I am grateful for this second opportunity to debate the future of our canals. As you may know, Mr. Martlew, I was fortunate to win an Adjournment debate on this very subject in April. Now, as then, I declare an interest: I am a member of the Lichfield branch of the Inland Waterways Association—and, as of a few months ago, patron of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust.

I am a keen narrow-boater and I have travelled much of the system. Should there have been any doubt about that, last summer I was running down a towpath in dirty shorts and a sweatshirt and holding a windlass, when I literally bumped into one of the directors of British Waterways. If there was any doubt about my narrow-boating credentials, there is none now.

At this point, I welcome the Minister to his first debate on canals and waterways. It is to be hoped that he will be more supportive of the waterways than his predecessor, who was a nincompoop of the first order, and whose departure was marked by the popping of celebratory champagne corks up and down the canals; having followed that marvellous series “Monarchy”, I believe that it is called a feu de joie—a fire of joy. That hon. Gentleman has already gone down in history as being the worst waterways Minister in living memory, and the new Minister, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), has been warmly welcomed by waterways societies and individuals keen to see a new approach.

The Minister has made at least two visits to canals—indeed, I believe that he may have made four—and he has met many organisations and individuals and received a glowing welcome in the boating press. He told me last night that he is seeing another delegation this afternoon.

indicated assent.

The Minister confirms that that is the case. I very much hope that he will be able to continue that record by solving the funding issues that canals face. If he is as constructive a Minister as I found him to be as Communities and Local Government Whip, he will do just fine. It demonstrates that there is honour among thieves and Whips.

The hon. Gentleman’s contribution to this issue is second to none among midlands Members, although I do not share his views about the previous Minister. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is so concerned with farming, flooding and fishing that British Waterways’ concerns are like a minnow swimming in a sea of whales. Is the location of the responsibility for British Waterways correctly placed with DEFRA, or should it be with a Department that has a greater resonance regarding the concerns that it is trying to deliver on?

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In April’s debate, I said just that. To my mind, although inland waterways carry freight—it could be argued that such responsibility should therefore lie with the Department for Transport—they attract so much tourism that I believe that such responsibility should be an important part of the work of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Sadly, we are left with what we have; at the moment, it is with DEFRA, and any change would be a decision for the Prime Minister.

The April debate focused on the debacle within DEFRA that created the need for in-year cuts—cuts, we were told, that were a one-off and not to be repeated. That has a somewhat hollow ring today. We also heard reports from hon. Members from around the country of their and their constituents’ concerns about the effects of further funding cuts. I spoke—with passion, I hope—saying that our canals are a national treasure not to be cast aside, but to be nurtured by the Government.

rose—

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who intervened on me in the last debate.

And it was on the very same subject—the Montgomery canal. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that for many years I and others have been campaigning to have the Montgomery canal reconnected to the rest of the canal network. The cuts, which the hon. Gentleman rightly highlights, could jeopardise the entire project. Does he agree that this Minister can earn great honour by reinstating the funding for that and similar projects, to ensure that such canals are reconnected to what is a vital lifeline for our leisure and tourist industries?

The hon. Gentleman is right. I have been on that canal, but I could not use the same narrow-boat that I use in England because the Montgomery canal is a disconnected system. I had to hire a narrow-boat, but the canal is worth visiting as the area is very beautiful. Not only would there be a certain logic in reconnecting it to the rest of the system; it would generate valuable income for that part of Wales. As some hon. Members will know, my mother was Welsh and I have certain connections with the area.

People come from around the world to marvel at our network of 2,500 miles of canals, and millions of people in this country use them daily for recreation, sport and travelling to work—and for a breath of fresh air. The canals play a key role in regenerating our towns and cities, providing a heart—a lung—around which regeneration can start.

The Minister need only to go to Manchester or Birmingham to see for himself how the canals are central to millions of pounds-worth of regeneration. Indeed, until recently the Government had a reasonable track record in supporting our canals. Over the last few years, they played a crucial role in developing our canal system along with local councils, organisations such as the Inland Waterways Association, canal trusts and others. However, that good will has been lost in the last few years.

Last summer the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee held an inquiry into British Waterways. Among its conclusions, it called for British Waterways and the Government to work together to solve a projected £35 million under-spend on major works. British Waterways told the Committee that if it received the anticipated comprehensive spending review settlement of RPI minus 5 per cent., the network would not be fit for purpose by the end of the review period.

It would be fair to say there has been some debate about figures, and I understand that the National Audit Office is shortly to report on the matter. Will the Minister enlighten us as to the conclusions? Whatever figure is finally decided on, how will the shortfall be met?

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on returning to the subject. I have some knowledge of the report that he mentioned because I chaired the investigation. The figures were somewhat opaque, and before we cast aspersions, we need complete clarity. The Committee asked British Waterways for such information on a number of occasions, and to be fair, it has been more open. However, part of the problem is that we do not know what the figures really mean.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. I hope that British Waterways will pay attention to our debate and that it will shortly provide the figures that the Committee has called for; then I and others attending this debate will table parliamentary questions to ask precisely what the Minister and his Department will do. However, I am not going to let the Minister off the hook. I hope that he can give us some indication as to what the Government think the shortfall is and how they intend to fill the gap.

The Select Committee also called for better communication between British Waterways and the Government. It has been reported that a status review is currently considering ways to allow British Waterways more financial flexibility. Has the review been completed, and if so what were its conclusions? Those are some of the questions I would like the Minister to answer in his response to the debate.

That is all to be welcomed, but sadly the Select Committee’s main concerns about the effects of cuts and the need for sustained and planned funding for British Waterways and for the Environment Agency have not been addressed. British Waterways is consulting users on how to make up the current deficit. That is even after 180 job cuts, which have included some of the country’s most noted experts on waterways maintenance and restoration and on the carriage of freight by water.

I understand that it costs £125 million annually to maintain our canals. Even after the cuts that I outlined, British Waterways has only 85 per cent. of the money needed to fulfil that obligation. It is seeking ideas from users on how it might bridge the gap—ranging from increasing licences, which is controversial for all boat owners, to increasing income from its property portfolio. However, boaters seem set to shoulder much of the burden. Mooring fees are set to rise dramatically and annual licence fees will rise by a third.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if British Waterways sought to meet the deficit through a massive increase in licence fees, it would be a major deterrent to people who use the waterways—people who are often on comparatively low incomes—and who ought to be encouraged further to do so, in order to make them the lively and thriving places that they deserve to be?

The hon. Gentleman is correct. Our waterways are not there just for regeneration and property values, or for people who can afford to hire boats and enjoy expensive holidays for two or three weeks when they fly over from California or Israel, which I have seen boaters do. They are there also for those who live on our canals and make them such an interesting and thriving part of our nation’s life. He is correct to highlight that point, because if we drive those people away from our canals, we will lose the atmosphere that so many people enjoy observing.

As the hon. Gentleman said, increasing the licence fees would be an unfair burden, given that boaters constitute a tiny percentage of users who enjoy our canals. A recent survey found that just 3 per cent. of canal users were waterborne, while the other 97 per cent. enjoyed the spectacle, colour and movement that the boaters brought to the scene. I believe that the value that we all gain from our waterways should be a shared cost and should not fall on just a few, which means that DERFRA must contribute and raise money from taxation.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Does he agree that we should sometimes look to investment in canals? My constituency covers Kirkintilloch, which is the canal capital of Scotland and has been used as a redevelopment mechanism to stimulate regeneration in the economy; indeed, we have a new mariner centre and an arts and culture centre. That has knock-on benefits for everybody in the community. It is an investment from which to reap benefits in future.

The hon. Lady is quite right. As I said, we need only look at the centres of Birmingham and Manchester, which have been revitalised from being, frankly, rather run-down slums that nobody wanted to visit to being gorgeous areas that everybody wants to visit. I have some friends who often visit the canal district of Manchester, but the least said about that the better.

My hon. Friend has spoken before about the regeneration that can follow from investment in canals and about the multiplier effect. He said that for every pound spent, a much greater sum is received from tourism, regeneration, flood management and so on. Has he sought to quantify that sum? Can he tell us what that multiplier is?

As a humble Back Bencher, I am a great believer in passing the buck on occasions. I did an economics degree and I know that cost-benefit analyses and multiplier effects need to be calculated by many people, so I shall throw that over to the Minister. My hon. Friend could table a parliamentary question to that effect, and the Minister could get his Department to analyse the multiplier effect. It would be wrong for me to guess, but I know that it is many times the actual investment, as so many hon. Members have pointed out already.

The effect of this year’s canal cuts can be seen across the network already and on the linking rivers run by the Environment Agency. The Secretary of State admitted as much in his answer to my question on DEFRA cuts last Thursday. Freight businesses are feeling the effects of a lack of dredging by British Waterways. Boat owners associations tell me that British Waterways is not keeping the navigation to the required depth, as laid down by Parliament. One operator in south Yorkshire informed me that the depth in Doncaster has been reduced—hopefully temporarily—from 8 ft 3 in to 7 ft 2 in, resulting in its barges being forced to carry less tonnage. That is at a time when DEFRA is supposed to be leading the charge to tackle climate change and reduce emissions—something that waterborne freight achieves.

A freedom of information answer requested by the Inland Waterways Association last week produced a list from British Waterways of £3.8 million of deferred maintenance in this year alone. British Waterways pointed out that those were not due to DEFRA cuts, but to floods, to property portfolios failing to deliver on time, to rising construction inflation and to a major canal breach on the Brecon and Abergavenny canal at Gilwern. That breach occurred in October when the canal burst its banks in, I am told, a most dramatic fashion. So violent was the torrent that swept through the area that eight people had to be rescued and a major A road was closed for several days. The canal may remain closed for a couple of years, which will seriously affect local businesses.

I was on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee whose report was referred to earlier in this debate. It is a question of “once more unto the breach”, in the sense that in the last 12 months we have seen a number of unexpected and expensive breaches that have required major capital expenditure to head them off or to repair them. Regardless of what the Minister says when he winds up, will he explain how a saner, more rational and more effective system for handling major capital projects on the waterway network can be introduced, irrespective of other considerations? It is that crucial.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that is crucial, but I must remind him that, sadly, my party is not in government—his party is. It is up to the Minister to answer his question. I think, however, that he directed it at him, and he might like to address it.

The cost to British Waterways of those breaches and flooding is about £1.4 million. British Waterways cancelled major works on the River Weaver to pay for those costs. This is a short-term robbing of Peter to pay Paul. What will happen if there is a major catastrophe costing many lives and millions of pounds as a consequence of that lack of maintenance? The Government will have blood on their hands. They will not be able to claim that they did not anticipate such a thing happening, because I and other hon. Members are telling the Minister now that it can.

Other maintenance work listed as “deferred” included culvert inspections. That might seem harmless enough, but failure to inspect culverts can lead to massive structural failure similar to that experienced at Gilwern. British Waterways rates its key structures like bridges and aqueducts from A to E—A is very good, E is bad. Each year more of its structures slip to D and E. Gilwern was a D, and today nearly 28 per cent. of British Waterways’ structures are D and E. They need urgent maintenance.

The situation on the Thames, which is run by the Environment Agency, is no better—in fact it is possibly worse, as navigation took a bigger cut in the agency’s budget this year. Some 16 lock-keepers have lost their posts from a total of 76. Many locks will, therefore, be unmanned as lock-keepers will have more than one lock or weir to maintain. At the same time, boat licence fees rose 12 per cent. this year and will rise a further 11.5 per cent. next year. Boating numbers have dropped by 8 per cent. as a direct consequence.

The other effect of the cuts is on the expansion of the network. Throughout the country, teams of volunteers from canal trusts and societies, supported by local councils, the lottery and even the Government, are working away to restore and reopen waterways that were neglected and left to decline following the second world war. They have been very successful. New business opportunities are created, as the hon. Members for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) said. The system can take more boats, and neglected parts of town and country are regenerated. Ministers are delighted to go along and open those new developments, but unfortunately they will have a few more free dates in their diaries if the cuts continue.

British Waterways has been critical in bringing canals back to life, but I fear for my local trust, the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust. It was founded in 1988 to restore its two canals, with the wider purpose of pushing forward the regeneration of the underused and decaying canals north of Birmingham. They are classed as “remainder” canals, and they therefore receive only basic maintenance. By restoring those two canals, each about 7 miles long and abandoned in the 1960s, the trust could bring great benefits to Lichfield and other towns, and provide appealing connections to the main canal network. Nearby canals are almost too popular at peak times. There is a clear need to reopen those that are closed and to regenerate those that are underused and neglected—as any narrow-boater in peak season, queuing up to go through a lock, can testify.

It has fallen to the volunteers to initiate and carry forward that work, raising the funds themselves with very little support from official bodies. British Waterways has been supportive in times of difficulty, but it has neither the funds nor the resources following the recent funding cutbacks. During the past 10 years, the trust has brought £3 million of inward investment to southern Staffordshire, which was a huge task. In the past year, it has raised a further £240,000 to fund a crossing of the new Lichfield bypass. Such projects were forced on the trust by the imminent construction of new roads and the unwillingness of motorway builders and local authorities to bear the cost. It was a very heavy burden for a trust with 1,500 members and no access to major funding.

It is generally accepted that the restored canals will bring great benefits to the area and to the national economy, but there is no national political will even to assist with the costs. The Minister may be unaware of this fact, but volunteer work goes on every weekend to rebuild locks and to reconstruct the infrastructure that was lost almost half a century ago. Impressive progress has been made and more will follow, but it is clear that unless major cash injections can be found, neither the Lichfield nor the Hatherton canals will be open to traffic within the lifetime of many of those people who have already dedicated almost 20 years to the work. A whole generation of walkers, anglers, boaters and others will have missed out on an invaluable experience.

Will the Minister accept my invitation to come up to Lichfield and see some of the restoration work that has been undertaken, including the provision of attractive adjoining parkland? He is not nodding now, but I hope that he will nod in agreement when he responds.

May I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the excellent work of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust, and to its endeavour to create a link with the top end of the Birmingham canal navigations, which, as he rightly says, is so underused? Indeed, many similar trusts do similar work throughout the network. Does he agree that the potential for further cuts in the funding of British Waterways is, as much as anything, a major threat to its capacity to respond to such trusts, to help them with their regeneration work and to provide, where necessary, leadership and support for that work? That threat is at least as, if not more, important than the threat to capital expenditure directly. The support for those trusts is so valuable and it could be lost.

That is a very valid point. I should not underestimate, however, the capital works to maintain the existing canal network. As good as the existing network is, it is a terrible shame that so many canals were filled in 50 or 60 years ago, because they now have to be reopened in order to complete the network and make it a living, interconnected whole, and the cuts will jeopardise that work.

The major restoration schemes that came to fruition in the previous decade, notably the Huddersfield narrow canal and the Rochdale canal, did so only when local authorities—supported by British Waterways, which is the very point that the hon. Gentleman made—finally saw that the volunteers needed serious backing. Partnerships were then constructed which were able to drive the schemes forward. It seems that in the current climate, much more is expected of the volunteers. What is needed is local council willingness to adopt restoration schemes and push them forward, instead of just cheering on the dedicated amateurs. However, the local government settlement, which the Government have just announced, means that councils are even more starved of cash.

Major national projects need major national funding. Canals are for everybody, not just for people lucky enough to have a boat. Restoring the Lichfield and Hatherton canals will bring enormous regeneration potential to the west midlands conurbation, as well as major benefits to much of Staffordshire. If reports prove to be true, the task may be even more difficult, as British Waterways’ shortfall has grown even bigger. Over the weekend of 17 to 18 November, we learned from the press that there were to be further cuts throughout DEFRA. Ministers are to be presented with £130 million of immediate cuts to DEFRA’s budget, with radical options for another £140 million of savings. Those cuts would affect all the Department-funded bodies, including British Waterways and the Environment Agency, and they would be an addition to the 5 per cent. year-on-year cuts that have already been mentioned.

British Waterways is allegedly at the top of the list for further cuts to funding. Although the comprehensive spending review settlement for the Department appeared to present a real increase to the Department’s budget, it emerged only later, during evidence to the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that a number of new priorities from Downing street had been added to the Department’s funding obligations and that their cost would have to be taken from existing budgets because no additional funds had been allocated. One must assume that DEFRA Ministers are shuddering at the thought that they may face further commitments after the Bali conference on climate change. On top of all that, the effects of this summer’s flooding and the breach in the Brecon and Abergavenny canal will create further demands.

During the floods, British Waterways played a largely unsung role in removing hundreds of millions of gallons of water from canals and rivers throughout the country—water that would otherwise have significantly increased the number of towns and villages affected and the depth of the flooding. The programme cost more than £10 million. Is that not an obvious case in which the Treasury should allocate additional funds to waterways managers to cope with such disasters? It was outside the managers’ control. That was the very point that the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) made.

I have several additional questions for the Minister to address. I have given him notice of them, so I hope that he will be able to give full answers. Is it morally right that those people who had no involvement in the outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, bluetongue and bird flu should pay the costs? Have Ministers managed to bridge the departmental funding gap without resorting to raiding other agencies’ budgets? Have they made an application to the Treasury for increased funding to cover the unexpected costs incurred because of flooding this summer? If they have made such representations, what were the results of their efforts?

Does the Minister agree that our canals are a shared resource that we all enjoy, and that costs should not fall disproportionately on the few—the boaters, who are just 3 per cent. of people who actually enjoy the canals? Has the new cross-departmental committee met, and if so has the Minister been successful in obtaining financial support from other Departments that benefit from our waterways? Has the status report on British Waterways been delivered to Ministers, and if so, what were its conclusions? How is the financial shortfall that I mentioned going to be met? Is the Minister hopeful for the future of our canals, and will he be the champion, who is so desperately needed, in the Government?

I hope that the Minister will answer my questions positively. Our inland waterways are too important to be treated in that cavalier manner. The two previous Secretaries of State have both gone on to become Foreign Secretary, leaving a trail of trouble behind them. The first of the two, in particular, deserved to be sacked, not promoted. However, that pattern of career progression should not be relied on; certainly the Minister’s direct predecessor did not enjoy that perverse reward.

I hope that the new waterways Minister will stand up for our canals and inland waterways and leave them in a better state than he found them. He can do that only if DEFRA owns up to its responsibilities instead of lurching from one disaster to another. Rather like the Prime Minister, the Minister will find that his good press and good will will rapidly evaporate otherwise.

Several hon. Members rose—

Order I intend to call the winding-up speeches at about 10.30 am, so I ask hon. Members to make short speeches.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on obtaining this Adjournment debate. Like him, I welcome the new waterways Minister, but I shall not go so far as to endorse the hon. Gentleman’s comments and the rather unparliamentary language, I suspect, that he used about the previous Minister.

On a point of order, Mr. Martlew. I am sure that, if “nincompoop” were unparliamentary, you would have called me to order.

That is true.

That is as may be.

I wish to refer to the exceptional usage that the canal system gets. I have a cutting from a Birmingham newspaper, headed “Noddy floats in to walk with the stars”. It states:

“A celebration of Birmingham’s canal heritage returned to the city yesterday with 19 decorated boats winding their way from the National Indoor Arena to the Mailbox.”

The event was watched by more than 25,000 people, who flocked to the city centre’s waterways for the procession. The article continues:

“An added attraction to the parade was the presence of Slade legend Noddy Holder on his very own glam-rock inspired narrowboat as he became the next celebrity member of the city’s Walk of Stars. Following in the footsteps of Ozzy Osbourne and Jasper Carrott, he said:

‘I’m really chuffed to be presented with this star. It’s great for Birmingham to celebrate their artists, actors and musicians in this way.’”

I raise that point only because—[Laughter.] I apologise for the poor imitation of the Brummie accent. What is interesting here is the potential to attract additional income to the canal network, which is much needed.

Last year, the in-year cuts that were imposed upon the grant in aid given by DEFRA to British Waterways caused ructions. The cuts came rapidly, were not programmed in and came mid-financial year, which caused huge problems. Equally, I share the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Lichfield during the later comments in his long contribution. He asked the Minister what will happen in the next year. I hope that the Minister can say what cuts, if any, will be imposed on British Waterways in the next financial year and the one following.

Perhaps I should have said that I have a few interests to declare. I am perhaps one of the people who are described as being on comparatively low income—all these things are comparative, I guess. I hold a licence from British Waterways, and this year the cost of my licence has gone up considerably. It is well over £600 a year, and that will rise next year. I am also chair of the all-party waterways group and president of the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust.

In Derbyshire, we have a couple of canals that we hope will be restored. One is the Cromford canal, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber), which is interesting in the light of what is happening in the rail industry. I remember 30 years ago—I must have been insane at the time—wading through a tunnel that was like a rabbit hole for probably close to half a mile, the Butterley tunnel.

What is interesting about Butterley is that it was the major ironworks that produced the huge beams that still hold up the roof of the tremendous new St. Pancras railway station. I could not get any further down the tunnel, because the roof had collapsed and claustrophobia was starting to take its toll, so I waded out pretty quickly. There is a wish to restore that canal.

The other canal is the one in respect of which I am president of the trust. It will bring the canal network right into Derby city centre, with a link up the River Derwent, and provide a unique feature: the Derby arm, a 300-ft structure that will swing boats across the River Derwent, instead of an aqueduct being put in. It will be a huge feature.

Interestingly, the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust has just received a £150,000 contribution towards employing a project manager for the next couple of years or so to seek and press forward the development of the canals in Derbyshire—the Cromford canal and the Derby and Sandiacre canal. I share the concern that has been mentioned by a couple of hon. Members that an additional liability will be placed upon British Waterways if those canals are restored. Even if its funding remains as it is, new sections of canal opening up will impose even greater maintenance costs upon it. Worries are emanating from some canal trusts and societies that wish to open new lengths of canal.

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that it is perverse that the opening of new canals produces liability for British Waterways, even though they are of enormous benefit to the communities that they serve and those who navigate them? Events such as the worthwhile one in the centre of Birmingham, with which he began his speech, can produce a cost to British Waterways rather than an income.

They can, and I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the costs of opening locks, perhaps having temporary lock-keepers and clearing up after such events fall on British Waterways. It should say, “Here is an opportunity to generate income.” I know that it can lock off sections of the Birmingham canal navigation, which I have fallen into on a number of occasions over the years—I can tell the House that it is not a nice place to fall into. That would provide it with an opportunity to put some people on the gates, charge people to come in, perhaps have a few hot dog stalls or whatever, and generate some money. Perhaps British Waterways ought to consider that. My concern is about the impact of canals that are about to be reopened, or will be in the future.

May I pick up on a point that the hon. Member for Lichfield made? He said—I believe that I quote him correctly—that the Government had played a reasonable role in funding the canal network. That is a little disingenuous. To be absolutely blunt, huge sums of money have gone into the canal network over the past 10 years. I can remember the condition of the network 40 years ago, and it bore no resemblance to what it is like now. Up and down the country, anywhere and everywhere, it is so much better. A lot of money has been pumped in by this Government, and we should give credit where credit is due.

I hope that the Minister can give a clear indication of what cuts, if any, are likely to be imposed. I know that other bodies such as English Nature, the Environment Agency and other DEFRA-funded organisations are involved, but I hope that if cuts have to be imposed, they do not fall disproportionately on British Waterways for the very reasons that I have alluded to.

Several hon. Members rose—

Order Again, I ask for short speeches.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing the debate and on his continuing interest in the canals and British Waterways. He mentioned the issue to which I wish to refer briefly: the breach in the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. It is more accurately called that rather than the Abergavenny-Brecon canal.

Yesterday, I visited the breach, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies). The canal runs from Brecon to Pontypool; it used to run to Newport. Its purpose originally was to take limestone to the steelworks and bring back slag and other materials for agricultural use in the more agricultural areas. It had fallen into disrepair by the 1930s, and only through the intervention of British Waterways and the Brecon Beacons national park was it brought back into use. That is an example of the partnerships that British Waterways makes use of so well.

Unfortunately, the breach is a catastrophe for the tourism of the area. A huge amount of material came down the hillside and, as the hon. Member for Lichfield said, it blocked the road and caused great distress to local people. The net result is that the canal has been dewatered from the Ashford tunnel to Pontypool, although water remains in it from the Ashford tunnel up to Brecon. The lack of water obviously affects private boat owners, but it also affects commercial operators such as Dragonfly Cruises and Cambrian Cruisers. In particular, I would like to mention Mr. Lewis of Llangattock, who invested a considerable amount of his own money to construct a marina that now sits on a canal that, as far as he is concerned, has no water. That has a major impact on his income.

When I met British Waterways officials yesterday, I was impressed with their reaction to the situation. To deal with the emergency, the organisation is putting in resources that normally would be used in other parts of its operation. An engineer from Birmingham showed me around. I believe that the hon. Member for Lichfield said that dealing with the breach would probably cost £1.5 million, which is a huge sum, given the annual budget of British Waterways. Far more important is the fact that British Waterways believes that the whole of the section from the breach to Pontypool needs to be improved to ensure that it will be fit for purpose, and the cost of that could be between £10 million and £20 million. One can see what a huge dent that would make in the budget of about £50 million that British Waterways has at its disposal.

British Waterways has done a grand job in keeping everybody informed as to the development of its understanding of the situation. On 19 December, it will convene a meeting in Crickhowell where the major stakeholders will come together, and it will set out its plan to deal with the situation. It anticipates that the canal will be shut along the major part of its length for between a year and 18 months. The effect on the local economy will be serious indeed. Not only commercial boat owners, but the pubs and hotels that benefit from usage of the canal will be affected. Therefore, I ask the Minister to visit the canal. I know that he will receive many invitations to visit canals, but I believe that this case is important.

For some reason that I do not really understand, but which became apparent to me when I was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee when it carried out the inquiry on British Waterways, the Welsh Assembly Government do not fund British Waterways at all, as opposed to the Scottish Parliament, which does. However, I can tell the Minister that the Assembly Member who represents my constituency has made a request to the Welsh Assembly for funds to try to deal with the problem, and none of us will be backward in trying to find other funding from the national park, local authorities and whatever sources are available.

I impress it on the Minister that the situation is serious for the local economy and the tourist season that will begin in the spring. I ask him to visit the canal. Such a visit would indicate the seriousness with which the Government take the situation and be greatly appreciated by local people.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing this important debate at this crucial time for inland waterways. I hope that the Minister’s experience of waterways will have convinced him already that our canals are not just part of our precious national heritage but also an important part of our future. They play an important role in regenerating our towns, cities and countryside.

The canals have enjoyed a renaissance under this Government. Unprecedented funding has brought real benefits to places such as Birmingham, Manchester and even Stoke-on-Trent, but the renaissance is fragile because canals, like roads, fall into disrepair without adequate funding. They cannot survive on past glories. Vital expertise built up by British Waterways’ teams is quickly lost if staff are laid off, as occurred in the past year when 180 posts were lost.

But not just jobs are at stake. There is an impact on the wider canal community, which includes local canal trust volunteers who constantly look to develop facilities and come up with ideas about how the canals can be used to attract maximum local interest. The community also includes councils, village publicans, local action groups, wildlife enthusiasts and children’s organisations. In the past, British Waterways has been a willing participant and has offered advice on investigating and developing ideas. Often, it took the lead on joint projects that were of benefit to everybody, but now it has insufficient resources to develop and support imaginative schemes. It has fewer staff and there are more demands on those who remain, so opportunities to regenerate, revitalise and underpin the waterway infrastructure are lost.

It is not just the expertise of British Waterways that is unavailable but its presence at the table to convince local partners such as councils, wildlife trusts and businesses that they can have confidence in investing in new projects. Not having the capacity to pursue opportunities with willing participants who are now all convinced of the value of the waterway to their community, British Waterways is missing out on the tide of enthusiasm and risks demoralising it.

Local Caldon and Uttoxeter Canals Trust enthusiasts are trying to drive forward the exciting development of a new canal basin at Leek. It would be a potential catalyst for the improvement and development of a significant part of the market town of Leek and could result in diversification of the economy, which has suffered from the decline of textile and manufacturing industries. A feasibility study was presented to the council, but progress is slow despite considerable public support for enhancing the canal terminus at Leek, which currently comes out at the back of an uninspiring industrial estate. We do not do enough for visitors. The Caldon canal is delightful. Its changing seasonal character is renowned, and attracts visitors in its own right, but the absence of even basic facilities, such as good visitor moorings, interpretation boards and signage, leaves visitors unaware of the local attractions such as the heritage steam railways, and the local pubs, restaurants and shops.

British Waterways plays a crucial role in the nation’s flood defence systems. That role was critical during our dreadfully wet summer, but it is not widely acknowledged or rewarded. My constituents are grateful for it, but are the Government? There is a limit to the number of cuts that British Waterways can take and continue to perform that role. Part of its water control efforts includes ensuring protection of some of its principal assets and structures that it knows are in poor condition. We have heard that 28 per cent. of those structures are in poor condition. One such structure with the potential to fail is a large weir at Horsebridge above the hamlet of Denford, not far beyond where the water is released from the main reservoir at Rudyard. That weir cannot be used at time of high water volumes because its poor condition puts neighbouring properties at risk. That is a tiny but critical example, and British Waterways still has massive maintenance arrears.

My constituents cite many examples, and are concerned about the listed Hazelhurst aqueduct, as well as bridges, weirs, and many sections of towpaths and collapsed banks. Last weekend, torrential rain and flooding, worsened by a silted and blocked culvert, has destroyed some of the thousands of hours of work put in by volunteers and British Waterways at Froghall to restore the first lock and basin of the Uttoxeter canal where it joins the Caldon canal. Such damage will have been repeated throughout the country, and there is no end in sight because more such weather is to come.

Directly or indirectly, waterways are an intrinsic part of the business economy, not just of tourism. The Caldon canal plays a vital land drainage role locally. Local businesses have been given permission to expand on the flood plain because the threat of flooding has fallen due to the Caldon canal acting as a great drain. British Waterways has a vital role, and it has suffered considerable cuts this summer. It also has tremendous costs following the summer flooding. Where is the contingency reserve to assist it?

We heard from the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee about the projected £35 million underspend on major works. British Waterways should be a recipient of extra Government funding, not a focus for yet more cuts. Where is the long-term funding contract between the Government and British Waterways to provide wider stability to the waterways network? It has long been promised, but is yet to be delivered.

I welcome the new, cross-departmental committee for inland waterways, but has it yet met, and will it help the waterways to tap into funds from other Departments? Has the Minister calculated the tremendous, positive impact of British Waterways during the summer floods, and their economic impact? I hope that he, unlike his predecessor, will be a champion for inland waterways. Much good will has been created over the past 10 years among canal users. Let us not destroy that now.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing this debate. He has a proud record as a champion of waterways.

I share his concerns and those of other hon. Members about the impact that another round of funding cuts will have on our inland waterways. My constituency has a rich canal history. In the centre of Ashton-under-Lyne, the Portland basin is a vital hub in the national canal network at the confluence of the Ashton, Peak Forest and Huddersfield narrow canals. The Ashton canal runs through Droylsden to Manchester to meet the Rochdale and Bridgewater canals, forming part of the Cheshire ring. In recent years, we have seen the successful refurbishment or restoration of all those canals and, most recently, millennium funding has enabled the restoration of the Rochdale canal through Failsworth in the Oldham part of my constituency. That investment has been a key driver in the regeneration of urban spaces alongside those canals throughout my constituency. I am still optimistic that the long-derelict Hollinwood branch canal will be reopened, but I should declare an interest as a member of the Hollinwood canal society.

These debates are becoming too frequent, and this is yet another to deplore the level of cuts imposed on British Waterways because of events and issues elsewhere in the portfolio of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We had similar debates in December last year and, as the hon. Member for Lichfield reminded us, in April this year.

This year, the pressures came from foot and mouth disease, bird flu, bluetongue and, of course, the dreadful flooding in so many parts of the United Kingdom. Those were serious matters and, unfortunately, they may be repeated. The waterways were also affected by the floods, sustaining damage and incurring costs running into millions of pounds.

Surely, there is a limit to how much planned and unplanned budget-cutting the waterways can absorb without reversing the significant progress made between 1999 and 2004. The hon. Member for Lichfield was right to acknowledge that the Government were making good progress until recent times. A DEFRA review published in 2005 highlighted much improvement by British Waterways and referred to

“a step change in the condition, management and reliability of its inland waterway infrastructure and the elimination of the safety backlog.”

It also referred to the following:

“Completion of six major restoration schemes, costing £177m, creating over 200 miles of new navigation and associated urban and rural regeneration.”

That progress and investment is now at risk.

Even with all that investment, some maintenance and repair work never reaches the top of the priority list. Some six or seven years ago, a retaining wall beside the Ashton canal near Ashton-under-Lyne town centre was in danger of collapse. British Waterways made a temporary repair with a large volume of stone chippings piled against the wall. Unfortunately, those stone chippings completely blocked the towpath and part of the waterway. My earliest correspondence with the Ashton-under-Lyne Civic Society and British Waterways on this matter dates back to July 2002. A letter from British Waterways to the civic society dated 17 August 2002 states:

“I would hope that we would be in a position to start works in the Autumn 2003.”

However, a rider states:

“Please bear in mind that this may change depending on other priorities that are required nearer the time”.

The pile of stone chippings is still there, and the temporary repair is still blocking the towpath, just a short distance from the splendidly restored Portland basin. During my most recent correspondence with British Waterways in October this year, it stated:

“Unfortunately, we have so many areas in need of works, we must programme all jobs based on priority.”

It continued:

“Significant cuts in funding have resulted in tight budgetary constraints which have led to further scrutiny on the jobs that we can and cannot complete within the foreseeable future.”

It must surely be clear that while funding for British Waterways remains solely with DEFRA, it will always be the poor relation in the Department with its funding pot being reduced year on year and, even worse, being reduced in-year when events such as flooding and bird or animal diseases impact on DEFRA.

We have heard that there is a strong case for other Departments to make a direct contribution to British Waterways’ funding to reflect the contribution that it makes to those Departments’ agendas. I thought that that was an eminently sensible suggestion, but the Government’s response was lukewarm. They said:

“Other Government Departments have the flexibility to fund the inland waterways sector direct where it can help deliver specific policy requirements.”

If this remains the position, more must be done to protect and to increase DEFRA’s funding for British Waterways. Much of the inland waterways network is more than 200 years old, and if funding continues to fall the significant progress earlier in this decade will be undone, the money spent on it will have been wasted, maintenance will fall behind, and it will not be long before there is a safety backlog on the waterways. The pile of stone chippings in Ashton looks set to remain, blocking the towpath for the foreseeable future. I am confident that that testament to the short-sighted view that accords our waterways such low priority will not characterise our new Minister’s approach.

This has been a serious debate, although it has been couched in entertaining terms. I am conscious of the fact that we have a lot of questions for the Minister, however, so I will try to keep my remarks brief.

Several Members have discussed the way in which canals will continue to contribute to the regeneration of some of our most deprived areas, as well as the opportunities that they offer for leisure and tourism and for underpinning the economies of areas with otherwise quite limited sources of income. I want, however, to make a couple of additional comments.

At a time when we need to tackle climate change, we sometimes underestimate the value of canals. Waterborne transport is among the most efficient forms of transport from an emissions perspective, and Tesco became the first major retailer to start transporting freight by canal earlier this year. Canals and waterways can also make a significant contribution to ensuring that the construction work carried out as part of the Olympics in London is greener and more efficient. In addition, the waterways are vital for transporting rubbish in the London area, and I am sure that we all think that such activities should be expanded.

Underpinning the debate have been the ongoing tensions between the Government and British Waterways, and between the Government and Members who are aware of the issues associated with canals. There remains great frustration about DEFRA’s disruptive cuts in mid-year last year, and although I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on calling for this debate, he surely should not have needed to do so, because the concern about the cuts must have been evident to the Government. The resulting fear, uncertainty and ambiguity—the sense that there is no clear direction regarding where investment will come from in the upcoming years or how much it will be—surely puts the Department under pressure to make things clear as early as possible, so that the industry has a framework and understands the circumstances that it faces. We all hope that the waterways will cease to be the Cinderella in the DEFRA budget.

I join others in saying that DEFRA must work in partnership with other Departments not only to discuss the future of canals, but to fund them. We could look at a whole series of budgets, including those of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Transport, to ensure that the waterways have a coherent future. I cannot believe that it is not vital to have in place a long-term funding strategy and some real clarity so that investment is possible, and we expect the Minister to address those issues when he replies.

I also join others in raising concerns about the pattern of cost transfers from the taxpayer to the user, and I hope that the Minister will address the issue. We see that pattern in other parts of the transport industry. One great benefit of the waterways is that they give people on relatively low incomes the opportunity to enjoy a holiday or, indeed, to have a residence. If we allow the waterways to lose that characteristic—if everything is for the rich, not the many—we will destroy an important part of the fabric of the waterborne community.

I will now sit down but before I do, I ask the Minister to give us a full set of responses to the issues that have been raised.

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Martlew; it is a great honour to appear before you. I also give my warmest congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing the debate and on speaking so eloquently. I make a plea to the Minister to be gentle with him, because he is also my Whip, and it is in my best interests that we are all terribly nice to him.

I am nice to everyone.

I know. I also warmly welcome the Minister.

I do not want to repeat all the points that have been made. The debate has been not only informative but entertaining, and it has been in the best spirit of the House. I should record, however, that we are probably discussing the future funding of canals because DEFRA seems to be reeling from one disaster to the next. In that respect, we are grateful to the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins) for securing a parliamentary answer from the Minister’s predecessor on 6 February 2007. That answer showed just how many British Waterways programmes of planned winter maintenance and repair work had to be cancelled or postponed in the winter of 2006-07. We all felt for the boaters who took to the River Thames in great numbers earlier this year to protest at the cuts.

I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to say something that I forgot to say earlier. I am sure that she will join me in congratulating the “Save our Waterways” campaign on the work that it has done and on the petition that it brought to Parliament to underscore these issues.

I will join the hon. Lady in congratulating the campaign in just one moment. Let me say, however, that 18 projects were cancelled or postponed last winter, and it would be helpful to hear when the Minister expects that planned maintenance and repair work, which is very necessary, to be conducted.

Many hon. Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield, have spoken about the leisure and recreation role of canals. Had the debate taken place in Holland, France or Germany, however, even greater numbers of parliamentary colleagues would have been present. The role of inland and coastal waterways in recreation and particularly in transporting goods in an environmentally friendly way is much better recognised on continental Europe than it is here.

I pay great tribute to all those who work on and support the canals system, including those involved in boating and recreational activities. As my hon. Friend said, however, the canals took on a particularly vital role following this year’s floods. May I therefore add to the list of invitations to the Minister? I recently visited the Bentley Ings and the adjoining canal, in south Yorkshire, and I should impress on him the fact that British Waterways and the Environment Agency have not carried out regular maintenance work, which has left the Bentley Ings, in particular, in severe danger of bursting its banks. The Environment Agency and the insurance industry have concluded that the failure to dredge the waterways contributed in no insignificant way to the summer floods disaster.

Let us accept that the waterways have an environmental role to play. It is perhaps appropriate to recognise that the environmentally friendly work done by British Waterways, the Inland Waterways Association and others has led to the return of that most beautiful bird, the kingfisher, among others, to our rivers, which is no mean achievement. That was due to the role played by our waterways and canals, and that should be recognised.

Several people who wished to be heard contacted me before the debate earlier today. One was the honourable secretary of the west riding branch of the Inland Waterways Association, who talked about the role that the waterways play. The association, which is a registered charity founded in 1946, advocates conservation, maintenance, restoration and development. It has 17,500 members worldwide, but they are deeply worried by the cuts. I was also contacted by the commodore of the Bray Cruiser Club, who talked about the work done by boaters on the Thames, particularly through the association’s Bray marina in Berkshire.

I want to dwell briefly on the question, asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield, of whether it is morally right that, through no fault of their own, British Waterways, the Inland Waterways Association and other agencies funded by the Department should have their budgets cut. To take one figure from the five-year summary of the British Waterways accounts, the most given in Government grant in recent years—£94.8 million—was given in 2003-04. That was reduced in the most recent year for which figures are available, 2006-07, to a mere £72 million. That was before the most recently announced Government cuts. I hope that the Minister will adopt an open and transparent approach and share with the House his knowledge of what order of cuts is envisaged. We understand that the Department has overspent by £115 million this year in the light of animal health crises such as foot and mouth and bird flu, and that there was an overspend on day-to-day administration relating to flooding that ran to £30 million.

I ask the Minister to be open about the matter because it is a source of some concern to all those taking part in the debate and those listening to it that the permanent secretary at the Department is publicly calling for it to play down the scope of emergency cuts of £300 million, which will hit environmentally sensitive projects and will not allow British Waterways and the Inland Waterways Association to make the contribution to the waterways and canals that is needed. The debate has been open and honest, and we need the Minister to respond as forcefully as he can.

I shall conclude now because I want to allow the Minister the maximum time to respond. I believe that the waterways fall firmly within the remit of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Government have probably put the greatest emphasis on the environment. Those hon. Members, like me, who represent deeply rural farming communities feel that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food concentrated more forcefully on farming and food production, which may be why we are no longer self-sufficient in food and depend increasingly on imports. However, I believe that DEFRA is the right Department to deal with waterways. I pay tribute to its role in keeping our waterways environmentally friendly. I urge the Government to return to the maintenance programme of previous years, and to the contribution that was made through Government grant and the Environment Agency. I recognise the role of waterways in tourism and recreation, as well as in transport and boating.

I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield was quite harsh in some of his comments, but I support what he and other hon. Members have said. The Department seems to reel from one episode of incompetence and disaster to the next. Our plea is for it to restore funding to canals, to restore the maintenance and dredging programme, and to put an end to the gross mismanagement and dereliction of duty that has come about. We ask the Minister to maintain our waterways as the pride and joy of the country.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing the debate. He described to us his long association with waterways, mentioning the fact that he is the patron of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust in his constituency. I understand that he is also the secretary of the all-party group on waterways, which he seems almost to have forgotten, such is the number of titles and responsibilities that he has, and his passion and commitment to the waterways. It is understandable, given his busy agenda. He described travelling the towpath, and also talked about his credentials and honour as a Whip, welcoming me as the Minister responding to the debate, as we worked closely together in our respective Whips Offices. I thank him for that. I did not like what he said about my predecessor, who is a fine man, and an excellent Member of Parliament, and was a good Minister.

I intend to concentrate on the main body of my speech, which I hope will respond to the central concern raised. In any remaining time I shall respond specifically to some of the more general points. This is an opportunity for me to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to inland waterways and report that considerable progress has been made since the report on British Waterways by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I am proud to be the Minister for inland waterways and I have been fortunate to see at first hand some of the tremendous benefits that waterways bring to communities. Many of those were articulated by hon. Members. In 1966, when Bobby Moore was taking England to World cup glory, and Harold Wilson was taking the Labour party to success in the elections, I had my first holiday on a canal boat, in my mother’s arms, on the Oxford canal, so from the earliest age I have had an affinity with the waterways.

Since I have become Minister with responsibility for waterways, my visits have included key regeneration projects such as Wood wharf. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) mentioned the opportunity presented by the Olympics, and I have visited Prescott lock, which will play a vital role, facilitating waterborne freight and contributing to a sustainable, environmentally friendly Olympics. I have also been to the Loughborough canal basin and Birmingham, one of the first large-scale inner city regeneration projects, which is a testament to what waterways can do for our industrial cities.

I have also met a wide range of stakeholders in past months, and have been struck by their enthusiasm, knowledge and passion for waterways. New Ministers are always put at a disadvantage when they meet stakeholder groups, who know their subject inside out and upside down. I am grateful for their enthusiasm and desire to engage in discussion about how to take things forward. To that end I am today meeting representatives of more than 30 interest groups—people who use the waterways—to hear their concerns at first hand. I want to improve relationships and do everything possible to facilitate constructive dialogue. However, hon. Members should remember that British Waterways is a public corporation, at arm’s length from Government, and it is for the board and executive to comment on operational matters.

Will the Minister give way?

I would, but I should not be able to respond to all the points raised.

We need to maximise the public benefits of waterways while delivering an affordable, sustainable network within the total funding available. We are working closely with both British Waterways and the Environment Agency on developing long-term strategies to achieve that aim. Much has been said about ensuring that adequate funding is available for the waterways, and hon. Members have rightly expressed their communities’ aspirations to extend and restore the canals. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) said, each restoration or new canal brings further revenue pressures on British Waterways, and we must recognise that. Given the fact that more people than ever before use the waterways, and that there is more enthusiasm for them, so that there are more people involved in the relevant projects, we must wrestle with the issues of competing demands on the public budget.

rose—

I have a huge amount to get through; I ask the hon. Lady to be quick.

We hear what the Minister says, but does he accept that British Waterways, which is an agency at one remove, is limited in the amount that it can raise? We must recognise that the cost of fuel has put boating out of the reach of many people who would otherwise have taken great pleasure from those craft.

I am grateful for that comment. On sustainable funding, British Waterways is not at the moment allowed to borrow. BW has assets on which it could be allowed to borrow, and the Government are working hard with the organisation, as part of its review, to ensure that it can come to a position in which it will be allowed to borrow. That is part of the sustainable funding footing that we want to see the organisation on in order that it can meet hon. Members’ aspirations.

Many comments were directed at me and the Department’s funding. Following the Department’s allocation, it is, as hon. Members would expect, going through a business planning prioritisation process to decide how we divvy up the money. We must do that, and hon. Members referred to a number of the Department’s many competing priorities. The Department is actively engaging with delivery partners in that process with an expectation that final allocations, including those for BW and the Environment Agency, will be known at the end of February. The role of DEFRA as custodian of the canal network on behalf of the Government has been recognised by Ministers and, at this stage, I am hopeful that the budget for BW will be broadly around flat cash for a three-year period. The Government are in discussions with BW on what that means for its business planning, and it is considering whether a further injection of capital from its commercial business into the network in the next three years is desirable. Hon. Members have asked me to be as clear as I possibly can, and I have set out for the House the position that the Government want to get to.

I welcome the conclusion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report that we have seen a remarkable renaissance in the fortunes of Britain’s historical inland waterways in the past decade, as was mentioned by many of my hon. Friends, and—sort of—by the hon. Member for Lichfield. It would not do his career any good to say, “It’s the best ever!”, but that is the case—our waterways are in a better state today than they have been since the second world war, and they are used and enjoyed by more people than at any other time in their history. I urge hon. Members to judge the Government over a period on what we have done for British waterways.

The Committee made a number of recommendations, including improving relationships, setting up an interdepartmental working group and carrying out research into the benefits of the waterways. I am pleased to confirm that we are making progress on those recommendations. First, I am committed to developing and strengthening our partnership with BW to ensure the continued and sustainable revival of our waterways, and I have frequently met its chair and chief executive. From my perspective, communications are good.

Secondly, as promised, we have set up an interdepartmental working group. The Departments to which I have written—Transport, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Health, Communities and Local Government, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Treasury—have given the support that I asked for and are committed it. The first meeting of the group will take place on 17 December.

Thirdly, the Committee recommended that we undertake a study to determine the social benefit of the waterways network. Many hon. Members mentioned the additional benefits that the waterways network brings to the communities who live in and around it. A steering group has been set up, and the interdepartmental working group will consider those benefits at its first meeting.

The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) made an important point about the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. On the detail of that, he was right to say that the canal suffered a major breach in October which caused considerable distress to the local community. I am pleased at what he said about BW’s communication with local people and community leaders. Such communication is important for confidence. Often, when people complain, they do not know what the situation is, and if there is uncertainty, people become concerned. There will be a meeting on 19 December at which BW will set out what it intends to do. We know that the canal is hugely important for tourism in that area. It has a long history of instability, which the hon. Gentleman will know about only too well. There are plans to restore the abandoned section between Cwmbran and Newport, and the Crumlin arm, to promote further tourism, and he knows of those aspirations. I hope that we will see that restoration, but it will be enormously expensive, which has to be taken account of in relation to the other demands and aspirations that hon. Members have for their areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Laxton) is chairman of the all-party group—

indicated assent.

My hon. Friend remembers that he is the chairman of an organisation, unlike the hon. Member for Lichfield.

My hon. Friend suggested that he is hard-up; I am sure that he will get a lot of sympathy in the House and in the wider community for that. The issue of licences relates to the issue of boat owners paying the costs. It is important to get the matter in perspective. Boat owners pay around 10 per cent. of the costs. The rest is paid for by all of us—by the taxpayer.

On a serious note, my hon. Friend talked about regeneration opportunities. There has been £7 billion-worth of waterside regeneration in recent years—I stress £7 billion. I have seen it at first hand, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (David Heyes) mentioned his area. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North mentioned industrial heritage, and was right to point out that the wonderful roof at St. Pancras was made by a former constituent of his.

When hon. Members get involved in local projects, I urge them to ensure that the projects offer opportunities for skills training. It is vital that the opportunity to pass skills down is taken, so I encourage engagement with learning and skills partners.

My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins), who has a proud track record of championing the waterways, mentioned funding, and talked about opportunities for regeneration projects and the impact of the floods. Many hon. Members mentioned the unsung heroes, and I am sure that BW staff will be grateful for their comments. It has made representations to the Pitt review, which is designed to learn lessons from the floods. It will look at how the Government dealt with floods across the board, and BW is a central part of it. On funding, as I said, we need to put BW on a sustainable footing. There is a review group with which we are working closely to ensure that that happens, so that we can meet more of the aspirations that we and our constituents have for the waterways.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) mentioned the need for long-term funding, the opportunities presented by the Olympics and for taking freight on our waterways. She said that it is a Cinderella service, but I do not accept that. DEFRA has many delivery bodies, but BW does not receive the smallest amount. It might interest her to know that it gets more than some of the national parks, which have enjoyed and welcomed a considerable increase in funding in this year’s budget. Like the national parks, waterways have a contribution to make in delivering on sustainability. She also referred to the fact that Tesco and Sainsbury’s put freight on canals.

The hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) asked me to be open and honest about funding. I hope that I have been so and that I have provided some insight into the difficult discussions that all Departments have at this time of year. The Department is committed to British Waterways, to establishing better relations, and to ensuring that stakeholders have a say on how the network is developed. We want to meet the aspirations of the thousands of people who enjoy the waterways and the rich heritage that they bring to communities up and down the country.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Lichfield for initiating the debate. I am proud to be the Minister with responsibility for waterways, and I look forward to working with hon. Members in the months to come.

I sought this debate because now more than ever it is vital that we give the achievements of our veterans the recognition that they so richly deserve. At a time when British troops are serving in some of the most dangerous and hard-fought conflicts in the world, some at home are questioning the nation’s support for our armed forces. That is why it is nothing less than our duty to ensure that the 5.5 million ex-servicemen and women—our veterans—who have risked life and limb for Britain and defended her when she has been under threat know how much we value their dedication, courage and sacrifices.

When I was Minister for Veterans, I set out my mission statement quite simply, saying, “We will value our veterans, their widows and their families, and we will do all in our power to demonstrate that.” How we value our veterans is a measure of Britain today. The care we show them, or in some cases the lack it, cannot fail to impact upon the morale of today’s servicemen and women deployed around the world, including those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I want to draw attention to the disgraceful treatment of the 35,000 veterans who took part in operations in Malaysia from 1957 to 1966. The Malaysia campaign saw British and Commonwealth troops confront Indonesian volunteers infiltrating Malaysia. The conflict claimed the lives of 114 Commonwealth servicemen, with another 180 wounded. The British and Commonwealth force successfully dominated the border area and defeated the incursions, leading to a lasting settlement of the dispute that had threatened regional stability. Like all veterans, the men who took part in that struggle deserve our deepest gratitude and respect. As our forces face similar problems in Afghanistan today, the case of the Malaysia veterans is surely all the more poignant.

The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point at a time in our history when we should remember the veterans, because so many of our servicemen and women are serving in dangerous places around the world. However, we are talking about very special veterans, because the Malaysia campaign was the last conflict to be fought by conscript soldiers. These were not volunteers; they were conscripted to serve their country.

Although there were some shocking incidents during that war of which we should be thoroughly ashamed, the vast majority of veterans who served did so with great professionalism and dignity. They served their country not as volunteers, but as conscripts, and in such circumstances it is particularly important to recognise their efforts.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. He is right to say that those were the last conscripted troops and that they deserve our special care and attention.

In January 2006, the veterans were given permission to accept but not wear the Pingat Jasa Malaysia medal—the PJM—which is a decoration instituted by His Majesty the King of Malaysia to commemorate the services of British and Commonwealth forces in safeguarding Malaysia’s sovereignty during the conflict. The PJM honours the valour and sacrifices made by forces that served in Malaysia between 1957 and 1966. I welcomed the decision by Her Majesty the Queen, acting on the advice of the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, to grant permission to the 35,000 veterans who took part in that operation to receive that medal. However, the decision of that Committee—commonly known as the HD Committee—to advise Her Majesty that the medal could be accepted but not worn is the most disgraceful and insensitive act by faceless mandarins in Whitehall that I have ever encountered.

I have followed this issue carefully. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there seems to be no consistency in the application of the five-year rule and no transparency in respect of the HD Committee, which seems to make up rules to suit itself at any particular time?

The hon. Lady anticipates some points that I want to make, but I am grateful for her comment because it reinforces some aspects that I want to develop.

The absurdity of that crass and insensitive decision was demonstrated when veterans were allowed to wear the PJM in Malaysia on the occasion of that country’s celebration of its 50th anniversary of independence last August. Earlier, in a written statement on 31 January 2006, the then Minister for Trade, who also served as a Foreign Office Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson), said:

“The Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals…has recommended an exception to two of the long-established rules governing the acceptance and wearing of foreign…awards”.—[Official Report, 31 January 2006; Vol. 442, c. 10-11WS.]

In effect, those exceptions set aside the rule forbidding double medalling when a British award has already been given for the same service, and also set aside the five-year rule preventing the acceptance and wearing of non-British awards for events or service more than five years ago, which the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) mentioned. In other words, the HD Committee waived two key rules so that the veterans could accept the PJM and then re-imposed the same rules to prevent them from wearing it.

Most people—most sane people, that is—would think that fairness and common sense dictate that our veterans, having been given permission to accept the PJM, should be allowed to wear it, but when I was a youngster growing up in Abersychan in south Wales, my mother often used to say to me, “Son, in life you will find that sense is not that common.”

I have a letter from one of the veterans, who told me how proud he was to be invited to the Malaysian high commission to receive the PJM, but how distraught he was at the last sentence in the letter, which said that he needed to remove it when he left the building.

In the last parliamentary Session, I tabled early-day motion 356, which attracted 176 signatures. It called on the HD Committee to change its advice to Her Majesty the Queen on the wearing of the PJM. Also in that Session, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) tabled early-day motion 375, which called on the HD Committee to do much the same thing. That, too, received widespread support from all parties in the House.

It seems utter nonsense not to allow veterans to wear medals officially awarded to them. We must bring to an end that confusing and insulting practice. It is wholly wrong that the veterans cannot accept and wear the PJM. At best, that decision is unjust; at worst, it is a disgrace and a shame on Britain.

Before the right hon. Gentleman moves off the point about consistency, I would like to make a point in case he is not going to mention it. He will be aware that those who served on the Russian Arctic convoys were allowed to receive and wear their medals, as my father did with great pride. He will also be aware that the Governments of other countries, including Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, have given permission for the medals to be worn at any time, so why should our Government not give the same permission?

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point that shows the inconsistency of the approach to accepting medals from foreign nations.

Being allowed to accept but not wear the PJM is a disgrace and a shame on Britain. Britain’s shame was compounded and turned into a farce more worthy of a Whitehall theatre than the highest echelons of government when Commonwealth Governments in Australia and New Zealand advised Her Majesty the Queen that their citizens should be allowed to accept and wear the medal on all occasions. Indeed, the Governor-General of Australia, Michael Jeffery, was presented with his own PJM on 30 January 2006 and is allowed to wear it in public with pride. I am holding a picture of him doing just that. So, the Queen’s representative in Australia is allowed to accept and wear the PJM, but the Queen’s soldiers in Great Britain are not.

Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether the Queen sanctioned the wearing of the medal in Australia and New Zealand? Any advice given to the Queen is not available under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, so it is difficult to be clear about the matter. Does he know whether she was given advice with respect to the other countries?

Her Majesty is the Queen of Australia and of New Zealand, and acts on the advice of her Governments there. They appear to have advised her that their citizens should not simply accept but be able to wear the PJM. Clearly, that has happened with Commonwealth countries, and I, like the hon. Lady, cannot understand why that is not happening in this country.

This Government have done much for veterans. They created the first Minister for Veterans, instituted Veterans Day and created the Veterans Agency, but I want them to do more. In presenting the PJM, the Malaysian Government are thanking the 35,000 veterans who served on operations in that country. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country. I know of no other Muslim country that today wants to honour British servicemen and women. What message does it send out to a friendly Muslim nation—an ally and a member of the Commonwealth—when the British establishment is throwing this generous gesture back in its face? I can only hope that the members of the HD Committee do not also serve in the diplomatic service. God help British foreign policy if they do.

On a point of information, the permanent secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a member of the Committee.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Let history be the judge is all that I can say.

We in this country have a tradition of showing gratitude to our veterans for their services, and celebrating their achievements, yet veterans of the Malaysia campaign are not allowed to wear the PJM. To add insult to injury, the HD Committee agreed in March 2007 to review its original decision but concluded that it should be upheld. In answer to a parliamentary question, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said:

“After examination of the issues involved, the policies underpinning the operation of the UK honours system and particular application of these policies in the case of the PJM, it concluded that the original decision to allow exceptions to two of the major principles of the British Honours System—the double medalling rule and the five year rule—should be upheld.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1223W.]

My God, if I could close my eyes, I could imagine Sir Humphrey saying that in “Yes, Minister”.

I raised the matter with my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. I am grateful for their keen interest in the matter, but I have to say that, so far, I have received the same old tired responses. I was told that it has been a long-standing policy to say that

“the wearing of non-British awards will not be approved or permitted for events or service that took place more than five years before initial consideration or in connection with events that took place in the distant past.”

Again, who says that “Yes, Minister” is not the training manual for the civil service? My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, whom I greatly admire and support, is a radical man. He wrote an excellent biography on the great socialist James Maxton, in which he quoted Maxton talking about poverty:

“Poverty was manmade and was therefore open to change.”

I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend’s Government have little sympathy with those who want Britain to cling to outmoded and antiquated systems that belong in the 19th century, not the 21st.

To paraphrase James Maxton, the system that denies our Malaysia veterans the right to wear the PJM is man-made and therefore open to change. The only conclusion that I can draw from the attitude of the HD Committee is that it seems more important to uphold the British honours system than to honour British servicemen and women, some of whom have laid down their lives for our country. Those soldiers faced some terrible conditions. One can only imagine what it was like fighting in the jungles in those times, so how must they feel when they hear about the attitude that we have taken and our refusal to allow them to wear the PJM?

One veteran wrote to tell me that he had been advised by a Ministry of Defence civil servant that he could stuff his PJM back in his Kellogg’s packet, because the medal status meant nothing to him. Shame on any official who speaks to a veteran in that way. Many of those lads are now in their 60s and 70s, and they grow fewer in number each year. The time is right to make a decision and rightly allow them to wear this honour. All they ask is to be able to wear with pride the medal that they earned, alongside other veterans who parade across Britain on Remembrance Sunday.

I have met many of these men and I pay tribute to their campaign. Their quiet dignity is in stark contrast to the actions of civil servants who are hiding behind the actions of some shadowy Committee. I have tried to find out how this Committee operates. I am told that the main Committee meets just twice a year, and its minutes are not made public. The idea of transparency and open government do not apply there.

There are also stories circulating that the Committee often takes decision not by members meeting each other, but by them telephoning or e-mailing each other. It is a good thing that we did not have e-mails in 1957 when some of those conscripted might have not turned up to fight, but sent an e-mail of support. Where would we have been then?

I know that many Malaysia veterans have lobbied parliamentary colleagues, the HD Committee itself and Ministers, and still we are no further forward. The veterans have been left confused and disenchanted by the whole process. They deserve far better, and I believe that we have to deliver that for them. Those veterans have done their bit. We should honour them and recognise that the medal they have been given is not some second-class award, but an award given by an ally and friend in recognition of service provided by British servicemen and women. Their cause is honourable: they simply wish to receive fair and even-handed treatment from the British Government and to be afforded the same right as their comrades in other Commonwealth countries to wear the medal that they have earned.

I also know that if the HD Committee changes its mind, we will be told that that is setting a precedent. I am sure that I am not alone in this Chamber in thinking that, throughout my political life, I have been warned that if I said this or that, or did this or did that, I would be setting a precedent. I am sure that when the first human being stood up and began to walk on two legs rather than crawl around on all fours, there must have been a group of Neanderthals, not unlike the HD Committee, who tut-tutted, wrung their hands and said, “This is setting a precedent.” That is precisely what I am asking my hon. Friend the Minister to do now.

My hon. Friend the Minister is a good man and we know each other well. I am extremely fond of him and I hold him in high regard. He is at his best when he is most eloquent, and his most persuasive when he says what he thinks, although from time to time, that has got him into trouble, as I well know. May I invite him to tear up the notes that his officials have given to him and speak from what he feels inside—from what he knows to be right? He will not be alone, because I have received many e-mails from across Britain and from across the world from people who are saying, “We must do something to put this injustice right.”

When there is some outrage of this sort, people look to Parliament for a solution. Something so shameful as the way that the Malaysia veterans have been treated deserves our attention. The British people look to this place, the Parliament of Great Britain, to right an obvious wrong. We are privileged to be the elected representatives of the people. If Parliament turns its back on the legitimate claims of the Malaysia veterans, where can they turn after that? In this day and age, we cannot allow a Committee with no ministerial involvement, that appears to meet in secret, that is not transparent and that appears not to be accountable to Parliament to take such arbitrary decisions that affect so many of our brave men and women.

I say this to my Government—no, I say this to our Government, because whatever our persuasion, they are the Government of the whole United Kingdom: if the members of the HD committee will not change their mind and advise Her Majesty the Queen that the medal can be worn, sweep them aside and ignore them. Like the Governments of Australia and of New Zealand, advise Her Majesty the Queen that the medal should be worn.

This is the Government who had the courage to pardon those who were shot at dawn during the first world war. I appeal to the same Government to demonstrate the same sense of justice by allowing the Malaysia veterans to wear the PJM. Then we could send a message to those who served our country in the past, but also to those who are serving our country now in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas around the world. They would understand that we will always honour, cherish and care for them. We must grasp this chance to deliver justice for the Malaysia veterans.

I shall not detain hon. Members long. I start by acknowledging the Government’s record on recognising veterans and celebrating their service and their subsequent contribution to British society in so many ways, including the fact that many veterans turn out in the end to be volunteers—using the skills that they have learned, often in the services, to help others in their community. The present Government have done very well in recognising that achievement by introducing the veterans badge, which many of my constituents wear with great pride whenever they can. Veterans are among the most worthy groups in British society and they well deserve the recognition that the Government have offered them.

The Government have acted honourably and properly in dealing with the issue, so it surprises me that they cannot take a small extra step and allow the PJM to be worn by the Malaysian veterans, who were not volunteers, as I was as a boy, but were conscripted; they were forced to fight and serve their country, which many of them did with great professionalism and dignity.

indicated assent.

I see the Minister nodding. While I have his assent, I will conclude my remarks.

I was just checking a fact with the proposer of this excellent debate, the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig), relating to the introduction of the veterans badge. The reason why I wished to be certain about that was that a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of receiving my own addition of the veterans badge for some very modest service in the Royal Naval Reserve as an ordinary seaman some years ago. I felt a little thrill of pride, which was no doubt completely unjustified, but it was very nice to feel that a little bit of service to society in the armed forces had been recognised in that way. How much more significant it would be for someone who was involved in risking life and limb in a serious war-fighting campaign to receive recognition in the form of a medal for the risks that they had taken and for their achievements.

I have been involved in one or two similar campaigns in the past, but they were campaigns with a bit of a difference. When the right hon. Gentleman, whom I congratulate on the bravura way in which he presented the case today, was Minister for Veterans, I was heavily involved with the campaign to try to get an Arctic star for the veterans of the Russian convoys. It was remarkable how much resistance there was to that, yet there was a considerable difference between that case and this, because no medal had been given for the Arctic convoys at all, although it was argued unconvincingly that some of the veterans were eligible for the Atlantic star, which made me wonder not only about the intellectual rigour of the case, but about the geographical limitations of the people advancing it.

Eventually, although an Arctic star was awarded, it was in the form of an Arctic star emblem. I do not believe that permission was ever formally given for that to be integrated with the officially awarded second world war medal range, but it was designed to be easily capable of attachment to the ribbons of those second world war medals, and the effect is that everybody happily wears the Arctic star emblem today among the medals and nobody raises a word of objection about it. Therefore, the first thing that I would say to any veteran who has received the PJM medal is, “Put it on your medal range. Wear it proudly and my guess is that nobody will say a word about it.”

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I was invited to a medal ceremony, and the pride of the men in their medals was almost tangible. I suggested to them the very same thing that the hon. Gentleman suggested, but it is not quite the same. They want official recognition and official permission to wear the medal, because ultimately they were soldiers and they are law-abiding—they like to abide by the rules.

The hon. Lady anticipates a point that I was coming to. Nevertheless, when it comes to practical advice, the first step should be to say: “You have the medal. Wear it and do so with pride.”

The problem that the Ministry of Defence and the HD Committee face is not that they wish to regard the PJM as a second-class medal—I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that any civil servant who referred to it in those terms is not fit to hold his job—but that it is a second medal. That is where I think the difficulty arises, because some of the medal campaigns that we have fought retrospectively, such as Commander Eddie Grenfell’s campaign for an Arctic star or Captain Peter Kimm’s campaign for a canal zone medal for royal naval personnel—I want to touch on that in a moment—are for cases in which no medal was awarded at all.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I would like to develop the point a little further, but if the hon. Lady would like to try again later, I will be happy to give way to her.

In the cases to which I was referring, the difficulty related primarily to the amount of time that had elapsed since the campaign took place. That issue is, I think, dead and buried because the canal zone campaign set a precedent for going back into the records and retrospectively awarding a general service medal, which I believe is known nowadays as an overseas service medal, to people who qualified as a result of their service in the canal zone. The reason given for doing that was that it could not be shown that the idea had been put up for a medal or a clasp to a general service medal to be awarded for that service at the time, and rejected, so I went to considerable lengths to try to show the same thing with regard to an Arctic star in the second world war and I could find no record. I went through the HD Committee and through the ceremonial department, as I think it was, that supplied the records that the HD Committee would have considered in relation to the awarding of second world war campaign stars, and I could find no suggestion that a medal for the Arctic had been considered and rejected, either. However, in that case, one had to settle for an emblem, whereas in the case of the canal zone, it was retrospectively decided to award the clasp or, in the case of those who did not have a general service medal already, the medal together with the clasp.

The problem with the Pingat Jasa Malaysia, it is only fair to point out, is that the campaign is not one that has not been recognised. The British Government have quite properly recognised it by awarding a general service medal with a clasp. It raises a question of arbitrariness for a Government who have benefited from the work of British servicemen and women to wish to award a medal retrospectively for service for which a medal has already been awarded. It is possible that somebody who received a general service medal and clasp for service under equally severe conditions—perhaps in another theatre of war where the Government were not as appreciative after our withdrawal as in Malaysia—might feel a tad resentful that their colleagues got two medals and they only got one.

That is the sort of consideration that the Ministry of Defence is doubtless thinking about. I presume—the right hon. Member for Islwyn will correct me if I am wrong—that it must have been with the co-operation of the Ministry of Defence that the Malaysian Government got PJM medals into those ex-servicemen’s hands in the first place. Without that co-operation, it would have been impossible to administer the scheme whereby they got the medals. Primary consideration must therefore be given to those people—I do not know whether there are any; I invite interventions to set me right—who served in Malaysia but who for some reason did not get a medal from the British Government. If anyone falls into that category, there should not be the slightest question about their being allowed to wear the foreign decoration.

As I understand it, the majority of servicemen who sacrificed and endured during the Malaysian campaigns did not receive a medal for it. Is it not therefore the case that the double medal rule does not apply? Those men have nothing that they can wear in public that recognises their sacrifice and service.

That is extremely helpful. I do not know how many of the people who served in that campaign received no medal or clasp at all. I invite the Minister to concentrate on that point in his reply.

That leads me happily to the fact that I am the proud possessor of a set of miniature medals given to me by the family of the famous airman Flight Lieutenant Kinkead, who is buried in my constituency. He won two distinguished service crosses, two distinguished flying crosses, a distinguished service order and a mention in dispatches between 1917 and 1919, both on the western front and in the intervention in Russia. It is relevant because among those miniature medals are two awarded by the white Russian authorities with whom he fought on detachment—unofficially, as it were, but officially—for the Royal Air Force in 1919 and 1920. Indeed, his DSO was for service in that campaign.

There is therefore a huge precedent for allowing foreign medals to be worn when the British Government have not already awarded a campaign service medal or clasp. I am surprised by the statement of the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that that applies to the majority of PJM recipients. If so, the point is crucial. If not, it is still most important for the minority of people who did not receive an award from the United Kingdom.

I should declare an indirect interest. My partner’s father, Frank Souness DFC, was decorated for his service in the RAF during the Malayan campaign in 1955, and I believe that his subsequent service entitles him to the PJM. Most people will recognise that there is a distinction between those who are awarded nothing for a campaign and those who have already been recognised for it by the British Government. It is not an easy point to make. We all wish to salute the gallantry of people who risk their lives in such campaigns. I look forward to hearing the Minister clarify whether attention will be addressed, at least as a first step, to those veterans of the Malaysian campaign who received the PJM but who never received any other award for their service.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on securing this debate and on the excellent and entertaining manner in which he prosecuted his case. We have also heard some excellent interventions and contributions from the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who made a detailed case for a change of heart in the Government. The case is even stronger because the right hon. Member for Islwyn, as a former Defence Minister, has some inside knowledge of such matters. Having been a Minister for Veterans, he has probably seen some of the deliberations on such issues. I presume that he is not allowed to divulge them to this audience, but it strengthens the case for why the Government should reconsider.

The Malaysian campaign is often regarded as the forgotten war. Vietnam and Korea have had greater exposure, mainly through Hollywood and other film-making enterprises, but that does not mean that we should forget Malaysia. Some 35,000 troops were involved, and there were more than 100 deaths. It was a significant conflict that should be reckoned along with the rest, especially when one considers the numbers—we have 7,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the number in Iraq will have reduced to 2,500 by spring. It was a significant effort that the Government should recognise.

Even though it is claimed as a forgotten war, we must not forget the 35,000 veterans who served in Malaysia, including the last conscripted soldiers, as the hon. Member for New Forest, East mentioned. I concur with the right hon. Member for Islwyn—the MOD has done some good work in recent years. It has appointed a Minister for Veterans, introduced a veterans badge and veterans’ day and given veterans priority health treatment. It has done some good work, but it is in danger of throwing it all away and losing the credit that it has gained recently. We are talking about an unnecessary slight to a group of veterans who served with distinction in the Malaysian campaign more than 50 years ago, and who have been prevented from appreciating fully the Malaysian Government’s thanks on behalf of their people to the veterans who helped give them their freedom.

This is a bizarre example of British etiquette and rules getting in the way of common sense. It has all the hallmarks of a British farce. To tell 35,000 loyal ex-servicemen and women that they may accept a medal but are not permitted to wear it defies logic. The rules on double medals and events more than five years ago are waived to permit acceptance and then, paradoxically, immediately resurrected as reasons why the medal may not be worn formally. Then, after much prevarication, the establishment permits the wearing of it—but only for a few days and on the other side of the world in Malaysia. Only in Britain could that sort of thing happen.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who always puts a logical and powerful argument; he was very even-handed in his approach, and drew out the difficulties of both sides.

I have been fearsome in my criticism of the HD Committee, as I have seen correspondence concerning the decision to allow our veterans to wear the medal during the 50th anniversary of Malaysian independence. In my view, the decision was taken because Commonwealth veterans would have marched in Malaysia wearing their medals and ours would not. Perhaps more important to the establishment, Her Majesty was represented at those events by His Royal Highness the Duke of York. I believe that there was concern that His Royal Highness might have been subjected to some sort of protest by British veterans if they had not been allowed to wear the medal while other Commonwealth veterans did so. The decision to allow them to wear it for that celebration was totally cynical and wholly unworthy.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. If the HD Committee is more concerned about the Duke of York’s feelings and his possible embarrassment than about the veterans, it is very sad. Perhaps it reflects the ethics of the Committee’s members.

What does it say about our relations with that foreign country—a Muslim country? As we heard, we do not have that many friends in the Muslim world, so we should not turn them away when they offer the hand of friendship. What does it say to the King of Malaysia? It is a nation of 27 million people, of whom 60 per cent. are Muslims. It is a newly industrialised country that has a long track record as a trading nation, and it is an important partner for the United Kingdom. When our veterans are offered a medal, it is very narrow minded and rather offensive for us to turn it away. I do not know how the people feel about it, nor do I know the King’s view or what he says in private, but I can imagine what it must be like. Surely our relations with that country are far more important than Britain’s medal etiquette.

What does it say to our Queen? She is put in the invidious position of allowing the medals to be worn in public by New Zealand and Australian veterans, but not our own. It puts the Queen in a very difficult position. I wonder what she says behind closed doors. We will never find out, but I wonder whether she has had a phone conversation with the King of Malaysia and is rather embarrassed by the whole episode.

I have a few questions for the Minister. Why did the Queen allow Australia and New Zealand veterans—

Order. The hon. Gentleman should not bring the royal family into the debate.

I apologise, Mr. Martlew.

Why were New Zealand and Australian veterans allowed to accept and wear the medal, when it was denied to our own veterans? If it is not permitted to receive a medal if five years have passed, then why were veterans of the allied Arctic convoys allowed to receive and wear in public the Russian 40th anniversary of victory medal?

I am puzzled by the Government's intransigence on this issue. As has been said, we are not talking about “bling” hunters—people who have medals all over their uniforms—and the veterans do not want that, either. They want something that is special. The difficulty has been caused by our obsession with etiquette, rules and regulations. We should be celebrating the efforts of our servicemen, not denigrating them. We need a review of the rules so that we can take a sensible approach to the receiving and wearing of medals. I urge the Government to look again at the set-up of the HD Committee and at some of the long-established rules that govern this issue.

I pledge my support for the Daily Mirror’s “honour the brave” campaign, which has tried to secure medals and recognition for the injured and those who have passed away in Afghanistan. One of my constituents, Captain McDermid, a long-serving soldier, recently passed away there. Such people should be given recognition, in order that others know the value that our soldiers give to our country.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) on obtaining the debate and on the manner in which he introduced it. I express slight surprise at the vitriolic way in which he attacked the HD committee. At the end of the day, it operates to rules that effectively are handed down by Parliament, and it is to those rules that officials work. If we are unhappy about the committee and how it works, we need to address the way in which it is structured. I shall say a few things about that later.

It is important to establish that medals are important to servicemen and to veterans. Those of us who have not served need to discuss the matter with veterans fully to appreciate the part that medals play in service life and the way that veterans view themselves and their service. It is by no means a trivial issue, and the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) and the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) fleshed out some of the problem.

The feeling that the veterans have for their medals cannot simply be dismissed by saying, “”Well, you can wear them anyway.” People can wear whatever they want. Indeed, those involved with Remembrance day services of one sort or another, which includes most Members here, will have noticed in recent years an increase in the number of medals, emblems and badges—we heard earlier about the veterans badge—which are all worn with a great deal of pride by veterans. Some of them, of course, are officially awarded and endorsed by the HD committee; some are not. Some of them are foreign awards and decorations, and some have the status of emblems or badges; some can be bought, for not very much money, but they have no official endorsement. We need to consider the subject in that modern context.

I want to put on the record my thoughts on veterans badges. Like many innovations, one has to reserve judgment initially to see how things work out. Having presented some, and having been eligible for one myself, like my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East, I am pleased with them. They were a good innovation and a positive move, something that was appreciated and warmly welcomed by veterans. I congratulate the Government on introducing them.

The make-up of the HD committee is curious. It has eight officials. There are representatives of the Prime Minister, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. They are senior officials. To say that there is no political input may be a little wide of the mark. Indeed, they can feed in the views of Ministers, according to a letter of 20 December 2005 sent by Mr. William Chapman, the secretary of appointments at No. 10. That is clear evidence that the committee is influenced by politicians. In considering whether the committee is fit for purpose, we need to remember that. I suspect that the right hon. Member for Islwyn, when he was a Minister at the Ministry of Defence, will have had some input to the HD committee through the MOD official.

In the context of a partly political committee, we need to discuss whether we should reconstitute the way in which honours and decorations are recommended to Her Majesty the Queen. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister feels that, informed by some of the issues raised in this debate, we could look again at the committee to see how it can be brought up to date.

The rules that the committee is obliged to work to are contained largely in Foreign and Commonwealth Office orders passed in 1969, which have since been updated. The first rule prohibits UK citizens from accepting or wearing a foreign award without the sovereign’s express permission. In a sense, we are making a rod for our own back, because, unusually for British law, those orders state that a person may not do something unless given permission to do so. In the context of our armed forces that is very clear: a person cannot wear any item on their uniform unless it is contained within uniform regulations.

However, this is not a debate about whether servicemen and women representing this country in uniform may wear particular awards or decorations—one would assume that they may not, unless they bear the image of the sovereign or specific permission is given. We are talking about veterans and civilians. It seems strange, particularly given the plethora of badges, medals and awards of various sorts that veterans are accustomed to wear, to forbid, in those regulations, the wearing of the PJM. That seems rather odd and a little capricious.

Mention has been made of Sir Humphrey. Although I would not accuse the committee of acting like Sir Humphrey, this situation appears somewhat Humphreyesque. Many will look on our country, perhaps from Malaysia, and ask, “What on earth are the British playing at? Why are they failing to give any official endorsement of the award of this medal?”

We heard eloquently from the right hon. Member for Islwyn and from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) about the possible effect on Malaysia. At a time when we are trying to build bridges, particularly with countries with a substantial Muslim population, it seems churlish to open ourselves up to the accusation of being unhelpful and unfriendly. The committee resides within the Foreign Office, which is why a Foreign Office Minister is replying to this debate, but we seem to be scoring a diplomatic own goal.

One of my principal concerns about the HD committee is that it appears to have been inconsistent in its judgments, which I suspect might be partly the result of political interference. It seems that two major rules override its considerations in this arena: double medalling and five-year retrospection. However, we have heard about the commemorative Russian 40th anniversary medal and how that event was marked by the British war medal. More specifically we might consider the Malta 50th anniversary commemorative medal, which is similar, but covered directly by the British Africa star.

The committee’s determinations appear to be inconsistent, and although the rules that govern it suggest that it is not necessarily a problem that precedent does not guide or dictate future decisions, if we do not rely on precedent, I am afraid that we are likely to fall into the trap of randomness that gives rise to a sense of injustice on the part of veterans when they find that their medal has not been officially endorsed. That endorsement is important to veterans, for reasons pointed out by the hon. Member for Romsey. They are ex-servicemen, accustomed to abiding by rules, and they feel uncomfortable if approval is not given to what they did, particularly when that concerns medals.

The rules, which state that one may not wear a medal unless it has been officially approved, are standing in the way of common sense. It might be far more helpful to replace those rules with a more permissive line that might run: “UK citizens may wear awards from foreign powers at their discretion unless they are requested not to.” That would get the Government and the HD committee out of the fix in which they unwittingly find themselves. It would be a sensible way forward.

The sovereign must remain the fount of all honour. That lies at the heart of the matter and is the bedrock of the work of the HD committee. However, those strange little rules generated in 1969 are standing in the way of what, to most of us—including friends and allies abroad who have approved this medal—appears to be common sense. However, just because New Zealand and Australia approve of its wearing, we are not necessarily bound to follow suit. As I understand it, approval was given to wear the medal by Her Majesty following recommendations made to her as Head of State of those countries. She cannot be bound to make the same determination in respect of the United Kingdom.

To use the vernacular, I am arguing for some “chilling out” on medals to avoid the blind alley down which the HD committee has been forced, by virtue of the 1969 Foreign and Commonwealth orders and regulations, which have been so unnecessarily proscriptive and caused so much unhappiness, bewilderment and misunderstanding, and which, I suspect, have had diplomatic consequences in respect of the PJM.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) for giving us the opportunity to debate this very important subject. I welcome his close interest in it. In my opinion, he was one of the best Veterans Ministers, and I congratulate him on the work that he did during his tenure of that post and on the commitment that he has shown to veterans ever since.

My right hon. Friend seldom makes Ministers’ lives trouble-free and harmonious, and he certainly has not done so in this debate. As he pointed out, I have been in great difficulties many times—as a climber, on the great north walls of the Alps, and as a swimmer I have swum too far out to sea. I also got into difficulties on picket lines outside power stations and pits a quarter of a century ago. I have been in grave difficulties in this place many times, as well. However, this is the most difficult case I have had to argue against—I am not sure that I am up to it really.

I know only too well that debating Chambers in the Palace of Westminster can be very inhospitable for Ministers. Indeed, my right hon. Friend and hon. Members have contributed in a fine way to the debate, and I find myself confronting as effective a resistance to the continuation of established Government policy as I have faced on any issue. It is very difficult to construct an argument that resists their case in defence of servicemen being allowed to wear the Pingat Jasa Malaysia medal alongside other awards that they may have won for courage and tenacity displayed in circumstances far more dangerous than any climbing route, swimming adventure, picket line or, indeed, Dispatch Box that a Minister might stand next to.

Let us remind ourselves that it is a great testimony to our veterans that His Majesty the King of Malaysia, the Malaysian Government and people wanted to honour them with that medal. The veterans played a valorous role supporting Malaysia—Malaya, as it then was—in its early days. Our veterans provided the support that the Malayans so desperately needed in the 1950s and early 1960s, and it was only a short time before some were back there supporting the newly independent Malaysia in her armed conflict with Indonesia, which ended finally in 1966.

In the past 50 years since Malaysia’s independence, our bilateral relations have gone from strength to strength. We have extensive and positive links on a range of issues, from education and climate change to sustainable development and defence. We have a shared history and culture, and many Malaysians have developed extensive links with the United Kingdom. I am delighted that His Royal Highness the Duke of York represented the United Kingdom at Malaysia’s celebrations of its half century of independence in August this year.

I am also delighted that a large number of British veterans attended the celebrations, and that an exception was made to our rules, as laid down by the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, to allow those veterans to accept His Majesty the King of Malaysia’s generous gesture in awarding the PJM. Those people who were able to travel to Malaysia for the 50th anniversary celebrations were, as my briefing puts it, exceptionally permitted to wear the medal in Kuala Lumpur. However, I fear that there are no plans—I am told this by the HD committee—to allow unrestricted wear of that medal, which, it argues would be contrary to some important rules governing the acceptance and wearing of honours and decorations, which have been long-standing practice in this country. That is what I want to consider in the time left to me, because I have got to try to explain why it is so.

I am informed that allowing the PJM medal to be accepted required the HD committee to agree a special exception to two principles governing the acceptance and wear of foreign awards. The first, which we have heard about, is double medalling, whereby a British award has been given for the same service. The second is the five-year rule, which does not allow medals to be accepted for events that took place more than five years ago.

The following point struck me when the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) spoke. I do not know the exact date when British soldiers went to Afghanistan, but it must be getting on for six—certainly five—years ago. It was probably February 2002. That is almost as long as the second world war, and although some acts of valour will have been rewarded already, it might be a long time before some of the ongoing events there receive full recognition. The question of the time span is important, and we must consider it in the future. Indeed, we must consider much else besides.

Both rules—it is argued—are long standing and fundamental to the integrity of the British honours system. The five-year rule, and an earlier two-year rule, date back to 1855, and the double medalling rule is also long standing. I was very grateful to the hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) for his compelling description of why some rules are in place. He gave us a fair and balanced description.

The British honours system—I am told—has a long history of recognising meritorious service and of preserving the integrity of Crown servants. It guards against something that the HD committee calls medal proliferation—a very interesting term. The committee should go to some of the countries that I go to occasionally if it wants to see medal proliferation. I understand that the tradition has been upheld by numerous reviews. As my right hon. Friend told us, our practice differs from that of some other countries. The British honours system is truly meritorious. Honours and decorations are highly valued, and the system is administered scrupulously, as the hon. Member for Westbury told us. However, I have also been led to understand that it allows flexibility for special circumstances. My right hon. Friend gave us some examples, such as allowing veterans of the Malaysian campaign to accept but not to wear the PJM medal.

In my view, that situation adds an anomalous variable to an equation that is already extremely difficult to understand. The HD committee’s argument is that the vast majority of the veterans who have received the PJM medal have also been awarded the British general service medal for the risk and rigour of their service in Malaysia. I do not know whether this will provide an answer to the hon. Member for New Forest, East, but there was only a short period, from 1960 to 1962, when the risk and rigour in Malaysia was not deemed—by those who do the deeming—sufficient to award a medal to British troops stationed there. For the rest of the period covered by the PJM medal, between 1957 and 1966, those who were thought to merit recognition by the award of a medal, and who fulfilled the appropriate time criteria, were awarded the general service medal with the appropriate clasp, the Malaya bar.

The qualifying periods were different for service afloat and service on land. Some naval personnel did not receive a naval general service medal for their time served off the coast of Malaysia, and they do not consider receiving the PJM medal to be double medalling, because they do not have a British medal for their service. I am told that the qualifying periods were carefully considered at the time, and there were obviously good reasons for making the naval qualifying period longer. However, the HD committee argues that the absence of a general service medal should not, in itself, mean automatic qualification for a foreign award.

The HD committee advises Her Majesty the Queen on all honours matters.

What the Minister has just said is hard to understand. It is not for the committee to decide whether British service personnel who did not qualify for the British award should be eligible for a foreign award. The Government of Malaysia have decided that all those service personnel are eligible to receive the award. Surely the point is that those who for any reason did not receive the British general service medal and Malaya clasp should therefore be eligible to wear the PJM medal because it is not a case of double medalling. Will the Minister focus on that when he takes away the argument, which he is evidently quite unhappy to have been given by his officials?

The hon. Gentleman has put the matter clearly, and that is why I described it as an anomalous variable in an already difficult equation. It is difficult to understand why that exception should be made. I shall argue that it should not.

As I said, the HD committee was established formally in the 1930s to provide what is described as

“independent and non-political advice to the sovereign”.

However, for the past century, the sovereign has called on his or her private secretary, in consultation with senior civil servants, to give advice on the honours system. Although the Committee is non-ministerial, it takes the views of Ministers into account—or so it says. It seems that it does not always take a great deal of account of the views of Ministers, as my right hon. Friend pointed out.

Will my hon. Friend provide us with evidence that the committee has ever taken the views of Ministers into account? I was never aware of that, and the correspondence that I have seen with colleagues who are no longer Ministers but support the veterans’ campaign does not show it. The hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) thought that I was vitriolic about the HD committee, and I was not sure whether the Tory party was on the side of the veterans or the HD committee until the end of his contribution. Can my hon. Friend provide us with evidence that the committee has taken notice of Ministers? We are living in a day when things are much more transparent. Can we, as Parliament, tolerate a body that makes decisions in secret without any reference to elected representatives? Surely we cannot.

No, I cannot give my right hon. Friend any evidence that the committee has ever listened to a Minister. In the case of the PJM, the Minister with responsibility for veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), and a former Minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), wrote a joint letter to the HD committee before its deliberations earlier this year, in support of wearing the medal. The committee’s members, however, were not sufficiently exercised by that correspondence to change their minds. I am told, nevertheless, that arguments for exceptions to our rules on the acceptance and wearing of decorations and medals are considered carefully—that is what the committee says—to preserve the integrity of the honours system.

In reaching its decision on the PJM, I am told that the committee considered the importance of British involvement in the Malaysian campaign in the histories of both Malaysia and the United Kingdom in the years between 1957 and 1966, the generous gesture of the King of Malaysia and the principles on which the UK honours system is based. I hope that the committee’s members heard what my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn said: that the generosity of the people of Malaysia, His Majesty the King of Malaysia and the Government of Malaysia carries with it a great deal of political significance.

We heard that other exceptions have been made which were probably based on considerations with such political significance. For example, I know about the sterling work that the hon. Member for New Forest, East did on the Murmansk medal and the Arctic convoys. The agreement to award the medal was seen as a gesture of our increasing friendship and relationship with the newly emerging Russian democracy. That is an important point to make, and my right hon. Friend reminded us that not many countries that could be described as overwhelmingly Islamic have decided to honour us in such a way and honour veterans who helped to carve out those countries in the first place. That is an important and significant political fact.

I am sorry to intervene on the Minister when he is making such an important point. He mentioned the significance of the Malaysia conflict, and I thought at first that he meant its significance as a war, rather than the political significance that he has moved on to. On its significance as a war, I remind him that 545,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped in 4,500 air strikes, 34,000 people were interned, defoliant was sprayed on hundreds of acres of land and 5,000 people were killed. It seems to me a more substantial and consequential conflict than many for which medals have happily been awarded.

Yes, indeed. The hon. Gentleman reminds us of some important facts, and I am remiss in not having commented on the central point that he made: that in many ways it was the last serious conflict to be fought by conscripts as well as professional soldiers. It was a substantial and difficult war. I grew up in a family that knew well the details of the Burma campaign in the second world war, much of which was fought over similar territory. People suffered greatly in the Malaysian campaign, most of all the indigenous people. It also had extremely significant ramifications for the wider world. It could be argued that it was a hot war fought by the major cold war combatants by proxy, and we ought to remember that.

As I said, some exceptions have been made for veterans to be awarded foreign medals as well as a British medal. For the HD committee to argue that those exceptions do not set precedents is difficult for a humble Minister such as me to understand. After all, if it is right to allow one small group of veterans to wear two medals for one period of service, in contravention of what is now called standard practice, there is a good case for arguing that exceptions should also be made for many other veterans, including the rest of those who fought in the Malaya campaign. It is not fair that many veterans find themselves not permitted to enjoy such an exception.

I am told that the HD committee has considered the case of the PJM three times, the third time to agree to wearing the medal in Malaysia during the 50th anniversary celebrations. Having considered it in such detail, carefully weighing up the arguments for and against, I am told—having read, I assume, the correspondence from the Veterans Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield—that the committee does not plan to reconsider the matter and that Ministers do not plan to overrule the committee’s advice to the Queen. I would be the last person in the world to want to overrule any committee, but I shall say something in a moment that might worry it a little.

I cannot wait. Of course the committee will not reconsider the matter, because it is obliged to work to the rules that are set down in the 1969 regulations. It is the business of Ministers to amend those regulations, so I am afraid that the Minister cannot get off the hook.

This Minister has never tried to get off any hook. This is the last time that I shall ever give way to the hon. Gentleman when I am on the last page of my speech, because he has just stolen my lines—an awful thing to do.

I have been told that the committee does not plan to reconsider the matter. As we have just heard, that plan is subject to the House’s deliberations on the subject, because there is political input to the committee via the high-ranking and distinguished public servants appointed to it. I shall read out the list: the private secretary to the sovereign, the defence services secretary, the permanent under-secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the secretary to the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, the appointments secretary to the Prime Minister, the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Defence, the permanent secretary to the Home Office and the ceremonial officer of the Cabinet Office. The HD committee’s plans will ultimately be determined by decisions of Parliament.

In March 1944, Winston Churchill observed:

“The object of giving medals, stars and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everyone does not possess. If all have it, it is of less value. There must, therefore, be heartburnings and disappointments on the borderline. A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow. The task of drawing up regulations for such awards is one which does not admit of a perfect solution. It is not possible to satisfy everybody without the risk of satisfying nobody. All that is possible is to give the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number and to hurt the feelings of the fewest.”

Those are wise words, but they were designed not just to make the central point that we must take great care in awarding medals and honours, which we do, but to ensure that there must be flexibility and sensitivity as events unfold and circumstances and perceptions change. That is why I shall try to communicate to my colleagues in the Government and to the HD committee that flexibility is needed in this case. I hope that they will take the testimonies that we have heard this morning and my words seriously.

I am grateful for this brief opportunity in a packed Westminster Hall to raise the issue of vulnerable adults in residential nursing and care homes in England. I pay tribute to the exceptional level of care that the majority of elderly, vulnerable adults receive from the dedicated private, voluntary and public sectors. It is important to put that on the record.

More than 280,000 adults receive care in a variety of settings, and I know from my constituency, where I rarely receive a complaint, that the level of care is generally outstanding, despite the ever-decreasing fees to support top quality care. However, the reality is that abuse takes place, and we know from last week’s ICM poll in The Guardian that 66 per cent. of adults are frightened by the prospect of going into care homes.

We were reminded only yesterday of the need for vigilance, high-quality inspection, investigation of complaints and prompt action when the owners of Parkfields care home near Glastonbury were arrested on suspicion of murdering five elderly adults. I hope that the Minister will give a further assurance today that the protection of all vulnerable adults is high on his priority list. He has recognised the challenge facing the Government, and on 20 February he addressed Age Concern’s Age Agenda conference and said:

“I think we need to create a society over time where people are as outraged by the abuse of older people as they are rightly about the abuse of children.”

He then said that

“we are a long way from getting there. I'm afraid in the months and years ahead, we'll have to face up to some pretty uncomfortable realities about the abuse of older people in our society”.

This week gave us a taste of that.

What, in effect, the Minister was saying was that of the 500,000 older people who are believed by Help the Aged to suffer abuse today, some will die because of our inability to act quickly enough to protect them. Some, particularly those with dementias, and those who are immobile or unable to communicate, will not even be able to voice their concerns before they die. That is unacceptable. The Minister was right when he said that we would not accept that for our children, and we should not accept it for our elderly people.

I hope that today the Minister will set out clearly the steps that he intends to take to build on the excellent initiatives already announced, and set a binding timetable for action to give vulnerable elderly adults the same protection as our children. That is what I am asking for. He could start by agreeing to two relatively straightforward measures. First, he could take steps to recommence the collection of data on elder abuse and to publish them, along with outcomes. It is not right that the Department does not collect those statistics. The £360,000 grant to Action on Elder Abuse is an important step forward, but it should not allow the Department not to collect those vital statistics.

Secondly, the Minister could take immediate steps to extend to care home residents full rights under the Human Rights Act 1998—as recommended in the recent Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the human rights of older people in health care—by including an amendment to that effect in the Health and Social Care Bill, which is before Parliament.

Given the Minister’s statement to the Age Concern conference, surely he cannot be content that the residents of 90 per cent. of care homes and 60 per cent. of domiciliary care agencies run by private or voluntary organisations are excluded from human rights protection. He knows that I have a long-standing interest in this area, largely as a result of the unacceptable handling by various inspection and regulatory bodies of the complaints of abuse that occurred at Gargrave Park nursing home in North Yorkshire between April and October 2002. The elderly residents at Gargrave Park who were subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse cannot expect justice today because they are no longer with us, but their legacy could be an inspection and complaints regime that gives the elderly in care at least the same level of protection that we demand for children in care.

My constituents Ruth Poole and Julie Dale, who were both registered nursing inspectors, exposed the dangerous and life-threatening practices at Gargrave Park, but when they produced evidence about the levels of abuse—supported by other professionals, including a consultant psychiatrist, GPs and social workers—sadly, the authorities sought to discredit the inspectors and not the abusers. Hiding behind a web of obfuscation and petty bureaucracy, those organisations charged with protecting the vulnerable—the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the National Care Standards Commission and the Commission for Care Standards—all failed in their duty of care to residents and to the inspectors. They were often more interested in procedural point scoring than in protecting the vulnerable.

The appalling incidents highlighted in February by the “Panorama” programme “Please Look After Mum” again demonstrated familiar failings by the inspection regime to find out what was happening, despite clear evidence from a whistleblower. Last week’s “Panorama” programme “Please Look After Dad” exposed a worrying trend in the use of anti-psychotic drugs to sedate residents with Alzheimer’s, despite evidence from Professor Ballard of King’s College and others that such drugs often have little positive effect and could shorten the lives of people with dementia. All those cases—and, indeed, many more highlighted by the Select Committee—point to the need to improve the quality of professional inspection of care homes. I want to challenge the Minister on that.

I recognise that the Minister is about to embark on another round of changes to the inspection system to merge the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission into the care quality commission. On the face of it, getting rid of three organisations and merging them into one is a sensible way of moving forward because such organisations often inspect the same institutions and individuals, but what assurances can the Minister give that this is not just another step along the route of de-professionalising the whole inspection regime? Is it not simply recognition that we have far too few inspectors of sufficient status and quality to safeguard the vulnerable in society’s care?

Five years ago, care homes were inspected against 38 standards, but that number was reduced to 15 in 2004 and will be further reduced under the new Bill. Since 2006, the frequency of inspections has been reduced from once every two years to once every three years, with a proposal for even less frequent inspections for good homes. Parkfields care home, in which five people were allegedly murdered, and Laurel Bank nursing home, in Halifax, had both passed their inspections, so presumably they could continue abusing at will. What is more, one fifth of care homes in 2006 failed on inspection to meet the minimum standard for medication and nutrition three years after the new standards were introduced in 2003, so what earthly justification is there for loosening the inspection regime? Is it simply that an inconvenient truth arises from inspection: that the system has lost control? Worse still, is it that the Government cannot afford a high-quality inspection system? Is that why the Minister is proposing an inspection holiday to allow the new arrangements to settle in? Would that be acceptable for care settings with vulnerable children? I think not. Yet it is okay for adults.

Let me assure the Minister that I do not wish to blame him for past failings because that would be grossly unfair, but I want him to acknowledge that there are serious misgivings about his proposals among organisations that support elderly, vulnerable adults. I cannot understand—perhaps he will explain—why routine inspections by pharmacists have been discontinued when there is a significant question about the use of drugs and medicines in some care homes. Surely, it is essential that pharmacists can check the use of medicines to ensure, for example, that residents are not being over-sedated or wrongly prescribed anti-psychotic drugs.

Equally, why is it now acceptable for a social care inspector, not a registered nursing inspector, to inspect a nursing home? A social inspector cannot physically examine a resident for signs of neglect or abuse, and many are not even trained to look for the key symptoms. It would be unacceptable for a social care inspector to inspect when an elderly adult was in a hospital setting, but there is not the same level of specialist service when someone is discharged to a nursing home. Will the Minster therefore give me an assurance that the number of nursing inspectors will be increased under the new arrangements and that patients in receipt of medical care, no matter how minor, will be seen by registered nursing practitioners? In short, can he give a categorical assurance today that the new arrangements that he proposes will put in place an enhanced, professionally appropriate and, above all, independent inspection system?

I come now to the issue of complaints. Until 2006, complaints received by the regulator were investigated by the regulator, and despite some obvious failings, there was a logic to the service. Since 2006, the Commission for Social Care Inspection has referred complaints to the relevant care home to investigate. Effectively, a care home investigates itself, which is akin to asking Herod to investigate child protection. How on earth can that system be seen as protecting the vulnerable? We know from the Department’s own evidence to the Select Committee earlier this year, which is at paragraph 235 of the Committee’s report, that residents and relatives are often loth to report abuse for fear of reprisal or even the loss of their place. At paragraph 237, the report concluded:

“We were shocked by the number of witnesses who told us of people who had faced eviction from care homes because they or their relative or carer had complained.”

Yet that is the system that the Government say will improve the way in which complaints are investigated. Surely, the need to have a complaint investigated independently is the most basic of human rights. Can the Minister give me an assurance that he will introduce appropriate regulations during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill to ensure that we have an independent complaints process, and give vulnerable adults who do not have family or friends to advocate on their behalf access to an independent advocacy service?

Since 2002, the regulation and inspection of care homes has been in a state of almost constant change. I accept that much of that is the result of attempts to improve the system, and I say that quite openly and honestly. However, that does not help the vulnerable and it does nothing to drive rogue operators and poor staff out of the caring system. The vast majority of those who own or work in the country’s 14,000 residential homes and 4,000 nursing homes deserve our thanks and praise for the work that they do in caring for the vulnerable elderly. However, most homes are grossly underfunded, have difficulty recruiting and training staff and must often deal with inappropriate clients who are placed in residential settings not because of their needs, but because of budget availability in local authorities. The huge expected increase in elderly vulnerable adults, many of whom will develop various forms of dementia, will present the Government and our society with a stern test in the years to come. As someone who is fast approaching maturity, I await the Minister’s reply with interest.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis)—if I may, I will call him my hon. Friend—on securing an Adjournment debate on this incredibly important issue, which, as he said, will become even more significant, given the demographic changes that are taking place. I also congratulate him on the insight that he gave us when he declared an interest in this issue. On a serious note, however, he will be a great loss to his constituents and the House now that he has decided to retire from Parliament. I think that it was Tony Benn who said that retiring from the House of Commons allows people to take up their involvement in politics again, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will follow that view of the world.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s statement about dedicated staff at the front line in our care system. Every day of the week, they do a tremendous job of caring for older and, indeed, disabled people in what are sometimes difficult circumstances. The vast majority do their job in a compassionate, sensitive and professional manner, and we must always put such debates into that context.

I also want to use this opportunity to express my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who suffered as a result of the dreadful tragedy at Parkfields home, about which we have heard over the past week. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the individual case, which is under investigation, as everyone is aware, but our sympathies go to the relatives who have been affected by that dreadful situation.

I also use this opportunity to put on record my thanks to Action on Elder Abuse and its chief executive, Gary FitzGerald, for the tremendous work that they have done recently to raise the status and profile of this issue in terms of public policy. Arguably, the debate about elder abuse is where the debate about child abuse was 20 or 30 years ago, and it is important to understand that. Sadly, child abuse has touched the lives of far too many people in our country through the generations, but it is only in the past 20 years that we have started to talk about it openly and to recognise that there needs to be a complete step change in public policy. I suspect that we are in a similar position on the abuse of older people, as the hon. Gentleman implied. Action on Elder Abuse and Gary FitzGerald are our partners in dealing with these issues and they do an excellent job.

It is probably right to say that before the Government came to power in 1997, the level of protection and regulation in the sector was appalling. It is interesting that Her Majesty’s official Opposition could not even be bothered to send a representative to the debate. Before 1997, we lived in a climate in which regulation was a dirty word, and the whole sector had been deregulated. Indeed, the ring-fencing of community care funding in the early 1990s was a deliberate and very effective way of privatising virtually the whole care sector. Now, roughly 75 per cent. of social care is provided by voluntary and private sector organisations. I do not want to make an ideological point, given that much of the private and voluntary sector does a wonderful and very positive job, but what happened before we came to power was the result of an ideological programme, and part of the ideology of privatisation was the decision not to put in place an adequate regulatory system.

When the Government came to power in 1997, we introduced national minimum standards and the protection of vulnerable adults scheme. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s reservations about elements of the performance of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, but it has earned a good overall reputation as a regulator, and standards have continued to improve across the sector. That does not mean that we are where we need to be, or that great concern does not continue to exist about areas where performance is simply unacceptable and where the regulator might have been tougher in using its powers. On the whole, however, I want to put on the record my appreciation for the work done by Dame Denise Platt, who leads CSCI, by Paul Snell, its chief executive, and by the many other people who work for the organisation.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the Government are introducing a new inspection and registration regime, which will culminate in the development of the care quality commission. The idea is to have a proportionate inspection regime that in some ways has more enforcement powers than the existing regime, and which focuses the new regulator’s resources on those providers that give us most cause for concern.

In a sense, however, the regulator’s role is just a small part of the story of how we not only protect older people, but ensure that the quality of care that they receive is what it should be. I want to do more than protect older people—I want to ensure that they have the greatest possible quality of life, and I know that the hon. Gentleman shares that aspiration. We therefore need to look at the other factors that will improve quality and, in doing so, enhance the protection of older people.

The first of those factors is the introduction of the new star rating system—a transparent system in which relatives and older people themselves will be able to make judgments about the quality of individual care. That is moving much further on: from a register that, in a sense, defines minimum standards and accords a home the right to exist because it meets the basics, to an attitude that says, “Let us be in a position to make judgments about the relative quality of care offered by providers.” The star rating system will make the sector more transparent and give people far better information on which to base decisions that are often incredibly difficult about their care or that of a family member.

The hon. Gentleman will know that I am already committed to a fundamental review of the adult protection framework—the process will begin early in the new year—including assessing whether the “No Secrets” guidance has had a sufficiently powerful impact, and considering the case for a stronger regime. I have said that I am willing to consider, in the context of the review of the adult protection framework, the case for new legislation, if that would add value and make a real difference. Too often in this place, we reach for the legislative solution when it does not always add value or make a difference. I and my ministerial colleagues will need to be persuaded that additional legislation is needed for adult protection. I am open-minded about the possibility, but the fundamental review is to take place and I shall be sincerely pleased if the hon. Gentleman contributes to it. We are also committed to further prevalence studies, specifically on the abuse of older people. There was a study earlier this year on the abuse of older people in their own homes, and we now need to consider a broader piece of work on evidence about elder abuse in a variety of care settings.

Commissioning is arguably as powerful as, or more powerful than, inspection and regulation, given the daily relationship within the community between the local authority or primary care trust and the care providers. We have made that clear in the context of world-class commissioning. Yesterday we launched our new concordat with local government and the NHS on the profound reform of adult social care in the next three years. A key element of that reform programme will be telling commissioners that they have a responsibility to reward and offer premiums and incentives to care providers that offer quality, dignity and excellence; and that, equally—the message is a tough one—they should take their business away from providers that cannot offer that quality and dignity. Commissioning is no longer about securing minimum standards. We are saying that world-class commissioning should be about securing high standards. The local authority has more of a day-to-day relationship with care providers within communities than any inspection and regulation regime has, given the number of inspections that can be carried out over a given period. Therefore, we must also put pressure on local authorities and primary care trusts regarding their commissioning responsibilities.

Does the Minister agree that the practice of placing vulnerable adults who need nursing care in residential care settings, simply because that is the only place in which the cash-strapped local authority can afford to support them, is unacceptable?

It is unacceptable to place older people in inappropriate settings. The decisions should be focused on the needs of individuals and their care requirements. I recently issued new guidance, which took effect on 1 October, on the funding of continuing care, because we know that many primary care trusts have been attempting to abdicate their responsibility and to define particular care packages as social care when they clearly include a nursing element. I hope that the new guidance will begin to change some of the practices that the hon. Gentleman has in mind, but equally, we must be clear about what high-quality commissioning really is. Part of it is a question of removing business from providers that do not offer quality to older people.

Yesterday, we made announcements on reform of adult social care, including giving far more power and control to older people and their families, with personal budgets and a choice about where they want their care to come from; that is another powerful way of influencing the system. If those people have maximum control, it is far more likely that they will choose care providers who can offer what they need and want, rather than homes that do not provide good standards. Another element of yesterday’s announcement was making it clear that we see advocacy as very important for older people who do not have a family member to support them in making choices about their care services.

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman about human rights. The current state of affairs is an anomaly, and neither Government nor Parliament intended that publicly funded residents living in private sector establishments would not be covered by the Human Rights Act 1998. That is an unintended consequence, and we need to put it right. The Government have decided that the appropriate time to do that is when we consult on the new rights and responsibilities Bill, in the context of a new constitutional settlement, on which the Ministry of Justice will lead. The change that the hon. Gentleman seeks will be part of the process; we must put the anomaly right.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about complaints, too. Publicly funded residents have the right to go through local authority complaints processes if they are dissatisfied with the way in which an individual home has dealt with their complaint. The problem is that self-funders, of whom there are an increasing number, have nowhere to go if they are dissatisfied with the way in which the provider investigates their complaints. The regulator, as things now stand, does not investigate individual complaints. On receipt of such a complaint, the regulator can visit the home, examine practices there and take action, but they cannot investigate the individual complaint. That is an important distinction. I am committed to considering how that can be put right. In a modern care system, it is unacceptable that self-funders should not have the protection that other residents have of being able to rely on an independent element in the process, if they are dissatisfied with the handling of a complaint by the very home that they are complaining about.

I have been leading a campaign in the past year to put respect for the dignity of older people at the heart of all care services, be they on NHS wards, in residential and nursing homes or, as is increasingly the case, in home and day care services. That is crucial. Some of the issues are about culture and attitude. We must make it clear that it is non-negotiable that, as a minimum, older people have the right to maximum dignity. Too often in various care settings, dignity is being disregarded. I shall continue and extend our national dignity campaign, and I shall be making announcements in the coming period about how we intend to do that. There is an important role to be played in every community by dignity champions—individuals, whether professionals or volunteers, in a variety of communities and care settings who are saying that we must prioritise the dignity of older people. The hon. Gentleman referred to dementia, and we are working with people in the health and social care worlds on producing the first ever national dementia strategy, which we shall publish next year. Many of the issues that he raised will be covered in that strategy.

Finally, the care system does not function in a vacuum apart from the rest of society; there are cultural and attitudinal factors in our view of older people. When I said that I want us to be as outraged by the abuse of an older person as we rightly are by the abuse of a child, I meant it. I do not think that we are at that point yet, and that should be a matter for concern. However, cultural and attitudinal change takes a long time. There is no one solution and no magic wand. Such change requires us all, at national and local level, in families and communities, to take responsibility. That is one of the great issues faced by society, because more and more people must make incredibly difficult choices for ageing parents and elderly relatives. Thankfully, more and more of us will live longer. Now, from the margins of public policy, the issue has become one of the great challenges that Government and society face; it is a demographic challenge. We must be up to the mark and ensure that older people have the quality of life, dignity and protection that they deserve in a civilised society.

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate Cadbury’s proposed closure of its Somerdale factory at Keynsham in north-east Somerset.

The only way that we can properly understand the huge impact and significance of the proposal is to look briefly at the history of chocolate making in the area. It is fair to say that Bristol has led the UK, and arguably the world, in chocolate manufacture. In the mid-1700s, chocolate was being manufactured in the many small factories in the city. Many of those factories amalgamated to form J.S. Fry & Sons, which, after the first world war, amalgamated with Cadbury’s, the other well known chocolate manufacturer.

Following that amalgamation in 1919, the company moved to its Somerdale site in Keynsham in about 1935. The site was specially chosen and purpose built, and it reflected the values and ethos of the Quaker families who owned and ran both Fry’s and Cadbury’s. It was a large site of many hundreds of acres. The idea was that the workers were not only units of production, but complete human beings. It was not only morally right to treat them well; it ended up being good business practice.

Of course, many people will be familiar with brands such as Cream Eggs, Mini Eggs and, perhaps most famously, Crunchies, which are made at Somerdale. Amazingly, someone calculated that a week’s production of Crunchies would stretch to the moon and back. That is how prolific the company is in making that famous product and others.

It must also be understood that changes in chocolate manufacture over the years have resulted in greater production with fewer people. At its peak in the 1950s, Somerdale employed about 5,000 workers. Ten years ago, that had fallen to 1,000, and there are currently 500. Of course, for those directly affected, the proposal to close the factory in 2010 is a great shock and a worry, which I am sure we appreciate.

Cadbury’s says that it proposes to close Somerdale because it faces an increasingly competitive global market—arguably, confectionery is one of the most competitive businesses. Cadbury’s looked at competitors such as Mars at Slough, Terry’s, formerly of York, and Nestlé, and saw that they had reduced their UK work force and moved production abroad. Although Cadbury’s is one of the last to reduce its work force in that way, it says that such action is inevitable if it is to remain competitive and secure the jobs of UK workers in future.

The company accepts that it is terribly sad to lay people off. It has had to close three factories around the country in the past five years and prides itself on working hard to provide good redundancy packages and training. Cadbury’s says that recent history shows that, by the time of closure, more than 90 per cent. of the work force will have found new jobs. It argues that, in a constituency such as mine, which in recent years has had the lowest unemployment in the UK, it is possible to ensure, with considerable effort and concern, to ensure that the impact is minimal, although what is happening is sad, regrettable and awful.

We must also understand that the proposed closure, as well as being a terrible blow for those who will be directly affected financially by it, will also be an economic blow to the town of Keynsham. Small business people in particular are concerned that the factory closure will have an impact on their businesses, and they fear that they may end up closing or losing much of their trade. The truth is that about a quarter of the work force live in Keynsham, so the issue goes wider than my constituency. It affects part of greater Bristol, Bath and much of north-east Somerset. Indeed, the whole west country could be described as having an involvement with the Cadbury’s factory at Keynsham.

The proposal is alarming for people in the area. The number of workers has gradually fallen over the years, but previous staff reductions were dealt with through voluntary redundancy or by people deciding to take early retirement. Although just fewer than half the work force are aged 50-plus and might therefore benefit considerably from the packages on offer for early retirement, it would be wrong to underestimate how big a blow the closure will be to Keynsham, north-east Somerset, Bristol, Bath and the west country as a whole.

The social impact of the proposed closure needs to be emphasised. The terrific traditions of the Quaker families who ran Cadbury’s and Fry’s—I should declare an interest in that I come from a Quaker family and understand their values—meant that the company provided sport and leisure facilities for its work force. In fact, those facilities were not only for the work force; they were available for use by the local community and people further afield.

Indeed, Keynsham relies heavily on those facilities for sports such as cricket, hockey and football. In fairness to Cadbury’s, it has indicated to me that it intends to keep the Fry club—the on-site sporting and social centre—so that it can be used even if the factory is closed. That is welcome relief to those who pursue sport and leisure activities at the site, but it does not take away the pain and discomfort for those who are economically reliant on the factory.

The hon. Gentleman set out in detail some of the history of the company, particularly the philanthropy of the Cadbury family in Birmingham and the Fry family in Bristol. We might see that philanthropy as an early example of what we now call corporate social responsibility. The Fry family also contributed to the founding of Bristol university.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the founders of the company would be turning in their graves—the ancestors of the Cadbury family have criticised the proposed closure—if they knew that the company was withdrawing from the Bristol area and from Britain, and that, ironically, it will in future import brands that are known and consumed largely in this country?

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. It goes further than the families: as I said, I have an interest because I come from a Quaker family and we talk about the matter a lot, because we would like to see more of those values, not less. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, I believe, has supported keeping the factory open for the reason that the values that created the factory are being forgotten, or it at least appears that way.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman agrees, but there is an irony in the fact that the Quaker values of co-operation, working together and respecting one another seem to be displayed by those who oppose the closure rather than by Cadbury’s, although the company would doubtless deny that. I have been impressed by the community’s reaction in all its forms, not least that of Unite the Union, and amazed by how it has communicated and co-ordinated its campaign.

What has Cadbury’s proposed? The company is talking about complete closure in 2010 through a series of phased redundancies, although they will not begin until 2009. The company says that it needs to do that to move production to Bourneville in Birmingham—where it will lose 200 jobs, but in which it is to invest £40 million—and to Poland. According to Cadbury’s, the proposals have been made in the context of aiming to reduce its global work force by about 15 per cent. That was first mentioned in summer, before the specific announcement on Somerdale in October.

The closure is wrong for two main reasons. First, Cadbury is risking short-termism with its attitude because it is looking at the wage differential, particularly in relation to its plans for production in Poland, where wages are so much lower than in the United Kingdom, although that will be of only short-term benefit. In five to 10 years, those wage differentials will have eroded.

Cadbury’s needs to re-check its figures and calculations and think carefully about the tradition of Somerdale, where generations of Keynsham people, and Bristolians and Bathonians, have worked and produced great profit for Cadbury’s over the years. Cadbury’s needs to revisit all that and think about whether it wants to give up a skilled and dedicated work force. That is not just something the work force says, but something they have proven since the 1930s.

Secondly, Cadbury’s view is short-sighted because, as the environment becomes a greater and increasingly important issue for many people as the years pass, it seems somewhat illogical to make chocolate bars in Poland, the vast majority of which will be imported to the UK, where Cadbury’s biggest market is.

I think that some 98 per cent. of the produce from Cadbury’s factory in Keynsham is consumed in the UK. I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be absolutely mad to start producing chocolate bars in Poland and incur all the food miles associated with importing them back to the UK.

I thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. I am not sure whether the figure is 98 per cent., but the vast bulk of the production will certainly come back to the UK. It beggars belief that that is an environmentally sound thing to do.

When I asked Cadbury’s about that, it said that the new plant in Poland in which it proposes to invest will be so efficient that it will offset the carbon footprint of transporting all that chocolate to the UK. However, having said that, surely the environmental impact or benefit would be that much greater if Cadbury’s invested in Somerdale. I think that Cadbury’s somewhat undermines its own argument.

The two key concerns are the short-termism of Cadbury’s economic thinking plus the environmental aspects. Cadbury’s argues that this is all necessary because of the competitive market in which it operates and that it fears that if it does not stay competitive, like the other confectionery companies that it competes with directly, it risks being bought out by some other company from abroad.

Cadbury’s wants to ensure that, by having a leaner, smaller work force, it is more robust in respect of such challenges in the years ahead and that it remains a well-known, world-renowned British name. I have to hope that Cadbury’s calculations are right and that its thinking is right, although, for the two key reasons I have mentioned, I am not happy.

I recognise that the Government have done wonderful things with the economy. The management of the economy under the Labour Government for the past 10 years has been hugely impressive—it is the envy of the western industrialised world in respect of unemployment figures—but we have low unemployment not because we do not have factory closures or redundancies or whatever, but because we can create more jobs than are lost. Clearly, that is a vital part of why Britain is thriving economically in the world, even with the global challenges that we face. We are in a better position to face those challenges because of the past 10 years, but nothing is omnipresent and totally consistent. I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister for Competitiveness to think about that.

Although we must consider the nation’s overall benefits and what gains there need to be for the economy, and one thing and another, when thinking about a factory such as Somerdale, which is so well known and so well established and which has been profitable throughout its existence, it is hard to understand why closure might be the right thing, particularly if people are directly affected, but even if they are not.

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be thinking carefully and constantly reviewing the Government’s strategy in relation to this matter, but people find the proposed closure hard to understand, particularly when there is such a long and great tradition. Chocolate making has been happening in Bristol since the mid-1700s and it is worrying to think that there could be no chocolate manufacturer in the area.

We had a foretaste of this situation some years ago—in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), I think—when Elizabeth Shaw shut its factory. I cannot remember when that was, although I think it was more than 10 years ago. Although we had that foretaste, I do not think that anyone ever thought it would apply to Somerdale, which was considered a much bigger, much more established factory.

I want to thank various people who have been active in the campaign opposing the proposal to close the factory. Not least, I want to thank the Bristol Evening Post and its editor, Mike Norton, who has shown that local and regional newspapers can go back to the traditional values of in-depth reporting and explanation. In particular, I also praise Julie Harding, the senior reporter on the Evening Post, whom I have known for 25 years. She has written some amazingly illustrative and insightful pieces about the proposal to close the site. It is encouraging to see the detail being put out there so that people can make their minds up and make an informed decision about what Cadbury’s is doing.

I want to thank Unite the Union, which has organised many events and continues to do so, and has strong views, which it makes clear. I am grateful to it. However, most of all, I thank the work force—not just those at Somerdale, but other Cadbury workers all over the country who have attended various rallies and events to show their complete opposition to the proposed closure.

I also thank the community of Keynsham and the surrounding area, where people have collected petitions. I am conducting a survey by questionnaire, as well. Lots of people have done sterling work because they feel so passionately and strongly about this subject.

I invite my right hon. Friend the Minister to come to the Somerdale factory, if he can possibly do so. Failing that, perhaps he will invite a delegation from the factory to see him. I appreciate that he is very busy, but it would be great if he could get a feel for the site by visiting it. I want him to hear from the workers and those directly affected, because they have a passion that is impressive and insight that will inform him. I should like to think that, after meeting those people directly and hearing from them, he would be minded to talk to Cadbury’s board about its proposals to close the site and not least work through my two key criticisms of the short-termism of this plan, as well as the environmental impact.

The closure proposal is terrible, but it would be even worse if Cadbury’s and the rest of the Keynsham community were to look back and say that the decision was utterly and completely wrong but was still pushed forward. That would be a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

We all hope and continue to fight to keep the factory open, but whatever happens the community of Keynsham is resilient and tough and will overcome the hurdles facing it. However, I hope that it will not be necessary for it to deal with the loss of an iconic brand, Fry’s, and the closure of a factory that has been hugely significant for the whole community for many a long year and has affected many generations.

When Cadbury’s comes to make its final calculations and assessment when the formal consultation finishes in the middle of next month, I hope that it concludes that there are other ways to make the competitive savings that it needs without needing to close this wonderful factory and lay off the wonderful workers at Somerdale who have been a dedicated staff for many years, produced profits for Cadbury’s and deserve to be treated better than to face a proposed closure.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) on securing the debate. His concern about the potential loss of jobs in manufacturing will be shared by many colleagues throughout the House and it is shared by the Government. I pay tribute to him for his campaigning on this issue and for the way in which he has presented his case today and throughout the campaign.

I vividly remember the dismay in my constituency when a long-established factory from the same group—a Trebor factory—was closed 25 years ago. Today the company name is still prominently displayed on the building, but that is all that is left. I understand very well the degree of alarm that my hon. Friend has described among those who work in the factory, following the announcement in October, and I want to express sympathy for everybody affected. I well understand the strong local concern, which he has expressed, about the impact on the local economy and the local community in Keynsham and north-east Somerset, especially when chocolate making on the site remains profitable, Crunchie bars remain popular and chocolate making in the area goes back so many years.

In October, the House received a very large deputation from the Unite manufacturing lobby. My hon. Friend was among those hon. Members supporting manufacturing at that event. There is also concern about the state of UK manufacturing more generally.

Manufacturing still accounts for one seventh of our national wealth in the UK, more than half of our exports, and three quarters of our business research and development. About 3 million people work in manufacturing, and manufacturing continues to be essential to the continuing health of the British economy. Since the summer, a string of reports from the Engineering Employers Federation and others have underlined the extent to which, after some very hard times, manufacturing in Britain is doing well. For example, last year we made almost twice as many cars in Britain as we did 25 years ago and we exported more UK-made car engines than ever before.

In recent months, I have visited a number of manufacturing companies in Hull, Sussex, Wales and, last week, in Sheffield, and I have been impressed by their strong commitment to, and confidence in, competing successfully with the best in the world. It is striking that the manufacturing sector is characterised by intense commitment and pride among those who work in it. My hon. Friend drew attention to the commitment and pride in the work force at the factory in his constituency.

Food and drink is the biggest single part of the manufacturing industry. It accounts for about one sixth of the total sector. If one includes manufacturers, retailers, food service and wholesalers, it accounts for a total estimated gross value added of around £70 billion, and almost 9 per cent. of national full-time employment.

We have an increasingly globalised and competitive environment. Companies have to be allowed to decide the most profitable way in which to run their businesses in order to grow. My hon. Friend referred to the fact that some of the company’s main rivals, including Nestlé in York, Terry’s, and Mars in Slough have decided to relocate production to other countries. At the same time, however, I would like to underline that many companies from outside the UK have decided to set up and develop their businesses within Britain with foreign direct investment. We are the world’s second largest recipient of foreign direct investment by overseas companies, creating many UK jobs.

As part of its restructuring, Cadbury Trebor Bassett announced the proposed closure at the beginning of October. The restructuring proposals within UK chocolate manufacturing are intended to achieve greater supply chain efficiencies. It is welcome that the company is committed to investing in UK manufacturing. My hon. Friend cited the example of Bourneville. The company, led by Unite, is currently talking to employee representatives. It is committed to consulting fully on its proposals and has provided the full business case for the proposal and all the relevant details requested by the consultative representatives. I know that the group has met on five occasions, with a further three meetings planned before the end of the consultation. We are about halfway through now. There has been contact with others locally, including the local authority.

I agree that it is important that the company reflects carefully on its decision. It must look at all the factors that my hon. Friend highlighted before it finalises its conclusion, including transport costs, the likely future carbon costs—increasingly the cost of carbon is factored into commercial costs, which was underlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy)—and the fact that the vast majority of production will be consumed in the UK. There is still a strong attachment to UK-made products in the UK market.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke asked me to visit the factory. I will check my diary in response to that invitation. It will be difficult to make that visit before the end of the consultation period, but I will gladly meet a deputation from the factory in Westminster if he can arrange that. Also, I will discuss any concerns that arise with the company.

Cadbury Trebor Bassett describe investing in the community as a “business imperative.” In the event of the closure going ahead, I welcome its commitment to providing resources to help employees find new jobs, to retraining those who wish to learn new skills, to providing independent financial advice and to supporting the maintenance of the Fry Club in Keynsham.

If the closure goes ahead, my Department, through the Government office for the south-west, will work closely with the local authority and other regional and local agencies to ensure that there is a co-ordinated local response to assist those who are faced with redundancy to find new jobs and to secure redevelopment of the site to bring in new employment. We would establish a taskforce, and the efforts of Jobcentre Plus would be very important in helping Cadbury employees find alternative work and to consider options for retraining. The taskforce would include representatives of a number of Departments or agencies, including Jobcentre Plus, the Learning and Skills Development Agency, the South West of England Regional Development Agency, the local business link, the Government office for the south west and the local authority.

The taskforce would work closely with the rapid response service of Jobcentre Plus, which helps people to identify transferable skills and training needs, to obtain training and certification that is linked to the local labour market and to overcome barriers to taking up specific job offers. I know that the district employment engagement manager has already been in touch with the company. There has already been a meeting with the local Jobcentre manager to discuss how Jobcentre Plus might help if the decision to proceed with the closure is made. The South West of England Regional Development Agency will also be very active on potential future development and future investment in the surrounding area. As my hon. Friend said, the context is a very successful economy in and around Bristol with a lot of inward investment, including a £500 million retail development in central Bristol, which I gather is due to open next year, creating up to 4,000 new jobs at big retail developments in Bath. The overall economy of the Bath and Bristol area is one of the strongest outside London.

On 22 November, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we will review the Government’s current manufacturing strategy and establish a new ministerial advisory group on manufacturing to help us with that review. I can confirm that the food and drinks sector, which is a very important part of the overall manufacturing sector in the UK economy, will be represented.

The Minister mentioned the food and drinks industry in the UK. There are really only four world-class manufacturers of confectionery. He mentioned Mars and Nestlé. There are also Kraft Jacobs Suchard, for which I was briefly the UK tax manager, and Cadbury’s. Cadbury’s is the only brand that is still British owned and predominantly British produced. Obviously, one could not prejudice a future inquiry, but the hon. Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) mentioned competitiveness and fear of takeover. I would be very surprised if the Competition Commission would allow Cadbury to be taken over by a foreign competitor that is owned abroad.

My understanding is that the company has every intention of continuing to thrive and succeed. Indeed, after recent changes, it is the world’s leading confectionery manufacturer. Our intention, not least through the work of the review of our manufacturing strategy, is to ensure that we continue to have a very successful manufacturing industry in the UK. Prospects are looking up for the sector. I want that to be the case in the food and drink part as well—

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

I am grateful for an opportunity to debate the latest draft timetables for train services on the west coast main line. I apologise to the Minister that I was not able to get my notes to him far in advance. I was working on them, and putting together what I wished to say, only late last night.

What I wish to say today is, I believe, totally supported by Cumbria county council and the local committees that it has set up, the Cumbria transport forum executive, Cumbria Tourism, Cumbria Vision and the Cumbria strategic partnership. We all acknowledge the considerable investment in the west coast main line that is leading to more reliable services and reduced journey times to London. Our expectation had been that the new service pattern to be introduced in December 2008/January 2009 would lead to an overall improvement in the economic performance of Cumbria by reducing its relative isolation and improving accessibility to the county for residents and visitors. Our comments on the proposed timetable reflect the importance of meeting those crucial objectives. As the Minister may know, Cumbria is the poorest-performing economy in the whole of the United Kingdom and is among the five poorest in the whole of the EU. We are therefore disappointed that the current draft timetables do not give Cumbria the economic opportunities that it desperately needs.

Our general conclusions reiterate previous representations made to the Department for Transport in 2006 and at various DFT forums. The loss of through-journey opportunities from Cumbria and the north-west to the south coast and the south-west under the new cross-country franchise represents a significant reduction in the attractiveness of rail for longer-distance travel to and from the county. We do not agree with the approach that maximises reductions in journey times to London and that results in a significant reduction in local service delivery because there are inadequate train resources.

I plead with the Government: please do not be so obsessed with cutting the journey time to Glasgow. I can lop half an hour off the London to Glasgow time if the train stops nowhere else in between, and I appreciate that there is potentially a big market to capture from air travel. However, those of us in Cumbria, Lancashire and all the other counties between London and Glasgow want a train service that is relatively fast to London but that stops in our county and picks up passengers. Therefore, although the headline figures that show reduced overall journey times to London are welcomed, we look to the Department to ensure that other aspects of the strategy are delivered. For example, we will require additional car parking at Penrith and Carlisle; that will be essential to accommodate the extra demands.

The Department should consider the existing use of west coast rail services in Cumbria. In particular, it should address specific gaps in service provision and how those will be accommodated in the future. It should address how the comments on interchange in the stakeholders briefing document of October 2006 for the new cross-country franchise will be translated into practical action plans by the train and station operators, recognising the needs of passengers who will be obliged to change trains en route to destinations that currently have through services.

We also reiterate comments made over the years regarding the importance of west coast trains providing local services to Penrith and Oxenholme to the south, as well as to Lockerbie, Wigan and Warrington. The stopping pattern for services should reflect not only the need to move between those towns and other key destinations, but the role of services in meeting the needs of commuters, especially to the city of Carlisle and to Penrith. I am concerned today with Penrith, but my colleague John Stevenson, the Conservative candidate in Carlisle for the next general election, has contacted me to say that it is vital that the 16.30 service from Euston includes a stop at Carlisle. He points out that that train will have to creep slowly through the station; it will not whizz past it at 150 mph. He says that it will take only two more minutes to stop at the platform there and to provide an excellent service.

Today, I want the Minister to consider the timetabled stops at Penrith and Oxenholme to achieve a better distribution of London services, and particularly a rebalancing of the split between Glasgow and Edinburgh services throughout the day. It is apparent that there is no regular pattern to the skip-stops between those two stations, and Penrith, in the new pattern, will lose four train stops a day.

Penrith is not only an important town; the station is also a gateway to the Eden valley and the north lakes and it is a railhead for parts of west Cumbria. Penrith will suffer the greatest net loss of services in Cumbria in the 2008-09 timetable, losing four southbound services and six northbound services each day. In the morning peak, the London service is to be reduced from three trains to two, with a gap from 05.56 to 07.59, followed 22 minutes later by an 08.21 train. There is also only one service after 13.02 to London, at 18.05, so there is a five-hour gap between the 1 o’clock train and the 6 o’clock train, during which trains are whizzing through Penrith but do not stop there. That is unreasonable. It is a significant reduction in London services.

The northbound Penrith services also exhibit an imbalanced pattern, with no morning departures to Edinburgh at all and a gap in Glasgow departures between 12.29 and 17.48. That skewed departure pattern, similar to that for Oxenholme, which is not in my constituency although it is the next station south, will require additional interchanges at Carlisle to transfer between services. The commuter service to and from Carlisle has a reduction in choice in both directions for work in Carlisle, with arrivals only at 07.50 or 08.25. Although those are comparable to the current arrival times of 07.19 and 08.30, the next northbound arrival, at 09.01, does not pick up at Penrith and would arguably be an attractive option, particularly as the next stopping service does not arrive until 10 o’clock. The evening southbound service now has a 90-minute gap between 16.05 and 17.35, compared with only 46 minutes at present, between 16.35 and 17.21.

Eden district council, in my constituency, believes that those are negative steps for several reasons. The first relates to tourism. With the increase in responsible tourism, particularly among those involved in outdoor activities, there is a real opportunity to encourage visitors to arrive by rail via Penrith. The reduced options not only reduce that opportunity but are likely further to increase car journeys into the already overcrowded Lake District national park and increase pollution. Penrith station is called “the northern gateway to the lakes”; if the trains are not stopping there, it is not much of a gateway in that sense.

Secondly, the new university of Cumbria—part of its campus will be based in Newton Rigg, one and a half miles outside Penrith—needs to encourage increased student numbers and they need easy access to both Penrith and Carlisle to attract them to the area. We have waited years—decades; centuries, one could even say—for a university in Cumbria. To have part of the campus based near Penrith with the main headquarters in Carlisle is a significant boost to the Cumbrian economy. We desperately need it. We are grateful to the Government that the opportunity has now arisen, but unless those students—the staff as well but particularly the students—have access to some commuter rail travel, it will not work to its full potential. Similarly, reduced transport access to London will not support that vital new educational establishment, which could attract new young talent to our district.

The third reason relates to the environment. The reduction in trains stopping at Penrith and further north will only encourage people to continue to use their car for long journeys and increase pollution and traffic congestion. Increased investment in the railway network should support improved rural access not just in the south-east, but in the north of England.

Let me give the Minister a personal example. Often, personal examples are not apposite, but this one is. At weekends from October to April or May, I never use Penrith station, a few miles down the road, because I am not prepared to spend seven hours travelling via Cardiff or Bristol as the west coast main line is fixed. I cannot afford the pain of sitting for that long on a train, so I pop across to Darlington on the A66 and take the wonderful GNER service. It is ironic that by driving 100 miles across the Pennines, I can get from my house in Cumbria to my flat in London four hours faster on weekends than by using the Virgin service. That is not Virgin’s fault; it is due to the wonderful repairs being done on the west coast main line.

Hundreds of other people make that decision, as well. If we are prepared to drive along the A66 and catch a train at Darlington, more and more of us will make that decision when the connections we want do not stop at Penrith. If I have to get to Westminster at a reasonable time and I cannot pop out on a Monday morning and catch that connection, I am not going to get up two hours earlier. Many people more important than me—business men and women—who also must make that decision will simply drive over the Pennines to Darlington. It is wonderful for GNER or the new franchise holder and great for the east coast main line, but it is not good for the environment, for the A66 and for train services on the west coast main line.

What do we want? London Euston services are being reduced from nine in each direction to five southbound and six northbound in December 2008. That will encourage people to drive along the A66 to use the east coast main line. We want that decision to be reversed. The five-hour afternoon gap in direct services to Euston between 13.05 and 18.05—three trains stop at Oxenholme during that period, by the way—is not acceptable. We cannot have that huge gap, and we cannot have people driving 25 miles south from the Penrith area through Shap and Kendal to Oxenholme, which has no parking facilities, to catch trains there. That would be madness.

Many of the trains that do stop at Penrith do not stop at Oxenholme or Lancaster, which makes it extremely difficult for local travel between stations from Carlisle to Preston. One can catch a train at Carlisle, but not at Oxenholme or Penrith. One can catch a train at Penrith, but it does not stop at Oxenholme or Lancaster. It is nonsense. We need some trains to stop at those important stations in between to provide connections to Barrow-in-Furness and Windermere.

All seven trans-Pennine express services to Manchester airport stop, but only five from the airport do. As they are hardly inter-city trains, with a maximum of only 100 mph, surely those services should stop at all stations. I had assumed that when the little trans-Pennine express splinter trains came in, they would stop at all stations. I am surprised that they do not. The general reduction in trains stopping at Penrith from 24 southbound and 25 northbound in December 2007 to 19 in both directions in December 2008 is not good for Penrith, the county, the environment or train travellers.

I shall give the Minister the timetable that we would like. For southbound services, we would like the 17.40 from Glasgow to Euston, which will whizz through Penrith at approximately 19.03, to stop at Penrith. We would like the 13.40 from Glasgow to Euston to stop at about 15.03. That would plug the five-hour gap. If nothing else comes out of this debate—if we cannot get our four trains stopping—we must have the 13.40 from Glasgow stop at Penrith at about 3 o’clock for a couple of minutes. Even I can board in one minute; I am sure that my fitter constituents can get on even faster. We need the 16.00 from Glasgow to Birmingham to stop at Penrith at about 17.22 so Penrith commuters can return. We need the 18.52 from Edinburgh to Birmingham to stop at Penrith at approximately 20.20. That is the last train from Edinburgh to Birmingham, and it would plug a two-hour gap.

As for trains heading north from London or Birmingham, we would like the 06.20 from Birmingham to Edinburgh to stop at Penrith at approximately 08.50, please. It would provide an early service to Edinburgh and an additional commuter service to Carlisle. We would like the 08.00 from Manchester airport to Edinburgh to stop at Penrith at approximately 09.48. All other airport services stop, and it would be an excellent additional service. We would like the 17.30 from London Euston to Glasgow, a very important train, to stop at Penrith at approximately 20.33. It would be an important returning train for business people, who would be able to conclude business in London by half-past 4 and catch that train home. Otherwise, they will have to take diabolically late trains. We would like the 16.00 Manchester airport to Edinburgh train to stop at Penrith at approximately 17.50.

Those are all our demands for the timetable. I am not asking for four additional services; I am asking that the services that we have should not be cut. We all support the improvements to the west coast main line, and we read in the headlines that one day a Eurostar from Glasgow will whizz through London—one will be able to board at Glasgow and not get off until it arrives in Paris, and enjoy the nightlife and the clubs. Some of us in Penrith would like to board that train occasionally, as well. We are not asking for ludicrous services or making unreasonable demands; we are saying that our county is in dire straits. It is one of the poorest performing areas. We need fast train services to London, but more importantly, we need reliable ones. We need train services that are not delayed unreasonably. We need trains that stop, giving our business people a good, reliable service. I appreciate that the Minister will not be able to give me those assurances today, but I hope that in the coming months, he and his officials will consider the proposed timetables carefully and conclude that they are not good for Cumbria, the environment, rail travellers or our future rail strategy.

I note the Minister’s early arrival, 30 minutes ahead of the published timetable.

Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Taylor. I was just so keen to speak under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) on securing the debate. I am glad that he does not expect me to be able to say yes to all his demands. When he finally finished listing them, I felt like shouting out, “Is that all?”. However, he is doing what any conscientious Member of Parliament should do in the circumstances, which is to lobby for his constituents’ interest.

I can undertake to meet with the right hon. Gentleman, as I have met with many of our colleagues from all parties, to discuss any specific reservations or concerns that he has. What I cannot do—I am sure he would not expect me to—is give an undertaking at this point that we can accommodate all his requests. I have said on many occasions that the Government do not write timetables, and neither do civil servants in my Department, and I want to keep it that way. If we veered into that area, I expect that his party would criticise us, and rightly so.

I shall try to answer two or three specific points before moving on to my main comments. The right hon. Gentleman has pre-empted many of them, as he knows rail services extremely well, but he might be interested to know that at 4 o’clock today in Committee Room 8, the all-party group on the west coast main line will meet with Chris Gibb, managing director of Virgin Trains, and Tony Collins, its chief executive, to discuss Pendolino trains. The right hon. Gentleman might receive more in-depth answers to some of his questions from Virgin Trains itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) has been closely involved not only in the all-party group, but in lobbying me and the Department for Transport about services in Carlisle.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for acknowledging that the west coast main line upgrade is an extremely important venture. Some £8 billion of public money has been spent on securing Britain’s main rail artery, and I appreciate his comments welcoming that investment. Britain’s railways today are a success story, with performance improving significantly over recent years as Network Rail and train operators have sharpened their focus on punctuality and reliability. Investment is at record levels, and after years of managing decline, the industry is dealing with unprecedented growth in demand for rail travel. The Government are giving high priority to providing additional capacity through additional carriages and new infrastructure.

The west coast route modernisation project is about renewing and upgrading the key main rail line in the United Kingdom. It links some key populations of the country. It must accommodate not only many long-distance passenger trains, but, as the right hon. Gentleman correctly stated, numerous local and regional passenger services. It also handles 40 per cent. of the nation’s rail freight business. The work of rebuilding has to take place on a live railway. Nevertheless, I believe that it is a success story.

The work is being led by the Government to ensure not only that the route can deal with today’s traffic, but that future demands for rail travel are taken into account. The infrastructure work is being delivered by Network Rail, and the train plan operators deliver the services. This is about spending more than £8 billion of public money to provide a railway that is safe, allows trains to operate reliably and has headroom for growth in both passenger and freight traffic. Capacity is being provided for an 80 per cent. increase in long-distance passenger trains, and between 60 and 70 per cent. in freight traffic.

An important feature of the west coast route modernisation is to secure the best return for taxpayers on the investment. I suspect that that goes to the heart of the problem that we are discussing. Modernisation will also ensure that rail contributes the maximum to the overall transport network of the country. It is about getting passengers to use rail in preference to other modes of transport, and experience to date indicates that that is being achieved. However, some difficult choices have to be made.

One of those choices is about allocating such resources where they can deliver the best possible service. It should be noted that, as well as the new Pendolino fleet, the Government have initiated the drafting in of 19 additional tilting 125 mph diesel Voyager trains, the use of five new TransPennine diesel trains and the delivery of 30 additional 100 mph electric trains. Much of the new timetable being planned for December 2008 is focused on the optimal use of those resources, the efficient deployment of which is vital to deliver seats for the rapid traffic growth that we expect. The longer-distance services will be able to run much faster, and much effort is going into ensuring that the weekend services will, at long last, be similar to those for weekdays—but not any time soon.

Passenger traffic on the west coast main line has continued to grow since the introduction of the revised timetables in September 2004. Overall, there has been an increase well in excess of 50 per cent., and in some cases the growth has amounted to 80 per cent. Our prediction is that there will be a trebling of long-distance revenue between 2003 and 2012, with the route generating about £1 billion in annual revenue. Additional business has been generated at many stations along the west coast route, including at Penrith. However, Penrith itself is not a high-earning station, nor is its business likely to grow significantly compared to that of other locations on the line. Put simply, the opportunities for growth are much greater elsewhere.

It might help if I describe the situation at Penrith. There are 24 southbound and 25 northbound services throughout the day. They are provided by Virgin West Coast and First TransPennine Express. Of the southbound trains, nine head for London. Typical journey times outside peak hours are just over three hours and 30 minutes, although morning peak trains tend to take about four hours as some weekday engineering work prevents full speed from being achieved on the line near Penrith.

Eight trains a day operate to Birmingham, typically taking about two hours and 45 minutes. The remaining services are for Manchester airport, and they operate every two or three hours. There are more local journey opportunities, with trains calling at Penrith then calling at some of or all these stations—Oxenholme, Lancaster and Preston .

Northbound, 15 trains operate to Glasgow, with a typical journey time of one hour and 40 minutes or more. Eight trains operate to Edinburgh, with a travel time a few minutes longer than that to Glasgow. The remaining trains terminate at Carlisle. All trains that call at Penrith also call at Carlisle.

The new timetables are being planned for introduction in 12 month’s time to take advantage of the completion of the west coast route modernisation project. They are designed around the constraints of rolling stock availability and getting the most out of the new infrastructure. In particular, for the first time, the services will start to become competitive with air travel from London and Birmingham to Glasgow, and from Birmingham to Edinburgh. Compared with pre-upgrade times, there will be reductions of some 80 minutes on Anglo-Scottish journey times.

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says about journey times, although we might have to disagree on their importance. One aspect of his speech was about the environment and persuading people to use trains rather than cars—in his case, travelling on the A66 to Darlington. It is my strongly held view that a key way to encourage people to use long-distance rail services is to make those services competitive and attractive as against air travel. A reduction of between 60 and 80 minutes in the time that it takes to travel from Glasgow to London on the west coast main route would pose a serious challenge to the airlines. I hope the right hon. Gentleman welcomes that.

In the December 2008 timetable, Penrith will be served on a broadly hourly pattern, with a second train in some hours. Across the day, five trains to London are proposed. Journey times will be considerably quicker, with the standard journey time to and from Euston being three hours for the 281 miles. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that that is an impressive average speed of well over 90 mph. It will also be a reduction of 30 minutes on today’s typical journey. In the mornings, trains from Penrith will be a full hour quicker.

Journey times for Birmingham services will also be reduced by around 15 minutes to just under two and a half hours. As with London, Birmingham will be served by a spread of trains across the day. The Birmingham service will continue to provide connections with a number of important stations en route, such as Crewe and Stafford. First TransPennine Express services between Edinburgh and Glasgow and Manchester airport will also call there. It might help if I explain that the 07.20 Manchester airport to Glasgow train will call at Penrith at 09.17. Those services will also provide local connections with stations such as Oxenholme and Lancaster.

Significant journey time reductions of around 20 minutes to Manchester—one hour and 40 minutes rather than two hours—will also be possible, and Penrith will gain a through link to Manchester airport, which can be reached in just under two hours rather than two hours and 20 minutes as at present. For northbound journeys, we anticipate that services to Glasgow will be around 15 minutes faster than today. Glasgow will be about 90 minutes from Penrith.

It is worth noting that those changes will benefit other towns nearby. For instance, Carlisle and Oxenholme will benefit from faster journey times. For significant portions of the day, Carlisle to London services will run hourly, with typical journey times of under three and a half hours. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Carlisle. There will be extra services to Carlisle in the December 2008 timetable.

During modernisation work, Saturday and Sunday services have been disrupted along the entire west coast main line. That will be rectified with the new timetables and the provision of weekend services similar to those in the Monday to Friday timetables, and it will not be interrupted with prolonged engineering activity.

There has been extensive consultation on the matter. The plans were originally consulted on in 2002, and formed part of the 2003 strategy. More detail was contained in the west coast main line progress report, published in May 2006, and more recently in a timetable consultation exercise co-ordinated by the Department for Transport.

Although it is normally the task of operators to undertake consultation exercises, the Department led with that work to present a complete picture of key services over the entire route. That information has been shared widely with numerous stakeholders, including peers of the realm, Members of Parliament, passenger transport executives, regional bodies, local authorities, Passenger Focus, user groups and, most important, passengers. I have asked officials to meet again with Cumbria county council in the new year.

In the two minutes remaining, I can say that the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman will understandably resonate with his constituents. He read through the list of services he wanted to be added to the December 2008 timetable, but I am sure that he realises that organising a real timetable, especially on the west coast route, is pretty much like playing three-dimensional chess. If it were as simple as stopping a particular train at a station, the Government would want to consider it. However, stopping a train and adding another five or six minutes to its journey could have a knock-on effect.

For example, if one of the services that the right hon. Gentleman spoke of stopped at Penrith, it would miss its access pathway to get into Glasgow Central station, which would make the train 10 minutes late. Having invested £10 billion, that is not something that we would readily contemplate.

None the less, my offer remains on the table. I am more than happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman. If there is anything that we can bring to the timetabling group that might address some of his concerns, I will be happy to do so. On this occasion, however, I cannot promise that he will leave that meeting with a light heart.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Two o’clock.