I know that, on 10 June, they had a problem at Heathrow terminal 4—I actually asked a parliamentary question about it. It is all right for those going through fast track, although, these days, I would call it, relatively faster track. Fast track is important because we want to win the support of business passengers; we want them to use British airports. It is important that money is spent in the United Kingdom to ensure that that happens.

I am afraid, however, that if people can get through relatively-faster track in 10 minutes, why should those travelling on economy tickets have to wait an hour and a half? That is a real issue, although Manchester had a blip on that day, and BAA was good enough to send me a graph showing that, for most of the day, people were getting through in under 10 minutes, but that then there was a four-hour period during which the queues at terminal 4 were outside the door and virtually on to the car park. Clearly, that is unacceptable and they need to ensure proper manning levels at security arches. Nothing is more frustrating for passengers who, having waited an hour, find, when they are finally searched at the security arches, that some of them are closed. They think, “Well, why are they not all open? Why are they not properly manned? And why has the delay taken so long?” That needs to be looked at.

I know that BAA and, indeed, all airports are spending an enormous amount of money on extra security and manning levels. BAA representatives were in Parliament last week telling us that they had employed an extra 1,400 people at Heathrow to increase the level of throughput. I suspect that there is a problem with predicting when planes are going to take off. We all think that the schedule is there to tell us when planes take off, but delays can result for all sorts of reasons. The hon. Gentleman mentioned passengers who do not get to their plane, but whose bags do, which results in a one hour delay, before the plane takes off, while their baggage is removed. That means that when that plane arrives back at Heathrow, it is probably one and a half, or two hours late taking off again. Congestion will result at airports, which is another reason for huge delays in getting some passengers through.

I understand that in the make-up of every ticket there is an element for security. It is a few pounds. Will the Minister assure us that all of that money is now being invested? I would like to know to whom the money goes. I know who is paying the money, but where is it going? Is it all being invested in new security measures? The hon. Gentleman talked also about ensuring a level of common sense in the measures being introduced. I agree with him on that. He mentioned the point about knives and forks. It was always ludicrous that at one stage we were using plastic cutlery, but that at the same time, if we ordered an alcoholic drink, it was served in a glass. A glass is a lethal weapon. Also, when airside, it was possible to buy a bottle of wine. Well, my goodness, a bottle of wine is a lethal weapon, I would have thought. So, there seemed to be a few inconsistencies in the security measures being introduced.

The same applies to the 100 ml limits on all liquids and gels, and all of that sort of stuff. We cannot fail to go through airport security without seeing huge supplies and bins of stuff taken off people who unwittingly, perhaps, brought it with them. Maybe they travel only once a year, and are not following the security measures, unlike those who travel more frequently, who know what they can take. I think that, now and again, extra publicity would be worthwhile to tell the public what the limits are, why they are in place and whether they are the same throughout the world. I know that Britain is a terrorist target; more so than some other European countries. We must accept it. But at the same time, we need to explain to passengers why these measures are in place.

Let us consider some of the new and old technologies. I mentioned the procedure in use in Armenia, which, quite frankly, I thought was excellent. Perhaps that could be rolled out in other countries. I suspect that it was done to ensure that those getting on the aircraft were those who had bought the ticket. It was trailed all of the way through. Also, it prevents people from saying, “I haven’t got a passport. Somehow I lost it on the plane.” We know what is happening. But if there is an electronic version of that passport, at least we have information about that person. Let us look at the technologies available to ensure that everything is done as quickly as possible.

I spoke to the chief executive of Manchester airport, Geoff Muirhead, who told me about issues that they have. A number of British airports were built in the 1960s and 1970s, when security measures were different—one could almost swan on to an aircraft without showing any identity. Now we have to show identity and be searched at regular intervals. With terminal 5 coming on, I assume that a lot of thought is being put into security at the design level. It will be a lot easier for Heathrow T5 to get people through more quickly with the new equipment.

Geoff Muirhead explained that we have some old airports and that the problem was not simply with moving some shops out of the way to make room for extra security, but with ensuring that the equipment and manning levels are available. He said that there will always be delays at certain times. That is what we must iron out as much as we can. If people are told that, when going to an aircraft, the security will take a quarter of hour, at least they can factor that into their timetables. The problem arises when they turn up at an airport and see a queue going out of the door and on to the car park. If they have a flight to catch in an hour, it becomes impossible for them.

I have every sympathy with the Minister, but we must not let the terrorists win. We must ensure the right level of security, and that people feel secure, including staff at airports and on aircrafts. For whatever reason, these terrorists despise our country and are doing all that they can to terrorise its people. Quite frankly, I wish that they would all get on an aircraft and go to a country that they would prefer, rather than stay here and terrorise us. If they want to go to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, or wherever, I am sure that, if they ask nicely, we will assist them in their passage. But we do not want them terrorising British people living in this country, which is why not only must we fight them, but we must not allow them to destroy our quality of life. Let us ensure the right level of security, and support airports and airlines to ensure that the terrorists do not win, but let us remain also on the side of the passenger to ensure that their quality of life is not diminished. I wish the Government great success in their efforts to ensure that the British travelling public can get on with their daily lives without hindrance, and be secure in doing so.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). I enjoyed his speech—especially the part in which he said that he would be happy to ship out all the terrorists who think that some other part of the world is better. People who think like that should be shipped out immediately and I will happily help in the security arrangements and in deporting them. They have made life a misery for all of us and we must not allow them to defeat what we are trying to do, so I strongly concur with the language and the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. My father’s generation fought hard to create a good society and to play their part, and such people are wrecking everything that was built in the spirit of multiculturalism. I find what they are doing offensive and I fail to understand their thinking or logic. However, I do not wish to be called to order for straying too far away from the subject of the debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) on securing the debate, and I join him and others in praising the staff of Glasgow airport and all those others who were involved in tackling the terrorists for their courage in defeating them. I praise the Government for all that they have done so far in public protection. They should be credited for making public protection their first priority. I want to raise a number of issues about my own local airport, Durham Tees Valley. It is not a major league airport by the standards of Glasgow or Manchester, but as the primary airport for the north-east, with routes to key European destinations, it is an important and busy centre in its own right. Some 1 million passengers a year generally pass through it.

Although it is primarily a civil airport, the security issues that I wish to raise stem from its use by the military. It is the nearest civilian airport to the large army camp at Catterick, about 15 miles away. In consequence, it has frequently been used for military charter flights for soldiers departing for, or arriving from, operational duties in the middle east. That is hardly a military secret; the sight of troops in uniform marching through the departure lounge is a regular feature witnessed by many travellers.

There are three points that I wish to make about such use of the airport. First, there is a question as to whether the security level at the airport is sufficient for military use. It is a particularly pertinent question, given that its military use might enhance the airport’s appeal as a target for terrorist attack. The recent events in Glasgow show that such an eventuality must be considered, and the security in place around military facilities in the UK stands testament both to the heightened risk and to the necessity for enhanced measures that surround our military personnel. I should like to ask the Minister whether, given the military use of Durham Tees Valley, extra security measures have been introduced. Will he tell me also whether any reassessment of the situation has been made following the events in Glasgow?

Two security measures that I wish to propose would address the issue. First, I wonder whether the Ministry of Defence, in conjunction with both the airport management and the charter flight operators, might consider whether military flights can be made outside the airport’s normal operational hours. That would have the security benefit of allowing measures to be concentrated at certain times and, crucially, would allow them to be implemented when members of the public were not using the airport. That, in turn, would have obvious advantages both to public safety and enhanced security.

The second possible measure is to use the RAF airfields in the region for such military flights. Leeming and Church Fenton are both operational, and are less than one hour from Catterick. The airfields might be unable to handle large passenger aircraft for engineering reasons, and, if so, I will gladly stand corrected. I know, however, that Leeming was used for Tornado fighter bombers for a long time and I imagine that its runway is of adequate length. If one of those airfields was available and suitable, it would be likely to provide a far higher level of security than a civil airport. The fact that members of the public cannot access RAF facilities would clearly be advantageous in that respect. I emphasise that my remarks are intended to be constructive and I make them in a spirit of co-operation with the Minister. I believe that there are genuine security issues for members of the public and for military personnel who use the airport, and I hope that he will consider my suggestions.

My final remarks diverge somewhat in their subject matter and concern a security issue that applies generally to UK airports. Last November, in the light of intelligence that had been received, the Government altered the regulations on hand luggage and prevented passengers from taking liquids and certain items through security gates into departure lounges and on to flights. However, there seems to be a disjunction between the items that are prohibited under those regulations, which were mentioned earlier, and the items that are banned from restricted zones such as departure lounges and airport shops. The result is that cigarette lighters cannot be taken through security into a departure lounge, yet can still be purchased from shops in the restricted zones and taken on to a plane. The only ban on purchase is on cigarette lighters which are

“in the shape of a firearm”.

I know of at least three UK airports where there has been a problem with that, and it seems to present an anomaly in security.

On its own, a lighter has a certain, albeit limited, potential to cause harm or damage. The worrying point is that lighters are sold in airports alongside a range of flammable substances such as aerosols and alcohol. It is easy to imagine that, in a confined space such as an aircraft cabin, such items could be used to deadly effect, so I ask the Minister to re-examine the regulations, because inconsistencies were mentioned also by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley.

The points that I have made have all been offered in a spirit of trying to help the Government in their efforts. So far, they have done a tremendous job in tackling the terrorists and we must not let go—even by a millimetre. I hope that the Minister will take up my concerns in that spirit.

rose—

Order. I should like to tell the two Front-Bench spokesmen that I shall call the Minister no later than 10.45 am.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor. As we are tight for time, I shall try to truncate my remarks. If I have questions, I shall direct them to the Minister in writing, because that might be easier. Before the debate, I thought that I had defeated stomach flu, but I am now less certain. I think that I will be okay, but, if I leave the room fast, I hope you will not see it as an act of discourtesy.

I join in congratulating the many people who reacted so effectively to the events at Glasgow airport. Rather than reiterate what has been said, I shall say only that I think the most important part of that reaction was the message that it gave to anyone with terrorist intentions. They will not find that the British public, airport staff, police or anybody else will shy away from them; they will be tackled and confronted. That gave great heart to all of us who know that one day could be our unlucky day and that we could draw the short straw.

Obviously, airport security must have the highest priority. In preparing for the debate, I took a quick look at an extract from the airport policing report by the right hon. Sir John Wheeler, which has been debated in Westminster Hall. Essentially, the report underscored the fact that although the Department for Transport is at the heart of aviation security arrangements, responsibility remains fragmented among DFT control authorities and airport authorities. Putting together a package of effective airport security measures is therefore extremely complex, and I hope that the Minister will address the issue and tell us how co-ordination has been significantly improved since Sir John’s original report.

The Department has accepted the report’s main recommendations, including, in particular, that the MATRA approach—the multi-agency threat and risk assessment approach—should be best practice at all airports. That approach, however, relates to risk assessment, and there is obviously also a requirement to respond—although assessment matters, so too does the co-ordination of the response. A review of legislation was to go ahead to clarify stakeholders’ responsibilities for airport security, but has it made any progress?

The report included recommendations on eliminating the system of designation. The issue of policing costs is fairly interesting, and I happen to come from the school that thinks that policing and security costs should remain with the airports and the airlines and should not fall on the taxpayer, although the United States takes a very different view. By not charging fuel duty and VAT on fuel, we effectively give the airline industry a £9 billion subsidy, and it would not go amiss if the industry spent some of that money on adequate security. The industry has not been abandoned—indeed, in comparison with other forms of transport, air travel is being supported—and one way effectively to use such money would be to spend it on security. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has discussed whether airport authorities should have more flexibility to charge the airlines additional fees for providing security. I understand that the Civil Aviation Authority has been considering the issue, but I am not sure what conclusions it has reached.

On the question of who will pay the VAT or the aviation fuel duty, it is the passenger who will pick up the bill at the end of the day. However, one airport also suggested that passengers pay an extra £3 so that they could get through the airport quickly. I do not think that we should have such fast-track measures; instead, an element should be incorporated in the ticket price to ensure that everybody pays the same and is guaranteed to be able to get through the airport as quickly and securely as possible. The costs incorporated in the ticket price should, however, be transparent.

I fully agree that costs should be transparent, and we should know whether we are in the group that is paying and not getting the service or the group that is paying and getting priority service. People would find that information very interesting. I should say, however, that the drive for ever cheaper flights to boost numbers and fill planes is somewhat countered by the need to ensure that adequate money is spent on security. Nor is turning to the taxpayer to ensure that we continue to boost ticket sales the right strategy, although that works rather well with broader environmental goals. The burden of providing security should fall on the airport authority and the airlines, not the taxpayer.

In the past couple of days, various events have caused us all to tremble slightly. No innocent individual was killed or seriously injured at Glasgow, and thank goodness for that. However, we have heard—perhaps the Minister can comment on this—that there was not a single armed policeman at the airport. That suggests that the security culture has broken down somewhere or that it has been focused only on Heathrow. If so, other airports and their vulnerabilities, which the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) discussed, will then become the obvious point of weakness for attack. Our approach therefore surely needs to be comprehensive.

We have heard the comments made by Mr. Ron Noble, the head of Interpol, who complained that the UK, among many other countries, does not take advantage of Interpol information when doing passport checks, and he asks that we participate in a watch list. There should be a real review of that issue. Sharing information obviously has consequences, and I would not want the Government wildly to share information with anyone who just happened to be signed up to Interpol, without being confident that there was genuine security. However, the issue must be reviewed, and it would make sense to deal with it with a greater urgency and to give it greater priority to ensure that we take full advantage of the passport checking facilities offered by Interpol, particularly where missing and stolen passports are concerned.

Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), who speaks on home affairs for my party, raised some issues with the Home Secretary. The Minister will be aware that vehicle access barriers have been under review, and there have been some pilot schemes at Victoria and Waterloo. Given the vulnerability of airports, I wonder why the scheme has not been rolled out. A report on how the technology was to be rolled out was due in April, but I have not heard any of the results. Any information that the Minister had in that regard would be important, particularly in the current circumstances.

I join the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) in saying that it is worth looking at the comments of the US Air Line Pilots Association. As he said, it has criticised the UK for focusing on objects—sometimes these objects are rather weird, and the approach is not consistent across Europe—rather than on behavioural patterns and profiling to identify threats. I recognise that there are real risks with the proposed approach, which must be undertaken with an awareness of the fact that any kind of profiling can create real problems. Indeed, I would prefer something that looked at behavioural patterns, rather than just at some crude form of profiling. I say that in a very personal sense, because, as the Minister may know, my husband was an American, and he travelled frequently between the two continents over the 35 years that we were together. My daughter’s partner is a black American, and I have seen vividly how the way in which he is treated at Heathrow differs from the way in which my husband, who was also an American, was treated—the word “appalling” is probably not an understatement.

That brings to me to my next issue. If security is to be sustainable, and if people are to be willing to go through intrusive checks that make their journey more difficult and require increased planning, there must be a level of care and customer service that makes the process acceptable and shows genuine respect. That includes treating those coming through immigration, or other travelling passengers, well—treating them thoughtfully and with politeness and real concern.

Several people have talked about the genuine inconsistencies that frustrate everybody. People cannot take their lighters through check-in, but they can buy them at the far end—excuse me, but that is starting to get silly. British Airways has said again today that it is trying to link up 20,000 lost bags with their owners, but people do not have endless patience. Obviously, T5 will bring some benefits in terms of dealing with that set of issues, but it will not be a complete solution.

I travelled as a non-American in the US for many years—obviously, I was married to an American—and I was always treated with the greatest rudeness by every immigration officer I talked to. However, that has changed dramatically, as many more people have been caught up in the process.

Not all of them.

All that I can say is that the hon. Gentleman did not see what it was like before. However, change is genuinely achievable.

Perhaps I can close with a few comments that have been made before by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam: if we are really going to have security, we need a national border force, bringing together the present border control functions of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the immigration and nationality directorate, and the police, with regard to both ports and airports. I shall not expound on that, but the Minister is, I think, very aware of that need. Also, we need to carry out exit checks. Those were taken away in 1994, but the Government seem to be dragging their feet about their reintroduction. I understand that, under present plans, they will not be in place until 2014, which is another generation.

I think that my time has run out; I congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire on obtaining the debate, and I hope that we shall hear from the Minister that airport security will be given the attention and priority that it deserves.

I too congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe), both on securing the debate and on his revelation that he serves as a special constable in the British Transport police. I listened to his remarks with great interest and agreed with nearly all of them. I join everyone else who has spoken in congratulating the police, security staff and emergency services, and, indeed, the stout-hearted members of the public who intervened at Glasgow airport, reminding us what citizenship should be about.

We must start with the clarification of responsibilities. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) was quite right to pick up that point from Sir John Wheeler’s report. It must be made crystal clear exactly who is responsible for what. There has been some progress, but there is still a degree of fragmentation. I also agree with the hon. Lady’s remark about a uniformed border force, something for which the Conservative party has been calling for a long time. That, however, is more to do with people coming into the country than with the matter before the House today.

It happens that I have some background on terrorist issues from my time in special forces. Between August last year and February this year I had a series of exchanges, both written and in meetings, with the British Airports Authority about security at terminals, focusing on one central concern: that queues for security apparatus are seen as targets of choice by terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), I happened to fly—to America—a week or two after the August incident, and I share the concerns of many that the hold-ups here were much worse than those in any of the busy American airports that I went through. Indeed, in November, Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, was moved to remark:

“We should accept that for so many of our customers...Heathrow isn’t working...In 25 years, Heathrow could be an aviation backwater, as relevant to the world economy of the mid-21st century as London’s former East End docks.”

Of course the flow at Heathrow has improved immeasurably since Mr Walsh said that, but I share his concerns. However, those concerns go far beyond economic competitiveness. The plain fact is that large numbers of people waiting for security apparatus, concentrated in an indoor location, provide an extremely tempting target for terrorists.

For obvious reasons, I did not make my exchanges with BAA public, but I can now reveal that at the meeting in which they culminated, on 7 February, its security manager pointed out to me that as well as providing extra scanners and staff BAA had installed bollards outside the approaches to all its terminals to prevent vehicular access. That, however, is not enough. It is perfectly obvious that any bomber—it need not even be a suicide bomber—can carry or wheel a large bomb in a suitcase straight into the middle of a queue. Those queues are extremely vulnerable and such large concentrations of people in the 21st century, which is, sadly, a terrorist era, are unacceptable.

It seems that our thinking has at every stage trailed behind the reality of the terrorist threat that we face, and that each time there is an attack we must learn, although fortunately, in the most recent case, not after people have died. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Government have been wilfully negligent. I am simply trying to understand why we have not quite grasped the nettle. As far back as November 2004 my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who was then our homeland security spokesman, tabled a question to the Department of Transport asking for

“a statement on security inspections undertaken at British airports.”

The reply was:

“The Department carries out an extensive programme of aviation security compliance monitoring activity. This includes announced and unannounced inspections and tests of the security”. —[Official Report, 1 November 2004; Vol. 426, c. 8W.]

My hon. Friend tabled a similar question in January 2007 and the reply was:

“New aviation security measures which have been implemented at UK airports in light of August’s security alert include the controls on liquids and the limit on the number and maximum size of cabin bags. Other new measures which have been implemented since August are not visible”—

probably for very good reasons—

“to passengers.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2007; Vol. 456, c. 243W.]

I know that our excellent new homeland security spokesman, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, takes a very close interest in all this. Curiously, to my thinking, the Secretary of State makes no mention of access. Terrorists can go wherever the public go.

BAA has recruited hundreds of extra security staff and bought extra scanners. Increasing throughput and thus reducing queues is part of the solution, but we must also examine again the issue of perimeter security. For example, at the channel tunnel and some continental seaports there are screening units that will reveal at a glance whether there are illegal immigrants in lorries. I understand that that same technology could be used to take at least a first look at people coming through the doors of security terminals, to see whether they are carrying bombs or weapons. I wonder whether the option of selective scanning of vehicles passing through the gates of airports has been considered. Such pre-scanning, even on an intelligence-led basis, would have a price, but it would materially reduce the threat.

Much of the technology that I have outlined was developed in this country. Security has become an extremely successful British industry. Companies such as Qinetiq supply hardware and British firms supply software packages and train people to handle security apparatus. Crucially, as other hon. Members have mentioned, we lead the world in the profiling packages to identify behaviour that is indicative of a terrorist mindset. Of course, no solution is cost-free, but the cost of doing nothing will be much greater, and not only in lives. The airport operators are private companies and if they reap the rewards in the good times, they must pick up the bill in the bad. The Government can help the process along. I shall come in a moment to an area in which funds could be better used.

Failure is not only risky. It will also be economically extremely costly to us, and could hand a victory of a different kind to the terrorist. If the security arrangements at our airports are not seen to be both tight and capable of processing large numbers of people without long queues developing, people will go elsewhere. London is still the world’s premier financial centre. Let our airports fall behind and we may find that we lose that edge. American friends of mine have told me that they do not want to use Heathrow again after the experiences that they had in the summer.

Technology has another role to play, which goes beyond scanning apparatus. Scanning systems do not prevent conspiracy, and they do not prevent those who are unarmed at the point of departure from going to another country from where they can mount an attack. As the recent terrorist attacks have shown, those people are highly mobile. They criss-cross the world, meeting together. As the security services get better at phone tapping and internet monitoring, the importance to the terrorist of the face-to-face meeting grows. What is needed is to pick up potential problems as early as possible in the process. To pick up on a point that the hon. Gentleman made earlier, a number of countries in the Gulf and New Zealand have a real-time analysis of data at the point of ticket purchase. Alas, the British system, Semaphore, which covers only 12 per cent. of passengers, is based on flight manifests, ensuring that the problems are likely to be identified only after the aeroplane has taken off. With that system we can only export the problem to another country, perhaps by turning the aircraft around, as the Americans do—they have a system like that in place at the moment—or hope to pick people up once they have arrived.

By using a system that is based on flight manifests, rather than one that is based on ticket purchases, we lose the opportunity to pick out associations. While an individual’s name might be on a list of suspects, the person with whom they are travelling might not be. A system that is based on checking flight manifests rather than starting with the original ticketing data, as is done in New Zealand, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and several other countries, will not pick up the fact that those two people are travelling together, so only one of them might be stopped. We are tackling problems at the final stage, instead of looking for trouble at the earliest possible stage of each process. After all the mess-ups in the NHS and other areas, I beg the Government not to carry on down the route that they are following with Semaphore and the working party that is very light on experience in this area. We do not need another costly Government-led development of a system that is not much use anyway. Instead, we should take the ticketing software that already exists, off the shelf, which has been so skilfully developed for use in other countries, and develop it into much better systems. We need to work from the beginning of the process.

What happens in our airports is only a small part of the battle against terrorism. Thanks to the initiative of the hon. Gentleman, we are rightly focusing on that small part today, but, ultimately, the development of intelligence and many other central areas for which the Government are responsible will be the decisive factors. As I said at the outset, when considering this important issue, which terrorists have chosen as a key battle ground, we must be clear about who is responsible for what. In a free country, we will never have control over where our citizens go, and neither should we wish to. If we try to restrict or curtail basic liberties or our way of life, we hand a different kind of victory to the terrorists by default—something we must never do. However, we are not powerless, and a great deal more can be done.

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr. Taylor. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) on securing the debate. As he said, he has a personal interest in this matter both as a frequent flier and as a special constable. I thank other hon. Members for contributing to this important and topical discussion.

Hardly a day goes by without some media reference to airport security. The spotlight seems to be permanently fixed on security at UK airports. That is good, in a sense, because it ensures that we remain highly sensitive to the threats and challenges that face us at this time. We need to be vigilant to the serious and sustained threat, and I join hon. Members in paying tribute both to those who protect us generally and specifically to those who have protected us in the past few weeks. Aviation remains a target for international terrorists—the incident at Glasgow is a prime example of that—but, in response to my hon. Friend’s comments, I shall talk about the events of last summer and the heightened measures that were introduced thereafter, which are still evident today, before addressing more specific points.

The increase in the threat level to critical last summer meant that we needed to introduce additional security measures to protect both passengers and people working in the aviation industry from the threat from liquid explosives. The alternative would have been to cancel all flights, but the cost and disruption of doing so would have given the terrorists the success that they desire and would not have been acceptable to either the industry or the travelling public. Those measures supplemented an already robust security regime. The industry should be applauded for ensuring that flights continued and passengers should be thanked for their understanding and patience.

UK security measures draw much from our success in ensuring that the baseline European security regulations, which restricted the quantities of liquids taken through search points, were eventually amended. Those changes took effect in November. Today, passengers may take liquids through security search points provided that they are in containers not exceeding 100 ml and that they are presented in a re-sealable, transparent plastic bag. The International Civil Aviation Organisation has recommended that its members should adopt the solution of allowing passengers departing their airports to use 1 litre bags or 100 ml containers, and the procedure has been adopted in the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore, which shows that there is discussion about harmonising arrangements internationally. Other measures introduced here and across the EU have included the removal of coats and laptops for separate screening. We also started checking passengers’ footwear and limiting cabin luggage to one bag, providing that it did not exceed the maximum size, and still do so today. The latter system is due to be incorporated into EU regulations next year and has long been recommended by the International Air Transport Association on safety grounds.

As the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) pointed out, the UK faces a higher threat from terrorism than most other countries in either the EU or the rest of the world. The evidence is there to be seen: there were attacks or attempted attacks in July 2005, August 2006 and June 2007. That is why we have and need to have measures in place that are more stringent than those in other European member states.

Surely it is a nonsense that when one gets to the comb, at security, one can get by the two-bag rule by packing one bag into the other, and can then take it out again at the other end. That does not make an awful lot of sense, and is not applied elsewhere in Europe.

I shall address that point, particularly why the one-bag screening option has been chosen for the UK. My hon. Friend also talked about the problems experienced by transfer passengers who arrive in the UK with more than one cabin bag to board another aircraft departing from a UK airport and by those carrying duty-free liquids that were bought in non-EU states. The industry has suggested that international passengers are choosing to transfer at airports outside the UK because of the difficulties they face in the UK, and airlines and airports tell us that they are suffering financial losses as a result, which is having an impact on UK plc.

The Government are acutely aware that the baggage restrictions are extremely challenging, but we are equally aware of the very good reasons behind them. Allowing only one item of cabin baggage reduces the number of X-ray images per passenger, thereby ensuring that security checks can be carried out to the highest possible standard. We have always said that we stand ready to remove the one bag limit, but it would be irresponsible to do so if the industry were not then capable of delivering the expected security standards. That offer remains, but the industry agrees that we must not rush into doing that, which is why we are assessing how well airports handle having to screen more than one cabin bag per passenger.

We must look further ahead and explore other, smarter solutions to the liquid explosives challenge. We are working closely with industry and manufacturers to progress developments in technology that are now available and we are undertaking several trials of new technology as a matter of urgency to assist the security process—the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) asked about that. We also continue to look for new technology that could reduce the burden on airports and improve the situation for passengers.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the serious events that happened earlier this month in London, and especially those in Glasgow.

The industry is concerned that the working party that the Government have asked to look into the technology is fairly light on people who are experts on that technology. The party does not appear to be focusing on technology that is already available, off the shelf, which is working very successfully in countries such as New Zealand and some of the Gulf states.

I hope that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the security summit convened and called for by the Secretary of State, which should be happening next week, will address those or any other apparent deficiencies. The hon. Gentleman’s comments will be taken into account in preparation for that summit.

The recent situations in London and, especially, in Glasgow demonstrated that the form of threat is not consistent—it is constantly evolving. That emphasises that we cannot be complacent in our attitude and action. Terrorism is a problem that we know we will face for the long term. Experience has also shown that the significant investment in infrastructure protection that our airports are making is well placed, and we will continue to urge airports to implement improvements where vulnerabilities are identified. I would like to place on record, as I have done before, our thanks to the police, to Glasgow airport staff and passengers, and to all the others who worked tirelessly over the past week to apprehend those involved in recent incidents.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of counter-terrorist checks for new airport staff. Operational deployment is not dependent upon completion of the whole CTC process and alleviation has been in place for some time, at the industry’s request. That allows the employer to deploy an officer—anybody who is on the appropriate security side—pending CTC clearance, providing they have passed a criminal record check and have been resident in the UK for the previous five years.

My hon. Friend asked about profiling. Passengers are selected for various security processes irrespective of their age, gender, ethnic background or religious beliefs. The purpose is to ensure that no prohibited articles are taken into the restricted zone or on to the plane. One of the basic tenets of aviation security in the UK is that each passenger is screened and has an equal chance of being selected for an additional search, irrespective of their age, ethnic background or religious belief. No one can adopt a particular profile believing that they may not be selected for additional searches.

My hon. Friend raised questions and gave us a demonstration about cutlery. As he said, passengers cannot take knives through airport security, but they are available airside at restaurants. Current security measures allow metal cutlery within certain specifications—they must have a blunt edge and a specific blade length; that was what he demonstrated—to be used as part of an airline’s in-flight catering regime or by airside catering establishments, such as restaurants or cafés. That approach does not apply to passengers, who since 9/11 have been prohibited from taking knives through UK airport security points. The aim is to avoid any additional pressure being placed on X-ray operators at those points. Metal cutlery knives are, of course, permitted in hold baggage.

I acknowledge the points that several hon. Members have made about inconsistencies in application. The fact that the additional screening for potential liquid explosives and so on is a relatively new procedure means that there are anomalies, but they are being ironed out as the procedure becomes more familiar to passengers and staff.

My hon. Friend also raised the question of immigration and border controls. As he knows, that is a matter for the Home Office, with which we work closely. I am happy to bring his comments and those of other hon. Members to the attention of our friends in the Home Office.

My hon. Friend raised the important question of a proposed advisory committee to assist in this process. We agree that airlines and airports should discuss these issues. The aim is to get security to be part of normal business, not just an add-on. I shall return to that point.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of hand luggage, to which I tried to respond in my opening comments. To reinforce the point, I should say that limiting passengers to a smaller bag enables a reasonable amount of personal items to be carried while giving the X-ray screeners a less cluttered X-ray signature, thus making the task of identifying potentially dangerous liquids and other possible threat items easier for them. That measure, together with the limit of a single bag, helps to reduce potential delays at the screening point, given that the search regime is more intensive. We are in close consultation with the industry to ensure that the new measures are capable of being delivered for as long as is necessary. As I have outlined, the measures are kept under review, including in the light of developments in training and screening techniques. The threat from liquid explosives represents a step change that will need to be taken into account on a continuing basis in the security measures of all airports.

The hon. Member for Ribble Valley raised the issue of the urgent need to get passengers through. As he was saying, there must be a balance between throughput and thoroughness to ensure security at airports and for airlines. He also asked whether the electronic tagging of bags by British Airways would help. When baggage has been screened on entry to the airport, the bag is clean, so no matter how long it is stored, it is secure and safe. In that sense, the matter is taken forward.

The hon. Gentleman asked what element of the ticketing price is earmarked for security and where the money goes. The breakdown of the cost of the ticket and where the funds go is varied. There is an element of security in the cost of the ticket. If permitted to do so, I shall write to him and to the other hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, as I am sure that they will be interested in further information on this. I acknowledge the point that he raises about designing safety and security into all public buildings, including airports. I am sure that he realises that that is very much a matter of modern architecture, particularly in respect of specific buildings.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) asked about matters affecting Durham Tees Valley airport. I am confident that the Ministry of Defence will have discussed these items with its management and that they can use the airport as they currently do. Again, I shall pass his comments on to the MOD and try to ensure that he receives a response on this issue.

All airports are considering the security position on approaches by car, and as we have seen on our TV screens and know from hearing about the personal experiences of colleagues, many have adopted new methods to deal with the matter.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) raised the issue of policing costs. The independent review of policing at airports by Stephen Boys Smith was completed last year and the report was submitted to the then Secretary of State and the Home Secretary. The then Secretary of State issued a written statement at that time welcoming its broad thrust. On 14 June, he issued a further written statement reporting on progress, including constructive dialogue with stakeholders and agreement on a direction for work. It recommended continued and enhanced liaison between key stakeholders, including Departments, the police service and airport operators at both national and local level, to maintain a consistent response to the threats and risks. As the hon. Lady mentioned, it also endorsed the current multi-agency threat and risk assessment approach in place at UK airports. These matters are still under discussion and review, so I am not in a position to comment further despite their being raised by her and by the hon. Member for Canterbury.

Has the Minister addressed the question of having dedicated police?

The whole question of policing is under review and I am not in a position to say anything further on that. I am sure that the matter will also be raised at the summit to which I referred.

The hon. Lady raised questions about our review of arrangements, and I shall cover that in my conclusion. She also mentioned vehicle access barriers, and, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland, since the incident at Glasgow, the Department is actively examining the best ways to mitigate against vehicle-carried devices. Barriers are not the only option, and these matters are in hand.

I am only too aware that the very necessary measures that we have in place mean that both aviation staff and passengers are being tested. We will do what we can, particularly in explaining to the travelling public why these measures are necessary. As a first step, we will host a security summit later this month. It will bring together key players across the industry to make sure that we plan effectively and in a co-ordinated way for higher volumes of passengers, especially over the summer months.

That will be backed up by a media and marketing campaign, which started yesterday, aimed at passengers, reminding them to arrive prepared when they travel to airports this summer. They should be aware that restrictions are still in place at UK airports and at a growing number of others across the world. Hon. Members asked for such an approach. We will do everything that we can to ensure that this issue gets as much exposure as possible.

The summit that we expect to take place next week will provide an opportunity for Government and senior industry representatives to look ahead to see how industry operational needs and security requirements can be handled in a holistic fashion.

I would like to express my appreciation to hon. Members for the constructive way in which this morning’s discussion has been handled and for the tone used. I know from this debate that we all want the same objective: safe and efficient travel. I assure hon. Members who have participated in this debate and, indeed, the whole House, that we are as committed as they are in wanting to ensure that that aim is secured as quickly as possible.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Taylor, to see you in such an obvious and deserved position of authority today.

This debate has excited a lot of interest in the electrical industry, and I hope that it will excite some interest among elected Members of Parliament. The directive is a response to the growing volume of electrical and electronic waste, which is the fastest growing waste stream by volume and by weight. The UK produces 1.2 million tonnes a year, and the EU produces 14 kg per person a year, which is astonishingly high.

The causes are readily identifiable. Clearly, there is rising disposable income. There is also considerable technological development in mobile phones and the ever-ongoing IT revolution, which affects all aspects of our existence: home, workplace and leisure activities. There is a greater variety of electrical and electronic products to buy, such as simple things like toothbrushes and mowers, which used to be worked by hand and are now worked by electricity, and new developments such as DVD players and microwaves, the like of which previous generations did not see. There are new electrical products on the market.

There is also a strong element of planned obsolescence in the industry, which was formerly a feature of the automotive industry. We recall cars that were developed with rust pockets built into them, and the use of chromium alongside steel, which precipitates immediate rusting. We recall the time that almost every car in the street was rusting away shortly after it left the showroom. There is a similar syndrome in the electrical and electronic industry. We can all point to breakable plastic features of electrical equipment that forces us to cashier it although it is otherwise usable.

One issue that the hon. Gentleman has not yet touched on is the digital switchover. There is a fear that many televisions and video recorders will be obsolete and that a huge mountain of them will have to be coped with. They may not even fall within the terms of the directive if they were bought some time ago. The fear is that many will end up in people’s gardens and be unsightly, or that they will be fly-tipped, which is another problem that may result from the directive.

Order. Interventions should be brief.

The hon. Gentleman anticipates my later comments. I think that probably every house in the country has a VHS recorder in a cupboard somewhere that will shortly be taken to a waste disposal site.

Another element is that many electrical goods are difficult and expensive to repair, and there is a general lack of repair facilities even when the fault is relatively minor. A worse vice to lay at the electrical industry’s door is the phasing of innovation to boost consumption artificially. DVD players were released, and a year or two later when most of them had been sold, out came DVD recorders. There was a push towards widescreen TV and when everyone had one, along came high definition TV, which is not available on the previous widescreen TVs. Flip-top phones were introduced and MP3 players were added later, but it would have been possible to do that earlier. The industry markets sophisticated computers and then changes the software so that a new computer must be bought.

The result is that the life of electrical goods is short, even when quality is good. Much waste is either workable or reparable, unlike the car of the 1960s. There are huge quantities of 14-in and 15-in cathode ray tube monitors gracing every tip throughout the UK, and there is no reason to think that the trend will change. As the hon. Gentleman emphasised, the digital switchover will, if anything, accelerate that trend. As with the advent of 3G networks, the arrival of Windows Vista will add to the mountain of computers, TVs, phones and VHS recorders. The benefits of innovation are sometimes uncertain, but the effect on the waste stream is in no doubt.

The waste electrical and electronic equipment directive endeavours to address the issue. Before discussing it in detail, I want to highlight two fundamental questions without going into them in depth. I want to park them. One issue is necessity: why the directive is necessary. Leaving aside the hazardous substances issue, if the waste is inert, the production materials are plentiful, consumers are happy, employment is maintained and the cost of recycling and reuse is high or intensive in energy consumption, why should we have the directive? I shall not go into that, but I am raising the matter simply to point to the fact that it exists.

Even if the waste is a problem and worth addressing—I think it is—there is still the question of whether that should be done on a European basis. During a debate in the House of Lords, Lord Willoughby de Broke went into the matter in depth, and asked whether we needed a European solution. Unlike rules on air quality and rivers, it is not obvious that a pan-European solution is necessary rather than national solutions, although any national scheme based on producer responsibility would have to come to terms with single market regulations, which may be why we are approaching this problem in a pan-European way.

I wanted to highlight those problems, and park them, because I want to deal with what we have got. I am broadly sympathetic with the thrust of the directive. I view old machinery fondly as children of the human spirit. I grieve over old TVs when I throw them out. I even repair old computers and printers, and am something of a specialist on Hewlett Packard. I am emotionally shocked by skips full of perfectly usable equipment and repelled by the apparent wastefulness.

The WEEE directive tries to reduce the waste stream, and its policy is straightforward. It sets targets for reuse and recovery; it makes producers or importers liable for meeting those targets and, in so doing, it hopes to provide a stimulus for less wasteful production and better design. The general brief or prospectus is agreed and clear, and most people are sympathetic, but its economic effects are unknown. They may add to consumer costs, which to some extent depends on whether the recycling and reuse market is profitable in the long term. I believe that it can be, but I am not certain.

The big problem is not the prospectus or its economic effects, but the practical implementation. The correct EU phrase for what the Government are expected to do is “transposition by the national state”. I have some sympathy with the Government because the directive is complex to transpose. There are distinctions to be drawn between historic pre-2005 waste and new waste, and between householders, who essentially have free disposal, and the rights of corporate customers, who have limited liability when not exchanging like-for-like-goods, but I believe they have a right to the collection of goods.

It is difficult for all nations to interpret their version of what individual producer responsibility amounts to and to work out how the directive’s overall objectives will be achieved. There is difficulty when discussing product types, which is important in cataloguing waste and billing it. There are different systems and different categories in different countries, and there is debate about whether something falls within the directive because it is a non-fixed asset and whether CCTV and so on is not covered because it is a fixed asset and part and parcel of a building.

National schemes are supposed to clarify those complex issues, and in the UK, rather than take a scheme off the peg from Johnny foreigner or whomever, we have devised our own—slowly, it must be said, because we have been warned several times to get on with it, and in our own individual way. To be fair to the Government, they have had all the usual accoutrements that one would expect to find attached to new legislation. There have been consultations, roadshows, notification to all the various bodies, and, as is always the case, a massive proliferation of acronyms, which so far I have managed to avoid using.

Essentially, the Government are seeking to stimulate or construct a network of responsibilities between producers, who are ultimately the funders, consumers, who have the stuff, waste collectors and receivers, who are normally but not exclusively local authorities, and recyclers, who are usually private companies or social enterprises. For the whole system to work and to hang together, each must understand their part in it, and they must be willing to play their part in a complex operation.

The “understanding” aspect has been extraordinarily slow and, perforce, difficult. Again, however, I have some sympathy with the Government’s problem in getting their message across, because an awful lot of people do not wake up to the imperative of new regulations, or of any change until it hits them. No matter how many prospectuses and advanced notifications one gives, many people work on a need-to-know basis, and respond, sit up and take note only when the regulations impact.

Research shows that only 2 per cent. of the public know anything about the directive, so we in the Chamber are a privileged group. Worse still, 43 per cent. of big producers are generally unsure about the demands that it may make of them, and 70 per cent. of small firms do not know that it exists, which is worrying.

To confirm what the hon. Gentleman says, on Saturday I was approached by a constituent who takes old phone systems and tries to recycle them. The process involves some waste, and he was unsure about whether he should register. That is part of the problem. The main electrical retailers seem to know what they are doing, but elsewhere in the waste chain, an awful lot of people are uncertain.

That is a big problem. In responding to that intervention, I should like to put on record the great part that big firms such as Hewlett Packard have played in ensuring that there is awareness throughout the system. However, even the big firms’ attempts have not gone so far as to penetrate the smaller retailers, who think about their day’s profits and the products that they sell, rather than about their products’ end-life use.

I had some initial fears, which, to some extent, have been dispelled. I was genuinely worried that there would be a lack of producer co-operation, but that is not true. I have been impressed by the extent to which the big players in particular have wanted to make the legislation work—and work on a European basis. I was worried that there would not be any adequate recycling facilities to do anything useful with the products when they were returned. The studies that I have made and the information that I have received convinces me that there is a more mature market than I thought, however. There are more end-use products: the stuff is not just being collected and put in warehouses; there are some valid and intelligent uses, even for things such as plastic casings.

There are problems in certain areas, however. I am told that, for example, a dead television is practically worthless in terms of what it or its components can be turned into. I was worried at first that there would not be an adequate number of disposal sites where people could take products. According to a recent Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs answer, however, my worries are again misplaced. Local authorities are more clued up than I expected and 72 per cent. are ready, so the infrastructure seems to exist.

Is my hon. Friend aware that on the last count, 250 council recycling centres did not have a partnership with a manufacturer’s scheme? That situation has been calculated to leave council tax payers with an estimated £27 million bill: £18 million for the facilities to collect and recycle and £9 million for the running of civic amenity sites.

That is a big problem, which I shall go on to highlight. There is a distinction between an authority’s physical readiness, whereby it is tooled up to do the job, and its contractual readiness, whereby it has all the paperwork in place to do the job and make the scheme work effectively. That is where the problem lies. Contractual certainty and clarity do not exist, and I do not see how the market can work without them. In fact, by general confession, in place of contractual certainty and clarity is something tantamount to a bureaucratic nightmare.

People who ought to know, because they are intimately involved with the regulations, tell me that the contractual uncertainty and lack of clarity are leading to the collapse of many pre-existing arrangements and the rise of mutual suspicions among all elements of the network. Producers fear over-billing; local authorities fear being left holding the baby, because the equipment will not be removed; and recyclers worry about the predatory activities of the black or grey markets.

Many councils have not signed up to a producer-compliance scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) just said that they number 250. Recyclers and producers are struggling with the critical evidence notice, which is the basis for the financial part of the transaction and crucial to the producers. Many people who are responsible for the recycling stations do not have the required permits from the Environment Agency, and although guidance was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry, it is widely agreed to be confusing. That is not my declaration; it has been passed on to me by people who have to use the guidance. Everyone is buried in paperwork, and that view seems to be the consensus. Some of the people implementing the process are not particularly sophisticated in handling complex paperwork.

If such chaos characterises the arrangements between people who are willing to be responsible partners, one has to wonder what chance the Government have of dealing with the trade’s less reputable element—the people who work on the grey and black markets. If we cannot run a straightforward system, how will enforcement be run any better? They have the capacity to frustrate almost all the objectives of the WEEE regulations.

The market figures are massive. Apparently, we export 150,000 fridges per annum; 150,000 washing machines and cookers; 500,000 televisions, which is equivalent to 10 per cent. of the UK’s electrical waste stream; 150,000 videos, with presumably many more to go; and 1.3 million monitors. It is a phenomenal but, by and large, unregulated trade. We are poorly equipped to run a satisfactory WEEE market, and we are vulnerable both to administrative chaos and to exploitation by people who work in a less regulated market.

If that characterises our current efforts, I am somewhat sceptical about what we will do when we aim for a more fine-grained implementation of the directive—when we get down to making individual producers responsible, as the best of them want to be, for their products and not anybody else’s. Unless we do something like that, we will not encourage the improvement in design quality and general recyclability to which the directive aspires. The EU will definitely review the legislation and how it works in the round throughout Europe, but what we need now from the Minister and the Government is hands-on action to alleviate the administrative chaos and to make this worthy directive work properly.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) on securing this debate on a matter that is important to the vast majority of people in this country and to businesses, as has been mentioned.

We live in a dynamic world. I suspect that if a number of us looked around our houses to see how many bits of electrical equipment are fast becoming obsolete due to new technology, we would all have our own mini-mountains, irrespective of the 35 million to 40 million houses in the United Kingdom and the 60 million people living within our shores. Another aspect, which has not been mentioned, is the fact that our population is ageing. We must pay due regard to that ageing population to ensure that they are given as much assistance as possible in disposing of their electrical items safely and securely.

I mentioned my worry, although the hon. Gentleman did not dwell on it, about fly-tipping. It concerns me greatly. If an individual has to pay to dispose of an item that they always assumed somebody would get rid of, and if the cost is too high or the bother too great, they might be tempted to tip the equipment either in the countryside or somewhere in their community. That would be awful, and it is clearly something that we do not want. Local authorities have a huge responsibility, as do the businesses that sell the items in the first place. We must ensure that electrical items are designed and manufactured to be as recyclable as possible.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned mobile phones. I am waiting with bated breath to get my hands on an iPhone, the wonderful new Apple product. No doubt if I wait another six months I will want something else, because I am a bit of a gadgets freak, but that will mean, of course, that the old phone will become obsolete. A number of places—Tesco operates a scheme, as does Carphone Warehouse—say, “Please hand back your mobile phone, and we will make sure that it is recycled,” and provide an incentive to do just that. We all carry such items as fashion accessories—I suspect that a number of us could not live without them. What will happen to all the old ones? I was speaking last Friday to a group of schoolchildren in my constituency, and I told them that when I was their age, we did not even have mobile phones.

Or telephones.

We had telephones, but we did not have mobile phones. I am sure that my hon. Friend will want to speak for himself on that matter.

Since mobile phones have been around, I have probably gone through about 30 of them. Some of them have been lost; goodness knows where they have ended up. We want to ensure that they are recyclable, and that we are not storing up mountains of mobile phones, to name one specific item, for the future. Landfill is a wasting asset in our country. We must look at ways of ensuring that we recycle as much as we possibly can.

I mentioned the digital switchover, which will be completed in 2012, alongside the fact that LCD and plasma-screen TVs came on the market at roughly the same time. People are now looking again at their electrical items. A TV has a shelf life of about 10 years before it needs to be disposed of, but I suspect that as far as the technology is concerned, most TVs’ lifetime is a lot shorter than that. In the past five years, high-definition television has been introduced, and those who bought LCD or plasma-screen TVs five years ago might be thinking, “Shavings! If only I’d waited, I could have had a high-definition television now.” Well, to use a high-definition television, they will need a high-definition Sky Plus box or its equivalent. What will happen to all the old equipment, as well as to the obsolete TVs and video recorders that we discussed earlier?

The hon. Gentleman mentioned video recorders, which themselves are becoming obsolete as people move to DVD players and recorders. My family was peculiar in that we chose neither Betamax nor VHS; we were one of the few families in Britain with a Grundig V2000. I think that it was obsolete when we bought it. It is just as well, because nobody in the family could work it—it was Jodrell Bank technology. It did a lot of things that we could not work out whether we wanted it to do; all we wanted was a simple video recorder. A number of such items must be disposed of.

When my washing machine broke down the other day, I went out and chose a new one. I asked the person who sold me the new one, “Of course, you will take away the old one, won’t you?” They looked horrified, and said, “I’m not so sure we can do that any more.” It comes down to businesses’ ignorance of what can and cannot be done. I said, “Well, it’s going to be a bit awkward for me, because I don’t have a garden at the front where I can put it for a few days while I wait for the local authority.” Because of many people’s lifestyles—both parents often work, for instance—we must make it as simple as possible. We certainly do not want gardens littered with electrical items while people wait for the local authority to come around. I must say that the Ribble Valley council is very good, with a keen department that takes away items and ensures that they are recycled where possible. That is important.

In the end, the company from which I bought the new washing machine said, “For a small fee, Mr. Evans, we will take away the old one.” Thank goodness they did, but I worry about elderly people. If they turn up asking for a new electrical item and are told, “You have to dispose of it yourself,” that will add an extra problem. They will think, “I’m buying a new one, but in the good old days the company would take the old one away and dispose of it.” That is what needs to happen now.

I remember some of the newspaper articles published at the time of the fridge mountains—there were amazing photographs of fridges being stockpiled. That is why we must ensure that there are businesses specialising in recycling. The hon. Gentleman mentioned his surprise that the industry was geared up far better than even he thought it would be. There must be best practice in other countries that do such things better than we do. I hope that, in connection with the directive, we can see which countries do.

To be fair, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee considered both the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive and the end-of-life vehicles directive some years ago. Although we were critical of both, the ELV directive has worked well. If the hon. Gentleman wants expertise to see how we could recycle many waste products, I suggest that the ELV directive is the place to go.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s advice. I am a carless person now. I tried to sell mine to a friend, who had it checked out to see what was wrong with it—he calls himself a friend. He phoned me up and said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I said, “Give us the good news.” He said, “There’s nothing wrong with the exhaust.” I contacted the people at the garage that he had taken it to, and fortunately they took the vehicle back; I hope that they stripped it of everything possible.

Best practice needs to be adopted and spread throughout the country. It all comes down to the fact that everything done with good intentions has unintended consequences. I hope that we can consider the unintended consequences of this issue and try to iron them out at the relevant legislative stages. I am sure that the Government are considering how we can make things a lot easier for people and go without a lot of the bureaucracy and paperwork that dog our daily lives. The vast majority of people do all they can to ensure that the generations to come have a future and that we do not leave them a planet full of electrical rubbish. We need the legislation that will help those generations.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) on securing this important debate. As the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) said in his most amusing and illustrative speech, the legislation has a lot of unintended consequences. While we are still at the beginning, I want not only to pick up some of my hon. Friend’s points, but to make some additional ones. I should be grateful if the Minister addressed them.

On consumer awareness, a recent poll found that only 2 per cent. of people knew about the WEEE directive and their responsibility. My first question for the Minister is about what the Government are doing to make the consumer aware of what is required in respect of returning electrical goods. A similar study found that 76 per cent. of people shown the symbol of a wheelie bin with a cross on it could not work out that that meant that they were not supposed to throw the article away, but take it back and recycle it. Some people thought that the symbol meant, “No wheelie bins around here” and there were various other misunderstandings. I ask the Government in all seriousness to ensure that such messages are clear. I do not watch much television, but I do not know of any advertising campaigns on the subject. Perhaps the Minister could tell me of one.

The symbol is hard to spot on many goods. In preparation for this debate, I went round my house looking at my electrical products to see whether they had the symbol. I had never previously noticed, but there it was on the DVD recorder and laptop. However, I had to look for it; I had never noticed it before.

The symbol has to be seen before it can be misunderstood, so that is an important point.

I turn to the problem of enforcement. What have the Government been doing in the four years that they have had to make the regulations workable? My hon. Friend talked of the mountain of paperwork to which companies have been subjected. The Government have pushed back the introduction of the regulations several times because of the complex requirements of the law. Why have they seemed to make things more complex instead of simplifying them, particularly in respect of small businesses, which need to understand and to comply with the regulations?

The regulations give business opportunities. It has been estimated that an industry worth in the region of £400 million a year has been created through their introduction. That industry is welcomed in this country by all concerned. However, small businesses could face thousands of pounds in fines because of their failure to register according to the rules. I should be grateful to know what the Government are doing to ensure that businesses, particularly small ones, understand when and whether they have to register and the implications of that registration.

I turn to computers. It has been estimated that between 28 and 93 per cent. of a computer, by weight, can be recycled, depending on the type. The problem for compliance is the erasing of the information on the hard drive. Many non-experts do not know that information cannot be fully erased from the hard drive without specialist software that guarantees full deletion. There are a lot of implications for data protection legislation and commercial confidentiality. I should be grateful to know how the Government are helping businesses in that respect.

Have the Government taken the cost of such software into account when calculating the regulatory impact assessment of the regulations? What steps have they taken to advise businesses of the implications of not fully erasing confidential data?

Does the hon. Lady think that it would be a good idea if all computers came with a disk that could wipe all the information? People sometimes want to change their computers for newer models. Some charities will transport their old ones to African countries and other developing nations, which will benefit from those computers.

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which ties in nicely with my next one. The whole point of article 8.2 of the WEEE directive was to ensure that manufacturers would build recyclability into their goods. However, a joint statement by a group of companies and non-governmental organisations on producer responsibility for waste electrical and electronic equipment stated that Britain and 10 other EU member states have not incorporated article 8.2. As they do not make producers directly responsible for the recycling of their own products, those producers can elect to pay a levy and someone else will pick up the tab.

The whole purpose of article 8.2 was to incorporate recyclability into design. By not addressing the article, the Government have missed the whole point. Why did Britain not fully implement article 8.2, as 12 other EU countries have done? What are the Government doing to remedy that and to encourage manufacturers to place a strong emphasis on design and recyclability, so that companies can divest themselves of goods in a way that will not compromise their confidentiality and commercial information?

Finally, I should like to raise the strange story of Benji’s in Llanidloes—I apologise to residents of the town in case I did not get the pronunciation right. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) has raised the issue with the Minister before, but he has not yet been favoured with a reply. The problem is as follows. I buy a kettle and decide that I do not like its colour, so I return it to the retailer. As I understand it, the kettle cannot go back on the shelf for health and safety reasons; I might have gone into the workings of the kettle and interfered with it. Under the WEEE directive, that kettle would be designated as waste. Benji’s has made a good living doing exactly what the WEEE directive is trying to promote. When goods are returned from major high street retailers, the company tests them, checks that they work and resells them. If there is a fault, it repairs them and then resells them.

The problem is that the factory where the company does all the repairs is in Poland. As the products are not included in any of the three specified types of list under the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 1994, they go on the red list, which is the same category as toxic waste. Every country that Benji’s has to send the goods through to reach Poland takes a mountain of paperwork and a three-day delay. If they go through France, Austria and Germany, which would be the normal route, that causes a major problem for Benji’s and for many other companies that wish to transport electrical goods across frontiers and are unable to do so purely because of the amount of paperwork. That is extremely unfortunate, as the biggest hazard from 99 per cent. of those goods would be that someone could drop them on their foot. I would be grateful if the Minister considered that.

The major problem that Benji is experiencing is that every two to three weeks Environment Agency officials descend on his warehouse with search warrants to check his premises for waste. As I understand it, any items that have not yet been sorted as fit for resale or needing repair are designated as waste and Benji receives an order that requires him to throw into landfill hundreds of tonnes of goods that could be reused, repaired and recycled. I would be grateful if the Minister looked into that specific matter as a point of urgency. The company’s livelihood is threatened and I wonder how many more misunderstandings and overzealous interpretations by Government officials are causing a hazard and thwarting the reasons why the regulations were created in the first place.

My hon. Friend has been working with Government officials to attempt to solve the problem, but we need the Minister to show agreement in principle to ensure that the WEEE directive does not have the unintended consequence of hindering the reuse and repair of damaged goods.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) on securing the debate and on the considered, thorough and thoughtful way in which he introduced the subject. We had our debate greatly enlivened by my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), who took us through a technological history of his life. I think that if we look into his garage, we will find a range of things tucked away—[Interruption.] But not a car; I should imagine that we would probably find a C5, given his ability to buy things that are going out of fashion before they even start. We would probably find one of those mobile phones the size of a breezeblock and a range of wind-up radios and kettles of the wrong colour.

It is a pleasure, too, to welcome the Minister back. I say that with some sadness, because I had hoped that he would move into the Cabinet. It is probably because I said that the last time that we met that he was not put in the Cabinet, so I regret any damage that I might have done to his career. However, all of us who are involved in dealings with him welcome the fact that he is still here.

This is a timely debate, because some of our constituents are just beginning to wake up to the full implications of the directive and what it might mean for them. We are beginning to see letters come in and the number will grow significantly as the measures come fully into force. The UK throws away some 5 million televisions, 2 million home computers and 8,000 tonnes of battery-operated toys a year. I thought that that was just the amount that my children throw away, but apparently it is the national figure. Some 4.1 million units of household equipment that contain cathode ray tubes are disposed of in the UK every year, and a large proportion are believed to be at civic amenity sites.

There have been six consultations, a review and three years of delay in implementing the directive. My hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has said that the endless delays, reviews and consultations have neither given retailers certainty nor a clear enough impression that the Government take the issue sufficiently seriously. He went on to add that this has been

“the longest WEEE in history”—

but I am not sure that I can read that into the record.

Member states were required to bring into force the WEEE compliant laws, regulations and administrative provisions by August 2004, but the Government did not lay the regulations before Parliament until December 2006. Those were huge and unacceptable delays, and perhaps the Minister can tell us why they occurred. As a consequence of the delays, the UK is one of eight member states in the EU to which the Commission has issued a final warning for failure to transpose the directive on time. What penalty does the UK face for the late implementation of the directive?

The fee structure for the regulations was revised to provide some relief for smaller firms. The Department of Trade and Industry’s approach in listening to smaller companies and to the Federation of Small Businesses was encouraging, but the changes do not appear to have gone far enough and still risk being overly expensive for smaller businesses. What discussions has the Minister had with the Federation of Small Businesses and other groups to try to overcome the concerns of the business community?

The directive is trying to avoid 500,000 tonnes of waste across the EU being buried in the ground each year, as some hazardous chemicals might leak. Waste electrical equipment is the fastest-growing category of rubbish in the European Union and, as the hon. Member for Southport said, some 14 kg per EU citizen are generated each year. It is unclear how the Government’s aim of reducing the number of items will affect the amount of domestic rubbish and the amount of waste electrical equipment involved in that. What steps are the Government taking to reduce the huge amount of electrical and electronic equipment disposed of by individual members of the public? We know that appropriate centres are being set up, but how many will there be and how will they be publicised?

How broad is the definition of what will have to be taken back? The directive says that electrical and electronic equipment must be taken back if it is of an equivalent type and provides the same function as the new piece of equipment. What does that mean in practice? If someone is buying a plasma screen to replace an old television set, would that be covered? They might provide the same function, but they are certainly not of an equivalent type. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley has said, with the concern over digital switchover and the new equipment that is being bought, that will be a live issue.

Each new generation of computer equipment has a range of functions that its predecessors did not have. By definition, such equipment does not provide the same function or else it would not be bought. What will be the requirement for it to be taken back and exchanged? If I want to buy an iPod and to exchange it for my old 1970s music centre, which I still have as I am one of those people who finds great difficulty in throwing away such things—I still have my first computer from school, which is the size of a breezeblock, because I think that I might need it again one day—would I be able to insist that my music centre be taken back?

There are other issues that we need to address. Clearly, local authorities will face costs in providing the centres and sites for such activity. How are the local authorities expected to meet such costs and how much support are they being given by the Government? Can we also consider the impact on very small businesses, which the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) has mentioned? There are many small businesses for which the sale of electronic and electrical equipment is only a fraction of their business activity. For many of them, the cost of the directive could become disproportionate. What have the Government done to address their concerns? There are up to 9,000 local independent stores in the United Kingdom that employ up to 30,000 people, but they represent 15 per cent. of the UK IT sales sector, worth about £9 billion a year. The average turnover for those independent retailers is between £100,000 and £250,000 a year, which is not massive, and the cost of implementing the directive could be significant. We are concerned that small independent computer retailers and others will be left at a huge cost disadvantage compared with shops such as Comet, which may be able to absorb the cost easily.

What will be the impact of the directive on those selling second-hand equipment and for whom electrical and electronic equipment is a very small part of their business? The hon. Lady told us about Benji’s, and I was slightly surprised by her story. I thought that all the people from Poland were doing such work here now, and I am surprised to find that there is anybody left in Poland to do the work there. They make a major contribution to our economy. The case highlights an issue involved: will such companies have to be fully compliant even if electrical and electronic equipment represents only a small part of their sales?

There are also charities involved in the sector. There is a charity just outside my constituency called Furniture Now!, which provides furniture and other equipment to homeless families and people who are only just able to get a house and do not have the funds to furnish it. If it sells electrical equipment as a small sideline to its main operation, will it have to comply? If so, that could prevent that valuable charity from selling such equipment to people who are genuinely in need of such a low-cost facility.

The Government have contributed £10 million to the distributor take-back scheme. What does the Minister estimate to be the total cost of setting up such a scheme, and how will the money be allocated? Will he also tell us what he sees as the responsibilities of end users that are corporate concerns rather than individuals? Sometimes corporate concerns are of much greater magnitude than the retailers that provide a service to them. If a big bank in the City were having a new telephone system installed, it would be a specialised system and the bank would probably call on a quite small, specialist company to provide that service. Would the obligation to dispose of the old kit be on that small company, or would the large corporate concern have some responsibility? What about house clearance companies, which perhaps go in to clear up a property when an elderly person has died? What will be the onus on them to ensure that old electrical and electronic equipment is disposed of in the right way?

We know that distributors are required to offer free in-store take-back facilities. What is the situation in relation to their charging for collection? Some of the items involved may be large, and a significant part of distributors’ business now is ensuring that items are delivered to our homes rather than our having to carry them there. Will such distributors be required to take things away free of charge, or will it be possible for them to charge the consumer for doing so? We all share the concern set out by my hon. Friend about the cost of fly-tipping and the damage that it can cause. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on that.

We all agree that the system must be made as simple as possible for the consumer. If it is not, people will simply fly-tip or dispose of things in whatever way they think easiest. Can we move further and require all mobile phone outlets to have a bin into which people can put their old phones when they do not need them any more? Can we consider the system used in Norway, where every shop that sells batteries is required to have a little disposal unit for batteries so that they are not thrown away with the general waste? Much more can be done and should be done now.

I have one additional point on mobile phones, which people renew regularly, and particularly on the interfaces on them. When disposing of a mobile phone, there is also the plug that goes into the wall. What goes into a mobile phone is different even within the same company—Nokia seems to have several interfaces on different models. Why cannot there be common interfaces so that people can reuse the plugs and the stuff that goes into the phone on different models, or certainly on models by the same company?

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. The manufacturers should undoubtedly consider that, because one simply buys the next model—whether of a phone, digital camera or whatever—and discovers that the old power supply cannot be used. One ends up with drawers full of old plugs and the whole range of connection cables that go with them and one cannot remember what they were for. Manufacturers could help significantly by designing out such faults and failings.

Will the Minister say a little about the support that will be available for other charities? There is a charity in my constituency called Computers for Charities, which takes second-hand computers. It finds significant problems in recycling them and making them available again. What is his Department doing to facilitate that process?

We all accept that the directive has an important contribution to make. The hon. Member for Southport made a strong case for why it should be in place and for its benefits, but, as he and others have said, it is cumbersome, chaotic and is not being implemented successfully. This may have been, as my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has said, the longest WEEE in history, but it has certainly not been a comfortable experience.

Follow that!

I intend to follow that, but first, in the traditional way, I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) on securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to expand on how we are implementing the unfortunately known WEEE directive in the United Kingdom. It is an important piece of environmental legislation that is intended to address in a practical and environmentally effective manner the increasing levels of waste electrical and electronic equipment here in the UK and across the European Union.

The directive comes at a good time, because more and more of our constituents are busy recycling bottles of lemonade, plastics, paper and so on when they can. Many people will welcome opportunities to recycle the vast amount of electrical equipment that they have in their homes. As hon. Members detailed their electrical experiences and electronic behaviour, I thought, “Who needs the Freedom of Information Act when hon. Members are so willing to tell us about their experiences?” The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), as has been noted, rather movingly told us about his desperate childhood in the valleys without a mobile phone and being forced to experience the Grundig V2000. I shall not try to compete with that in the normal way by saying that in my day we would just gather round the piano singing “Hound Dog” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, because we have had quite enough of that already.

To put the matter in context, as hon. Members already have, we estimate that about 2 million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste were generated in the UK last year, and that is probably the case every year. One of my colleagues calculated that that is enough to fill the new Wembley stadium up to six times over, which probably accounts for the delay in the construction of Wembley stadium. I hope that the Select Committee is considering that fact. At an individual level, we calculate that each UK citizen will generate 3.3 tonnes of electrical waste during their lifetime. The hon. Member for Southport reminded us of the trend to have so much electronic gadgetry.

The UK system is designed to ensure that waste is not dumped in landfill to damage the environment for current and future generations but separately collected, treated and recycled. The UK implementation of the regulations came fully into force on 1 July and I am pleased by the response that producers, distributors, retailers, local authorities, re-use organisations and the waste treatment and recycling industries have made in working together to deliver an effective system. We admit that the system has been difficult to put in place and is coming in later than we had intended, but I assure hon. Members that the European Union is now very pleased with the way in which we are implementing the directive.

I wish to say something about producers, Mr. Wilshire, and I welcome you to the Chair in this important debate.

You are very kind.

The regulations place obligations on all producers of electrical and electronic equipment to finance the costs of collection and the waste management of the products that they place on the UK market. All responsible businesses have welcomed the aims of the WEEE regulations, as they are keen to limit the environmental impact of their products when they reach the end of their lives.

Under the UK system, all producers are required to join an approved producer compliance scheme that best meets their needs. The environment agencies have now approved 37 such schemes. Collectively, more than 3,300 producers have registered so far. I recognise, however, that there will be businesses that have not yet joined the WEEE system, despite the efforts of Government and business representative organisations. We will therefore continue our ongoing efforts to raise awareness of the regulations; for example, a further series of UK-wide roadshow events are planned for September—if Members have not yet booked their holiday, that is worth bearing in mind—and the Environment Agency will shortly be commencing a telephone campaign to alert companies that may have obligations.

Let me say something about retailers and distributors. Although the bulk of the obligations rests with producers of electrical and electronic equipment, the distributors of such equipment also have obligations. When a replacement item of electrical or electronic gear is purchased, distributors must provide facilities for consumers to return equipment that has reached the end of its life. That can be done in one of two ways. They can offer services to take back the equipment at their premises—I believe that Dixons is doing that—or, more typically, as it is turning out, they can join the distributor take-back scheme, which will help them discharge their obligations. So far, 2,550 distributors have joined the scheme, and, as a result, £10 million will be provided to local authorities for the use of their sites and to finance any upgrading, signage and so on that may be needed.

Let me say something about the role of local authorities. The WEEE regulations place no direct obligation on local authorities. Some media reports have claimed that local authorities will incur a financial burden as a result of the regulations, but that will not be the case if they become part of the WEEE system by applying for their sites to be designated collection facilities, whereby they can arrange for a producer compliance scheme to provide the necessary containers to collect WEEE and to clear WEEE from their sites for free.

Local authorities may count the recycling of such waste deposited at their sites towards their recycling targets and, by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill, they will be able to reduce their waste disposal costs. To date, 99 per cent. of local authorities have applied to participate in the system. All but two sites have so far been approved.

I hope that before he leaves this subject, the Minister will address my point about article 8.2, which related to manufacturers incorporating thought into their design process because of the requirement for them to take back their own products. So far, he has not addressed it. Also, is he blaming local authorities for not having been able to find producers to collect the waste from their sites?

I come not to blame local authorities but to praise them. I am chasing up a couple of slow coaches, but 99 per cent. have already signed up, so I am encouraged by the local authority response.

On design, we are already seeing signs in the United Kingdom that the producers of electrical and electronic goods are thinking hard about sustainability, and that they are recognising that the materials will be recycled. People are already incorporating such considerations into their designs. We need to consider the best approach, but the hon. Lady makes an important point. Between 60 and 70 per cent. of local authorities have finalised or are finalising arrangements for clearance of their sites by a scheme, and we expect all local authorities to have reached agreements with schemes in the next few months.

Let me say something about reuse, which is related to sustainability. Some discarded appliances can be reused as whole appliances either here in the UK or possibly overseas. The WEEE regulations encourage such activity by allowing legitimate reuse to be included as evidence of producers discharging their obligations. That approach has been widely welcomed, and I am encouraged that many reuse organisations are building even stronger relationships with local authorities, their communities and producers to ensure that a piece of equipment that can be reused as whole is reused. In my borough of Croydon, I have seen that in action. There is an organisation that will take certain white goods, clean them up, repair them, make them fit for purpose and then sell them at reasonable cost, often to low-income groups. We need more schemes of that kind.

The UK waste management and treatment industry also has a key role in ensuring that the WEEE that is collected is treated, recovered and recycled in accordance with the regulations. The sector is rising to the challenge with 230 approved authorised treatment facilities in place and a number of significant new investments totalling more than £15 million throughout the UK announced since the WEEE regulations were made. The investment includes plants in south Wales, Bedfordshire, Kent and Birmingham that will be capable of handling in excess of an additional 250,000 tonnes of WEEE material.

On the reuse point, there can be genuine reuse and there can be warehousing or landfill disguised as reuse, regardless of whether the goods go abroad or are kept in this country. What measures will be taken by the Department of Trade and Industry or by anybody else to police reuse and ensure that it is genuine reuse rather than exploitive activity by some shoddy trader?

We are discussing that important matter with the environment agencies. All I can do is assure the hon. Gentleman that we are very concerned about it. If I can provide more information, I will write to him, if that is acceptable.

Let me say something about the position of consumers. The regulations are, of course, business regulations. They are aimed at ensuring that businesses that are part of the electrical waste problem are also part of the solution. However, we recognise that the engagement and support of consumers are crucial in securing an effective long-term solution to the problem of waste electrical equipment.

From 1 July, consumers will start to see changes in the information that is available to them when buying a new electrical product. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) made a point about communication. Consumers will be advised on how and where they can best discard their waste equipment to protect the environment. Indeed, I saw a leaflet in the Croydon branch of Currys only this past weekend. Because I am more shy than my colleagues, I shall not say what bit of electrical equipment I was buying at the time and I shall refuse any freedom of information requests. Actually, in case I raised false expectations, perhaps I should say that it was a radio.

Many consumers will be unaware of the significant contribution that they are already making. In fact, some 80 per cent. of electrical goods returned to local authority civic amenity sites are already being separately collected and treated: fridges and freezers, TVs and computer monitors, and fluorescent tubes because of existing hazardous waste legislation, and large household goods because of the value of their scrap metal content. We are doing better than many people think.

Before I make my closing comments, let me deal with some of the issues that were raised, notably about small businesses. The directive does not exempt small businesses from its requirements, so neither do the UK regulations. The Government have made extensive efforts to consult small businesses via their representative bodies. I was asked a question about this by the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry). As a result of the latest public consultation, the annual registration charge and the financial burdens for small producers have been addressed through a graduated-fee structure based on the turnover and VAT status of the business. The distributor take-back scheme offers an easy way for small distributors to comply with the regulations if they would find it difficult to perform in-store take-back. The scheme offers tiered membership charges for distributors.

There was a question about mobile phones. I am advised that the vast majority are already reused via schemes run by phone companies and retailers. Reuse is actively promoted by WEEE regulations, and the industry widely welcomed our approach to reuse, which would further support its activities to promote reuse.

Will the Minister give way on that point?

Yes, but may I just add this comment, which I believe the hon. Gentleman touched on? There is a scheme called “fonebak”, which is unfortunately spelt with an “f”. I hope that it is not a misspelling by my officials; we are not the Department that deals with education, but we do like high standards. The scheme is organised by The Carphone Warehouse and other major organisations and many of the phones are sent to the developing world.

Will the Minister talk to industry about plugs and interfaces because if there is a good technological reason for different interfaces, at least we will have asked the question? If companies talk to one another and have a common interface—even within a company—when we change our phones, we could keep the old plugs. That would do away with many of the drawers that are full of plugs that will otherwise be thrown away.

Indeed. Is the hon. Gentleman also calling for greater EU standardisation in relation to that?

No.

That would be a consistency too far, even for the hon. Gentleman—albeit environment in one nation. I will raise that issue with the producers because I, too, understand its importance.

I was asked about digital switchover, which we are obviously phasing in across the UK. The switch from cathode ray tubes to liquid crystal displays means that many traditional televisions—as we now think of them—have already been disposed of. I am advised that a study by my Department—now called the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the impact of switchover has indicated that there should not be an overall increase in volume, but that there may be a slight acceleration in disposal. That is certainly an issue of which we are very aware.

I was asked about security issues in terms of computers. I am advised that a number of professional businesses in the UK deal with waste information technology and communication equipment, including personal computers. We will certainly ask our new advisory body on WEEE to introduce recommendations on what, if any, further steps are needed to ensure that such data is protected as part of the new WEEE system.

I was also asked about individual producer responsibility. In an ideal world, one could say to the producer, “You are absolutely responsible for what you have produced”, and, as I have implied, that would make producers responsible. In the UK, we, along with many other member states, face difficulties in identifying practical, workable, solutions for the enforcement of individual producer responsibility. Again, as part of its remit, the new WEEE advisory board will be asked to examine individual producers’ responsibility and to make recommendations on how the system should be introduced here. I am advised that, for understandable technical reasons, no member state has a full workable system at the moment.

The hon. Member for Solihull asked me about a particular case that I think related to Benji’s—see I can pronounce it.

Llanidloes is the problem.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for helping me to emphasise a rather poor joke. I am advised that the hon. Lady did not refer to the WEEE regulations, but to regulations from our sister Department—the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In any case, it would not be right for me as a Minister to comment on that in public, but I will pass on her concerns to colleagues in DEFRA.

The issue is at what point the return of a good, either because it is damaged or for no better reason than someone has decided that they do not want it, is designated as waste under the WEEE regulations. That is the fundamental problem experienced by the company that I mentioned. If I write to the Minister, I will be grateful he looks into this specific case.

I will, of course, be happy to do that.

I think that there is just one more point to cover, but we can check the record and if there are others, I will write to colleagues. I think that I was asked by the hon. Member for Wealden whether there is a like-for-like function and what the obligation is. That is a matter of equivalent functions, and whether, for example, a DVD player could be exchanged for a VCR. I hope that I have covered that, but I will write to the him to provide more information.

I will perhaps make a final point about charges for collection. Yes, companies can charge for collection, but there are different options for individuals who wish to dispose of waste electrical and electronic material. If there is in-store take-back, the store will by definition take the item back. If someone is buying a new white good, typically not all companies will charge, but they have an obligation. The consumer would be advised to shop around, and I hope that more companies will look critically at any charges that they levy. There is also a local authority system. If someone cannot take an item themselves to the local authority recycling centre, many local authorities offer a free service and will take away items a few times a year. There are different ways of tackling this issue, but I hope that companies will look self-critically at the charges.

We have had a useful debate; it is an interesting subject. Many issues relate to the processes involved in setting up new schemes. We will learn lessons and the system will not be 100 per cent. perfect in the early weeks. However, I do not recognise the term chaos in relation to the issue. Everyone expects schemes such as this to be chaotic as it makes a good headline, but I see no chaos, and I am not putting my hands over my eyes. What I do see is a scheme that has been delayed because we wanted to get it right. We are now getting it right and I am pleased about the way in which producers and the recycling industries are fully involved.

The scheme will create new commercially profitable industries and businesses in this country. Local authorities have risen to the challenge, but more consumers need to know about the scheme. The communication strategy will improve and more people will know about it. The scheme is a significant step away from the throw-away society of yesterday to a society that is led by consumers—our constituents—who want to be more responsible for the environment and recycling.

The sitting is suspended either until 12.30pm or until Mrs. Gilroy and the relevant Minister are present.

Devonport naval base provides support services to the Royal Navy and has done so for hundreds of years. Devonport is the largest marine complex in western Europe: the site covers 330 acres, with 11 operational dry docks, five outfitting basins, 5 km of deep-water berths and a wide range of support workshops. Devonport Management Limited is Devon and Cornwall’s largest private sector employer, and is almost double the size of the number two company. I know that the Minister is aware of the arguments for Devonport continuing or, indeed, growing that role, which we have set out in “The Case for Devonport”. That is our submission on the socio-economic impact of the review options and our input to the strategic sustainability appraisal carried out by his Department.

We have a long and proud record over the centuries and in recent years, which is relevant to the future, but we cannot rest on our laurels in this era of fast-moving global change. I want to set out why we believe that it is in the interests of the Ministry of Defence and UK plc to ensure the continuation of and to build upon the naval base in Plymouth. I do not, of course, expect the Minister in his response to say, “Yes, of course Linda, everything you say is true and the conclusion of the naval base review will go in Plymouth’s favour.” However, I shall provide some background and hope that he will respond to a series of questions that I have about what has become a more complex process than certainly we in Plymouth originally envisaged. We hope that that will help all of us to understand more about how the various ducks will line up in respect of the important decisions that lie ahead.

How that happens has implications not just for obtaining a reliable and high-quality support service for the Royal Navy, and for realising important value-for-money considerations—it has potentially huge implications for communities that support that activity and related activity, and for cross-Government impacts. Those potential impacts have been described locally as “hospital passes” because of the expenditure that other Departments might have to pick up if there is not full transparency about the basis for decisions on the future of the naval bases. We also want to understand what consultation there might be on any proposed decision, and the timing and transparency of any such consultation.

I am sure that the Minister understands that such clarification is absolutely vital to a city that has the proud history that I outlined earlier. We are very ambitious for the future of our city and its people. We have an urban plan—the Mackay vision—and an economic development strategy that we do not want to see suffer from the setbacks of former years. We are still recovering from the devastation of previous, poorly thought out cuts to the defence budget in the 1990s. Only one area in the UK is in receipt of convergence—formerly objective 1—funding, and our state of recovery is demonstrated by the fact that we receive regional aid as the key city on the edge of it. As the MP who inherited the poorest ward in England from my predecessor, I will fight tooth and nail any proposal that threatens the progress that we have been making in recent years.

In its terms of reference, the naval base review set out the need

“to take note of the emerging issues, costs and benefits from the Surface Ship Support Alliance, Submarine Acquisition Modernisation, Maritime Industrial Strategy, and other internal initiatives and industrial proposals”

In Plymouth, we believe that we can offer a great deal to the future support of the Royal Navy in a way that complements and supports the important work that we do to maintain the UK's submarine fleet. The skill base needed for that is fragile, as was clearly demonstrated in the Defence Committee report on that subject. One of the reasons why Plymouth has managed to maintain such a skills base is the synergy that has been realised between submarine work and work on the surface ship fleet. Like cars, new generations of subs have longer periods between service requirements, so it is essential for young submarine engineers to use their skills, to develop them and to have work that retains their interest. That is currently achieved primarily by enabling them to deploy their skills on surface ship work. Engineers who are skilled to work on submarines can turn their hand to work on ships. However, the training for work on submarines involves greater skills, so the reverse is not true for those trained to work on ships. If, under the naval base review, there were a reduction in base porting at Devonport, the successful recipe that has been developed in Plymouth for regenerating the skills base would be at high risk.

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s remarks and I congratulate her not just on obtaining the debate but on chairing the taskforce in Plymouth that has been spearheading our campaign to ensure that the Government take our arguments seriously. Is not one of the most important points that she is making that of the collocation between the naval base and the dockyard in Devonport, which gives the greatest strength to her arguments? It is vital to maintain the skill base in both those operations so as to ensure that the city has the core of trained men and women that can take us forward.

The hon. Gentleman knows a lot about these matters and has contributed to the strategy group during the period in which it has been meeting—since the naval base review was announced. He is absolutely right and he was almost reading my mind, although he has not seen my speech. I was about to say that decisions on the naval base review are integrally connected with the wider industry restructuring and with the timing of the decision on the future carrier, which itself appears to depend on the outcome of defence spending proposals in the 2007 comprehensive spending review.

The spending review outcome is expected in the autumn, which suggests that a decision on the naval base review may not be made until then, although I understand that it could be earlier. We sense that, if the future carrier proceeds, Ministers will be recommended to agree naval base review option 4, which involves finding further efficiencies at all three bases. Without a positive decision on the future carrier, there might still be a preference in some quarters for a three-base outcome, even though we believe that there is an investment case for a more radical solution.

The Minister will be aware that, within option 4, a number of alternative surface ship base porting and support scenarios have been considered. From a naval base infrastructure perspective, which is the focus of the naval base review, there might well be no significant cost benefits in pursuing any of those variant options. However, although they might not come about as a result of the immediate naval base review process, they could emerge over time through Navy decisions on base porting or as a result of industry proposals or pressures.

That seems a rather fine distinction. The implication is that any consultation on the naval base review options will only, in respect of option 4, be about keeping things broadly as they are in relation to base porting and work load. Our concern is that consultation will not take place on the option 4 variants, which, at one extreme—with transfer of type 23s and other ships to Portsmouth—are virtually the “minimise Devonport” option, with all the consequent impact on the city, and at the other extreme shift the centre of gravity over time to Devonport. In any consultation held with the communities—there is talk of that consultation occurring over the summer recess period—option 4, which involves retention of all three bases, must not become a default position without proper acknowledgment and analysis of the long-term impact of the decision.

We very much welcome the commitment that the naval base review team has made to assess the mitigation costs associated with some of the naval base review options and their potential impact on other Departments. The process involved in that has, however, been unsatisfactory. The key issue for the MOD is whether broad-order costs to other Departments are such that they largely or wholly outweigh the MOD's cost savings, but the assessment must also satisfy other Departments at a finer level of detail.

Work that Plymouth and Portsmouth were encouraged to carry out independently and in short order on a “quick and dirty” assessment of mitigation costs has, not surprisingly, exposed major inconsistencies in assumptions and in approach. A quick and dirty figure that meets the MOD's requirement to show that there are no showstoppers is therefore unacceptable unless it is done on a consistent basis and with some independent oversight. I understand, and very much welcome, that the naval base review team has recently agreed with regional stakeholders and other Departments that the Department for Communities and Local Government will take the lead in setting a common basis for carrying out that work, that regional partners will contribute, and that independent validation of data that are submitted will be provided.

Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be helpful if, in his response, the Minister told us to what extent the MOD is genuinely consulting other Departments, so that it gets the fullest possible picture of the economic, social and other ramifications of whatever decision is made, and of the outcome of that decision? I hope that the MOD is not acting in its silo and instead is taking account of Government as a whole.

I absolutely agree. I understand that the aim is to complete a first-stage, broad assessment of costs by the end of July so that consultation can proceed, and that the Department for Communities and Local Government is likely to commission more detailed work from expert consultants during the consultation period. I hope that the Minister will indeed offer some clarification and assurance on a number of matters.

The first such matter is clarification of the naval base review timetable and its relationship to announcements about the future carrier. Next is agreement that at least the first-stage work on mitigation measures and costs on a consistent basis will be completed ahead of any consultation on the naval base review options. We seek an assurance that the purpose and scope of the consultation, the way in which it is used to inform a final decision and the requirements for further consultation on the implementation of the preferred option will be clearly explained. We also seek an assurance that decisions on the naval base review will be based on an objective assessment of the most cost-effective and operationally acceptable deployment of naval base assets to deliver submarine and ship support.

In addition, we seek recognition of the need for the MOD, in influencing and endorsing future industry restructuring, to have regard to the cost and deliverability of surface ship and submarine support. We also seek an assurance that the MOD will continue to engage regional stakeholders on the future distribution of surface ship support, the impact on local communities of changes in distribution and the measures required to mitigate such impacts.

We also seek recognition of the fact that the positive relationship between the city and the Navy is built on the delicate balance and complementarity between nuclear and surface ship support and that that balance must be retained, not only in the immediate term, following the naval base review, but throughout the years to come. Finally, we seek recognition of the fact that Devonport cannot provide a long-term commitment or savings to the Navy on the basis of submarine work alone, and nor will it maintain the support of the local population if it is seen just as a decommissioning yard for nuclear submarines.

Of course, the recent purchase of DML by Babcock International Group will make DML part of the largest support provider to the Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence. That sits well with the MOD’s defence industrial strategy and should bring the MOD major economies of scale. It should also strengthen Devonport’s case for maintaining, and even developing, the naval base at Devonport, together with the base porting of the surface ship fleet. However, we are concerned, as the Minister will perceive from my remarks, that if the naval base review does not consider all the points that I have raised in the debate, and it is left to the companies to carry things forward, the short-term pressures to realise savings and to release profit to shareholders could take priority over safeguarding critical skills and maintaining the successful recipe that we have developed in Plymouth to refresh, renew, regenerate and retain a unique skills base and capacity.

I therefore seek the Minister’s reassurance that those important issues will be safeguarded as the naval base review proceeds, as the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed on the agreement with Babcock for the purchase of DML and as the Minister with responsibility for defence procurement begins to develop the full and legally binding terms of business agreement with Babcock’s marine division following the recently announced agreement to sell DML.

The debate has given me an opportunity to set out some of our concerns about the naval base review in Plymouth. Of course, the central issue must be the Royal Navy’s requirements as regards future naval base activity, but the Minister will understand that the potential loss of, or substantial reduction in, economic activity around the biggest employer in the whole Devon and Cornwall sub-region is also at stake. That could affect 5,000 Royal Navy personnel from ships and submarines, 1,150 Royal Naval base personnel, 950 naval base civilian personnel, 2,900 industry—that is, DML—personnel and 1,750 further indirect and induced jobs. We in Plymouth think that we can contribute to a high-quality, value-for-money service for the MOD and UK plc, and that will be achieved by retaining, or even growing, the naval base and its associated activity in Devonport.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) on securing this important debate on the implications of the naval base review for Plymouth and on giving me the opportunity to speak on this important subject. I have also heard the points made by the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), which I shall address, as far as I can, during my response. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) is here, and she takes a great interest in this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) has also been a great advocate for Plymouth, and although her duties as a Whip mean that she cannot take part in the debate, she is here to listen and will no doubt continue her lobbying elsewhere.

I listened carefully to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and I start by acknowledging the strong links between Her Majesty’s naval base at Devonport and the city of Plymouth. The west country and the Royal Navy have a long and distinguished history; indeed, the ships that defeated the Spanish armada sailed from the mouth of the River Plym. Since that historic moment, the people of Plymouth have provided unparalleled support to the Royal Navy in peacetime and in war.

As my hon. Friend is aware, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced in September 2006 that we were to undertake an in-depth review of infrastructure requirements at the three naval bases at Devonport, Portsmouth and Faslane. He pointed out then that the defence industrial strategy, which had been published the previous year, laid down a challenge to the UK maritime industry to reduce its overheads and invest in the facilities and skills needed to meet the demands of the Royal Navy’s future warship programme. He also made it clear, however, that we cannot rely on industry alone to achieve the necessary rationalisation, and we must also look at support capacity at our naval bases to ensure that it is matched appropriately to the Royal Navy’s future needs. We need to ensure that every penny counts and that resources are rightly focused on the front line.

Although I, of course, pay tribute to the Devonport work force for their dedication and professionalism, we must not lose sight of the fact that the number of ships requiring maintenance and repair has been reducing. We therefore need to be realistic and to look to the future, rather than dwelling on the past. That is not to say that we should fail to celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past, and our commemoration of the Falklands conflict 25 years ago is a timely reminder of the vital role that Devonport played in preparing much of the fleet for its deployment in that conflict. However, we need to take this opportunity to consider in detail our future support needs; indeed, it would be wrong for the Ministry of Defence not to review the way in which it supports the fleet or to seek out efficiencies.

As I said, the naval base review is an important part of the maritime element of the defence industrial strategy. The terms of reference, which have been published and which are widely available, including on the Ministry of Defence website, clearly show that the intention is to hold a wide-ranging review. The review team is, however, now focusing on three possible core options, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton alluded: first, an optimised three naval base solution; secondly, a scenario that would see Portsmouth naval base minimised through the withdrawal of all ships and their engineering requirements; and, thirdly, a scenario in which Devonport naval base would be minimised through the withdrawal of all ships and submarines—with the exception of flag officer sea training—but with ship and submarine deep repair and maintenance retained to provide a smooth engineering load. The other options, which ranged from doing nothing at one extreme to closing all three naval bases and building a new one at a single location, have now been dismissed as a result of the work done so far. I appreciate that the current position does not necessarily provide further certainty for any of the naval bases, but it clearly demonstrates that the review is making good progress.

As my hon. Friend is aware from her recent meeting with the then Minister of State with responsibility for the armed forces and her question on the Floor of the House last month, which was answered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, the naval base review is considering a number of broad cross-Government issues. As part of that work, we are engaged with other Departments, including Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government, which have been briefed on the review’s aims and objectives and on the range of options being considered. Working with those Departments, we are assessing the cross-Government cost implications of the different naval base review options to ensure best value for the taxpayer.

That work is being supported by the regional development agencies, including the South West of England Regional Development Agency, which is providing important information about the Plymouth area. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State with responsibility for the armed forces is due to meet the South West of England Regional Development Agency later this month. Although this complex pan-Government work is progressing well, further work is required before final conclusions can be reached. However, I take this opportunity to reassure my hon. Friend that this aspect of the review is being handled in as professional a way as all the other aspects of the review are. We always regard the speedy production of costing information as just the first step.

I referred a moment ago to further work being required before a final decision can be reached, and one aspect of that is the need for public consultation. We will continue to listen to the various representations that are being made, and this debate is one such representation. I have also visited both Plymouth and Portsmouth, and many representations were made to me by different people. An ongoing listening exercise is therefore taking place.

My hon. Friend has heard my ministerial colleagues state that it is important for the naval base review to be allowed to run its course to enable the right decision to be made for defence as a whole. We have always said, as, again, my hon. Friend is aware, that the outcome of the naval base review will be coherent in relation to other maritime initiatives. For that reason, we have been considering, in our thinking, the other key maritime industrial strategy initiatives. It is of paramount importance that we do that in order to deliver an overall outcome that is best for defence.

My ministerial colleagues and I have made no advance decisions on the future of Devonport or indeed the other naval bases as we are reserving judgment until we see the results of the review. I fully understand that that means a period of further uncertainty for Devonport naval base and its work force, for industry and, more widely, for the people of Plymouth and the surrounding area, but it is simply still too early to say what impact the review will have on Devonport and the wider south-west area.

I appreciate the emphasis that my hon. Friend puts on the need to provide value for money and quality services to the Royal Navy, but does he also understand that we are concerned that any consultation on that should have a very good evidence base? Will he cover, in his concluding remarks, the questions that I asked about the consultation, including its timing and transparency?

I am sure that my hon. Friend will not be surprised that I cannot give her any details about that at this stage, but I can tell her that accuracy, and obtaining a wealth of information, are very important. As I have said, I can guarantee our commitment to working with everyone and to listening to all sides and all views. In my visits in recent weeks and months to Portsmouth and Plymouth I have heard many views and opinions, so the process is and will continue to be transparent. I hope that my hon. Friend accepts that.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will be reassured that business improvement activities, such as the change programme at Devonport, are also being given due weight in the naval base review. The aim of Devonport’s change programme and the efficiency drives at the other naval bases is to deliver savings locally. Clearly it is important that those savings should also be recognised by the naval base review team and that they have been taken into account as part of that process. Only by considering all the relevant factors will we be able to determine the best value for money option and avoid incoherence and the loss of effectiveness and efficiency that goes with it. It is only when the review has been completed that we will be able accurately to quantify the likely costs and savings from any changes to naval base infrastructure. In the meantime, it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on what those might be.

I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that a full investment appraisal has, however, now been undertaken by the naval base review team, which outlines the relevant costs and savings. The appraisal is undergoing rigorous scrutiny as part of the Ministry of Defence’s internal approvals process. I hope that that, too, gives my hon. Friend some reassurance.

I should like to emphasise to the Minister the particularly important point that I and the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) drew to his attention: there is a fine balance between the work done on submarines, particularly by young engineers, and the work done on surface ship support and maintenance. In his final remarks, will my hon. Friend perhaps recognise that that is an important balance to maintain?

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point, and can only reiterate that all aspects of the matter are being looked at, and that we take into account all the issues and concerns that are raised.

I know how proud Plymouth is of its past and present links with the Royal Navy, and that came across vividly when I visited Plymouth earlier this year. I pay tribute to those who have provided such sterling service at Devonport naval base over the years. I want to reassure my hon. Friend that I, my ministerial colleagues and my officials are fully aware of the local feeling in Devonport about the mix of submarine and ship support work. As I said earlier, it is too early to say what the impact of the review will be on Devonport, but the issue is being taken into account by the review team. Indeed, engagement on such important matters at all the naval bases is something that the Department takes very seriously.

I am also aware of how vital our partnering arrangement with Devonport Management Limited is in the successful day-to-day operation of Devonport naval base. As my noble Friend the Minister of State, Lord Drayson, who has responsibility for defence equipment and support, recently remarked, the transfer of ownership of Devonport Management Limited to Babcock International Group marks a significant step forward in realising the MOD’s plans for a vibrant and sustainable UK maritime industry. The formalities of the sale, I am pleased to say, are progressing well along the lines we anticipated.

I am pleased to have been able to respond to my hon. Friend on this important issue.

Will the Minister give way?

I did not give my hon. Friend permission; one is supposed to ask.

I am sorry; I did not mean to offend my hon. Friend. I just wanted to raise a point that she raised in her speech about the timing of the carrier vessel future decision, which the Minister did not respond to. I wondered if he would respond to it.

As a matter of timing, we will, as I say, put the information in the public domain as soon as we can. I reiterate what I have said about our intentions on transparency and the timetable. The important thing is to get the right decision for defence, and to take into account the concerns and issues that have been brought up.

I hope that hon. Members will be reassured that the naval base review will take into account the important issues that have been raised. I hope, too, that I have done enough to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton that the review is about securing best value for money for defence and for the taxpayer. I am aware that previous reviews concluded that three naval bases should be retained, but we have to recognise that we are in a fast-changing world and that the support that we provide must adapt as the strategic context, and hence the needs of the armed forces, alters.

As to the specific point about the way ahead for the joint venture and the carrier vessel future, we aim to make the main investment decision when the project is sufficiently mature and we have a clear understanding of the risks and robust estimates of cost and time, and when the contractual framework is in place. That is dependent on progress and we cannot give a firm date at this stage. We need to make sure that we have the right balance of capabilities to meet modern threats, and therefore that infrastructure will meet our requirements. I reiterate that no decisions have been taken about Devonport or indeed any of the naval bases. We owe it to our people on the front line to get the decision right.

I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for allowing me the opportunity for this debate, with its emphasis on adaptation to climate change, rather than what is usually discussed, which is mitigation. I also thank the Minister for taking time out of her busy schedule to spend her lunch hour on the debate, which I know goes down a path trodden before by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), ably supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie). It is a path that is not frequently trodden, and I think that the debate is important.

I know that the previous Secretary of State, and Ministers and Members of both Houses produced a good deal of work in the Joint Committee on the draft Climate Change Bill. As a London Member of Parliament and a London assembly member, I should like to mention the work of the London climate change partnership on adaptation to climate change. It has done a great deal to proselytise the issue within London and to London’s businesses. Indeed, the City of London was the first authority to come forward with an adaptation policy.

The debate is timely because of the release, on 29 June, of the European Union’s Green Paper on adapting to climate change in Europe. We are faced with an alarming scenario of climate change, and there has rightly been much debate on its causes and on what can be done to mitigate the effects of our activities on the planet and its future. A natural, reflex response to the political reality of climate change is to ask, “What are we doing to stop it?”, but it is certainly now an extant phenomenon that will continue for decades regardless of any strides that we make in our efforts to stop its development. Indeed, work done by the intergovernmental panel on climate change suggests that a temperature rise of 0.1° C per decade is expected for the next two decades even if greenhouse gases and aerosol concentrations are kept at year 2000 levels. The Association of British Insurers, which was helpful when I was preparing for the debate, has emphasised how the annual costs of storm and other damage reaches at least £1 billion a year. The recent floods are a pertinent reminder of the need for both preparation and prevention.

The Environment Agency kindly provided me with a briefing for the debate, in which it made clear the imperative need to act now to adapt to the ill effects of unavoidable climate change. Climate change has happened and will continue to happen regardless of our efforts, and we cannot hide from the consequences. There will be sceptics in my constituency who might read this debate and who will contend the reasons for climate change, but we can see the change and it is important that we try to adapt. This point is extremely anecdotal, but the sound of crickets chirping in one’s back garden at the end of September—a sound that one would expect to hear in the south of France—suggests that something is happening.

I know that it is far easier to pose questions than to answer them, so I shall pose mine to the Minister early in my speech to allow her time to give the most comprehensive reply. First, when will the inter-departmental framework for climate change adaptation be ready for publication? Is there any recognition that early investment is better than reactive, unplanned adaptation? We saw the fate of the French politicians who dealt with the problems of the 2003 heat wave and what happened to the senior US officials who were unable to cope satisfactorily with the appalling effects of hurricane Katrina.

Good work has been done by public authorities at EU level to deal with migration from north Africa and the Maghreb. If climate change hampers opportunities for access to EU markets through its effect on the ability to provide primary products to the EU, we will continue to face increased migration pressures from that part of the world. This country has strong links with Bangladesh, which is particularly liable to the effects of climate change: as a low-lying area, it is particularly at risk of flooding. We must either be prepared for the migration pressures that will arise from climate change or provide aid that is directed at climate change. The Government have been trying to become a leading player in the provision of such aid, but a strong concentration on preventing such flows through preventive aid is needed.

Does the Minister believe that the national heat wave plan is sufficiently robust? What continuing work has been done with primary care trusts and emergency services on the emerging risks of the effect of heat waves on the vulnerable? What additional resource is being provided to fire authorities to deal with the increased incidence of forest and heath fires, and what measurements are being adopted by police services on the conflicts that are more likely to arise after extended, hot summers?

Good work has been done on city heat islands and the large increase in overnight temperatures in summer periods. The London assembly published a good report called “Chainsaw Massacre: a review of London’s street trees”, which considered the role that street trees can play in the mitigation of high temperatures in high summer. The report found that although 48,000 trees had been planted in the past year, another 40,000 mature street trees had been removed. My borough was particularly maladroit in removing a net 2,600 street trees, but it is addressing that issue by providing an extra £300,000 of expenditure. I am interested to know what can be done to encourage local authorities to mimic the work in places such as Basel, Linz and Toronto to support the construction of green roofs and cooler pavements—I do not mean that they should be more chic, but am describing the use of more reflective surfaces and surfaces that can retain more water to have a cooling effect.

I am also interested in the work that has been done in the city of Tokyo on thermal environmental mats and ventilation paths, which can be extremely hot in the summer. Can we encourage the adoption of similar approaches here as good practice? What can be done to mimic the work of the City of London in encouraging good practice regarding subsidence in buildings? There is good work to be done with planning new buildings.

Many people in the south-east do not realise how vulnerable the area is in relation to naturally available water supplies. For example, our average rainfall is lower than that in Spain. I am pleased that work is being done to have an additional reservoir in Abingdon, although that idea is not always popular with my colleagues from elsewhere in the country. In addition to the work that is being done to deal with water leaks, should consideration be given to encouraging major investment in the transfer of water from elsewhere in the country so that the continued and robust economic growth of London and the south-east can be supported? That growth will be compromised if a water supply is not available.

The harvesting of water is an important aspect of storage plans that can be put in place to deal with the heavier summer storms that will come with climate change. There are such opportunities in the Thames Gateway—an area where there will be substantial housing development and which is at risk in respect of building on a floodplain. For example, storm run-off could be retained in the gap between dual carriageways rather than in the raised level, as is typical.

Work needs to be done on a regional basis. The UK faces the risk that moneys will be transferred away from us because EU funding is needed for areas that will be even more severely impacted by the need to deal with climate change. I hope that the Department has a positive attitude to the idea of sharing experience between the 27 partner members of the European Union.

I wholeheartedly congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He is doing a wonderful job, knowledgeably and succinctly hitting all the right buttons in his speech. I welcome the cross-party consensus that I think we have on many of these issues. Does he share my sadness that almost all the climate change debate in our country, and in Parliament in particular, has centred on the causes of climate change and there has been almost no debate on its effects? Concentrating on its causes is almost totally beyond the UK’s control, given that we are responsible for only 2 per cent. of world emissions, whereas adaptation—the sorts of issues that he has been discussing—is entirely within the control of the UK and our Government.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. To some extent, I am inspired by the work that he has done on this issue. This is an important path for us to walk down. In many ways, it can allow us to have a positive view about what people can do, not only at governmental level, but at local level. Businesses and individual citizens can also have a real impact in dealing with these challenges.

The Government have given strong support for investment in cooling London’s transport, and money has been provided for that. In hot summers, this can be a real issue. Issues will arise in terms of less hydro provision and cooling water for nuclear power stations. What is the Government strategy for dealing with such issues? What advice can the Government give farmers on pest-resistant crops, given the change in the pests that we will face? What advice is being given to health authorities on dealing with the likely increase in deer-tick diseases that will arise from changes in our environment? What support can be given to our tourist industry, which might well benefit from people deciding to holiday here during the summer rather than go to previously warmer climes?

What work can be done to provide additional support to the regulator and to water utilities to deal with increased sewerage outflow risks that result from storm drains spilling into sewerage facilities when there is high rainfall? As a London Assembly member, I greatly enjoyed going down London’s sewers, but my colleagues on that investigative committee did not regard this as a clever joke.

What work can be done to encourage the healthiest of ecosystems? Healthy ecosystems are more likely to be able to deal with fighting changes in the environment. Watering holes for migrant birds is an important strategy matter for us, because reduced water provision in certain areas is likely to compromise migrations.

What work can be done to support the insurance industry, particularly in terms of further integration across the European Union, so as to maximise responsiveness in providing insurance products that will be able to deal with climate change? What will the Government be able to do to promote climate change adaptation in the private sector? It is clear that the Government have done good work on liaising with business and that they have listened to the robust advice of the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment.

Good work has also been undertaken by local authorities in supporting the Nottingham declaration. Some 200 authorities have been involved in that way, but have the Government considered whether there is value in making that declaration, or any derivative document, mandatory?

Does the Minister accept that her statutory responsibility to come to the House to account for climate change adaptation progress is a necessary part of parliamentary scrutiny? In many ways, I am asking whether it is option one or option two within the climate change process.

I appreciate that I have asked more than 20 questions. I am sorry to have spent the whole of my speech asking questions and I appreciate that the Minister cannot answer them all in the remaining time. My asking so many questions perhaps underlines just how much this is a cross-cutting issue for Government; it runs beyond many Departments. I am sure that the answer that she is able to give will contain a clear indication that the issue is being addressed throughout Government as a whole.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) on obtaining this debate and on raising what we all agree to be an important issue. We do not debate it often enough, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) has said. It is a key part of the climate change battle and I intend to increase its profile both in Parliament and in the country. We all agree that climate change is happening now. While we put every effort into curbing emissions to protect our future, we must also accept the need to adapt to the inevitable changes brought about by the world’s existing and increasing CO₂ burden.

The recent intergovernmental panel on climate change report clearly states that the impacts of climate change are real and global. It says that

“recent regional changes in temperature have had discernable impacts on…physical and biological systems.”

More erratic weather patterns, hotter summers and bigger storms have been predicted, and few of us doubt that recent UK weather patterns are tantamount to those predictions.

The flood events in June were notable for the intensity of rainfall and the fact that a lot of flooding was surface water run-off rather than fluvial. These are precisely the sorts of events that we might expect as a result of climate change. If we are to try to prevent appalling damage and tragic loss of life such as we recently experienced, we must learn the lessons. As hon. Members will know, the Prime Minister has announced a lessons-learned exercise, and officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be heavily involved in the examination of our agencies on the ground, delivery and policy development. We have no time to lose in developing adaptation responses to these challenges. The Secretary of State has announced that spending on flood management will rise to £800 million in 2010-11 to help to protect more homes and livelihoods.

Past events also give us pause for thought. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the insurance industry. It tells us that between 1998 and 2003, claims for flood and storm damage reached £64 billion—double those of the previous five-year period.

We do not just have to worry about excess water—the best available science predicts hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. The hon. Gentleman mentioned our vulnerabilities. Within 70 years, rainfall in the south-east might fall by 50 per cent. That would have obvious consequences for water supply. Yet we could also be facing increasingly intense rainfall, leading to more frequent flooding.

The UK is considered to be a world leader in adaptation; it is leading the way at home and abroad. The Government are supporting stakeholders with information and tools for adaptation, but there is a need for a more strategic direction and for ensuring that the science and tools remain up to date. Cutting edge information is being published for decision makers through a series of climate change scenarios, which have been developed using the latest modelling techniques by the Met Office’s Hadley centre, working closely with the UK climate impact programme—UKCIP, not UKIP. A new set of scenarios will be published next year.

I shall now touch on some of the questions raised by the hon. Gentleman. UKCIP works with a number of partners to develop adaptation strategies. Local climate impact profiles are being developed to help councils to obtain an insight into how a changing climate may affect their locality and to learn the lessons of past events. UKCIP also works closely with the regional climate change partnerships. The hon. Gentleman is familiar with the London partnership, which is very active and has produced guidance for businesses. He asked about guidance for the private sector. That is being provided through those partnerships to business, developers and planners. I am pleased to note that Croydon has taken advantage of that advice and has made it a requirement for all new developments to include adaptation measures. The regional partnerships are essential in supporting and catalysing action at the level where impacts will be experienced.

I spoke earlier about the need to provide greater strategic direction. We are providing that in two ways. First, the draft Climate Change Bill places a reporting requirement on the Government. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the Government should report, and clearly they will have to do so because that is clearly stated in the draft Bill.

Clause 37 of the draft Climate Change Bill follows on from my ten-minute Bill earlier this year, which called for annual reporting. The draft Climate Change Bill calls for a first report in three years and five-yearly reporting thereafter. That frequency is insufficient. Will my hon. Friend look again at the frequency called for in clause 37?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this field and for his ten-minute Bill. He has heard from the Government about annual reporting not being appropriate, but I am always happy to look at the matter again and will do so at his request.

The draft Climate Change Bill introduces a reporting requirement, which includes an assessment of the risks of climate change to the UK in terms of impacts and vulnerabilities, to which the hon. Gentleman also referred. Furthermore, we will be required to set out our efforts to integrate adaptation. Efforts are also under way to set a strategic direction through a cross-Government framework, and last year’s consultation acknowledged that the time was right for a new direction to enable the UK to take more effective action.

The hon. Gentleman asked when the cross-Government framework will be published, and I am assured that it will be ready by the end of the year. It will identify priority areas for action when Departments need to work closely together to ensure that adaptation occurs.

I shall try to answer some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. He asked whether early intervention was better than later adaptation. There can be no disagreement about that, and I hope that there is none throughout the House. We must get on with the matter with increased vigour.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the need to direct aid to prevent mass migration from other countries. I hope that I shall have time for a few concluding comments on the subject of developing countries and their needs. I agree with him that we must provide them with help.

Questions about national heat wave plans for primary care trusts, fire authorities and the police are for other Departments, and without prior notice I am certainly not in a position to gather the answers for the hon. Gentleman.

On street trees—this is entirely my personal view—I agree that there has been far too much removal of trees from streets. I understand the difficulties, but we must examine ways of reintroducing greenery, not just for aesthetic reasons, but for the important impact on global warming.

The hon. Gentleman asked what can be done to encourage local authorities to undertake a whole range of tasks. UKCIP works closely with local authorities to provide support and tools. He mentioned the Nottingham declaration action pack, which is an ongoing toolkit to help to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies at local level.

The next round of beacon council schemes includes a climate change theme with adaptation elements, and DEFRA officials have met the Local Government Association’s Climate Change Commission to stress the importance of adaptation. The commission’s recently published interim report puts adaptation first of the six key issues that local authorities must deal with. A slow start was made, but a lot is now being done, although there is much more to do.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned ideas from other cities, notably Tokyo, and there is undoubtedly much that we can learn and intend to learn from the experience. He will know the extent to which the London Mayor has made working with other cities a priority.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the vulnerability of the south-east and asked whether consideration should be given to investment in a linked transfer, so that water could be brought to many other parts of the country. If I said that that was a great idea and that we would get on with it, there would be a lot of concern in the Government and certainly among my colleagues. I am a Welsh woman, and I remember the stories that I heard during my childhood about the English stealing our water. That is a debate for another day, and something to be looked at.

Other questions referred to transport cooling and nuclear power stations. They are matters for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, previously the Department of Trade and Industry, and we can certainly consider with it what can be done. DEFRA began work on the agricultural project to look at adaptation some time ago, so that is in hand. A DEFRA tourism study was published in 2005 on climate change and the visitor economy. Again, the Government are keen to tackle both risks and benefits.

On sharing experiences between EU partner members, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand that that is normal practice. He spoke about the recent publication of the EU document, and we will of course do more to keep in touch. My hon. Friend spoke about his sadness about the fact that the debate has been too concentrated on the causes and that not enough attention has been paid to what we should do. I agree with him absolutely.

If there is anything that I have not dealt with, I shall be pleased to do so in some other way, but I want to conclude by stressing that the problem is not for the future, but for us now because it is happening and it is global. Despite all the horrors that we have had to endure during the past few weeks, we should never forget that the greatest impact of climate change is already being felt in the developing world, where we can see the potential for crop failure as temperatures rise, with more cases of malaria, which is already a tremendous blight on African countries and their people.

With sea levels rising, we can, as the hon. Gentleman said, anticipate that low-lying countries such as Bangladesh will be seriously affected. We must do all we can through our aid programmes and encourage other international aid agencies. Britain cannot do everything alone, and we must encourage help for countries that will suffer and may create difficulties for us with migration.

I am glad that DEFRA is working with teams in India, China and Bangladesh on climate change and adaptation. The Department for International Development is beginning to take action to ensure that its development projects build in climate change. The challenges at home and abroad for adaptation are immense, but the Government cannot do everything alone. We have responsibilities as individuals, and we must factor in all those aspects of investment, infrastructure and our own objectives, ask how viable they will be in 10, 20 or 30 years, and take climate change into consideration. Winning the battle requires a twofold effort. We must stop the rising greenhouse gasses—

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

As I am feeling my age, Mr. Touhig, I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

I sought this debate to draw attention to the discrimination that older people face when trying to obtain goods and services. It is a timely debate, given that the Government are consulting on their Green Paper, “Framework for Fairness: Proposals for a Single Equality Bill for Great Britain”.

The issue came home to me in June when I spoke at the National Old Age Pensioners Association of Wales conference in Port Talbot. The subjects raised were many and varied. I heard how older people are unable to have their groceries delivered from Tesco or Asda, because they do not have access to the internet. There was a question about why we force magistrates to retire at 70 years old when they have built up a wealth of experience. I could not help but think that older people still get a raw deal in our society.

The association, of which I am president, has contributed to the pensioners’ manifesto for Wales. Point four of the manifesto says that the pensioners of Wales are calling for:

“Age discrimination legislation to be extended to apply to goods and services, not just in the workplace. It should be treated as seriously as other forms of discrimination with immediate effect.”

I know something about age discrimination in the workplace. When the former Prime Minister telephoned me and explained that he needed me to give up my portfolio as a Defence Minister because he needed me to make way for younger people, I asked whether, at 58, I was too old to become the Minister with responsibility for veterans.

With our ageing population, it is about time that the pensioners’ manifesto demand was taken seriously and that something more was done about it. It seems wholly wrong that people who have so much to offer are often discarded, regarded as disposable and thrown on the scrapheap, simply because society considers them “too old”. As a result, Britain is the less, because we miss out on the special skills, talents and, above all, the experience that the older generation can offer our society and economy.

Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I visit community groups in my constituency, and there always seems to be an older person at the heart of them—running them. This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the model village of Oakdale. There has already been an RAF flypast, an art exhibition, a carnival and a schools sports day, all of which have been organised by the Oakdale and Penmaen community partnership. At the heart of the partnership are retired or older people who make it work.

Today, I have in Parliament some guests, Roy and Charlotte Morton. Roy, an active Rotarian and a member of the Newbridge Royal British Legion, has collected 33,005 pairs of glasses, which are sent to people in the developing world. Roy is 85. Who would dare say that he has nothing to contribute to our society? What a commitment to serving others he has. He is a living example of the Rotary Club motto, “Service Above Self”.

The Government have made some progress towards meeting the challenges of age discrimination, but the discrimination is institutionalised and cultural, and it must be exposed and challenged. In 2001, the Government published the national service framework for older people, which stated that age discrimination would be rooted out in health and social care—fine words and very encouraging. Some action has followed, and many age barriers that prevented older people from receiving services have been removed. In 2005 the Government published “Opportunity Age—Meeting the Challenges of Ageing in the 21st Century”, which not only set out a new approach to the ageing population, but urged us to recognise that older people are an asset to our society, not a burden. In 2006 the Government implemented the European equal treatment directive, which banned age discrimination in the workplace and removed barriers for people who wished to undertake vocational training. Although I commend the actions of the Government in effectively outlawing ageism in the workplace, the job is still only half done. A Department of Health report entitled, “A New Ambition for Old Age: Next Steps in Implementing the National Service Framework for Older People”, acknowledged that negative attitudes towards older people were part of a failure to provide adequate services for them.

In 2005, Age Concern criticised an advertisement for the betting company, Paddy Power, which showed two elderly ladies crossing the road. Punters were invited to place bets on the likelihood of a car running them over. Just imagine the outcry if, instead of two elderly ladies, the advertisement had used pictures of a black, gay, Muslim, or severely disabled person. The advertisement was sickening, and it demonstrated how prevalent age discrimination still is in our society. Sadly, it was not an isolated case.

Age Concern tells me that The Carphone Warehouse would not let someone have broadband because they were over 70. The company said that it thought that anyone over 70 could not understand the terms and conditions, and that they would have to be accompanied by someone younger. How insulting, condescending and inconsiderate can people possibly be? At the same time, the Government have been heralding the rise of the silver surfers, and encouraging people to use computers and surf the net. A golf club would not allow members over the age of 65—just trying telling that to Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus.

Some people say that stereotypes portraying older people as doddery but dear are harmless. However, the results can literally be fatal for older people. Older people who suffer from treatable illnesses that would benefit from earlier intervention often have their illnesses put down to old age. Time and again, people have raised such issues with me in my role as president of the National Old Age Pensioners Association of Wales. They have gone to the doctor, who has said, “What do you expect, love? Look at your age.” Or, “You’ve had a good innings, haven’t you?” That is quite the wrong attitude.

Despite being in the group with the highest risk of developing breast cancer, women over 70 do not get called for regular screenings, while younger women do. Older people are at a disadvantage in the provision of mental health services. Certain specialist mental health services are available only for people aged 65 and under, according to research carried out by MIND. That situation occurs despite the fact that 40 per cent. of people who visit a GP, 50 per cent. of general hospital patients and 60 per cent. of care home residents are older people with mental health problems.

Older people’s mental health is dealt with separately from general mental health provision, even within the Department of Health. Social care for older people focuses on health and safety concerns rather than on promoting independence, participation and social inclusion. For older people, care services are often commissioned in short blocks of time to cover basic needs. For younger people, the blocks of time are often longer, allowing them to participate in social activities and to play an active part in their community. Surely it is wrong to tolerate such discrimination.

Older people’s well-being, like everyone else’s, is linked to a sense of being an important part of other people’s lives. Members of the Woodfieldside old age pensioners association in my constituency will tell you, Mr. Wilshire, that the friendships they develop, sustain and encourage at their weekly meetings keep them going, keep them active and keep them feeling like they still have a great deal to contribute to community life.

Older people come up against the barrier of ageism when they try to obtain goods and services that young people take for granted. If older people want to travel abroad, they are more likely to be refused travel insurance or to have restrictions placed on them to the point that insurance cover costs more than their intended holiday. Companies that operate exclusions based on age include Barclaycard and Alliance and Leicester, which offer benefits to customers who buy their products, but specifically exclude travellers over 65 from the travel benefits that are associated with taking out their cards.

Marks and Spencer offers annual multi-trip insurance cover to travellers up to the age of 70 only. For people aged 66 and over, there is a premium loading of 100 per cent. In contrast, the premium loading for people who take part in winter sports is just 35 per cent. Age Concern tells me that it knows of someone who has been excluded from insurance income protection schemes solely because they are 62 years old. Older drivers face increased car insurance premiums based on their age, not on their driving record and skills. Some companies even refuse to quote for those aged 75 and over. In an extraordinary story, a Barclays customer applied for a loan to pay off debts but was refused because of her age. She is 57 and in good health, and works part-time as an office manager.

We now have an historic opportunity to end such injustice and eliminate age discrimination from all parts of our society. The Government committed themselves in the last Labour manifesto to introducing a single equality Bill, and are considering banning age discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services. They are also considering introducing a positive duty on public bodies to promote equality across the board, including age equality. Now is the time for the Government to extend their record to all equalities. So much progress has been made in delivering equality for women, minority ethnic groups, disabled people and lesbians, gays and bisexuals. It would be quite wrong to send the message that it is fine to treat ageism differently from other forms of discrimination.

I appreciate that the matter can be complex, and that some people are reluctant to get involved in challenging and tackling it. Age is widely used as a criterion for access to certain services—for example, concessionary bus fares or reduced admission to cinemas—but that should not hold us back if legislation on equality is needed. There has been enough debate about how to craft exceptions for access to services, but plenty of experience from other equality areas and overseas could overcome the difficulties that I highlighted.

Although older people often realise that they are being treated badly or pushed aside, they rarely call it age discrimination. The time has come for the Government to deliver equal protection against discrimination on the grounds of age. As we move to a single equality Act and a new unified Commission for Equality and Human Rights, it would be a scandal if in Britain in the 21st century a situation were allowed to develop in which some were more equal than others.

Like everyone else, older people want to be part of their communities. They want to be linked in and feel part of other people’s lives. Many offer vital resources to families and support to communities. They pass on knowledge, understanding, love, support and experience. Let us make age discrimination a thing of the past and recognise and celebrate the contribution to our society that older people make and want to make. It is a great challenge to all of us.

I hope that the Minister will give us some positive responses to the issues that I have raised, and that colleagues throughout the House will take up issues of discrimination involving people who find, because of their age, that they cannot access services or support. If we do not highlight such discrimination, it will continue. It is a cultural matter, and we must work hard to change it, but I am confident that if the will exists, we will make a difference, ensuring a better quality of life for a great many people to whom this country owes a great debt.

Thank you, Mr. Touhig. At the age of 63, I am not sure that I feel better at the end of your speech than at the beginning.

At the age of 64, I think that I outrank both you, Mr. Wilshire, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) in terms of longevity, and I hope to serve here for a few more years yet. I hope, in fact, to be one of the extra million people over the retirement age of 65 who are now working, thanks to Government programmes. I am proud of that.

As my right hon. Friend said, the Government have done a great deal for age equality, and we are strongly committed to tackling age discrimination in all walks of life. Last October, we introduced regulations prohibiting age discrimination in employment and vocational training. We have also made a commitment to review the default retirement age in 2011. If the review shows that that is no longer needed, we will remove it. Personally, I am committed to doing so.

This October, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights will come into being. It will work across all equality strands, encouraging our institutions to operate for the benefit of every individual and helping people to ensure that they do so. We have also taken a number of non-legislative steps to address age discrimination in the provision of public services and to help individuals to achieve their aspirations for a better later life. As my right hon. Friend mentioned, “Opportunity Age” is a comprehensive strategy and programme of action for meeting the needs of an ageing society.

My right hon. Friend rightly said that there are contentious health issues that must be sorted. We have introduced the national service framework for older people, which focuses explicitly on tackling age discrimination in service delivery. However, I know from my constituency experience and my mother’s experience that waiting lists for services used heavily by older people, such as chiropody, hearing aids and wheelchairs, are very long. Often, old people must wait an inordinately long time for those services.

However, the Government are aware that those measures have not yet fully addressed age discrimination outside the workplace, nor indeed within it, as we have seen in some areas. A recent review of the national service framework for older people reported significant improvement in older people’s experience of health and social care, but it also found that deep-rooted cultural attitudes to ageing are still hampering wider Government plans to improve services. My right hon. Friend correctly mentioned mental health. I will be 65 at Christmas. If I had any mental health problems—which could be induced by being in this place for too long—I would be transferred from adult services to older people’s services, which deal mainly with dementia. Although I sometimes have senior moments, I hope that I am quite far from dementia.

Cultural attitudes to ageing are difficult to shift, and they cannot be shifted just by legislation. On 12 June this year, we published the discrimination law review consultation document “A Framework for Fairness”. I know that my right hon. Friend is aware of that, and I encourage him and other hon. Members to submit their views to the consultation, which will end in September. The review is considering the case for introducing legal protection against age discrimination in goods, facilities, services, premises and public functions, as well as how any such legislation should be framed. That is how such shameful instances as those he mentioned—Tesco internet access, Barclaycard, Marks & Spencer and The Carphone Warehouse—could be addressed.

I am grateful to the Minister. She has a valid point—it is not possible simply to legislate away the culture or the difficulties that we are experiencing in this country—but has she or the Department considered that it would be good to invest in an advertising campaign to bring home the message? Some old people are unaware that they are being discriminated against; it just has not occurred to them. If we can raise the profile of age discrimination, as we have done with drink-driving and other issues, we will convey the message much more effectively than we would with another piece of legislation. I fully understand her point.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend said that. Sometimes we are in danger of over-legislating. We could do with an advertising campaign, rather like the one that we ran to recruit more teachers, to make older people—as well as younger and middle-aged people—aware of how age discrimination might be occurring. Britain is a polite society, on the whole. Once we are aware of something, we pay attention to it. There is concern about the treatment of older people and elder abuse. Help the Aged and Age Concern have done marvellous work in bringing it to public attention.

With regard to the private sector, the Government are aware of the difficulties that some older people face when trying to get a competitive quote for travel insurance. The review is looking into that issue and whether there is a case for legislation or voluntary agreements.

We have a careful balance to strike. Legislation could send out a strong signal that unjustified discrimination on grounds of age is wrong; it could also help to change social and business attitudes, which badly need to change. However, any such law would be relatively complex, to put it mildly, and require a significant number of exceptions from the principle of equal treatment, to avoid unintended consequences and allow justifiable and beneficial age-specific services to continue.

Such services include the free bus pass—I got mine four years ago, with a feeling of shock—and targeted services for older and younger people. We need to consider carefully how to ensure that any legislation would not lead to service providers withdrawing beneficial age-appropriate services because they were confused about what was and was not allowed under the new law. The Government are gathering together all the available evidence and carefully sifting through it to consider how to ensure that any legislation would tackle unfair and harmful age discrimination while safeguarding beneficial differential treatment.

We are also considering whether targeted, non-legislative measures could be effective in tackling issues for which there is evidence of discrimination. My right hon. Friend mentioned age discrimination at golf clubs; we are consulting on whether, if we prohibit age discrimination for goods, facilities and services, we should prohibit it in private clubs such as golf clubs. However, we would still want to allow clubs that exist for the benefit of people in particular age groups to continue.

The discrimination law review is also considering something on which I am personally keen: whether there should be a duty on public bodies to promote age equality. That could address some of my right hon. Friend’s concerns. A positive duty could be particularly effective in ensuring that public service providers take the needs of people of all ages into account when planning and commissioning services and providing staff training. That could play quite a part in the cultural shift that we need to bring in.

My right hon. Friend raised the issue of volunteering. The Government are keen to extend and involve volunteering to all age groups, but a decision has been taken that magistrates should retire at age 70. My personal view is that that could be reviewed later. I remember that when my parents turned 60, they seemed really old to me, but nowadays people do not get old as fast, thanks to our health services and our increased knowledge of the body’s make-up and exercise. Some such limits will probably be stretched in future, although at present that limit remains at 70. I agree, however, with my right hon. Friend: many people of that age have a lot to offer.

The discrimination law review consultation closes on 4 September and I urge all individuals and organisations to respond to it. We will continue to work closely with a wide range of stakeholders, both during and following the public consultation period, to ensure that we take the right approach, which will effectively tackle harmful age discrimination while safeguarding the wide range of beneficial and justifiable practices that treat people differently.

With my right hon. Friend, I should like to pay tribute to Roy and Charlotte Morton. I happen to have been involved with a charity doing similar work to theirs in Africa. In some places there, there is only one doctor for every 27,000 people and there are no ophthalmologists or opticians; in such circumstances, most people just go slowly blind. They cannot read. My right hon. Friend and I are completely dependent on bits of glass if we are to see anything in front of us. Such charities do really wonderful work.

I disagree with my right hon. Friend: the job is not only half done—it is half done, but we are well on the way to completing the whole job. I hope that he will join me in ensuring that there is equal treatment for older people and across all other age ranges in our society.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Two o’clock.