May I say, Mr. O’Hara, what a pleasure it is to open the debate this morning under your chairmanship?

It is with some sadness that I stand before the House after securing Mr. Speaker’s permission to hold a debate on the Buncefield disaster that took place in my constituency on 11 December 2005. I shall start with a quotation:

“Speaking to you all, it quickly becomes apparent that there are really strong local partnerships in place… Obviously it is these relationships which will undoubtedly bring about sustainable and lasting solutions to all the challenges to rebuild community life.”

The quotation is from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who visited my constituency following the Buncefield explosion. It is sad that I should stand here, more than two years after the explosion and more than two years since the last statement on the Floor of the House by the then Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), saying to the Government that we have some real problems in my constituency following the explosion. The problems are no fault of my constituency or my constituents, or the businesses or the local authority that has done so well to handle the situation.

On 11 December 2005, three explosions rocked my constituency. The first, from tank 912, measured 2.7 on the Richter scale. Those of us who can think back to that terrible day will have seen the television footage. The depot is not in the middle of nowhere or on the coast; it is smack, bang in the middle of the country, and right in the middle of the Maylands industrial area. The explosion and the subsequent fires in 20 tanks caused huge problems for the country, my community and the emergency services.

I wish to put on record again—I have done it many times, but it will not hurt to do so again—my admiration for chief fire officer Roy Wilsher, for the Hertfordshire fire and rescue service, and for the many county fire services that came to our rescue and helped us. I must declare an interest: I was a fireman for eight years, and I trained on refinery fires at the Coryton refinery, which supplied the fuel that caused the initial explosion. I am unashamed in my huge admiration for the firefighters of this country.

I also wish to thank the other emergency services, and in particular the chief constable and the constabularies that came to our assistance. Sadly, as is often true of such situations, many thousands of people had to leave their homes and many businesses had to be excluded from their premises. I wish also to place on record my admiration for Dacorum borough council, led by the excellent chief executive, Daniel Zammit, whose staff were magnificent. They put themselves into dangerous situations to protect others. There were no questions about whether a building was a local authority property, private property or anything else; everybody—the whole community—pulled together. I received literally hundreds of letters from people in private dwellings whose homes were boarded up and made safe by the chief executive’s officers. I have nothing but admiration for Dacorum borough council, which is a very small authority—I do not say that in a derisory way—that responded fantastically.

Being a local resident who was at Buncefield within half an hour of the first explosion, a former fireman and very nosy, I managed to get very close to the incident. I was lucky enough to be at the forward control point when senior firefighters were making decisions about how to put out the fire. My initial concern, like everybody’s, was the safety of my community: the residents and the people working on the site as well as—and this was very much the case—the firefighters and other emergency services.

It was apparent that serious injuries had been sustained by some of the people working at the depot in the early hours of that Sunday morning, and it has been put on record many times that it is an absolute miracle that no one died. At least one engineer who was working at the site received serious lung injuries, and all the injured were taken to the excellent accident and emergency department at Hemel Hempstead general hospital. I wonder what on earth would happen if such an incident took place in December this year, because there will be no accident and emergency department open to look after those injuries. Sadly, the Government have decided to close Hemel Hempstead general hospital. I shall not go on about that today, because I am going to request an Adjournment debate on the hospital’s future, and another Minister can take the flak for it.

The Buncefield incident, which took place in the early hours of a Sunday morning, left thousands of people with damaged homes, and thousands not knowing whether their businesses or jobs would survive. I wish to emphasise how lucky our community was. I have met many residents, including some very young people, who were lying in bed that morning, as one does on a Sunday morning, probably not even awake. Indeed, if one is thinking about waking up at 6.10 am, perhaps one should turn over and go back to sleep. They were woken initially by the explosion, but they suddenly realised that they were covered in glass; or that the front of their house had disappeared; or in some cases, that the whole house was falling down around them as they lay in bed. We are talking not about a war zone, or an area where, sadly, earthquakes or tsunamis happen, but about an urban area in eastern England, which was blown apart by an incident at an industrial complex.

Many of my constituents still suffer trauma from the explosion, and many children still receive counselling. I shall provide some quotations from children who have received counselling to try to recover. They are not grown-ups who have experienced many things in their lives. One boy of seven who needed counselling said:

“Counselling has been good ’cos it’s made me stronger.”

He is a seven-year-old boy whose life has been tragically changed because of an industrial incident. Another child said:

“You have really helped me find out what I want and how I feel.”

That young lady was 12. That is how young people in my constituency have been affected, and hundreds of people of all ages have received counselling.

One former constituent, who moved out of my constituency because he can never return to his home, is a gentleman called Ian Silverstein. Ian’s home was blown to smithereens. It looked like someone had dropped a 1,000 lb bomb next to his house. I have visited the site. The house is gone—it does not exist—and he worked all his life for it. I am sure that we would all struggle to realise what that feels like. There was no explosion in his home, and he had not done anything wrong. Something happened through no fault of his own.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his fight over the past few years for his constituents. He has been very assiduous, and I just wish that Ministers were more responsive to his requests for information and action. Can my hon. Friend estimate the distance from the explosion to the homes that were damaged? In my constituency, there are homes near to plants that are even more dangerous than the one that exploded at Buncefield.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. May I also praise him for his quick response before Christmas when the hydrocracker at the Coryton refinery exploded? I have some knowledge of the hydrocracker because when I was a fireman in Basildon, I was on the first response unit that went to deal with it when it blew up many years ago. I know the fears that exist, and I am conscious that my hon. Friend did not go in the opposite direction; he went straight down to see the firefighters to ensure that they, too, were looked after.

To answer my hon. Friend’s question, when the first explosion took place at Buncefield, the damage occurred several kilometres away. If he has an opportunity to read the interim reports from the health and safety inquiry, he will find that because there was nothing structurally to prevent the explosion spreading outwards, or the subsequent suction inwards after the oxygen had been used up, properties as far away as St. Albans, Redbourn and the centre of Hemel Hempstead, which is several kilometres away, were subject to serious structural damage. One school in St. Albans had its central heating boiler sucked up through the flue, which blew up boilers throughout the school. Subsequently, the school did not open. That is the sort of damage that occurs in such explosions.

I was told many years ago, when I trained on such fires, that we could expect only one tank to catch fire, and probably no explosion. That remained the advice until Buncefield happened. I was told that an explosion such as Buncefield had not been modelled and no one knew that it could happen. I pointed out that it had happened in New Jersey and Florida, so we could have predicted it. However, we could not have predicted the subsequent explosions in other tanks.

I find something slightly difficult to understand. There was a tank containing unleaded petrol, and some 200 tonnes flowed from it when it was full. Someone who does not think that an explosion will take place if the safety devices fail does not really understand petroleum and should not be in charge of safety at such a depot. It will be for the inquiry to come to conclusions on the matter, and I shall return to that later. The fears of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), of people in my constituency and of others around the country about the safety of such depots are understandable.

So where are we today? An inquiry is being conducted—astonishingly, through the Department for Work and Pensions—by the Health and Safety Executive. It is headed by the independent chair, Lord Newton of Braintree, who is doing an excellent job considering the remit that he has been given. Sadly, its inquiry is being conducted behind closed doors, so public confidence in it is somewhat diminished. While the fire was in full flow—the fuel was still flowing, which was why there was such a large plume—I said that for the sake of public confidence in such installations and the confidence of my community, it was vital that there was an open, public inquiry. I entered into negotiations with the then Deputy Prime Minister suggesting that we hold an inquiry similar to the one that took place after the Marchioness disaster. I freely admit that that inquiry took place not under the last Conservative Administration but under the new Labour Administration. It is sad that there was not an early public inquiry in that case, as it would have saved a lot of anguish and concern for many of the relatives concerned.

Sadly, once the fire was out, the role of the Deputy Prime Minister was removed, and I was told immediately that the inquiry would be conducted by the DWP, which is responsible for the HSE. I cannot understand why that was the case. It was a massive local situation that had nothing to do with work and pensions and everything to do with the community. The then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was in charge of the fire service, and the issue was about local government and local communities. That is why I was desperate for a Department for Communities and Local Government Minister to respond to this debate, and I thank the Minister for his attendance.

Two years on, an inquiry is in progress, and it has produced interim reports. We now know, within reason, what caused the explosion. There has been extensive modelling, and it seems as if every safety device between Buncefield and Coryton in Essex failed. As I said earlier, 200 tonnes of unleaded fuel escaped through the air venting at the top of tank 912 and caused a vapour cloud. Something—the inquiry and others are not yet 100 per cent. confident about what it was—ignited the cloud, causing the first of the three explosions and the subsequent 20-tank fire.

The costs to my community, the region and the nation as a whole were large, and I shall try to break them down. I shall probably ask the Minister more questions than he can answer, and I appreciate that he may have to ask other Ministers to write to me. There was a great deal of concern about the decision to put the fire out. When there is a fire of such a size firefighters contain it, usually with a water curtain, before deciding to try to work their way in and put it out. I apologise for having too much knowledge on the subject—it comes from having a previous life outside politics.

When the decision had been made to contain the fire and there was no longer a real worry about more tanks exploding, a decision had to be made about whether to allow the fire to burn itself out—all fires burn themselves out once the fuel goes, whether it is wood, building or, in this case, oil and petroleum—or try to put it out. I took part in broadcasts from the site, and it was obvious to me that if we tried to put it out, there would be environmental risks because of the wash-off of the firefighting water, which would take with it contamination from the site. It is plain what sort of problems would have resulted.

Knowing such refineries, it was clear to me that the bunds designed to hold the fuel would never be able to cope with holding the firefighting water and foam. I did not know at the time that the mastic that had been used on the bunds was not heat-resistant and had melted almost instantaneously, causing the water to flow out. I did not know that the engineers had drilled 7 to 8-in holes in the bund wall through which to feed pipes, but had not corked them, so it leaked straight through. I did not know that some walls were damaged so badly by the explosion that water was flowing straight out. It is for the inquiry to conclude who was responsible and whether there was any negligence.

I did know that perfluorooctanyl sulfonate—or PFOS for short—is a carcinogenic chemical used in a lot of firefighting foam. For those who do know, PFOS is a sticking agent. It is used in firefighting and fire equipment, but over the years it has also been used extensively in insecticides and pesticides on agricultural land. I shall come on to that point later. The Environment Agency asked for a delay. There was consultation in which I was not involved—I understand at gold command—and the decision was made to put out the fire. Firemen always want to put fires out; they are robust creatures and join the fire service to fight fires. If they are told not to fight a fire, they put up a robust argument against that instruction—I can say so from experience. Sometimes, however, it must be decided whether it is worth risking the life of firefighters—in my consideration no building is worth anybody’s life—and whether there is a risk to the environment.

Can my hon. Friend confirm that by that stage considerable time had passed—several hours, in fact—and there was no risk to buildings because they had all been destroyed? The question was whether the fire should be left to burn out or whether the firefighters should go in and, in doing so, put the environment at considerable long-term risk. No doubt he will come to that.

My hon. Friend has read my thoughts; that is exactly the point that I was coming to. There was no risk to any other building. The buildings involved had been blown to smithereens. The fire at one property close to the incident, Northgate house, was an eight-pump fire on its own, which is a major incident. As a fireman, I probably went to four eight-pump fires in eight years, and I was at a busy station in Basildon, in Essex.

There was no risk at all to others. The only risk was to those who were looting local people’s properties, and that was a risk that they took in doing something abhorrent and appalling. The decision was made, and I have not quite got to the bottom of exactly why. The chief fire officer Roy Wilsher tells me—and I believe him—that he made the decision to put the fire out. As I said, firemen are firemen, and they want to put fires out. There was a huge amount of help, not only in manpower from other brigades, but on a national level with the high-velocity pumps that the then Deputy Prime Minister procured. I have praised him for that before, and I praise him again. Those pumps are a wonderful national asset. They were used extensively to help tackle the flooding that sadly occurred last year—interestingly, their role was exactly the reverse of their role in my incident: pulling water rather than pumping it.

The decision was therefore made to put the fire out. There is much concern in my constituency and surrounding areas about contamination not only from petrochemical products at the site but from the foam that was used. I understand that some 70,000 litres of concentrate contained the chemical PFOS. In the run-up to Buncefield, the Government were in extensive negotiations with the European Commission regarding legislation to ban PFOS from inclusion in any product in this country. Indeed, they wanted the maximum penalty for using or bringing the product into the country to be two years’ imprisonment, so there was obviously knowledge that PFOS is very dangerous. It is carcinogenic and is classed as toxic under the chemical regime. As has been fairly widely publicised since the incident, extensive contamination from petrochemicals and PFOS has been found in the new and existing boreholes drilled by the Environment Agency.

In the spring after the Buncefield incident, I was worried when one of my farmers reported that deformed cattle were being born on his farm—Westwick farm in the Leverstock Green part of my constituency—on land adjacent to Buncefield. The farmer, Mr. Archer, has told me, in good faith, that lots of foam was blowing across the land where his rare breed stock were grazing. He brought in his stock, but does not know whether they ingested any of the foam. I am not a farmer, but whenever I go to the farm, all the cattle want is to be fed. When something different is in front of them, they tend to want to lick and taste it; apparently that is natural.

I shall not mention all of the deformities, because they are shocking, but to give hon. Members an indication, some of the calves were born with heads of almost twice the size of a normal calf and some were born with no spinal cord. Those sorts of deformity are frightening. My constituent did the right thing: he contacted his vet, who then contacted the Food Standards Agency, which said that the matter was nothing to with it, and my constituent then contacted me.

I have been in negotiations and discussions with the FSA, and subsequently with the laboratories at Pirbright, which should have been informed so that toxicology tests could take place. I have spoken to the head of the Government’s toxicology department, who has visited the farm. Tests are now being done—two years on—to find out whether the deformities are due to PFOS. I was upset and worried when the head of toxicology—I thank him for being so frank and honest—told me that the test results were unlikely to be ready before June. I asked him why, and he said that PFOS is particularly difficult to detect in fallen stock and liver samples and that only one laboratory in this country is capable of doing those tests.

PFOS has been used in pesticides, insecticides and other agricultural products for 30 years. I am sure that the Minister will not be able to answer this, but is that the reason why, before Buncefield, the Government were becoming more and more concerned about PFOS in the environment? Could it be that the only laboratory that is capable of testing for PFOS has a contract with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to test for PFOS in the food that comes off the land in this country?

I appreciate that the Minister will not be able to give an answer on this, but I would love to receive a letter from the relevant Minister saying whether the laboratory is testing basic foods that are coming off our fields to discover the level of PFOS contamination, if any. I believe that that is true and think that the public should know whether it is. Perhaps it is time to come clean about it if there has been contamination. I am sure that such a serious situation will concern the public. I am not trying to scare the public; I am trying to get to the truth about what has happened to the environment in my town and country.

I, and many others in my constituency, have called for a public inquiry from day one, and we came close to getting one from the previous Deputy Prime Minister, who saw the logic and sense of natural justice and having an open inquiry. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) visited Buncefield shortly after the explosion to praise the emergency workers and see for himself the devastation and effects on my community, he, too, called for a public inquiry. He also called for a single, high-ranking Minister to be made responsible for addressing the problems incurred by communities when incidents such as Buncefield occur, and empowered to do so.

Since then, there have been natural disasters around the country—I send my thoughts and commiserations to those who have lost so much in the flooding—and I am sure that hon. Members who have experienced the effects of flooding will, like me, have been moved from pillar to post by different Departments saying, “They’re in charge; I’m in charge—no you’re not in charge.” That happens with the Environment Agency, the DWP, local government, the FSA and three or four other Departments that I could name.

It is completely illogical that, when such incidents occur, which is fairly rarely, and the Government need to take action quickly in a co-ordinated way, we do not have the aid and help that we need. I do not wish to be controversial, but the Government have responded compassionately to disasters around the world, and this country has responded fantastically to the tsunami, the flooding in Bangladesh and other incidents around the world, so it is incomprehensible to me that this and previous Governments have not thought about how best to look after our own communities should such an incident occur.

With the backing of the leader of the official Opposition and, I hope, Members on both sides of the House, I call again for detailed planning to ensure that if that sort of disaster is, sadly, thrust upon other communities—of course, I hope that that does not happen—a single, high-ranking Minister, perhaps from the Cabinet Office, will be in charge. It is most frustrating for local communities, businesses, authorities and MPs to write to a Minister asking about x and be told that it is nothing to do with him and to ask y, but then be sent to someone else.

Let us consider the effects on my community. I have alluded already to the effects on individuals, some of which were traumatic and difficult to explain to someone who has not had the same experience. If a person’s home is blown away, is completely gone, whether it was a rented local authority home or a property of perhaps £1 million-plus does not matter in real terms—it was their home. So many of my constituents and the constituents of colleagues in the Chamber today have lost so much. It is ludicrous and immoral that, two years on, so many of them have not had the compensation that they deserve.

The oil companies involved are employing some of the most expensive, articulate and, they probably think, brilliant lawyers and barristers in the country to limit their exposure. Of course, much of the compensation will be held back slightly while we wait for a decision from the Health and Safety Executive inquiry and Lord Newton, as its chairman, on whether prosecutions are likely to take place under the relevant Acts. There is no way that I want in any shape or form to jeopardise any such prosecution, but it seems fundamentally wrong and unfair from a simple natural justice point of view that people have lost so much.

People’s lives have been affected so badly, businesses have gone to the wall and thousands of people have lost their jobs. One third of the people who worked in the Maylands business area live in my constituency. The knock-on effect of the difficulty in making decisions about how we go forward is, frankly, wrong, immoral and unfair.

There are court cases. People have had to pull together in consortiums, so that they can afford even to take cases. Some people have been lucky in that their insurance included legal protection. Their cases have progressed, but even some of those are coming to the end their financial period.

Again, I praise my local authority, not only for how it handled the incident and the subsequent evacuation of many thousands of people from their homes, but the cost to it was substantial—just under £80,000. My local community and taxpayers are not able to recoup that. The Bellwin formula has done its bit and other help came, but just in Dacorum—I am not talking about Hertfordshire’s expenses but just Dacorum’s—the costs resulted in nearly 1 per cent. more on the council tax. That is a huge amount of money for a small local authority to bear.

There have been promises. I read the ministerial statement before Christmas from the Department for Communities and Local Government. It was a response to my request of the Leader of the House during business questions. The statement said that, after Bellwin, some £4.4 million of aid had gone to my community. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) will deal with this in a moment. We do not know where the money was coming from or whether it has arrived. I am conscious that it may well be money that was promised for the regeneration of Maylands, the town centre and the community before the Buncefield incident even took place. If that is right, it is fundamentally wrong that money that was already coming has been switched from regeneration to help supposedly because of Buncefield.

Planning and planning law is another area in which the unfairness of the system on my local authority and community is obvious. The oil companies are multi-billion pound, multinational companies. They have budgets that most Departments do not have, and they are putting huge pressure on my local authority to reopen parts and, I am sure, eventually all of the Buncefield depot. I could possibly understand such pressure after the inquiry has come to its conclusions, after we know the facts, after we know how safe it is to have a home or business close to a refinery, as alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point a moment ago, but it is being applied now.

BP has asked to open its area of the Buncefield depot, which was only marginally damaged. I understand that some £1 million-worth of damage was done, but anybody who has seen photographs of Buncefield would know that it was quite a small amount of damage. The company has asked to open its part, so that it can supply aviation fuel to terminal 5. Apparently the existing pipeline to terminal 5 is not big enough. The sudden realisation that a bigger pipe is needed makes me wonder what the planners were doing during all the years of planning for terminal 5. BP is negotiating very hard with my local authority, and to be fair, it is quite open about the fact that it wants to use the depot for aviation fuel and not for petrol. I understand that a section 106 agreement is required, and I hope that it is tightly worded, so that we do not get any problems with lawyers later on.

It seems fundamentally unjust to my community that a small local authority must make planning decisions that involve national infrastructure and safety when an inquiry has not finished and when it has asked for help. I understand that the local planning committee referred some of the questions up to regional level. They were bounced back with the comment that the decision was the local authority’s, but the local authority is not qualified to make such decisions. A Department must take responsibility and decide on the way forward. The local authority has fantastic staff and officers, but the decision cannot be left in their hands, because it is not part of their job.

Just to give an example of the sort of pressure that oil companies are applying and their blatant disregard for the laws of this land, just before Christmas, Total, one of the other oil companies that operated from Buncefield, indicated to the local authority that it would connect through a valve system the pipeline from its refinery to the Heathrow spur pipeline. My local authority said, “You need planning consent.” It has the experts, so we would think. Naturally, their word should be taken. I understand that the authority sought advice and was told, quite rightly, in an opinion from the Departments involved, that planning was required. The response from Total was, “No, we do not agree with you and we are going to do it,” and it did. No planning exists. I understand that the Environment Agency and the HSE were present on site while the work was done to ensure that safety was paramount and that there was no risk to the environment.

Why was the work not stopped? How can a company just ignore planning law and go ahead? I asked that of my local authority’s chief executive, who said, “Mr. Penning, what can we do? We have one opinion that says yes, but the big oil company says no. We put in an order to stop the work and we have to pay the costs. We are only a small authority, and we cannot risk that burden on our local taxpayers.” The matter should have been taken out of the hands of my local authority. Such decisions should be made by experts and senior Ministers. It seems absolutely ludicrous that fear of the costs of challenging a company like Total on this sort of decision should preclude the enforcement of planning law.

I ask the Minister to ensure that that situation is highlighted. I hope he will indicate that we will have meetings with the relevant Ministers, and I hope that common sense will prevail and the laws of this land will not be ignored simply because a local authority does not have the financial clout to proceed. That is what is happening. The fear of litigation and of incurring costs is preventing local authorities from being allowed to protect their local community.

An interim report from Lord Newton’s inquiry contained a very interesting statement. In short, it stated that Dacorum—my local authority—should be granted special status. That includes parts of the constituencies of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) and of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main). My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans, whose constituents were greatly affected by the fire, sends her apologies for not being here today. As she is in Bangladesh at the moment, I accept her reasons for not being able to make it here in time this morning.

What does “special status” mean? I have had meetings and made calls and found that it means something similar to the status that was granted to Carlisle when a disaster took place. I understand—I stand to be corrected—that an enterprise zone was created there, so that the community could benefit from tax breaks to regenerate the area. As I understand it, the official interpretation is that one can apply for things that are available to everybody and one might possibly be granted some special status. Frankly, to put that in layman’s terms, “Do not hold your breath.”

We are holding our breath, because if we do not receive help in this significant regional hub, the effects on my community and on the whole region will be devastating. We have had many visits from the Deputy Prime Minister and the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. We have had visits from the then Leader of the House, who, shockingly in my opinion, did not visit Buncefield or any of the affected residents or businesses. He also did not visit my hospital, which is closing. We had a visit from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Although he is responsible for the inquiry, he did not go to the Buncefield site and meet the residents and businesses that have been so badly affected. As I understand it, he did not even meet the chief executive of my council who has been worried about the future and the long-term effects of the disaster.

We have had forums and meetings. Officials from myriad Departments have given us promises and undertakings, and nods and winks to indicate that help is coming. We do not need any more nods and winks; we need help. My community has suffered so badly from an industrial disaster that was not its fault, from a plant that is owned by multi-billion pound companies that are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to their responsibilities to the community. My community needs help from the Government, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively.

I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words, and I shall endeavour to be brief. First, I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) for his role in this matter. There is something providential about the fact that the worst fire in western Europe since the second world war should occur in a constituency represented by a fireman. It was undoubtedly in the interests of all his constituents and mine to have someone so knowledgeable, as well as so vigorous in their response, to represent their interests. I pay tribute to him for securing this debate and for his contribution today. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) who, with her customary vigour, upheld the interests of our constituents vis-à-vis the local authority and its dilatory response early on. I also pay tribute to the emergency workers who responded with speed, efficiency and courage to the original fire.

I have a few questions that arise from the fire. In particular, I want to know why it has taken so long to complete the inquiry. I am a simple person, and it does not seem to me that it should take two years or more to carry out an inquiry into this sort of event. I have every confidence in my right hon. former colleague who is in charge of the inquiry, but I cannot help feeling that with a tighter timetable and suitable resources, it would have been possible to finish the inquiry earlier to everybody’s advantage.

I want to raise the planning implications of the fire. Again, I take a simple approach. When the Buncefield site was built, it was some way from residential areas. Over time, residential and industrial areas have built up closer to it and consequently were affected when the fire occurred. It seems to me, and to most of my constituents, that the obvious next step is to replace Buncefield with a site that is further away from any built-up area. It will still supply the fuels that we recognise are necessary for our lives and for aviation and so on, but it will do so away from the existing site and release it for house building.

We are under huge pressure to build houses. Most of us think that the pressure is excessive and results from mistaken Government policies. However, if that house building is to take place, the Buncefield site is a sensible place to choose if the depot is moved elsewhere. Why cannot that simple decision be taken? If the reverse decision has been taken—to retain Buncefield where it is—may we have an explanation for that?

I have only a limited number of constituents affected by the fire. The border of my constituency is the M1, and Buncefield is a few hundred yards to the left of the M1. Actually, the Buncefield site is the boundary of my constituency and a few residences there are among the closest to the fire. It was traumatic for all those residents, not least for one of my constituents, Ian Silverstein, who lived in a wonderful Lutyens house, which was one of the nearest to the fire. He was at home at the time and he said that he felt as if a plane had crashed upon his house. He managed to escape, but the front door was blown right through to the back of the house. That beautiful residence is now potentially ruined. My constituent’s traumatic experience was made worse by the fact that the property, though boarded up, was thrice looted in the ensuing days, which raises questions about the effectiveness of the security and police response to prevent such action. Looking forward now, he raises some questions which he has asked me to put to the Minister on his behalf.

First, why, some two years on, is my constituent still not in receipt of any compensation? His life is in ruins. Everything is on hold pending the HSE report and any potential prosecution. Why has there not been a speedier response? He is also worried that the report itself is being funded by the oil companies. That seems to him to introduce a degree of collusion and undermines the integrity of the report. Will the Minister explain the nature of that funding and reassure him on that point?

My constituent Ian Silverstein wants to know why the Government are not taking action against the oil companies responsible and why they have not created a disaster or recovery fund to compensate the people who have been directly affected. Only a small number of people have been directly and seriously affected by the fire. I hope that we will receive answers to those questions and I hope that we will learn the lessons of this whole experience. The two lessons that seem to be paramount, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead pointed out, are that when this sort of disaster occurs, a whole range of Departments and local authorities are affected, so it is crucial that one person be put in charge. One Minister should be the focal point to clear all queries, to supervise, co-ordinate and ensure that there is a joined-up response. Can systems be put in place to ensure that that is the immediate response in the event of another disaster?

The other lesson to be learned is that we must respond more rapidly. Lengthy inquiries that go on for ever cannot be necessary. The facts, although complicated, do not require two years to sort out. Can we therefore have a speedier approach to inquiries and the resolution of the issues involved?

If those lessons can be learned, some gain will at least have been made in the event of future problems. We all recognise that there will be different problems in different places in future and we would like the constituents of other Members of Parliament at least to benefit from the failures that took place in this case.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time since the 2006 Finance Bill, Mr O’Hara, although I hope that this will be a slightly quicker and less draining experience for us both. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on the way in which he has articulated the views of the people of Hemel Hempstead since the Buncefield explosion on 11 December 2005. Once again, he has demonstrated his passion and thoroughness, as well as his concern for Hemel Hempstead, and he articulated his case very well.

The implications and consequences of the explosion have affected a much wider area than just Hemel Hempstead, including my constituency, and that is not just because the vast majority of my constituents were woken at 6 o’clock in the morning on 11 December. On that day, I attended a function in Tring, which is not far from Hemel Hempstead, and spoke to a constituent who worked on the Maylands estate. He was deeply concerned that he had, in essence, lost his job that very morning.

The impact has also been felt by Dacorum borough council, which my hon. Friend mentioned, and, more widely, by Hertfordshire county council and the Hertfordshire police authority, all of which have had to pick up some of the bill in dealing with the consequences of the explosion. For example, Dacorum borough council is about £78,000 out of pocket even after we take account of the sums that it will have received under the Bellwin formula. The figure for the Hertfordshire police authority is about £300,000 and that for Hertfordshire county council is about £2.5 million. Those are substantial sums for organisations that are not necessarily very large. I do not intend to set out a general case to show that Hertfordshire is often hard done by, although we have learned in the past few days of concerns that Hertfordshire council tax payers may have to pick up some of the cost of the Olympics. That aside, however, the costs involved in dealing with Buncefield are significant and are having an impact on council tax payers and council services, and we should not ignore that.

There are also the costs involved in trying to rebuild the Maylands estate, which was devastated by the Buncefield explosion. That brings me to the statement made by the Minister for Local Government on 17 December 2007, which my hon. Friend mentioned. As the Minister said, the East of England Development Agency had by then provided £4.4 million of financial assistance, and my hon. Friend mentioned that. However, my understanding—I could be wrong, and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) may correct me—is that about £2 million of that money had already been promised to Dacorum and Hemel Hempstead before the Buncefield explosion, so it is not necessarily new money.

There is a wider issue, and we clearly need to look at the financial implications of the way in which we respond to disasters. I am sure that the matter is close to the Under-Secretary’s heart, given that he represents Gloucester, which suffered terrible flooding in the summer. Following the summer flooding, money was made available in addition to the funds provided through the Bellwin formula. Even so, there is concern that support has been somewhat slow to reach the areas that were flooded, and local communities are having to pick up the cost of that major disaster. That is a concern in the Dacorum area, which covers not only my hon. Friend’s constituency, but much of mine, too.

This is not the first Adjournment debate that we have had on Buncefield; we had one on 19 July 2006. On that occasion, I focused on PFOS, which my hon. Friend mentioned. Subsequently, we received a lengthy and thorough letter from the then Minister for the Environment. The letter was informative and raised a number of points —I counted nearly 40 typographical errors, but that is by the bye. I have a number of questions relating to it, although the Under-Secretary will not be able to respond to them all today. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, it is in the nature of such issues that they cut across several Departments, which is why it would be helpful if one Department took responsibility for the issue.

The environmental issues raised by the incident are important. The letter, which was dated 4 August 2006, referred to the Government seeking an EU ban on PFOS, and I would be grateful to know whether any progress has been made on that. There was also talk of the fire and rescue services implementing a voluntary ban on the use of PFOS, and it would be helpful to have an update on that.

The letter also referred to two evaluations of PFOS, one by the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment, which was carried out on behalf of the Health Protection Agency, and the other by the drinking water inspectorate. I would be grateful to know whether any progress has been made on the evaluation of PFOS and what assessment has been made of its dangers or otherwise.

In our earlier debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) and I mentioned concerns about a leak of 800,000 litres of firewater at the Blackbird Lees sewage treatment plant near Radlett. At the time of the then Minister’s letter of August 2006, no damage to the aquatic environment had been found, and I would be grateful if Ministers could confirm at some point that that remains the case.

Another issue is of particular relevance not to the Dacorum area, but to the other end of my constituency. Following the Buncefield explosion, much of the firewater was stored at the Maple Lodge sewage plant. In his letter, the then Minister for the Environment said that he shared concerns about the 26 million litres of firewater still being stored seven months after the incident. Indeed, that firewater was not dealt with until June 2007—18 months after the explosion. I followed the issue quite closely, staying in contact with the Environment Agency and Thames Water and visiting the site. My understanding is that much of the blame lies with the oil companies, and there are clearly lessons to be learned about the way in which we should deal with firewater, should we ever be unfortunate enough to face a similar incident again. Clearly, 18 months is too long, and by the end of the process, several of my constituents were complaining about the dreadful smell that the water was causing.

I want, however, to end on a positive note. The way in which the people of the Dacorum and Hemel Hempstead area—whether local authorities, voluntary organisations or individuals—have rallied around has been hugely impressive. They have demonstrated a real sense of community, and I congratulate them on that. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead on all the work that he and they have done collectively to ensure that Hemel Hempstead rallies round and recovers from that dreadful explosion.

In his usual pragmatic and courteous style, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) has not only done a superb job for his constituents, but made the Government address the issues in a way that should make life safer for all those of our constituents who live close to major accident hazard sites. That is very necessary, so I congratulate my hon. Friend warmly.

There are two such sites on Canvey island, both of which are potential threats. I have often raised the Calor liquid nitrogen gas proposals in this Chamber, so I shall not do so now. We have a new proposal, the Oikos biodiesel site, which I shall come to in a moment.

Lord Newton is the chairman of the Buncefield inquiry, and I congratulate him on his conduct of it, but I should have wanted more speed and transparency. I am sure that he will take note of that. As a result of the inquiry, the Health and Safety Executive has conducted a consultation, referred to in its consultative document CD211, “Proposals for revised policies for HSE advice on development control around large-scale petrol storage sites”. In section 6 of the document the HSE acknowledged:

“Clearly we have a poor scientific understanding of the mechanisms which led to the vapour cloud explosion at Buncefield, and we accept that installations storing other substances could present this type of hazard, for example bulk LPG storage, and other flammable liquid storage.”

Order. We must proceed to the winding-up speeches.

I echo other right hon. and hon. Members’ tributes to the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) for securing this important debate, and for the work that he has done on behalf of his constituents and the many other people across the country who may face incidents of the same type in future. He spoke movingly of the horrors of the day. When the incident occurred, my noble Friend Lord McNally, who is a resident of St. Albans, was staying with my family in Cornwall, and was on the telephone to his family to find out what had happened. The impact of the incident in the wider area was brought home to me then.

The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead rightly paid tribute to the work of the emergency services and local authority employees, and the way in which the whole community handled the event and sought to come to terms with it. He poignantly expressed how traumatic it was for people, including children, and homeowners whose property was destroyed or damaged. He raised crucial questions, which other right hon. and hon. Members have echoed, perhaps the most crucial of which was how the decision was taken about how to handle the fire—whether to let it burn or to be more proactive, and perhaps place the environment at risk in the longer term. The hon. Gentleman made some very sensible suggestions about how the Government should respond to continuing questions from the community, to ensure that there is transparency and that everyone involved knows who to go to for a clear point of contact in resolving issues.

The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) addressed the issue of the speed of the inquiry, as did the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink). The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) made telling points about the financial implications for local organisations and taxpayers. The last thing that the community needs after such a trauma, as we have heard, is greater financial pressure. It should be getting further support to deal with the problems caused by the incident.

The Major Incident Investigation Board has made it clear that its work is not concluded and that several more years’ research may be needed to deliver sound guidance to the industry. Arguably, what is missing is more guidance from Ministers to the community in Hemel Hempstead and the surrounding area, which has been severely affected by the blast. The Minister may recall the water contamination incident at Lowermoor in my own constituency some 20 years ago. The then Government were determined not to let all the facts come to light, and many are still buried today. I am convinced that the present Government do not want to make the same errors for the people of Hertfordshire that were made for people in North Cornwall all those years ago.

Specifically, is not it time that a Minister made a statement to the House about the Government’s present view on the safety of perfluorooctane sulfonate, the chemical dispensed at high speed along with water through high-volume pumps, to tackle the Buncefield blaze? The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead referred to the case of Mr. Archer, the local farmer whose calving success rate fell sharply after the incident. I read about his case with interest and a growing sense of horror before this debate, and although of course I have not had the benefit of any direct contact with him, I know that the hon. Gentleman is doing what he can to deal with the matter. Mr Archer was told in May last year that PFOS is not highly toxic, although there is clear evidence to the contrary. Indeed, the Government’s own risk analysis said so in 2004.

Government agencies are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to such individual cases. People are bound to wonder why, when the Environment Agency considered something toxic in 2004, the Food Standards Agency would suggest that it was not toxic in 2007, after it was possible that people and animals had been affected. As with those who have been affected by organophosphate poisoning from sheep dip or from pesticides used during service in the Gulf, or by exposure to contaminated air in aircraft cabins, it is in any Government’s natural interest to deny a causal link. It is easy to claim that there is not 100 per cent. of proof of anything, but the Minister would surely concede that when a farmer whose business has been very successful experiences a huge increase in the number of deformities in calves, something needs to be investigated, so there is a case for more Government action.

It cannot be right for the Drinking Water Inspectorate to invent a “safe” level of PFOS in the water supply. Indeed, the inspectorate itself has recognised that PFOS at the levels it calls safe is potentially unsafe for young children. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether he stands by the inspectorate’s guidance. At the same time, he could tell us whether it was really necessary to use PFOS to extinguish the Buncefield fire. Indeed, was it necessary to extinguish the fire at all? As the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead has suggested, it is not at all clear that the decision to use high-volume pumps was an operational one. Was political pressure brought to bear from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the local gold command to use the pumps? After all, it took eight hours for the local operation to decide that HVPs were necessary, and expert advice not to use them was ignored at the time.

Now that contamination has occurred, the Government must not repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. In my own constituency, a not dissimilar event that resulted in water contamination has brought the whole machinery of government into disrepute. Twenty years after our water poisoning incident, I am still in touch with sufferers, and even in the past month it has been left to a coroner to try to get to the bottom of what occurred in 1988. The Government must not fall into the same trap of opacity with the Buncefield incident.

I hope the Minister will work with his colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that complaints from the constituents of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead are taken seriously. Experience in North Cornwall suggests that tests have to be carried out promptly if the full health effects of chemical contamination in water are to be properly measured and, more importantly, treated. In recent years a corrosive trend has emerged in which disasters or incidents occur and the Government respond by announcing an inquiry. The inquiry may take years to research and report, and there are no guarantees that the Government will, in any event, take notice of its recommendations. Meanwhile, those who were affected are left without answers and are forgotten as the media circus moves on to the next incident. I urge the Minister again not to indulge that trend.

I again congratulate the honourable Member for Hemel Hempstead, and other right hon. and hon. Members from Hertfordshire and the wider area, on raising questions about the incident, and continuing to press for more answers on environmental pollution, the financial implications, and the lessons that can be learned, so that other communities that suffer incidents—whether natural disasters, industrial accidents or whatever else might occur—can be sure that they will get the support they need from the Government and Government agencies.

This is an appropriate and timely debate, for a number of reasons. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on securing it, and on the passionate, cogent and moving way in which he dealt with the history of what has befallen his constituents since the tragic events in question. The House knows the commitment and assiduousness that he has shown in attending to the interests of his constituents in this matter, and I pay tribute to him for that. His contribution is enhanced all the more by his own expertise in, and knowledge of, the fire services. Of course, the importance and dedication of our fire and rescue services, which were demonstrated at Buncefield, have been demonstrated many times since, not least, tragically, in Warwickshire recently.

All the hon. Members who spoke made cogent and telling points on behalf of their constituents, and I hope that the Minister will take them on board. I shall not repeat them, because I want to give him the maximum time to respond. All the points were soundly made and based on the evidence. The specific issues that affect the people of Buncefield and surrounding areas need to be addressed, but the debate has also highlighted related broader issues of public policy. Again, those were referred to in the debate. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) valiantly made the point that we need to look generally at how we deal with civil disasters and emergencies such as Buncefield once the immediate catastrophe has been dealt with. Our rescue services are good and highly professional, but once the immediate danger has been dealt with, what happens once the media attention and circus has moved on, as the hon. Gentleman said? How do we help the communities that are left behind to pick up the pieces? People in the communities surrounding Buncefield have genuine concerns and grievances.

We must consider, too, the length of time that it has taken to find out what went wrong, and the need for transparency and openness to restore public confidence. I, too, have the utmost faith in Lord Newton of Braintree, and I am sure that he will use every proper endeavour to resolve those issues. It may be the case that his inquiry has had to take place in private because it might recommend criminal sanctions, but it is important that it acts in a timely fashion. As soon as it has reached a conclusion, and decisions of the kind that may inhibit Lord Newton from speaking in public are out of the way, the facts must be placed fully in the public domain—that is what the people affected are owed.

The Planning Bill, in which the Minister and I are involved, went into Committee yesterday. It will look at ways in which we can speed up inquiries into major developments, but perhaps we should also look at the means by which we can speed up inquiries into the consequences of such disasters. A criminal trial arising from an incident such as Buncefield would be wholly unconscionable if it were allowed to drag on for a period of two years. We need to apply the same sort of discipline to Health and Safety Executive inquiries. Another point I wish to make on planning was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) and by other hon. Friends. It is the question of how to deal with the impact of major developments that are necessary for the economic well-being of a major industrial country but which have adverse impacts on those who live near them. While the Planning Bill is in Committee, I hope that the Minister and his colleagues take on board the crucial importance of ensuring that the communities affected by things such as pipelines and ancillary developments are given maximum input in the development of national policy statements and in decisions on the specific sites of such proposals. The ability of those people to put their case or to seek redress thereafter must not be watered down in any way.

I am concerned about the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead about the lack of what lawyers would call “equality of arms” that arises when a small local authority, on the one hand, seeks to deal with extremely wealthy multinational companies on the other. The issue of fairness needs to be addressed by the Government, and the Opposition would be more than happy to co-operate with them and to look at ways in which local authorities can be enabled to carry out their functions on behalf of their residents without any kind of intimidation or hindrance.

Another crucial point is the means by which we can ensure that help and assistance are channelled swiftly and effectively to those concerned. My hon. Friend referred to the observations made by our right hon. Friend the leader of the Opposition about the desirability of having a single Minister to deal with such incidents. Following that logic, such a Minister should have a dedicated small team and budget. My right hon. Friend was right when he said that two years ago, and events since—the Minister has personal experience of flooding in his constituency—have reinforced the need for such a Minister. In the past, I encountered difficulties when I dealt with people with wide, cross-departmental responsibilities, so it is important that someone is empowered to take decisions, get things done, and to push through the logjams that we have all encountered in such instances. I hope that the Government look seriously at those suggestions. Again, in a spirit of co-operation, the Opposition are more than happy to work with them to find a constructive way forward and to achieve the single, joined-up focus that is necessary.

Significant points were made on the question of resilience funding. There is serious concern that the importance of resilience in civil emergencies is perhaps not as widely recognised as the importance of resilience to, for example, the terrorist threat. Many people who work with the fire and rescue authorities are concerned that, historically, resilience funding for their operations has not been as generous, or as reflective of the need to acquire new and technologically advanced equipment such as the high-velocity pumps that were mentioned, as the support given by the Home Office to police authorities. The difference in grant settlements for police authorities and for fire and rescue authorities in the same areas in recent years, including this year, tends to reinforce that point.

Does my hon. Friend accept that there might be a connection between the civilian and terrorist threat? My constituents are deeply concerned about the terrorist risk to plants near them, and rightly so, because one such plant was bombed by the IRA in the 1980s.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know well the plants to which he referred. We have such plants in the London part of the Thames Gateway. There is a large number of plants in civilian hands, and the terrorist threat as well as the ordinary civil emergency risk must be taken into account.

Within the existing funding envelope, I hope that we can look at a more sensible allocation of resources. I also hope that any changes to the planning regime will take those issues on board. We need an inherent scientific knowledge of risk in operations of this kind but sadly it is necessary, given the world in which we live, to look at the broader issues too, to ensure that communities that neighbour essential but inevitably risky developments are made safe. The remaining issues have been well rehearsed by my hon. and right hon. Friends, but I shall conclude by saying something on the importance of looking at the PFOS problem. Many people in the fire and rescue services have raised the issue with me in recent years, and I agree with the points made by the hon. Member for North Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats. The official Opposition support the need for greater clarity on the risks of PFOS. What is the position regarding its future use? We wish to ensure that those concerns are allayed, so I hope that Minister will address that and the other significant issues that have been raised in the debate.

The hour and a half that is allocated for this kind of debate sometimes seems daunting but, invariably, I get only 10 or 11 minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. May I first wish everybody a happy new year and congratulate the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on securing the debate? He has put his points across with great passion and his experience as a firefighter has shown through in the debate. In the time available, I shall try to deal with as many of the questions as I can before coming back to what I think is the key point regarding regeneration in that part of Hemel Hempstead and the support for people in and around the affected communities in Buncefield.

The hon. Gentleman got across very well the scale of the explosions and the consequential impact on the local community—people, young and old. I join him in paying tribute to the work of all the emergency services and the fire and rescue service in particular. He mentioned the new dimension equipment and, in particular, the high-volume pumps, which made a huge difference. They have made a massive difference across the country in a range of incidents, not only the Buncefield fire, but the recent flooding. He mentioned his local authority, Dacorum, which, with a range of agencies, including the Government, has done very constructive work over the past two years. I will say a little about some of that work.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned public confidence in the inquiry. Lord Newton is a very well respected former Minister in the Thatcher Government and is doing a good job in the inquiry. The issue of a public inquiry was raised by a few hon. Members, but I must say that a public inquiry might well have taken much longer.

It is worth noting some of the local comments as well. Just a few weeks ago, in December, a report from the Buncefield community taskforce said:

“The Buncefield Investigation Board, tasked with finding out what happened and why at Buncefield, has been keen to engage local people in a variety of ways.”

It is important to say for balance that some good work has taken place in involving local communities.

rose—

I will give way, but just once, because I want to make some headway on a number of points that hon. Members have made.

I thank the Minister for being so generous; I am conscious of the time. There is no criticism whatever from me or any other Opposition Member of the way in which Lord Newton of Braintree has handled the inquiry. He has done an absolutely fantastic job, but as I have said before publicly with him, his hands are tied behind his back by the remit that he has been given. The public inquiry on which the then Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), and I were negotiating was one similar to the Marchioness inquiry, which was very short, very robust and very quick. An inquiry like that would not have affected the prosecutions that this inquiry may involve.

I am not in any way suggesting that the hon. Gentleman is criticising Lord Newton or the way in which he has been handling the inquiry. I wish to ensure that that is noted during the debate.

The hon. Gentleman referred to a farmer in the area and calves that have been born on his farm. As I understand it, DEFRA’s veterinary agency is looking into that. I have no further, more detailed information than that, but I know that it is taking a close look at that.

PFOS was mentioned by a number of hon. Members. PFOS is voluntarily being phased out at present, and I should like to get it on the record that the public may see foam being used, but PFOS is present only in the older stocks of foam. It is important that people are aware of that. I appreciate that hon. Members have asked more detailed questions about PFOS, to which I will ensure that there are written responses.

Giving a specific Minister responsibility was an underlying theme in the debate. In dealing with flooding in Gloucestershire, I have been dealing with a number of Departments—whether the Department for Transport in relation to damage to roads, people in my own Department, such as my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, who has responsibility for recovery from flooding, or other Ministers, such as those with responsibility for regional development agencies. I hear what hon. Members have to say on this issue and the Cabinet Office is considering it, but the most important principle is to have joined-up work happening across Departments, because even if a specific Minister has responsibility, they and their Department will not necessarily have all the qualities required to get the best out of this. This is not just about Ministers either, but about inter-agency working at official level in Departments and about how we work better with local agencies.

Insurance was mentioned. I am pleased to say that there has been some progress with regard to those who have applied for cover. I understand that 75 per cent. of those who suffered damage have now had all the repairs carried out to their homes. A further 11 per cent. have had most carried out, but 14 per cent. still need repairs to be undertaken on their properties.

That is not right.

I am happy to enter into correspondence with the hon. Gentleman—in fact, not just correspondence. The Minister for Local Government is keen to meet him to take up some of these issues, particularly those affecting the hon. Gentleman’s local authority, Dacorum. I am sure that he would welcome such a meeting and will ensure that it happens soon.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned, when talking about his local authority, the capacity to deal with oil companies, decisions about revocations and whether it should be the Government’s role and responsibility to make those decisions. The Government have a role in the appeal process, but it is right for local authorities to be making those decisions on the ground. I would be interested to hear more—I know that the Minister for Local Government will be—about some of the capacity issues that Dacorum has had with regard to being able to use its own officers and its dealings on the ground. However, I think that all hon. Members would agree that it is important for local representatives and local communities to have their say with their local authorities when such decisions are made.

The hon. Gentleman talked about funding support and nods, winks and commitments that have been made in the past. I should have liked to talk in more detail about the £14 million package, the specialist status that goes with being a housing growth area and the support. The East of England Development Agency is providing more than £4 million as part of that. Very good work is happening locally with Dacorum and the Maylands partnership. We should pay tribute in the debate to the work that has gone on there. As I said, there is £14 million, and there is Bellwin money as well. All that can make a significant difference, but the hon. Gentleman is right: it must go together in a coherent package and the local authority must have the flexibility to use some of those resources in the way that best suits the local area. That is certainly our desire as well.

The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) mentioned the Health and Safety Executive and the role of industry in paying for the inquiry. In response, I can say that it is likely that the HSE and the Environment Agency will seek to recover some costs from industry, much as we seek to recover legal costs from losing parties, but of course that does not compromise the integrity or the independence of the investigation by Lord Newton and his board. The position is very much as one would expect and as has been the case in similar circumstances across the country.

The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) mentioned PFOS. As I said, I will ensure that we provide him with more information in writing. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) asked an interesting question about gold command. I do not know the details of what happened at the time, but my own recent experiences of crises and our experience in government is that gold command usually knows best, and we need to rely on that local expertise. I imagine that that was the case at Buncefield as well.

In conclusion, a great deal has happened, but I hear what the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead—the local Member of Parliament—and other hon. Members have to say. I think that there would be real benefit in having the meeting with the Minister for Local Government and doing that sooner rather than later.

This is a timely debate on the African Development Bank, not least because only last month the 11th replenishment took place in London. At the beginning of December, I had the privilege of spending a week at the bank in Tunis on an internship so, before I start, may I thank Dr. Donald Kaberuka, the President of the African Development Bank, who was more than happy for me to visit for the week? It was a wonderful visit, not least because of Dr. Kaberuka’s marvellous staff, particularly Graham Stegmann, a former Department for International Development employee, who acts as his special adviser and facilitated the visit. I praise, too, our representative, Richard Dewdney, who is doing a sterling job on behalf of DFID. I imagine that, all too often when being sent to such places for three years, people think that nobody is watching, but in the week that I witnessed Richard in action he did a fantastic job, and I should like to put that on the record.

I want to cover three main areas in the short time available. First, I shall briefly explain how the bank is set up. Secondly, I shall review the outcomes of the recent replenishment in London. Thirdly, I will outline some of the challenges that the bank faces in the years to come. The ADB has had a turbulent time since its establishment in 1964. The undoubted low point came when it lost its AAA status in the mid-1990s, having got itself into a tremendous financial muddle. However, since then, it has slowly begun to repair its reputation in recent years and is definitely now on the up under the leadership of the current president. The bank has 53 African or regional members and 24 non-regional members, including the United Kingdom. From a financial perspective, apart from the small, specialist Nigeria trust fund, the bank’s organisational group falls into two principal parts: the ADB, which offers hard loans at commercial rates, rather like any other bank, and the African Development Fund, which was established in 1972 and whose stated aim as the soft loan arm is to reduce poverty in regional member countries via concessional loans that are interest free apart from a small service charge. The fund also offers grants for projects, programmes and technical assistance for studies and capacity-building activities. It is vastly over-subscribed by countries that are eligible to receive funds from it, and at the end of the last replenishment it had an excess demand of some $700 million. In that context, attention in London last month focused on the 11th three-year replenishment by donor countries to the fund.

On 11 December 2007, the ADB deputies, joined by representatives of regional member countries and international development institutions, met in London to decide the size, composition, financing and operational priorities of the 11th replenishment for the period from 2008 to 2010. Financially, it was a success. Overall increases rose by 52 per cent. over the actual funding level during the previous replenishment period covering 2005 to 2007, with 75 per cent. of the total for country allocations, 17.5 per cent. for regional operations and 7.5 per cent. for fragile states.

I give credit to the Government for the UK’s contribution, increasing to some £417 million, which was announced by the Secretary of State during his visit to Tanzania a couple of weeks before the replenishment. Although that symbolic act may have been intended to encourage others—I sense that it may have been a bit too late for that, as I doubt whether budgets could have been changed at the last minute—I am none the less pleased that the Government increased their contribution. In financial terms, the increase equated to some 3.54 billion units of account. The unit of account is bizarre and almost unintelligible: it comes from a portfolio of funds and is basically a political measure so that no one is offended, whether dollars, euros or pounds are used. I am intrigued to know what the Under-Secretary’s view is and whether he thinks that we should get rid of this ridiculous measure so that the numbers that the bank uses are at least more understandable. The increase, when combined with internal resources of 2.06 billion units of account, resulted in overall funding of 5.6 units of account for the three-year period from 2008 to 2010. Hon. Members can see what I mean.

In the December meeting, donors agreed to explore the possibility of making additional contributions. It was agreed that the performance-based allocation method for funding projects would be slightly rejigged to fit in with the output rather than input mantra of the ADF. That is a lesson for our Government and a subject to which I shall return shortly. The meeting was one of great hope for the future of Africa, but equally, and unfortunately, there was disappointment about the lack of progress in previous years. Although poor by western standards, Africa’s economic performance is at its best for decades and hopes for greater, wider and more integrated development are abundant. Unfortunately, despite the improvements of Africa’s monetary fortunes, parts of Africa remain in abject poverty, with inadequate infrastructure to deliver peace, democracy and development in post-independence and, in some cases, war-torn states. I hope that the latest replenishment round will provide an improved financial system that can be utilised by African states and other actors to move towards the achievement of the millennium development goals, which at the moment looks far from certain.

In recent years, the ADB has focused on a period of financial consolidation, which is desperately needed if it is to regain the AAA financial rating that it lost in the dark years of the early 1990s. It is clearly attempting to become an effective development organisation, and that is slowly being achieved by operational reform complemented by a reinforced mandate. Simultaneously, the ADB under the leadership of Dr. Donald Kaberuka has shifted its attention to a sharpened strategic focus whereby positive results are more important than inputs: that is, output rather than input is being used as the measure of success. I encourage the Government to do the same, and I hope that the Department will pick the brains of a former DFID employee, Colin Kirk, the operations evaluation director at the ADB, to see what lessons might be learned.

Hopefully, the new country offices, streamlined operational systems and tighter delivery networks will provide the bank with a new lease of life to deliver development to the poorest people on the continent. The reforms are ambitious and I shall come on to them in a moment. I was impressed both by the openness and commitment shown by the president and his staff and by their determination to implement the changes that must be made if the bank is truly to fulfil its potential. Since the last replenishment, demands by RMCs—regional member countries—for loans and grants have vastly surpassed the ADF’s financial abilities. At the same time, a review of the effectiveness of ADF 10 points to three key areas of change needed to maximise the delivery of ADF 11. First, success should be measured via results-based analysis throughout the operational institution. Secondly, the quality of, and the ability to, deliver all ADF projects before they are put into action should be ensured. I shall return to that in more detail in a moment. Thirdly, the organisation should instil a continuous supervision culture to reduce waste and bureaucracy in projects while enhancing accountability through evaluation. Work on all those changes is being achieved by project harmonisation with RMCs, by effective decentralisation and by the creation of country offices.

ADF 11 sets out three operational objectives for its three-year contract, and seeks to improve infrastructure, governance and regional integration. By tackling those key issues along with the deployment of the ADB as an African development institution with vital links to leaders of RMCs, cross-cutting development issues, such as gender, the environment and climate change can be addressed on an integrated regional scale. It is clear that the bank is determined to move to being much more of a development bank, rather than just an aid organisation. That is a commendable goal, and I should be intrigued to know whether the Under-Secretary shares that aim in respect of his Department.

I want to deal with some of the key issues that face the bank, starting with its location. There is continued controversy over the bank’s temporary location in Tunis. It was originally located in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, but because of problems experienced there it moved to Tunis a few years ago. That location is causing continuing uncertainty, not least among the bank’s staff, as the three buildings occupied by the bank are unsuitable. They are separate buildings—one has to walk from one to the others—as they are former accommodation blocks, built as flats. The temporary location is therefore proving a burden to the bank and causing great unrest.

I should be intrigued to know the Minister’s view. Should the bank move back to Abidjan? Interestingly, a recent BBC report mentioned that peace moves have been made in Abidjan and that the rebels have come together to form a unity Government. Perhaps that could be the start of the bank’s relocation. Issues have also arisen between Anglophones and Francophones, and there is a great debate about where the bank should go. Do we have a view? If not, does the Minister at least accept that it must be decided whether the bank will stay in Tunis or move? The continuing uncertainty is not helping the bank at all.

Another issue on which I should like the Minister’s view is the role of the board of executive directors. It is an 18-member board, consisting of 12 African or regional directors and 6 non-regional directors, the UK sharing a constituency with Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany. Richard Dewdney is carrying out that role for us, and doing it well. The directors play a hands-on role, but there is concern in the bank that 10 per cent. of its administrative costs and efforts are geared towards helping the board. It has been suggested that the board should be more hands-off and trust the president, his vice-presidents and the bank’s senior management team to get on with their job, rather than micro-managing them as it seems to be doing. The directors are proficient at what they do, but I am not convinced that what they do is actually necessary. Perhaps we should move towards a non-executive board, but as the UK is a major donor, I should be intrigued to know the Minister’s view.

The African Development Bank is much smaller than the African section of the World Bank, and its lack of capacity continues to prove a major hurdle in most of the work that it is trying to do. As I mentioned, there was $700 million in excess demand from projects that had sought funding and been approved but simply could not get the money from the fund. One reason why such projects have not been implemented is the bank’s lack of capacity. All too often, money is spent where it is easiest to spend it. When we went to Tunis, for example, we visited some wonderful projects being built right outside the bank’s door, including a new road along the tourist coast, because it is relatively easy to spend money there—it is just down the road from the bank. I am not convinced—and I should like to know the Minister’s view—that that is the best place to spend money from the fund or the bank.

I realise that there are limits by country on how much can be spent, but surely much of the bank’s and the fund’s effort should be directed at the countries that need it most, not necessarily the countries where it is most convenient or easiest to spend money because of the bank’s lack of capacity. There will be no budget increase for the bank’s administrative side in the next year. In fact, it sounds remarkably like the Department for International Development, which will get an awful lot more money to spend on projects, but not necessarily the staff to deliver that greater budget. I am intrigued to know the Minister’s view.

One of the problems with the fund is that we can replenish it only every three years. The only other way for the bank to put money into the fund is to use some of its loan repayments. It is trying to secure greater private sector involvement, but under the current rules, that is limited to 20 per cent. of the capital available. The bank reckons that it will reach that limit within two years. Will the Minister support the bank in raising that limit? Does he support in principle a greater use of the private sector in delivering funds, or does he think that the African Development Bank’s role is not so much to engage with the private sector as to form the glue between sums of private sector money and offer the reassurance that projects will go ahead?

On decentralisation, one of the bank’s big problems is that it is incredibly slow to deliver. Although African countries regard the ADB as their bank and want to use it, they turn to other multilaterals simply because the bank performs too slowly to provide them with funds in time to deliver their projects. The bank is trying to decentralise by setting up country offices—I think that 22 have been set up—but that has caused friction. It will take the political will of the bank’s leadership to ensure that the country offices are empowered. The leadership certainly have the will, but at the moment there is a 20 per cent. staff shortage in the country offices. Once again, it is tempting to set up offices in countries where it is relatively easy to do so, but they are not necessarily the countries that need country offices in the first place.

My hon. Friend mentioned the move from Tunis and the fact that accommodation there was not particularly good. Having visited the African Development Bank a number of times when it was based in Abidjan, I can say that accommodation was equally inadequate there. Given his points about decentralisation, should we not take the opportunity to say that we do not want another big-building headquarters? We want to decentralise, but we want to do so into those countries where development is most needed.

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. My personal view is that it is not for the UK to impose its values on the bank; it is for the bank to make up its own mind about exactly where it wants to be. However, I support the bank in its ambition to decentralise and speed up the process, and it can do so only by setting up country offices. It is pretty clear from my visit, however, that there is a small amount of resistance within the bank. As it begins to specialise—I shall come on to that in a moment—some parts of the bank may feel pressured that their roles will be diminished by the establishment of country offices.

I shall touch on infrastructure before I hand over to the Minister. The bank has identified infrastructure as its comparative advantage. When I spoke to the president, he was clear in his mind that that was where he wanted to specialise, but the bank has yet to make a formal decision. There would be great advantages in such specialisation. The bank has a clear role in bringing Governments together. With some 15 landlocked countries in Africa relying entirely on interconnectedness between countries, the bank can play a strong role in building cross-regional and cross-border infrastructure. It is a key way for the bank to make a major contribution. It has chosen infrastructure because many of its projects have been based on it.

The Minister may recall that at Gleneagles, the UK pledged that 0.56 per cent. of the budget by 2010—or $25 billion—would be spent on infrastructure, yet it was made clear to us in Tunis that to date, organisations such as the infrastructure consortium have been given no idea by DFID how that will be delivered. The year 2010 is not far away, yet detailed plans for how exactly the money will be delivered, in which sectors it will be spent and how it will be accessed have yet to be issued by the Department. I should be grateful if he added some meat to those bones. Not only am I interested to know the answer, but I know that the infrastructure consortium at the African Development Bank would be pleased if he clarified the Department’s position.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) on securing this debate. It is timely; the latest financing discussions for the African Development Fund concluded in London on 11 December last year. Before that, on 27 November, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for International Development, announced a doubling of the United Kingdom’s contribution to the ADF to some £470 million over the next three years. That demonstrates the Government’s determination to fulfil our 2005 Gleneagles promises to double aid to Africa by 2010, and to build African institutions.

I acknowledge the dedication of the hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes to his role. He spent a week at the African Development Bank headquarters in Tunis to get a better understanding of the institution—its strengths, its potential and its challenges. That dedication came over in his contribution.

The ADB has a unique role as a pan-African development institution engaged across the continent. African countries own the majority of its shares, and they play a leading role in managing and guiding the institution. The bank works with other key African institutions, such as the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. It has been given mandates in corporate governance and in infrastructure by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

During the 1980s, through mismanagement, the bank’s relationships with its members and donors came under substantial strain. Resources were reduced and the ADB lost its position as a premier financing institution. Since then, the bank’s president has pursued a strong reform agenda, initially focusing on financial issues and more recently on improving the contribution that the bank makes to development in Africa.

The hon. Gentleman asked for the Department’s perspective on the bank with respect to infrastructure and development. In our opinion, the institution ought to be the premier financing and development institution for Africa. The UK is a strong supporter of President Donald Kaberuka and his efforts to transform the bank. Pledges for the ADF replenishment from us and other donors recognise the success of its reform efforts and provide a foundation for the future. The president has described his objective for the reform programme as moving the bank from being a centralised, process-driven and hierarchical organisation to one that is dynamic, flexible and able to respond better and more quickly to the diverse needs of its clients.

The ADB has made many changes to its systems and processes to increase the number and calibre of its staff and to open country offices, of which there are currently 23. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is still much room for improvement, particularly in ensuring a stronger focus on results. However, there are good grounds for believing that the bank can make a much stronger contribution to tackling poverty in Africa in the coming years. Work is already in hand, and the bank has made a serious effort to articulate results of the aid that it provides to the poorest African countries.

Over the past three years, ADF projects have had a real impact across Africa. Almost 6 million people now have improved access to health services, and more than 40,000 jobs have been created. In the energy sector, ADF projects were able to leverage three times their own resources in co-financing. Overall, more than 700,000 households across Africa have been provided with new or improved access to electricity.

The second electricity project in Mozambique expanded the national grid to rural and peri-urban areas. It provided electricity to nearly 5,000 rural families and to village schools, health clinics and community centres, and it contributed to a fivefold increase in the number of tourist lodges.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about some of the developments in Tunis and of the notion that money may have been spent in the easiest areas. Money is spent according to performance-based allocation mechanisms, which are set out at the beginning of each financial year. It is not actually spent in the easiest way.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the unit of account. I share his perception that it can cause confusion—it certainly does to non-bankers like us. However, the unit of account is based on a basket of the currencies of all member countries of the ADB. All multinational development banks use that mechanism so that financial issues in one country—for example, depreciation of the US dollar—do not affect the financial balance sheet of the bank, as might be the case if it was based on one currency.

I turn to some of the comparative advantages of the ADB. The bank is concentrating its efforts on assisting countries and supporting regional growth. Infrastructure is the key; indeed, the hon. Gentleman focused on it. The UN Economic Commission for Africa estimated that Africa needs to spend an additional $20 million a year on infrastructure between now and 2015. Given the scale of the challenge, it is essential that the bank works with other development partners to help African countries and regions to prioritise infrastructure projects that will unlock and sustain growth.

Africa’s future economic growth will depend on linking its internal markets to create more sustainable regional markets, as well as connecting to the global economy. Regional integration is the only way forward for Africa’s domestic markets, limited as most are by small populations and low incomes. Regional integration provides economies of scale, stronger competition and more domestic and foreign investment. I believe that the ADB is well placed to help connect and increase Africa’s markets.

I was pleased that it was agreed that regional integration should be a key factor over the next three years, with extra resources being allocated. About a quarter of the resources for the next three years will be used in that way. More generally, the ADF 11 negotiations that were concluded in December were positive for the bank. Donors agreed to provide a record level of support. Over the next three years, the total resources available to the bank will reach $8.9 billion, an increase of more than 50 per cent. over the previous period.

The new resources will help to fund important innovations, most significantly a new fragile states facility. Of total resources, 7.5 per cent.—$665 million—will be provided to post-conflict countries, including for assistance in arrears clearance. We all know of the special challenges of fragile states—weak institutions, dysfunctional governance structures, poor policies and the inability to provide basic services. They undermine economic growth, deepen poverty and make countries vulnerable to natural disasters. The allocation of 75 per cent. of resources—about $6.7 billion—will be based on the performance of African countries, to ensure that the resources are used effectively and to encourage good performance and accountability in each country. The replenishment also agreed that the bank would place more emphasis on critical cross-cutting objectives, including the promotion of gender equity, environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation and private sector development.

Having worked opposite the African Development Bank for a year, I am less convinced of its efficiencies. The outputs—the millennium development goals—are rightly the concern of the Minister’s Department. How, roughly, would he attribute the input from the bank to the outputs? Is the bank’s input 10 per cent., or is it nearer 50 per cent.? How important is what he has called a premier institution in that mix, when delivering the millennium development goals?

We want the bank to become a premier institution. I shall speak about the millennium development goals a little later; the bank has a crucial role in helping to achieve them.

As we heard, in February 2003 the bank was temporarily relocated to Tunis, following the war in Côte d’Ivoire. Discussions are under way for the bank to return to Abidjan, but that will not happen without substantial improvements in security and the physical conditions required for a functioning bank. At the bank’s annual meeting in May, a review will take place of how far forward the situation has moved in Abidjan, with a view to considering relocation.

I turn to the board of directors. In the past, the board—it is a resident board—has not worked as effectively as it might. Several shareholders have considered the option of moving to a non-resident board. That is certainly something to consider in the longer term. A non-resident board would reduce the problems of micro-management and the costs of running the board. In the immediate short term, we need to ensure that the board continues to add value and not to micro-manage. The recent performance of the new board, mostly appointed in 2007, has been encouraging.

There are two other critical areas—climate change and the capital situation of the bank. Although Africa bears little blame for climate change, it will be the first to suffer its effects. The bank’s board is considering the problem, with our encouragement. On capital, we have been in discussions with the bank about how it can make better use of its resources for development purposes. At the 2007 annual meetings in Shanghai the president committed the bank to reviewing its capital position in time to put recommendations to governors at the 2008 annual meetings.

As hon. Members will see from the monitor, the House is debating the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and the withdrawal of trade union rights from the Prison Officers Association, and the debate in this Chamber is about police pay, so it is clearly a day for dealing with contentious political matters. I understand that there will be a Division in 15 minutes, before which I shall make a brief introduction.

I am aware that a number of Members on both sides of the House put their names forward for this debate—I was fortunate enough to have my name pulled out of the hat to start the debate—and that demonstrates the seriousness of the concerns over police pay on both sides of the House. I have taken an interest in police matters for a number of years, largely because my brother was a police officer for 30 years—from police cadet to chief superintendent. He retired a number of years ago. I therefore have an understanding of the job. However, I am also the secretary of the Justice trade unionist group, which brings together all unions whose members work in the justice system. Although the Police Federation is not a trade union and therefore not a formal member of the group, it regularly sends us observers to keep us informed on policing issues and, more recently, on the development of negotiations on the latest pay settlement.

The Justice trade unionist group has supported individual police officers and the Police Federation in expressing its deep concern over the unilateral imposition of the latest pay settlement by the Government. It also supported the federation’s concern over the deferment of the pay award from the regular date of 1 September to 1 December. This debate therefore takes place in a climate of considerable concern in the House and anger among serving police officers and their families about the Government’s intervention in this year’s pay settlement. That anger has been expressed in correspondence that has filled Members’ mail bags in recent weeks from long-serving police officers, their families, retired officers and trade union officials.

My hon. Friend referred to the scale of concern. I am sure that my e-mail inbox is similar to others. Concerns over police pay have been the fifth most frequently expressed to me over the past 10 years—debt and climate change were among the top-four issues. The key point that comes out of the many dozens of e-mails that I have received is that this is about trust, although there is also talk about recruitment, retention and morale. What is the meaning, if there is still one, of binding arbitration if neither side is bound by it? Surely, we must tackle that before anything else. In a typically robust performance in Question Time, the Prime Minister rightly pointed out our strong record on inflation and how it is under control. If that is so, why are we picking a fight over £30 million?

It is a matter of trust, which has been reflected in statements by the chair of the Police Federation, Jan Berry, to the Home Affairs Committee—I am grateful to the Chair of that Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), for being present for this debate—and she referred to the

“anger and discontent of police officers who have been betrayed by the Government”.

In another statement on this issue of trust, she said that

“by not honouring the deal, the Home Secretary has betrayed the trust of all UK police officers”.

That is how strongly the representatives of serving police officers feel. However, it is not only police officers who are concerned, but chief police officers. Ken Jones, who is president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, stated:

“I would not underestimate the tensions and feelings people have in terms of feeling let down. Cops”—

his word, not mine—

“are pretty exercised and angry over this”.

And not just serving police or chief police officers are concerned; employers are also concerned. I am interested in some of the statements made by the employers’ side of the joint negotiating body and representatives.

I concur totally with what the hon. Gentleman has been saying about the volume of e-mails that we have all received on this issue. From my perspective, it was the No. 1 issue on which I received e-mails and letters last year. However, not only police officers are concerned; many of my constituents, who have nothing to do with the police, are equally outraged about what they feel is a betrayal over police pay.

The anger and concerns are widespread. However, it is rare, in a breakdown in industrial relations, that the employers’ side also makes representations on behalf of the principle of adherence to a deal. The chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Len Duvall, wrote to the Home Secretary in a letter that was unanimously agreed by the MPA—again, cross-party. The letter stated that

“the government has not acted fairly regarding arbitration for this annual pay award”—

the point that my hon. Friend made. It continued:

“This has led to an unacceptable relationship between employer and employee. The situation has led to needless antagonism.”

The employers’ side—let alone the employees’ side—feels that it is undermining relationships within the service. In my view, that is impacting upon morale. Our concern must be over the delivery of service.

The Home Affairs Committee unanimously—again, cross-party—agreed to write to the Home Secretary. That letter, written by my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the Committee, stated:

“We feel that it is incumbent on the government to honour the recommendations of the independent tribunal”—

this refers back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor)—

“This is a question of trust. We are therefore unanimous in asking you to change your mind and accept the recommendations in full.”

It is extraordinary to have that broad range of virtually unanimous opinion in condemnation of a Government’s actions and a call for the Government and, in particular, the Home Secretary to act.

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on from the issue of morale, does he accept that policing in this country is conducted with, and through, public consent? The police do not walk around with guns and batons flying. That requires a tremendous amount of good will from the police, which in turn requires a high level of police morale. The Government are putting that and the whole basis of policing in this country at risk for a measly £30 million. Can that be right?

All of us who have been involved in policing affairs over the past 30 years, particularly in the 1970s and ’80s, have accepted how remarkably policing in this country has been transformed as a result of that consent—whether it involved communities seeking reforms in the police, their attitudes and delivery of their service or the creative response from the police themselves. On that basis, we thought that we were moving forward—indeed, I believe that we have moved forward considerably—but this breakdown in trust threatens those gains. That is a running theme in all of the comments and representations received on this matter.

Let us talk about why that breakdown has occurred. Let us be specific: it is a breakdown in trust in the Government and in the Home Secretary in particular. There are straightforward answers. As my hon. Friend said, the Government have reneged on a system of settling police pay awards that has existed and worked effectively for almost 30 years. It came as a shock that this of all Governments have intervened to undermine the system, which has worked so effectively. On that basis, serving police officers, their representatives, and others now, have interpreted the Government’s move as an act of bad faith.

I was a member of the Greater London council in the early 1980s, but I remember how, in the late 1970s, when I was a trade union official, the system came about because of concerns that police pay had fallen behind the general development of pay in this country. Some Members will recall the recruitment and retention problems in particular forces and across the board. As a result, the Edmund-Davies inquiry was established under a Labour Government—the Callaghan Administration—to resolve the problem of police pay once and for all, taking the negotiation of police pay out of a process of disharmony to try to establish an objective system that would enable us to increase morale and improve recruitment and retention overall.

At that time, there was a recognition—cross-party recognition, I think—that an objective system was needed to set police pay. We developed an index; we derived an indexation process; 1 September became an annual settlement date; and each year we went through—yes—negotiations, but negotiations based upon the parameters of the index, and, even after arbitration, the assurance that the agreement would be honoured. It provided fair settlements and a generally accepted fair system.

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that, as a result of the issue, we could face the same recruitment and retention problem once more? Is he aware, as I am, being a serving part-time special constable, that large numbers of experienced and trained officers are seeking employment in Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth states, where they feel that they will be much better treated?

I shall address that matter later, but there is an air of complacency that, just because there are a large number of applicants for individual vacancies currently, the situation will go on for ever. There is also complacency about the quality of recruitment being maintained for ever.

For me, and generally for the people involved in the police in this country, the Edmund-Davies process was acceptable, because it recognised that the police were unlike other workers: they did not have the right to strike, and therefore they did not have the same negotiating powers as others. The process was transparent, and it had an element of independence due to arbitration. On that basis, generally, it was—yes, I use the word again—trusted. We know what has happened this year. The process started as usual, and the Police Federation was considering an initial claim of 3.94 per cent.

I was describing what has happened in this year’s negotiations. As I said, the process operated as usual. The federation and the staff side were looking for a settlement of 3.94 per cent., which was slightly inflated to take into account changes in the index. The employers’ side wanted a settlement of 2.325 per cent., so the matter was referred to conciliation, as is often the case. There was a failure to reach agreement, so the negotiations went to arbitration.

Arbitration recommended 2.5 per cent., payable from 1 September in the normal manner. Arbitration is not binding on the Home Secretary, but in the history of the process, since its foundation 30 years ago, no Home Secretary has refused to honour a recommended award. There lies the problem. The cause of anger is the Home Secretary’s unilateral intervention, refusing to pay the full award on 1 September and deferring the matter until 1 December. Many found that extraordinary and incomprehensible, and certainly many found it reprehensible.

Why did the Home Secretary make that intervention? It was not about saving money. We are assured that police authorities have already budgeted for the award, and we know from statements made by the employers’ side that that is exactly the case. On 18 December, the Home Affairs Committee took evidence on police pay from Mr. Steve Green, the chief constable of the Nottinghamshire police. He advised the Committee that he could have paid the full award without budgetary difficulty and that the money for it was contained in his budget. We have heard the same from the Metropolitan Police Authority and other police authorities around the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. What he has just said was exactly the case in respect of the Gloucestershire police authority. It had allowed for 2.9 per cent., so 2.5 per cent. was a quite acceptable and—dare I say?—conservative judgment in its implications. I do not understand the notion, in much of the correspondence that has come to MPs, about how important the £40 million saved will be to police authorities.

It is interesting that the Association of Chief Police Officers said in its statement that it found the award fair, affordable and budgeted for. Therefore, this is not about saving money. Is it about diverting resources away from other areas? No, the award does not come at the cost of existing plans to recruit more officers, as some Ministers and others have alleged. Chief constables have denied that the resources saved will be used on further recruitment. It is not part of any manpower planning process and is not likely to be. Therefore, what is the main reason? The Prime Minister explained it to the Liaison Committee before Christmas:

“It is to bear down on inflation in our national economy so that we do not have the problems that we cannot react to global financial conditions by cutting interest rates at a time when inflation is rising.”

It is, he said,

“part of the national interest.”

However, there are problems with this argument, including the amount in question. We are talking about £30 million to £40 million. I fail to understand how that amount of money, which is relatively trivial in the overall Government budget, can have the dramatic effect of increasing inflationary pressure.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very important subject and for relying on the evidence given by the Select Committee. He makes a point about saving money. Ministers have suggested that that money could be used to recruit x number of additional police officers. Does he not agree that that is virtual-reality stuff? We will not get additional police officers from that £34 million. It is money that has already been budgeted for that should be paid out.

I am not aware of any police authority that will use that money for large-scale additional recruitment. I have been involved in police budgeting for nearly 25 years. I was the chief executive of the Association of London Authorities and the Association of London Government who negotiated the police settlement with the Metropolitan Police and central Government. From my experience and from police authority reports, it looks as though any savings will be transferred into balances. They may be used in future years, but most probably to cushion potential problems, such as declines in grants from the Government. Therefore, this is not about substituting police pay for police officers.

I have to say as an aside that, if the Prime Minister is concerned about inflationary pressures and he identifies £30 million to £40 million as having a major inflationary impact, I am amazed that he made no comment over the Christmas period about City bonuses, which have ranged from £6 billion to £13 billion annually over the past few years. They are having an inflationary impact on our economy, particularly in London and the south-east.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on this important debate. I am sure that he shares my view that it is obscene for individuals to receive bonuses of £50 million and £60 million each, as was reported in the press just before Christmas. That distorts not just house prices in the south-east, but society as well.

It puts into context the concerns that have been raised by Government about the inflationary pressures of this relatively trivial amount, and it demonstrates a misjudgment by the Prime Minister about the nature of the inflationary pressures for the future.

We all realise that the inflationary pressures are a red herring. My understanding is that, in Scotland, the police have been given their full pay award. I presume that the Scottish Parliament is equally concerned about inflationary pressures.

Let me not incite the Scottish debate at this stage; others may want to do so at a later stage.

Another argument is that paying the award on 1 September would set a precedent and open the floodgates for other public sector claims. To be frank, the precedent was set anyway. Some hon. Members will remember that the decision was made last June or July to give the Army its full pay settlement and not stage or defer it in this way. The Prime Minister, then the Chancellor, sought to defer the payment to the Army, but the then Prime Minister intervened and resisted attempts by the Treasury to defer that payment. Therefore, there is a precedent. Will it open the floodgates? Other public servants have either settled or have had a pay award imposed upon them. This pay round has neared its end and is unlikely to incite others to make extortionate pay demands, as some Ministers have suggested.

As regards the contribution to inflation, I do not think that the evidence bears out the argument that public sector pay incites inflationary pressures. A report by an independent body was published last year for the Council of Civil Service Unions. It drew attention to the fact that wages follow inflation and not the other way round. It cast doubt on whether public pay has any significant impact on inflation. No link was identified between public sector pay demands and inflation in the wider economy. In fact, it drew upon evidence from the Bank of England, which said that it would be concerned about inflationary pressure only if earnings across the economy exceeded 4 per cent.

Given the correct and cogent argument that the hon. Gentleman is making, does he feel that the Scottish Government have done the right thing in awarding the police their full pay award, as was expected throughout the UK?

I do not want to incite a Scottish debate on the matter. This is not a comment on Scotland, but when arbitration and a settled system of negotiation has worked well for nearly 30 years, I would expect anyone who wants future industrial relations in this country to be harmonious to abide by that process and therefore to honour agreements and arbitration.

I can quote other sources on inflationary pressures. The Senior Salaries Review Body drew upon the evidence provided by the Bank of England that said that inflationary pressures from the public sector would need to be taken into account only if they went over 4 per cent. The Government’s own Office for National Statistics demonstrated that inflationary pressures at the moment do not come from pay but from increasing housing costs, petrol and oil price rises and the increasing cost of household goods, energy and food. It does not cite increases in public pay itself. It is therefore surprising that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have tried to argue that inflationary pressure is coming from the relatively trivial sum of £30 million, saved from a deferred police pay settlement.

With a background in economics, I have to say that there is another argument. When we are looking at a downturn, we should not be looking at depressing demand. When we are looking at a prospect of increased unemployment and an unwillingness to spend because of high levels of personal debt and insolvencies, what is needed is steady, consistent and reasonable wage settlements that assist the economy by maintaining consistent demand within the economy.

The problem of the coming period is not the inflationary but the deflationary pressures that might arise. Several of us feel that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others might be fighting the battles of yesteryear, rather than those of this year, which is one of deflation, not inflation.

Why have the Government acted in this way? What are the real reasons for their actions? What evidence and sources can we draw on? One source is a leaked memo from an adviser to the Home Secretary entitled “Police Pay—The End Game”, which was cited in the press some time ago. It was written by Mr. Stephen Kershaw, the director of the police reform and resources directorate, on 29 June. He wrote:

“Asking the Treasury to let us do so”—

that is, pay the full award—

“risks damaging our bid for significant extra money for counter-terrorism. There is no real business case for a generous pay rise for the police this year.”

On the evidence of that memo, serving police officers have been caught up in negotiations between the Home Secretary and the Treasury about the Home Office budget. In such instances, we would normally expect the Prime Minister to intervene as an arbiter to ensure fair play, consistency in Government policy and the full payment of the arbitration award.

The other evidence on which we can draw is the attitude of the Government themselves—we can draw on briefings and statements from Ministers and the parliamentary Labour party office to find out what has happened to their attitude to police pay. The argument in those briefings and statements is that the police are paid well enough and have, in fact, done too well in recent years, and reference is made to their having received wage increases of 39 per cent. over the past 10 years. I have looked in detail at those figures, however, and they are misleading. They refer to increases in basic pay, not average increases. Annual surveys of housing and employment show that serving police officers and sergeants have suffered a detriment in recent years of anything up to 16 per cent.

Most of us can explain anecdotally what has happened to the ability of serving police officers in our constituencies to achieve a decent standard of living. I am of course proud of what the Government have done to improve wages, but serving police officers in my constituency will not get into the housing market, because the average price of a home is anything between six and 10 times their salaries. Many of them are therefore unable to live in the very communities that they seek to serve.

The Government have also argued that recruitment is not a problem, so why should they pay the police the full award? They argue that there are six applicants for every job, but that does not recognise our long-term recruitment needs, the need for good-quality, well-motivated recruits or the fact that we need to maintain morale to retain decent staff.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. As he rightly said, the issue is not recruitment, but retention. A lot of good police officers who have served for many years have got to the end of their tether and now want to find other forms of employment, because they no longer feel valued. If we lose those experienced officers, we will have to recruit and train new officers, and a big cost is associated with that. Retention is a big issue in all police forces.

That is a valid point, and the Government must take on board the fact that retention is largely based on people’s morale, how they feel about the job and how they are treated by their employer. Anything that undermines that morale or breaks the relationship of trust between employee and employer undermines our ability to retain staff in the jobs that we need them to do.

The real reason for what has happened over the past six months is that serving police officers have been caught up in what we learned this week is the Prime Minister’s strategy of imposing a long-term pay policy on the public sector. He decided to send an early message to the police, and thereby to the Prison Officers Association, the Public and Commercial Services Union and all the other trade unions in the public sector, that a three-year pay cycle and pay policy would be imposed on them. There is a calculated strategy of imposing a pay policy by taking on the police first. That fits in with the political strategy.

It has been calculated that the only way to cope with the economic downturn that we now face is to reduce public expenditure and public sector pay in the hope that we can get the economic cycle back in sync with the electoral cycle. The strategy is this: control wages in 2008, attempt to stabilise the economy in 2009 and hope that there are signs of growth in time for an election in 2010. That is a flawed strategy in a period when we have deflation, rather than inflation; it will alienate people at the beginning of the cycle, and we will never restore their morale and confidence. Police officers rightly feel that they have become political footballs in a much larger long-term political strategy. It is no coincidence that this dispute has occurred at the same time as the three-year wage settlement strategy has been announced.

There is a cost to the Government’s strategy. It will alienate a body of public servants who have served the Government well by reducing crime, delivering public safety and being creative and flexible in responding to the policies that the Government have introduced. The Government’s strategy has angered officers who regularly put themselves in harm’s way to protect our community and it is undermining morale, destroying trust and creating anger where we should have a sympathetic response.

There has been much talk over the past year about the military covenant between the Government and those in the military who serve us, but there is another covenant: the policing covenant. Police officers accept that they will have to put themselves in danger on occasion. They present themselves on duty whenever they are ordered to, and there are restrictions on their private lives and on their families. They are prevented by law from going on strike and joining a trade union, and they are accountable for their actions both on duty and off. In return, the covenant says that the Government should treat those officers fairly when it comes to their pay and conditions and should respect their views. Successive Governments have abided by that covenant over the past 30 years, and it has been widely supported in the community. As a result of the Government’s intervention in this pay round, however, the covenant has been broken and put at risk. If we are not careful, the whole system could sustain long-term damage.

I sought this debate to urge the Government to think again. It is not too late to reopen the dialogue with the representatives of the Police Federation and others, and there may be an alternative approach. Let me make this offer for the Justice trade unionist group: we are willing to offer our good offices and our services to bring all sides together to discuss the opportunities for compromise, so that we can overcome the problem and seek a way forward. I appeal to the Government to take up that offer in the best interests of police officers, the police service and their own standing. I ask them not to put at risk the good will of the police service. Even at this late stage, they should show some understanding, concern and creativity and work with us—if necessary, on a cross-party basis—to resolve the problem that we face.

rose—

Order. Colleagues who catch my eye might wish to note that the winding-up speeches must now start at 3.45 pm.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on his good fortune in securing this debate and on the moderate way in which he made his case. Before Christmas, he and I, along with half a dozen colleagues, met the Police Federation, and we agreed to request this debate. I am therefore delighted that his name came out of the hat. When the Minister responds, I hope that he will not use the abundance-of-recruits argument as a defence. If that argument were applied to ministerial salaries, he might find his standard of living somewhat depressed.

In Hampshire, there is real anger with the Government. The chairman of the Hampshire branch of the Police Federation wrote to me on 17 December:

“I cannot explain to you the anger and sense of betrayal that the 3700 officers I represent are expressing at the moment as a result of the decision of Jacqui Smith. The manner in which the Home Secretary has managed this whole process is being seen as underhand and disingenuous…Never before has a Home Secretary reneged on an agreed pay award.”

He went on to refer to

“the principle of honouring the findings of the independent tribunal which the staff associations agreed to be bound by.”

As a former member of the police parliamentary scheme, I have seen at first hand what officers do, and I believe that they are entitled to every penny of the proposed increase. When Parliament removes from employees a right that is available to nearly everyone else, it must ensure that those employees are fairly dealt with by their employer, particularly if the employer is the Government, who are in turn accountable to the House of Commons.

Let us examine briefly the arguments deployed against paying the settlement in full. The Government Departments on the official side said that they did not support the proposal on the grounds that

“the offer will not produce an outcome consistent with the UK government objectives including achievement of the CPI inflation target of 2 per cent. and affordable and sustainable pay awards.”

However, there are exceptions to the 1.9 to 2 per cent. ruling. Hospital doctors will get a flat £1,000, worth 3 per cent. for the newly recruited. Permanent secretaries are going to get a flat 2 per cent. next month. Larger rises of 9.2 per cent., as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington mentioned, were awarded to about 13,000 of Britain’s lowest paid squaddies, in a move applauded by military chiefs, who had campaigned for that. A further 6,000 members of the armed forces will benefit from rises of more than 6 per cent. All other ranks and officers will get a 3.3 per cent. increase, with the exception of the most senior. I mention that not to begrudge those groups their increases, but simply to make the point that 1.9 per cent. is not a hard and fast rule, and there have been many exceptions.

The other leg of the argument is the consumer prices index inflation target. The impact on next year’s council tax bills will be exactly the same, whether the payment is staged or not. It is necessary to meet the full increase, so there will be no saving in the impact on the retail prices index. Nor does staging affect the headline rate, which remains the same; it just becomes the headline a few months later. Nor will this year’s council tax bill be reduced retrospectively by any saving. The money will simply be spent on something else. As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said, most authorities have pencilled in the increase, and have the resources to pay it, so the argument that somehow it would push up costs does not hold water. If it is true that there was a trade-off in the public expenditure negotiations along the lines of “If you, the Home Office, show restraint on pay, we will give you extra money and another part of your bid,” that blows out of the water any deflationary argument that the Government might deploy.

We are essentially talking about inflationary pressure. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the unexpected extra £3 billion that the Chancellor is pulling in from fuel duty is a greater inflationary pressure on society than the £30 million he might give to police in England and Wales?

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point: the rise in the fuel price has given the Chancellor money for which he did not budget, so to that extent resources are available that he can deploy in that context, with little impact on his original forecast. I think that the Government have the worst of both worlds. They have betrayed an important group of employees for zero impact on inflation.

My final point is that the Government have made a political mistake. Previous Home Secretaries—particularly the somewhat larger ones—would have had a confrontation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and would not have agreed to the demand to stage. That would then have escalated into the Cabinet. At that point I suspect that Tony Blair and the Cabinet would have sided with the Home Secretary; the increase would have gone through and the Government would have avoided the pickle that they are in. We are paying the price for the Prime Minister still believing that he is Chancellor, and the absence of substantial counterweights in the Cabinet. My view is that if the present Home Secretary had dug in her heels and threatened to resign over this she would have won. She would have been unsackable in the first few weeks after her appointment had she made an issue out of it. The Government have made a political and economic mistake that I believe they will live to regret.

I have three observations to make. I have rehearsed with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), whom I again congratulate, the issue of police authorities. One would have thought that they at least would have been among the happier stakeholders in this apparently disastrous decision, yet they must now deal with very unhappy—not to use stronger terms—police forces.

My first substantive point is that, from what was happening last year, when I had the opportunity to chair a meeting with the Police Federation, like my hon. Friend this year—it is good to hear that other hon. Members were able to get to the meeting—and given that it appeared then that confrontation was going to arise, I do not understand how this was not a disaster waiting to happen. To be fair to the fed, which is fairly well known as a pretty tough negotiator, it made it abundantly clear to those of us who attended the meeting a year ago that it was prepared to consider new structures on pay. Pensions and conditions were a different matter, but pay was on the agenda. I know that the Government set up the Booth inquiry to consider how to start the process, but, as we have learned from today’s debate in the House, kicking away the legs of the stool on which we are basing the edifice of how the negotiations are going to proceed will not lead, as my hon. Friend said, to an overwhelming feeling of trust. I am worried that we are not in a good environment in which to start to get things right for next year—because the negotiations for next year’s pay settlement are about to start, and my right hon. Friend the Minister may wish to say something about that. I worry that we have caused immense damage.

My second point is that if the e-mails, letters, phone calls and individual meetings that I have had are anything to go by, people are very angry. Hon. Members who have worked in the public sector sometimes underestimate the reaction of the public sector; we expect it to be able to take such things. The reaction has been such that it will take at least a generation of police officers—notwithstanding what may come out of future arrangements—to rebuild trust. It is easy to make party political points, and I will make points about the Government, but this is not just about party politics; it is about people’s general distress about the political process.

I apologise for not being present at the debate from its beginning, but I was in the main Chamber, where an amendment that I had tabled was to be debated. My hon. Friend mentioned his e-mails and letters, and I think that many other hon. Members have had the same experience. Can he think of another occasion when he has had so many communications from serving police officers? I cannot.

Not only can I not think of a comparable occasion involving police officers; I cannot even think of a parallel with teachers, health workers or others in the public sector, such as probation officers, to mention a category relevant to criminal justice, when there has been such a depth of anger in the reaction to what is seen as a great injustice.

I can comment on recruitment, because—I declare an interest in this respect—for the past two years and more my son has been trying, in two different police areas, to enter the police force. It is not a substantive matter for this debate, but it is unjust to use the idea that people want to join the police, so the pay can be deflated. I could spend a long time explaining some other issues in relation to that process, but it is wrong to use that argument to justify keeping people’s pay down. Given the age profile of the police force at the moment, we need lots of new recruits, and it will not do us any good to try to depress pay, let alone to make it apparently less worth while entering such an important job, which we would be silly not to value greatly.

My final point is about something that my chief constable said to me last week; I hope that he does not mind me talking about it. He said that the way in which the police negotiating board has operated recently is very disappointing. Arbitration might be the appropriate backstop, but if it is entered into as it was in this situation, and as it has been before, as being the only way forward, and then the Government decide not to meet the arbitration award in full, there is much feeling that the whole area of pay negotiation is entirely wrong. Given what I have been told about the process and the police negotiation body, about the lack of preparation and unwillingness to listen to individual police authorities, I worry that this was a disaster waiting to happen. It is not appropriate for the Government, as a party to arbitration, to fail to fulfil the arbitration process. There are a number of issues to consider, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will give us some sense that even if we got it wrong this year, things will be improved in the future. Otherwise, there will be even more hurt, and that is unacceptable.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this important debate. I shall keep my comments brief, because I know that hon. Friends and other colleagues wish to speak.

May I begin by praising Shrewsbury police for their tremendous work? I have always found them to be extremely dedicated and hard-working. Shropshire is a rural community and, as many hon. Members will know, it is not easy to police rural areas, because there is a large area to cover. Shropshire police are extremely courageous and professional. One of the worst things to happen to my community in the two-and-a-half years in which I have been an MP took place last year. A serving police officer was shot dead in Shrewsbury, and that had a profound impact on the whole town: I have never seen our community come together as strongly as it did then. It has not been mentioned that policemen and women put their lives at risk on a daily basis to protect us. That is why so many of us are angry about, and feel insulted by, the below-inflation pay award. West Mercia police authority is one of the worst funded authorities in the whole of England, but it achieves one of the best results, which shows just how dedicated and hard-working our officers are.

Like the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I have received an inordinate number of e-mails on this issue. Two Sundays ago—I was at home looking after my baby daughter, and I happened to be working that afternoon—I received 89 e-mails on it. I rarely receive 89 e-mails on any single issue, even over a long period of time, but I received that number in just one day. So far, I have received more than 230 e-mails and letters on the matter. I reiterate that it is not only the police who feel strongly about this. Many councillors and people in our community have approached me about it.

The Scottish police have received their full pay award. I mentioned that earlier, but the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington clearly did not want to be dragged into the West Lothian question. As someone who believes passionately and fundamentally in the Union—this is where I disagree with the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil)—I must put on the record how appalled and outraged I am about the matter. The fact that different police officers on the same grade in the same country can be given different pay is appalling.

The hon. Gentleman should realise that in the run-up to last year’s election, the Scottish National party stated that it would recruit 1,000 extra police, but it has now reneged on that pledge.

The hon. Gentleman knows that the debate is about police pay, not police numbers. He is throwing me a red herring.

We all know about the huge increases that everyone has to face with petrol prices, oil for heating homes and council tax going up: everything is going up above 2 per cent. A below-inflation pay rise will simply make police officers’ lives more difficult. A lot of people come to see me in my surgery about personal debt, which is a serious and growing problem. It is increasingly difficult for police officers with young families to make ends meet, and the pay award does nothing to help them. I conclude by putting this on the record: I shall not vote for any MPs’ pay award above 1.9 per cent., because I cannot look any of my constituents who are police officers in the eye and say, “You will stick to 1.9 per cent., but I should have more than that.” That would be totally inappropriate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing the debate, not least because I applied for a debate on the same subject. Having been unsuccessful in securing it, I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the issue.

I pay tribute to, and thank, Alan Cooper, the chief superintendent from south Manchester, who has just moved to a new job. He has shown real commitment to south Manchester and will be sorely missed in our community. However, I wonder whether someone of his calibre would have chosen not to remain in the police force if he had been faced with last year’s debacle some years ago. Would he have gone down another path of employment if he had felt, earlier in his career, that he was not valued? How many more Alan Coopers will we lose in the coming months and years as a result of the breakdown in morale among the police?

Everyone knows what a tough job the police face every day. They receive little credit when things go right and are roundly criticised when things go wrong. They are effectively never off duty and face restrictions on where they can live. In Greater Manchester, we have experienced cuts in police officer numbers, even though Labour Governments have increased the number of offences since 1997 by more than 3,000, thus giving the police more work to do. For the job that they are asked to do, they are not well paid; indeed, they are poorly paid.

Before Christmas, I was invited to a meeting of the Greater Manchester branch of the Police Federation at which members were invited to question a panel that included the chief constable, Michael Todd, and the chair of the police authority, Councillor Paul Murphy. Given concern at the time about the impending pay review by the independent arbitration panel, I expected police pay to be the No. 1 issue, but it was not—it was the last issue on people’s minds. Serving police officers were more concerned about policing the streets of Greater Manchester than about their salaries. The big issues raised that evening were the future of the dog-handling service in Greater Manchester and concerns about the Government’s drive to replace police officers with police community support officers.

The police are committed and dedicated to their jobs. They have agreed to be bound by independent arbitration, and the Home Secretary’s decision not to honour the agreement is a kick in the teeth for every serving police officer. Will the Minister explain what the point of independent arbitration is if the Home Secretary does not abide by its decision? Will he also give us his opinion on the question of why the Government believe that the police are not worth their pay rise? When I met union representatives from the Greater Manchester branch of the Police Federation, with my Liberal Democrat colleagues from Greater Manchester, they made clear the impact of the situation on the morale of serving police officers, and said that more and more officers were considering leaving the service. They pointed out that Greater Manchester police could afford to pay the full increase proposed by the independent arbitration panel, as it had been budgeted for in the GMP budget. They also highlighted the fact that civilian staff and community support officers will receive a bigger percentage increase than police officers as a result of the Home Secretary’s actions. Perhaps the Minister can tell us if that is fair. The Labour Government should be ashamed of the way in which they are treating our police, who deserve better.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made an excellent and comprehensive speech. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) that it is not just this year that police pay is an issue. There were considerable concerns last year, when a decision was made at the last minute. The police were concerned about how things were handled then. This year, of course, the issue is the failure to honour the recommendation of the police arbitration tribunal.

We all fully understand the need for restraint in pay settlements if we are to keep inflation down. We also understand that the police are in a special position of responsibility. The very nature of their role in maintaining law and order requires absolute loyalty and, therefore, they are not in a position to resort to strike action. For that reason, it is essential that police pay is determined by an independent body that can make appropriate comparisons and a recommendation that is fair and objective. We would all expect the outcome of the police arbitration tribunal to be binding. It may not be legally so, but there is a long tradition of accepting such recommendations. That is why the police are angry. It is not just the police who are angry. Many members of the public have expressed considerable concern that the Home Secretary has refused to honour obligations by not accepting the recommendation.

I have the good fortune to enjoy an excellent relationship with my local police force, which tries hard to make neighbourhood policing a reality. They have supported me in surgeries with local residents, and they willingly tackle the problems that residents raise. They play a proactive role in deprived communities by tackling the causes of crime. In addition, they have duties dealing with all manner of difficult and dangerous situations. The Home Secretary’s decision will undermine the good will on which much of the implementation of such strategies depends. I draw the Minister’s attention to the olive branch proffered by Jan Berry, who said that it is not too late to make amends. I urge the Minister and the Home Secretary to reconsider their decision on police pay. I urge them to have the courage to acknowledge the fact that their first decision was ill advised, and to give full consideration to accepting the recommendation of the police arbitration tribunal.

As the secretary of the all-party police group, I am glad to be able to take part in this debate, which is not just about police pay but about pay for various key groups in the public sector: police officers, teachers, nurses and prison officers. The Government want to give the impression that this is all about inflation, and that there are echoes of Jim Callaghan. I was a parliamentary candidate back in the days of the Callaghan Government and the Lib-Lab pact, when inflation was an eye-watering 21 per cent. Today, it is 2.1 per cent., so the Government action in capping pay for public workers has nothing to do with inflation but everything to do with their urgent need to balance the books. If, as anticipated, the economy continues to slow down, the underlying state of the Government’s bank balance and finances will become even more obvious.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), the shadow Chancellor, put it very clearly yesterday when responding to the Prime Minister’s suggestion of three-year pay deals. He stated:

“The real reason for today’s pay announcement is that, thanks to Gordon Brown’s economic incompetence, Britain’s borrowing boom now has the largest budget deficit in Europe. The government has run out of money—it is as simple as that.”

The people who will pay most for the Government’s financial incompetence are key public sector workers. The Chancellor’s proposed three-year pay deals will affect only the 5.5 million workers on the public payroll. There might be some justification for that if public sector pay were racing ahead of private sector salaries, but that is no longer the case. The most recent figures on the record show that private pay is rising faster than public pay, and the Government have broken various implied contracts with public sector workers.

On pay, does my hon. Friend agree that the Thames valley force has a particular retention problem, and that the Government would be well advised to review the rate at which the south-east allowance is paid?

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It strikes me that recruitment and retention will not be helped by the Government’s action.

There is a covenant: in return for employees not taking industrial action, or being prevented in some instances by statute from take industrial action, the Government have put in place various independent pay review bodies. Independence must surely mean just that—independence—and it must be inherent in any such process that both sides accept the outcome and recommendations of any independent pay review body or arbitration service. It seems that the Government have decided unilaterally to accept the recommendations of independent pay review bodies only if they do not breach whatever arbitrary, overall target the Government have decided to set for public sector pay. That is simply a crude cap on public sector pay.

Moreover, I am afraid that the Government speak with a forked tongue. Yesterday, the Home Secretary promised that any three-year deal with the police would be implemented in full. If that is the case, why can she not honour the proposed independent review pay award in full? In effect, staggering the pay rise for police officers reduced a pay award of 2.5 per cent. to 1.9 per cent. It is little surprise that the Police Federation called on the Home Secretary to resign. The total cost of honouring the police pay round in full is some £30 million. I cannot help but note that the National Audit Office found that the Home Office wasted £33 million in my constituency alone on an aborted proposal for an accommodation centre for asylum seekers at Bicester. Not a sod was turned nor a brick laid, yet somehow the Home Office ended up spending £33 million. Police officers are being short-changed because of the incompetence of Home Office Ministers. Why on earth should they believe the Home Secretary when she says that the Government would implement in full any three-year settlement when the Government have chosen not to honour an existing public sector pay claim?

It is not just police officers. Nurses’ pay increases were staggered to make their pay increase worth 1.9 per cent., and an independent recommendation to award prison officers a 2.5 per cent. pay rise in April was rejected by the Government and replaced with an offer of 1.9 per cent. That is a breach of compact and covenant by the Government. It is bad personnel management and bad human relations, and it is miserably unfair that key public sector workers should be treated in that way.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on expressing his concerns—in fact, our concerns—so clearly. I echo the praise that has been expressed by several Members and, I am sure, thought by all Members for the essential role that police officers play in keeping us safe. I feel sorry for the Minister, who, clearly, is extremely isolated. No one has spoken in favour of the proposal. There will simply be the Minister responding, and he will have to speak on behalf of the Government.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Minister has perhaps been unfairly treated in that the wrong Department is represented here? Perhaps the Treasury should be answering our questions.

I am sure that the Minister will do a good job of defending himself and, indeed, the Treasury.

All Members have been bombarded with comments by police officers, their families and other members of the public who are concerned about the issue. I shall quote briefly from two e-mails that I received:

“I have been a police officer for over 10 years now but feel my time of policing the streets is coming to an end. I am not on my own by a long way in this… Morale is at a real all time low in the service… This dispute is not about the £200 we lose and in fact take a pay cut but the way this government is eroding everything it touches.”

Another e-mail from a constituent in Wallington states:

“Has she”—

the Home Secretary—

“forgotten the unique status of police officers who have forfeited the right to strike in order to serve the public? In the absence of this right, we don’t even have arbitration that is binding on the Home Secretary… I wish to convey to you the sense of outrage that this action has created throughout the police service.”

I am sure that other Members can quote similarly concerned and alarmed e-mails and letters from their constituents.

A final comment that I should like to put on the record concerns at least 10 Ministers whom I understand are also apparently deeply unhappy with the decision. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, will want to reveal the names of the Ministers who have expressed concern about the settlement, but it is clear that, even within the Government, there are people who are concerned about the decision.

Liberal Democrats were astounded when the Home Secretary decided not to honour the independent recommendations of the police arbitration tribunal, and it was disappointing to learn about the decision through a leaked document. We believe that the pay award should be backdated, so that it represents the agreed 2.5 per cent., not the 1.9 per cent. that the Government intend to pay. We are happy to put that spending pledge on the record. Often, the Government deploy lists of alleged spending pledges that we have not made, but we are happy to pledge that £30 million to £40 million and to put that on record.

Will the Minister give way?

I am not the Minister yet, but I shall give way.

I am sorry I called the hon. Gentleman “Minister”, but I am sure that one day he will be. He is not simply making a spending pledge, but a spending pledge that is already in a budget.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for pointing out that I do not even have to make the spending pledge, because the money is already there—I withdraw the pledge.

The fact that the Police Federation is considering balloting its members on the right to strike demonstrates how inept the Home Secretary’s handling of the situation has been. Again, people will have seen the press reports. There is growing support in the ranks of the police to have the ability to take industrial action and concern about what they describe as disgraceful Government tactics. We can understand their anger, because the Home Secretary says that she is happy to accept the 2.5 per cent. award, but goes on to refuse to backdate it, so it is no surprise that they are so concerned.

In her statement of 6 December 2006, the Home Secretary set out her reasons for dismissing the tribunal’s recommendations, and it is worth asking the Minister some questions about that. Specifically, in her statement, the Home Secretary said:

“The index suggested by the PAT for the 2007 award could inform discussion and negotiation of the police officer pay award for next year.”

Will the Minister explain exactly how the tribunal will inform discussion, when that will happen and what of the outcome? In the same statement, the Government said that they

“will consult, in the near future, on proposals for implementing the necessary changes to the police pay machinery.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2007; Vol. 468, c. 95-96WS.]

Will the Minister set out in more detail what that might entail?

It is our view that the Home Secretary should honour the panel’s decision and, indeed, issue an apology for the way in which the matter has been dealt with. The Prime Minister’s involvement in the affair has been unhelpful. He stated that it was

“in the national interest”

that the payment is not made. However, it is equally clear that he has sought to distance himself from the matter by saying that, at the end of the day, the decision was taken by the Home Secretary. He went on to say:

“People should look at the bigger picture…and the future of the British economy.”

Perhaps he might reflect on the fact that, occasionally, we also need to look at the smaller picture and the detail of Government proposals.

As hon. Members will be aware, early-day motions on the matter have been signed. I am pleased to say that a majority of my colleagues signed early-day motions 494 and 512, and the Minister cannot have failed to notice that a large number of Labour Members signed them. They describe the settlement as “unacceptable” and say that it will make police recruitment more difficult and that refusing to agree to the settlement is petty and needless. The Minister needs to respond to that.

The absence of any support for the proposals indicates that he has a challenge on his hands. It is clear that the trust between the Government and police officers has been broken because of the Government’s refusal to honour the arbitrated pay settlement. The Home Office can begin to repair the damage immediately—various offers of mediation have been made—or it could do so at the stroke of the pen by signing up to the deal. Police officers could then concentrate on what they do best: making our streets a safer place. Will the Minister tell us whether the Home Office is big enough to acknowledge that it has made a mistake and to go against the man with the clunking fist, so that it can allow the pay deal to go through?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing the debate, which is of such vital interest to the police service and, indeed, to the wider public.

Let us remind ourselves why the Home Office is in such a mess. The Government claim that their plans to extend three-year pay deals are an attempt to tackle inflation, but the fact is that the Government are running out of money. They have been forced to increase their borrowing to cover their costs. In March 2006, they said that they would borrow £30 billion in 2007-08. In March 2007, that estimate was increased to £35 billion, and in October, it increased again to £38 billion. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the Government will borrow £42 billion this year.

I am not sure whether the Government have a credible pay policy that we can believe in. We hear of three-year deals, but hon. Members will have heard that before from the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. In September 2000, he spoke to the TUC about the need for long-term pay agreements and multi-year pay deals, which the Treasury repeated in December 2000. In June 2006, he called for a three-year pay freeze when he addressed the CBI, but none of that came to pass, so I do not know what is the evidence for believing that he will deliver such measures in three year’s time.

The biggest sufferers and victims of the incompetent handling of the pay negotiations have been our policemen and women. They have suffered especially because of how the arbitration was handled: it was cack-handed, cynical and verged on the dishonest. The police feel that their noses have been rubbed in it, and we agree. The situation has been made more offensive in particular because Home Office Ministers have made no acknowledgement whatever of the special nature of police officers’ service to the public. Not only do they have a no-strike agreement and must submit themselves to restrictions in their personal lives when off duty, but they show great bravery and courage. As lay people, most of us would not have the guts to confront violent crime, drug crime and so on. They deliver amazing reassurance to the public day in, day out.

The sense of outrage is focused particularly on the fact that the police side said up front that they would abide by the police arbitration panel’s decision, whatever it might be. It is a shock to many of us that the Government did not honour their side in that implied agreement. The Home Secretary has broken trust, and it is virtually impossible to imagine her restoring it. Unfortunately, she was the Chancellor’s poodle when she should have been a strong defender of the police and standing up for them.

We have heard about the Kershaw minute of 29 June—an exercise in cynicism that is staggering even by Westminster standards. It was topped by the Home Secretary’s letter on 30 November to the Chancellor. This is almost beyond belief. She stated:

“We will have the moral high ground in moving away from the former…index”.

It gets worse:

“The Tribunal’s findings provide a transitional public sector-facing index, which looks likely to generate decreasing settlements.”

The arrangements for awarding police pay were good post-1979, in recognition of the particular work that officers do and the fact that they cannot take industrial action. If the official Opposition were running the Home Office, we would not have got into such a position. A Conservative Government would have treated the police fairly and honourably and would have given them the respect that they so clearly deserve. In 2006, for the first time, the Government did not honour those arrangements.

It is worth noting that the period since 1979, as my hon. Friends will agree, covers the 18 years of the last Conservative Government, during which they honoured the police pay agreement every single year. It would also be fair to say—I hope that the Minister takes this on board—that some of the years under the Conservative Administration were years of very tough financial restraint, but that did not stop the Conservative Government making police pay a high priority.

It is a matter of the deepest regret, certainly among Conservative Members and the public beyond, that the same priorities that we saw to, abided by and adhered to in our 18 years of government do not appear to be governing the priorities of the current Administration. We say, therefore, that the time has come for all politicians of good will to look closely and urgently at the need for new arrangements to make arbitration binding for those public servants who abide by no-strike agreements.

This has been a very informed debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on initiating it and on the measured tone of his remarks overall. I want to discuss principally his speech in some detail and then come, as and when I can, to the interesting points made by other hon. Members.

It would be remiss of me if I did not start, whether it is appreciated or otherwise—the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) is entirely wrong on this—by making it clear that we understand as a Government, and I certainly do, having been the Minister responsible for the police for nearly two years, the very special job that they do in defending our communities up and down the country day in, day out and week in, week out. It is quite low and remiss of the hon. Gentleman to suggest that Home Office Ministers have not made that abundantly clear over time. He was wrong—I am sure that it was a slip of the tongue—to suggest that somehow no deal was done or a deal was done in bad faith last year, and I will return to that point shortly.

At least one hon. Member mentioned the notion that there is a grand tradition going back 30 years that, every time this matter has gone to arbitration, the decision of the arbitration body has been met in full. Over the past 29 years, this matter has gone to arbitration—this is, ironically, one of the strengths of the Edmund-Davies system—once. The notion that there is a fine tradition, going back years, of arbitration decisions being met in full is simply not true. That once was last year. The arbitration panel said 3 per cent., and 3 per cent. was paid in full.

I am not detracting from some of the substantial points that hon. Members have made or from some of the substantial points that many authorities, serving police and certainly the Police Federation have made, but let us have the real debate on real issues and not something else. I guarantee that, if the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds is ever in government at some future time, he will be here explaining why Edmund-Davies is no longer sufficient, as the arbitration panel did, and that we need to move to a new indexation system for police pay. That system is now called, rather clumsily, the PAT index—the police arbitration tribunal index—and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that it can and should be the basis for this year’s pay award, to answer a point that was made. Hon. Members should remember that we are talking about this year’s pay award, not the first award of the 2008 pay round for the public sector, but principally the last award of last year.

The point made by the hon. Gentleman for Baldry—[Laughter.] I apologise. The hon. Gentleman now knows clearly who he is—[Hon. Members: “Banbury.”] Banbury; that’s right. The hon. Gentleman’s point about this matter going wider and our being, in his terms, nasty to a whole series of public sector workers throughout last year’s pay round was entirely unfair, for reasons that I will illustrate in a moment.

We will have the chance to repeat this debate to some extent tomorrow afternoon, when we consider the Home Affairs Committee’s report on police funding. Although I accept the point that the Minister is making, I think that hon. Members are making the point that, over the past 30 years, certainly since Edmund-Davies, all previous Home Secretaries have honoured the agreements that have been made and have not done what the current Home Secretary has done, which is to ask the Treasury’s permission first. That is the point. We have to look back to the time of Edmund-Davies to find a dispute of this kind.

One does not; one has only to go back to last year, when the tribunal’s decision was met in full. My point was simply about the notion suggested by some, but not all, hon. Members that at any time over the past 30 years when this matter has gone to arbitration, binding on both sides—as hon. Members have expressed, but not the Home Secretary—the Home Secretary has accepted the decision in full. I am thinking of both the police negotiating body’s recommendations and any tribunal’s recommendations to the Home Secretary. The matter has not gone to arbitration in any case other than last year. That is by the bye, anyway.

People have said, quite fairly, that recommendations are simply made to the Home Secretary, even under Edmund-Davies, and I accept what people say about the broader spirit of this. I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said in the middle of his speech about the federation certainly being minded to sit down with the Government to discuss a whole host of issues beyond pay and—to quote, I think, my hon. Friend—to move considerably forward on a whole range of issues, pay notwithstanding. I congratulate the federation on that.

However, I do not accept that the decision on last year’s pay will have come as a shock. I was rebuked in March last year for saying in a written ministerial statement that the first part of Booth’s report that recommended an indexation more closely aligned to the public sector than Edmund-Davies would somehow curtail the ability of the police negotiating body to make its deliberations. The previous Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), was rebuked when he wrote to the police negotiating body saying that it was directed, as were its standing committees, to reach agreement on deliverable options for the award. He said:

“Agreed options will need to secure an outcome consistent with the achievement of the CPI inflation target”—

the 2 per cent. target referred to in the previous paragraph—

“the government’s wider objectives as set out above, and the further modernisation of police pay arrangements. Options for discussion should include, but need not be limited to, staging or otherwise modifying the award”,

as happened with most pay review body recommendations this year. That relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) about last year’s pay round.

So a clear indication was given in April 2007 to all involved in the negotiating body, on both the staff and official side, that staging was at least a consideration. There is a notion that this came out because of what had gone on with all the other public sector pay awards that had been announced, but it is unfair to suggest that staging was never going to be an item on the agenda.

None the less, the decision is not easy and is not taken lightly by the Home Secretary or the Government, including any other Ministers dealing with other members of the public sector. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington—but I do take the forewarning—about us being anywhere near the conditions that prevailed in the 1970s. I admit that I was still at school then, but I have read detailed accounts from many observers of how we got to a stage at which the police service—police forces—were in a really parlous state because of a range of factors, such as low pay, recruitment, morale and retention.

I disagree firmly with my hon. Friend’s notion that we are complacent and think that such conditions will never come back again. It is a serious warning and one that I take very seriously in my role. I do not take the position—I think fairly outlined to the arbitration panel and agreed by it—that recruitment and retention are certainly not areas of concern. I do not demur from the notion that they might be concerns if we do not remain alive to the issues. The point about six applicants for every one job happens to be a matter of fact that the arbitration tribunal agreed to.

Will the Minister give way?

No.

I do not agree, either, that all those other elements comparing the police to other parts of the public sector were complacent or dismissive of what the police service does, for reasons that I have outlined. The Home Office simply put its case in numbers to the arbitration panel. I would say to hon. Members who have not read the outcome of the arbitration panel that all aspects, pretty much, were agreed to by the arbitration tribunal, as was the principle, at least, of the new index. That is important, too.

There is no complacency at all. The Police Federation, entirely fairly, asked for 3.9 to 4 per cent. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington suggested, it said, fairly in its terms, that 1.03 per cent. of that would cover what it regarded as a transition to a more level playing field: effectively, the additional cost to its members of a transition from Edmund-Davies to a new index. The arbitration panel, not the Home Office, said clearly that it was not convinced about the 1.03 per cent. element in terms of a level playing field; nor were the Government.

If people read in full what the arbitration tribunal said, putting to one side temporarily the decision about whether to pay last year’s award in September or December, the Government’s case for the wider transition and the future, which my hon. Friend mentioned, was well made. In that context, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that, for this coming round, she would like to consider making the index the basis for a multi-year agreement that we hope will cover two or three years, rather than simply a further year. As the body of the letter says—if hon. Members have not got it, I shall make sure that they get it—if such an agreement is possible and real progress can be made, she believes that future settlements could be implemented in full. Her writing that letter and describing the context of this year’s pay round is important, because the next pay round starts very soon, as I think the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said. Certainly, the early discussions on the pay round start soon.

Inadvertently, I think, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) said—although it cannot be the case—that police authorities have, with a degree of comfort, budgeted in full for the arbitration panel’s pay rise and do not have to make cuts and so on in policing budgets. That description was afforded not just by the hon. Gentleman, but by other hon. Members.

Will the Minister give way?

No.

One cannot have it both ways. Assuming a level of pay increase, which is important given that 85 per cent. plus of the authorities’ budgets comprise wages and salaries, is different from budgeting for it. We cannot have both. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington is entirely wrong.

I have never said, in terms, that somehow the £40 million equates to 800 new police officers. I have said, in terms, that it equates to 800 police officers that may not be retained—[Interruption.] Seriously, that may be so, given the concern still expressed to me, even after 6 December, by a range of police authorities about how tight and difficult their budgets are. One cannot have that both ways either, although some hon. Members have mentioned it. The issue was whether we could get to a stage where as much as possible was put into police grant, and we have managed to get that to an average of 2.7 per cent. this year, not least for a range of the issues concerned.

Hon. Members will know—it is not necessarily for me to say, but I shall anyway—that the elements involved in keeping inflationary pressures down in relation to the police are not just about the amount, whatever the size. As the hon. Member for Banbury mentioned, this must be considered in the context of a significant element of public expenditure across the whole sector, including teachers, lecturers, the Army, civil servants and a range of others. About £40 million, £50 million, £80 million or £100 million from each of those adds up to a considerable sum and to considerable pressure.

I hope that, in the context of the letter that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary wrote yesterday, we can move forward on the 2008 agenda and deal deliberately and productively with next year’s pay round.

It is a privilege to have secured this Adjournment debate under your watchful eye, Mr. O’Hara. My first involvement with accommodation addresses and mail forwarding agencies arose from my close and long-standing working relationship with local and national trading standards officers. [Interruption.]

Order. Will hon. Members exit expeditiously and quietly, please?

Thank you, Mr. O’Hara.

I declare an interest, because the relationship led to my being afforded the privilege of nomination to the position of vice-president of the Trading Standards Institute, which is entirely honorary and unpaid but one that I cherish. I should like to put on record my thanks in particular to Sue Seddon and Stuart Pudney of the TSI, who showed skill and determination in uncovering the extent to which accommodation addresses and mail forwarding agencies are abused and my thanks for the constant support of Ron Gainsford, the chief executive of the TSI.

The case that I want to make is simple to summarise. Indeed, I have already done so in early-day motion 37. I have also met the Minister responsible and his predecessor to discuss the issues and have left him with a considerable and detailed dossier.

Our research has demonstrated that accommodation addresses and mail forwarding agencies are exploited by individuals and organisations connected with a wide range of criminal activities, such as terrorism, serious organised crime, identity theft, mail scams, tax evasion, financial swindles and benefit fraud. As a result of that clearly recognised abuse, a range of major crime fighting organisations, including the Metropolitan police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Trading Standards Institute, the Office of Fair Trading and various Departments and agencies, are calling for accommodation addresses and mail forwarding services to be regulated across the United Kingdom.

The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will be aware that until 2000 there was some limited regulation, albeit rarely used, under the Official Secrets Act 1920. That control was removed by the Postal Services Act 2000. However, and this is the real crux of my argument, regulation of accommodation addresses and mail forwarding agencies has now been restored in London as a result of the London Local Authorities Act 2007. Given the proven criminal abuse of accommodation addresses and mail forwarding services, the range of major crime fighting organisations calling for regulation to be extended across the country and the fact that such regulation already exists in some form in London, why should that provision not be extended in the way that we are calling for? It seems superfluous for me to point out that the criminal fraternity are unlikely to restrict their activities to the boundaries of Greater London.

Accommodation addresses and mail forwarding businesses often operate on a “no questions asked” basis and keep insufficient records or no records at all of those using their services; thus the person or organisation becomes virtually untraceable. Criminals rent those addresses, then have the mail redirected to them or collect it personally. Very often, the desirability of the address suits the scam concerned: an obvious example is using Harley street for medical products. Crucially, consumers or organisations who send money or, often, vital documentation to such addresses do not realise that the addresses are merely fronts and may in fact consist of a small shoe-box sized locker or a pigeon hole in a small office.

The use of such addresses is extremely widespread among both honest traders and criminals. Although most providers of such services act perfectly honestly and legitimately—I stress that—and ask their customers for identification, many do not. Many large national providers, as well as small operators such as newsagents and even cafés, provide accommodation addresses. Royal Mail, for example, offers PO box addresses throughout the country to customers wanting

“a snappy, discreet new address”,

to quote the Royal Mail website.

Officers investigating possible offences relating to accommodation addresses can request information, but I understand that under the Enterprise Act 2002, any information so obtained cannot be passed on to consumers who may want to pursue a claim against a fraudulent business. As there is no requirement to keep records, they are insufficient or non-existent in some cases, and as there is no requirement to carry out checks, any information recorded is likely to be inaccurate, especially in cases of fraud or other uses of such addresses for criminal purposes.

In the absence of a registration scheme, tracing the owner of an accommodation address may be difficult for authorities and practically impossible for consumers. The legislation that we seek, like the London Local Authorities Act, would merely deal with those who make no effort to obtain suitable identification, keep records and co-operate with enforcement authorities. It does not pretend to stop criminals, merely to close a wide-open door that they are currently only too happy to exploit.

During our meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), the TSI and I provided numerous wide-ranging examples of the type of criminal activity for which accommodation addresses are used. It is not my intention to go through all of them today, but I shall give some pertinent examples. Initially, our examination of the abuse of accommodation addresses and mail forwarding businesses was prompted by their abuse by the perpetrators of various mailshot scams of a type that we are all more than aware of—bogus lottery wins, bogus prize draws and so on. One elderly resident in my constituency was defrauded of more than £20,000 by a range of scams, and another parted with more than £2,000. They are certainly not unusual examples. Similar scams and bogus traders and services are legion, and I need not elucidate.

The more we looked into the abuse of accommodation address agencies, the more we realised that their exploitation by people such as the perpetrators of mail scams and rogue traders was only the tip of what turned out to be a more extensive and much more frightening iceberg of crime. From the agencies with which we have spoken, it is clear that both within the UK and abroad, organised crime groups are using accommodation addresses to deceive members of the public and major organisations, particularly in the public sector, as well as to conceal themselves and their criminal activities.

For example, in 2003, an organised crime gang plundered £12 million from high street banks in a prolific multiple-application fraud by stealing the identities of dead people and setting up Royal Mail redirections on their addresses to redirect the mail to accommodation addresses under the criminal organisation’s control. Once the false identities were fully established, the criminals opened multiple bank accounts and applied for loans. In addition, accommodation addresses were used to protect the fraudsters’ real identities. Cars were registered to the mailbox, and the fraudsters quoted the accommodation address when hiring out office space to further the criminal enterprise.

In another case, a pair of phishers—phishing is an internet-based crime whereby criminals obtain personal bank details by sending bogus e-mails purporting to be from the victim’s bank—stole £6.5 million. Their use of accommodation address services gave them a physical street address, which they used as part of their tradecraft to receive documents and equipment to assist them in creating multiple identities. As a further extension of the abuse, they also used the accommodation addresses to register their vehicles, thereby implementing an early warning security system for possible traffic violations that might render them open to attention from law enforcement agencies.

In a third case, an individual linked to organised international crime, murder and the use of multiple bank accounts in fraud was discovered through his use of an accommodation address that revealed multiple identities, all of them stolen. He had used Royal Mail diverts and mailboxes to establish multiple identities in order to undertake a number of criminal activities, all of which resulted in the loss of considerable revenue to the UK.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has provided us with many examples. I quote them not just because of the crimes involved, but because they demonstrate the sort of obstacles confronting officers of various enforcement agencies pursuing potential criminals through accommodation addresses. Traders such as those involved in duty-paid alcohol frauds, for example, frequently use accommodation addresses to avoid paying VAT.

A typical example of HMRC’s experience occurred when HMRC officials followed up a trader’s given address to find that the principal place of business was a letterbox on a fence down a secluded lane, owned by a man who lived around the corner—you could not make it up. The man said that he knew nothing about the trader and stated that the box was there for a number of companies and individuals wanting an address in the UK. He told them that he processed the mail and then forwarded it. Inquiries showed that eight VAT-registered traders used the address, and that the directors of some of the companies were the directors of hundreds of other companies.

An investigation into self-assessment fraud identified the principal criminals as living in another EU country. They had concealed their whereabouts by forwarding self-assessment returns to HMRC via virtual offices located throughout the UK. Clearly, such malpractices are not centred solely in London. An accommodation address was also used to forward 21 false construction industry scheme applications to HMRC. The examples go on and on.

Investigation into a further fraud involving a self-assessment record duplicated for the purpose of generating fraudulent repayment showed an agent acting on behalf of the taxpayer from a recorded address in Middlesex. Again, inquiries made at the address established that it was an accommodation address providing a mail forwarding service on the agent’s behalf. That business had no record of the person purporting to be the agent, but records showed that the mail was being forwarded to another accommodation address in Manchester. Inquiries made at the Manchester address established that it in turn operated as an accommodation address. Fortunately, that provider kept records enabling officers to identify the person abusing the service. That is one of the reasons why I mention HMRC examples—they show that legitimate organisations that keep good records can easily assist officers from enforcement agencies, and that we would place no great extra burden on such organisations.

There are also examples of accommodation addresses being used by cigarette smugglers. One provider is a parent company that runs a number of franchised shops. Local HMRC officers have an excellent relationship with the parent company and its chief executive, who has written to franchisees to tell them to co-operate fully with HMRC. However, one refuses to do so, which demonstrates again why we need the sort of regulation available in London.

We have tried voluntary regulation, but it has clear limitations. Although it has been suggested that unfair commercial practices and money laundering directives might have some impact on the abuse of accommodation addresses, closer scrutiny indicates that they will have very little. Some trading standards services promoted the mail, accommodation, internet and locations fair trade scheme—MAIL—which is free of charge for traders to join and was designed to generate co-operation between trading standards departments and its members. Members are required to keep accurate records of their clients and assist trading standards departments in following up complaints.

The scheme, voluntary as it is, has been extremely limited in its impact. In Westminster, only 30 accommodation address providers of the 200 in the borough engaged with it—mainly those who were already operating their businesses to quite a high standard—and in my area, the West Yorkshire trading standards service has been able to persuade only two operators to register with the voluntary scheme.

My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that the regulation of mail forwarding businesses is not unique. Stringent controls have been introduced in the USA over the past few years, and, as I said, the London Local Authorities Act now gives boroughs the power to introduce such regulations. The London regulations encompass all that we want to see.

It is not rocket science, and it is not a major burden: we seek the registration of mail forwarding businesses and the addresses used to receive mail. We want to see the maintenance of records, with inspection powers for enforcement officers and the police. We want there to be a requirement to carry out reasonable steps to verify information and identities, a requirement for businesses to report suspicious activities and a statutory code of practice to give guidance on how agencies should operate and on what steps would be considered reasonable to verify information and identity. We also want a requirement to keep records for at least five years.

I accept that I am calling for more regulation—or at least its extension. I fear that over the years regulation has become an illogical phobia in some Government quarters, and that deregulation is sometimes a mindless mantra. However, although we should avoid over-zealous and disproportionate regulation, we should not use such a laudable objective for the bathwater in which we throw out the baby. Some regulation will always be necessary; based on the evidence that I have given to my hon. Friend previously, I would say that this is one case that calls out for the extension of regulation beyond the boundaries of London.

Today’s debate is a follow-up to an Adjournment debate that I secured in April 2006, and to subsequent meetings with my hon. Friend and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield. Following a meeting in October 2006, we were told that departmental officials and the Better Regulation Commission were drawing up terms of reference for a cross-Government group to discuss the issue, but I have not heard a great deal since. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to confirm that some progress has been made, and that the commission is not acting as a funeral director for such regulations.

There we have it—a clear picture of how a range of criminal enterprises, from the highest level to the lowest, have abused accommodation and mail forwarding services. A range of major crime fighting organisations have identified such abuse in their day-by-day battle with criminals, and a range of organisations have subsequently called for the regulation of businesses to be extended throughout the country. The fact that regulations are being introduced in London shows an acceptance of their desirability. The logic of extending them to the rest of the country should be obvious, so I hope that I am pushing at an open door.

I begin in the traditional fashion by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) on securing this debate and on raising the extremely important subject of accommodation addresses and mail-forwarding services.

I know that my hon. Friend is passionate about the subject; indeed, he has been assiduous in using all the parliamentary tools at his disposal to ensure that my predecessors and I did not allow the issue to fall off the agenda. His interest was sparked by a number of horror stories in his constituency, which he described today. I say at the outset that I am sympathetic to the concerns that he has raised not only in this debate but in our meetings just before Christmas, to which he referred. I recognise also that his concerns are shared by the wider trading standards and enforcement community. The matter is serious and distressing for the victims; and the addresses have—in some cases inadvertently—helped the abuse to be perpetuated. I echo his view that we must not allow criminals engaged in scams and other fraudulent activity to continue to do so undetected. They must not be allowed to hide and to profit from their dishonesty, of which my hon. Friend gave examples.

I am sympathetic to the concerns of enforcers, who may be frustrated in their wish to carry out their duty to target those who perpetuate scams. As Minister with responsibility for consumers affairs, I have seen at first hand trading standards officers tackling people who deliberately set out to defraud consumers. I therefore know the difficulties that those officers often face in carrying out their enforcement activities.

I hope the House will indulge me, and allow me to record my appreciation of the work of Ron Gainsford and his staff at the Trading Standards Institute. Trading standards staff generally do not receive the recognition that they deserve for their work, upon which we all, as consumers, depend. They do their job with great rigour, skill and professionalism, and I believe that that is not sufficiently recognised. We have an opportunity to record our collective appreciation for their work, and I hope the House will endorse that. I am therefore supportive of the principles behind my hon. Friend’s proposal.

My hon. Friend raised a series of issues, and possible routes to deal with the problem. He mentioned the Enterprise Act 2002 and the London Local Authorities Act 2000, and I shall return to the points that he made. It would be wrong of me not to stress that the majority of those using the services that we are considering today are responsible and honest businesses, many of them small and medium-sized enterprises, and I know that my hon. Friend would not want us to handle the issue with an iron fist or a heavy hand. As I said earlier, I had an opportunity to meet my hon. Friend just before the Christmas recess to discuss the problem. I promised to give careful consideration to the issues that he raised, as it was clear that further work was needed. However, I hope that he will understand that I have to consider all options before encouraging the Government to embark on a particular legislative route.

I welcome the fact that, since 15 December, some business accommodation address providers have been covered by the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. Those regulations are designed to ensure that the United Kingdom’s regime against money laundering is effective and proportionate, and that it consolidates best practice. The regulations strengthen the supervision of business services at registered, business, correspondence or administration addresses. For example, such businesses now have to know their customers and have procedures in place, using appropriate checks and keeping records to help us tackle money laundering and terrorist financing. They are also required to register with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Regulations will therefore have an impact on criminals who use this sector.

I realise that those provisions do not go far enough for my hon. Friend, because they do not apply to individuals who use such services. However, I hope that he and other hon. Members acknowledge that they go some way towards addressing the issue. In so doing, they send a clear message to the criminals that there is nowhere to hide if they get involved in money-laundering scams. I noted with interest my hon. Friend’s point that the regulations may assist in the gathering of information without imposing further burdens on business. We would be interested in exploring that further and will consider it as part of my Department’s work in assessing the appropriate tools to tackle the problem that he outlined.

My hon. Friend mentioned the unwitting part that business accommodation addresses can play in scams. The Government are committed to improving Britain’s consumer regime further—we want to protect and empower consumers as well as being fair to business. He will recognise that a delicate balance needs to be struck. We recognise that our consumer regime needs to be more effective in stopping the rogues. Those who set out to deliberately defraud consumers and, in so doing, target the most vulnerable in society must be tackled. We must keep under continuous review the tools at our disposal to do so.

That is one reason why the Government have committed £1.8 million over the past two years to pilots on a new regional approach to deal with dishonest and rogue trading practices. As a result, three specialist trading standards teams have been set up that can work across local authority boundaries, and they have begun to deliver benefits to consumers affected by scams in the pilot areas. We will continue to support the three Scambuster pilot projects to target conmen preying on the most vulnerable members of our society. We seek to extend the initiative to other parts of the country. Furthermore, we are funding a national network of analysts, led by the Office of Fair Trading, to ensure smarter and quicker identification of problems affecting consumers through the gathering of stronger intelligence.

My hon. Friend mentioned unfair commercial practices. To help strengthen our consumer regime, in April, we will implement the unfair commercial practices directive, which will help to simplify complicated UK law and hopefully make it easier for consumers and businesses to understand their rights and obligations. That will make it easier to tackle rogue practices and unscrupulous traders, some of whom have become adept at exploiting loopholes in the legislative framework. My hon. Friend made it clear that the use of accommodation addresses goes far beyond the scams tackled by Trading Standards. A number of other agencies and Departments across Government are responsible for investigating a far wider range of crime than that which affects consumers. He highlighted the possibility that accommodation addresses could be used by people who wish to conceal their identity or are involved in activities such identity theft, by organised criminal gangs, and by those who wish to evade paying taxes, to conceal benefit fraud, and to camouflage financial swindles and other activities.

Given the range of potential criminal activity that accommodation addresses can help to facilitate, other Departments and agencies have an interest in this issue and have a perspective on the available solutions. I have therefore asked officials from the Better Regulation Executive to facilitate a series of cross-Government meetings to improve our understanding of the extent of the problem and of the need for Government intervention; to identify the regulatory tools available and alternatives, if any, to regulation; and to begin to assess the costs and benefits of regulatory options, including statutory registration requirements. The first meeting will take place shortly, and I shall continue to track the progress of those discussions.

The Milton Keynes and south midlands sustainable community plan requires that 43,000 dwellings be built in south Bedfordshire by 2031. Originally that was to be just around Dunstable and Houghton Regis and the north of Luton, but later, at the request of the previous Leighton-Linslade town council, it was decided that they would also be built around Leighton Buzzard and Linslade. This is a truly massive amount of extra housing—roughly double the number of houses in my constituency, which is far more than other areas have been asked to accommodate. I believe that the number is too high, for the reasons that I shall explain.

Originally, South Bedfordshire district council planned to build about 9,000 extra houses, which itself would have been quite a tall order. However, I backed those plans because I recognised the local housing need and that people should have a decent home that is affordable and suitable. A recent South Bedfordshire district council survey found that 573 affordable homes are needed in south Bedfordshire, and 934 in Luton. The waiting list at South Bedfordshire district council is for about 2,250 houses—very different from the 43,000 houses that the Government are demanding that we build.

I want briefly to address why demand for housing is so high. As I understand it, the Government give two principal reasons: the rather loose term, “household formation”—most people would recognise that as family breakdown—and net immigration. If neither are checked, will another 43,000 houses be demanded by the Government after 2031? A sensible Government would take steps to deal with both those issues. I understand that the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that about 40 per cent. of the new houses that the Government want built are needed to cope purely with the rise in net immigration, which is running at about 190,000 per year. A Conservative Government would limit that number—it is too high for a cohesive society, particularly when 2 million of our fellow citizens who want to work are on benefits. On the family issues, I can give the Minister some good news: locally, South Bedfordshire community family trust is doing its bit to promote family stability, to reduce family breakdown and thus reduce demand for extra housing in south Bedfordshire.

I turn to local jobs—or rather the lack of them. There is already massive out-commuting from south Bedfordshire. The figure is estimated to be about 55 per cent.—probably higher—across the district as a whole, and in Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, with their good train service, it is probably nearer 70 per cent. There are nothing like enough local jobs, let alone enough for the residents of 43,000 new homes. Where will they work? London, Milton Keynes, Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, St. Albans and Stevenage will no doubt be some of the places. A truly sustainable community needs enough local jobs for those who want to work locally. A sustainable plan would strike a good balance between housing and jobs, which I am afraid that the current one does not.

Some people need a short commute to care for children or frail or elderly relatives, or to contribute fully to voluntary and community life in their neighbourhoods. Those opportunities will be denied to many people locally. The big local employers have gone, including Lipton, Lancer Boss and Gossard, in Leighton Buzzard, and Bedford Trucks, Waterlows, BTR, AC Delco and many others, in Dunstable—a town in which people used to have a good choice of major employers at both ends of the high street. We are far more of a dormitory district than we should be. Do the Government view south Bedfordshire just as a dormitory for London commuters, many of whom would rather live in the London where their work is?

Local transport needs are key to the housing growth agenda. Dunstable, Houghton Regis, Leighton Buzzard, Linslade and many of my villages all suffer appalling traffic congestion. Their residential areas suffer from rat-running, as do villages such as Totternhoe, Tebworth and Toddington. Much of the problem could be solved by the early building of the A5-M1 link, and I shall continue to campaign hard for its completion as soon as possible. Officials from the Department for Transport, the Government office for the east of England, the East of England regional assembly, the East of England Development Agency and English Partnerships, and lead councillors and officers from local councils, met locally on 7 December to try to progress the matter, and we shall meet again in July. I asked officials or Ministers from the Department for Communities and Local Government to come, and I understand why they were not able to, but it is important that they are involved in the process, too.

It is vital that the M1 widening scheme also includes the A5-M1 link, but it does not. Currently, the M1 will be widened without junction 11A being put in, costing the taxpayer an extra £12 million, which is nonsense. When we have appalling congestion, the Government should not even think about building extra houses without building that key road. It is catch-up infrastructure that should have been built many years ago, and the issue lies in the Government’s hands. They can instruct the Highways Agency to build the junction while it is widening the M1, and have the road built as they intend to build the new houses.

I fully support my hon. Friend on his points about the widening of the M1 and junction 11A. Does he agree that there is not only pressure on south Bedfordshire, but that Mid-Bedfordshire, and particularly the village of Aspley Guise, is suffering from Milton Keynes expansion and the number of houses that the Government want to build in the area?

I recognise entirely the points that my hon. Friend rightly makes about her area.

I also asked the Government whether they have examined the ability of the bypass to cope with the cars from an extra 43,000 houses locally. I want to end up with an area that is viable—a nice place that works for people who live and work there once the project is complete.

On the need for local jobs, the delay in building our bypass has caused massive problems for retail trade in Dunstable, and many shops are either empty or charity shops, as is true of Leighton Buzzard, too. Some residents west of Dunstable tell me that because the congestion in West street has become so bad, they find it easier to travel the 8 miles to Berkhamsted to shop, rather than cross Dunstable to reach the major supermarkets in the east of the town. Some residents of the Planets estate in east Leighton Buzzard tell me that they find it easier to reach Tesco in Bletchley, as they would get stuck in traffic trying to reach Tesco in Leighton Buzzard. Those are the congestion problems now. Urban extensions to former mediaeval market towns cannot continue without causing gridlock. My towns are not Milton Keynes, whose grid system allows the traffic to keep flowing as new houses are added. Do the Government not recognise the difference between the two?

Train capacity from Leighton Buzzard is not adequate for the projected housing numbers either. How will a possible 120 extra seats on some 12-coach trains cope with the extra demand from Leighton Buzzard and Linslade’s new residents who need to commute to work? How on earth will only 240 extra car park places be sufficient, given that the station is on the west of the town, most new housing will be in the east, and not everyone will be able to bicycle to the station? We need answers to those questions before the houses are built.

South Bedfordshire already has a deficit, lacking much vital infrastructure that the population deserves now, before a single extra house is built. Facilities for the young in all three towns that I represent are woefully inadequate compared with neighbouring larger towns. Young football players and older bowls club players in Houghton Regis have no changing facilities or toilets to use while they play their matches. Lottery funding, which could finance those facilities, runs at only one third that received by neighbouring poorer and wealthier constituencies.

Leighton Buzzard needs medical facilities, a community hospital with beds for post-operative care and other medical services. It is one of the largest towns in the country without a hospital, so why does Bedford have a hospital and a health village with short-stay beds, when Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire’s second biggest town, has neither?

Where is the commitment from the Government not just to build but to fund year-on-year a community hospital in Leighton Buzzard as part of the growth plans? Why does Bedford have bypasses around it in almost every direction, when the key bypass that is vital to all south Bedfordshire and beyond, including towns such as Aylesbury, is not projected to be finished before 2014?

We in Leighton Buzzard would also like cells in the local police station, the return of a magistrates court if we are to have such growth, and a lift at Leighton Buzzard station. Furthermore, what about water resources? Representatives from the Environment Agency asked me to accompany them on a visit recently, and they said that

“there are no new resources available to meet the demands that development will place on an already struggling supply”.

How much more expensive will water be for my constituents because they have to pay for the cost of shipping in water from a long way away to accommodate the demand for the new houses?

Flood defences have been postponed, but the areas on which there will be building are prone to flood. When will the defences be built? The Environment Agency says that it has

“reluctantly postponed the work for the time being”.

May we have a date please from the Minister?

On greenbelt issues, I note that the Minister’s boss, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said on 13 July 2007 in response to a question from Jonathan Dimbleby:

“No I think I have tried to be as clear and unequivocal as I can be and say that the current protection for the Green Belt will remain.”

My constituents do not understand that statement when they see the south Bedfordshire greenbelt being rolled back in significant areas.

On local democracy, or rather the lack of it, why not trust the people? Put the infrastructure in up front and towns will vie for housing growth as they do in Germany. That way we will stop politicians—of all parties—from opposing development as six Labour Cabinet Ministers have opposed it in their areas. The Conservative approach will be bottom-up. We will scrap the regional assemblies and return power to council chambers from where it should never have been removed. Planning law should allow for quicker decisions and faster implementation of locally taken decisions, so that we can build more than just the 45 affordable homes that were built in south Bedfordshire last year. That is not enough, and in my area I want acceptable housing growth to come more quickly, and with the infrastructure. Why has planning law not been changed to allow faster implementation of appropriate housing with infrastructure?

Will the Government ensure that developers wait until the core strategy document is in place? On the one hand, the Government insist that South Bedfordshire district council produce a core strategy document that, with the best will in the world, will take it another nine months to complete; and on the other, they allow developers, under planning policy statement 3, to lodge plans. The Government should allow the council to go faster to complete the work. Local views are, after all, very well known. In March 2004, 17,000 local residents, mainly from Dunstable and Houghton Regis, signed a petition raising the concerns that I raise today. In November 2007, 10,500 people, almost 30 per cent. of Leighton Buzzard’s population, signed another petition expressing similar views to those which I express today.

Will the Government assist the district council to produce the core strategy document sooner and tell Arnold White Estates, Willis Dawson Holdings and other developers locally not to lodge their plans before the document is ready, and will they address the jobs, transport and infrastructure needs of which I have already spoken?

It appears to us in south Bedfordshire that the Government are trying to secure development on the cheap. Will they give the district council the cash to plan housing as they have given West Northamptonshire development corporation, which received £15,353,000 in 2005-06—all from the Government? Bedford Renaissance, Bedford’s local development vehicle, also has Government funding.

The district council has to employ consultants, often at more than £1,000 a day, to do the work that the Government require. Is that really value for money when housing to the value of about £4 billion is being discussed? With the Government demanding that 43,000 houses be built, will they fund the council to do the work that they demand, as they have in Bedford and in west Northamptonshire? Why is south Bedfordshire again being treated worse than other areas? Why should our council officers have to do two jobs for free, when they could work for consultants, doing one, less stressful job at a higher salary that was paid for by local authorities and funded by my local council tax payers’ money?

We want a speedy decision on local government reorganisation. The delay, which will be almost two years after the July 2007 date that we were originally promised, has been damaging, with officers leaving due to the Government’s inability to take a decision and stick to their original timetable.

When the houses are built, can they please be of the highest ecological standards, to limit our carbon emissions? Can we have lifetime homes to help people when they become older, frailer and more disabled, and housing specifically for the disabled? Can we have adequate parking? We want none of this trying to design out cars. Let us really look to the future, when cars will be greener and so will not be a problem. There are massive problems when the Government insist on housing without enough parking being provided. Can we have enough space for fire engines to get through narrow streets when cars park on either side? That is a real problem, and there will be a tragedy if it is not addressed. Can we please not build on flood plains?

In spite of the problems that I have outlined, south Bedfordshire remains a great place to live and work, and I would not want to live anywhere else. It has human-scale communities and beautiful countryside, but it deserves to be treated fairly, which it has not been for many years. We are already close to the edge of viability due to congested roads and trains and the lack of local jobs and other infrastructure. It is because I care about the area that I have raised concerns.

There is a different way. Stop ramming houses into sustainable community plan areas; spread the growth more equitably; put the infrastructure up front; trust local communities; scrap dictated Whitehall and regional targets; put back to use 150,000 empty properties in the south-east; convert more flats over shops into starter homes; and use more redundant public land and less of the farmland that we shall need as grain prices rocket. Do not build on flood plains, as global warming is making floods more frequent and forceful; reduce demand by addressing net immigration and family breakdown; and ensure that more housing is affordable through shared ownership schemes so that more people can get on the housing ladder sooner. Encourage better use of social housing by incentivising couples in social housing that is now much larger than they need, perhaps because their children have left home, to downsize, thus freeing up much needed family accommodation. That is what the Government should be doing, and I should be grateful if the Minister could answer the questions that I have asked.

I wish you a happy new year, Mr. O’Hara. It is a pleasure to see you chairing the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate, and I wish him and the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who made a contribution, a happy new year, too.

The debate has been important and articulated extremely well. I was intrigued by the contribution of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, and I am looking forward to seeing in Hansard tomorrow the spending commitment shopping list that he made, which seems to be somewhat at odds with the policy of tax cuts of Conservative Front Benchers. We shall leave that be for the moment.

The issue is important, and I shall go back to first principles, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. We are facing, and have faced for a generation, a substantial shortfall in houses, particularly affordable homes. We need more homes—it is as simple as that. I believe that that is becoming a political consensus across the spectrum. We have not been building enough homes to meet demand since the 1970s. As the hon. Gentleman said, society is changing—we are living longer and in different ways, including on our own—and that needs to be addressed through the housing stock in a way that it perhaps was not 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

I was interested in the hon. Gentleman’s point about immigration. He said that 40 per cent. of new household formations were the result of migrant flows. I point out to him that 23 per cent. of new households in the east of England are a result of immigration into the region. It has been calculated that only about 20 per cent. of those households can be identified as being due to immigration from overseas; the rest are due to migration from London and the rest of the UK. It is a bit of a myth to say that we need more houses to cope with immigrants. That is not the case. We need more houses to cope with demand, which is a result of society changing. That is an important point to clarify.

There are parts of the country—the hon. Gentleman said that his is one, which I know is the case, as I have been to the area—where it is difficult, if not impossible, for young people to get on to the housing ladder. He will know that we published our housing Green Paper last July to address that, and its title, “Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable”, clearly illustrates where our priorities must lie.

The south Bedfordshire district is located in the Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-region and is one of four growth areas that we designated in 2003 in the sustainable communities plan, which sets out how we would tackle sustainably the pressing need for new homes and jobs. It recognised the need for a joined-up approach to development and placed quality of life at the centre of that development for new and existing communities.

Quality of life and sustainability continue to underpin the Government’s approach to delivering new homes and communities. To create a spatial framework for delivery, the Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-regional strategy was developed to identify not just the best locations to deliver the growth required to meet housing and employment needs until 2021, but those that offered significant regeneration opportunities. Two locations in Bedfordshire have been identified: Bedford and the northern Marston vale and the Luton-Dunstable-Houghton Regis conurbation, which I understand includes the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He rightly said that the sub-regional strategy allocated a growth target of 26,300 new homes and 12,600 new jobs by 2021 to Luton and south Bedfordshire and indicated that the primary focus for them should be in and around the existing conurbation. It stated that a green belt review should be undertaken and land safeguarded for a further 15,400 homes and 7,400 jobs to be created from 2021 to 2031.

As the hon. Gentleman said, those are challenging targets, but we now have a planning system in place that will give local authorities every opportunity to deliver that ambition. To prepare the local development framework in a joined-up fashion, we have passed legislation that allows the three relevant local authorities—Luton borough council, South Bedfordshire district council and Bedfordshire county council—to set up a joint planning committee. It is now statutorily constituted as the local planning authority for the area for the purposes of preparing the local development framework. I congratulate our local government colleagues in the area on taking such a constructive and joined-up approach to delivering the local growth agenda that their population needs. I recognise that, for each authority, it represented a considerable political challenge.

One of the greatest things that I do as a Minister is chair the Milton Keynes and south midlands inter-regional board. Time and again, when I visit the region, I am struck by the ambition, can-do and positive attitude of the people there. I am inspired by what I see in the constituencies of the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire.

The new planning system, which we introduced in 2004, is designed to ensure much greater public input than in the previous system. Extensive public consultations have been carried out already in Luton and south Bedfordshire on a number of options for growth, and the authorities will now act on their results. As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, they will produce a preferred core strategy setting out the spatial framework necessary to deliver growth in accordance with the agreed vision for the area.

The options that were published for consultation identified a wide range of potential housing locations, primarily on the periphery of the conurbation and around Leighton-Linslade. I can understand why some of the options caused concern to the hon. Gentleman and those whom he represents, but many of the potential locations were put forward by landowners and developers. It would have been remiss of the joint committee to exclude them from its consultation, even though some were outside the area recommended by the sub-regional strategy. It was an appropriate approach, as it was better to put those locations in the public arena now than have them emerge later.

Will the Minister kindly address the two specific points that South Bedfordshire district council asked me to put to him? Will he allow plans to be lodged before the core strategy document is in place, which the Government are allowing under PPS3, and will he help South Bedfordshire council to do the work in the way that it is being done in Bedford and west Northamptonshire?

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I am coming to the specific points. I hope that I shall address all his points of concern, but I pledge that, if I cannot do so in the time available, I shall write to him and to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire if she wishes.

I have mentioned the public consultation, and it is important to have public accountability and engagement in the process. I urge the hon. Gentleman, if he has not already done so, to respond to the consultation and encourage his constituents to take full advantage of it and express their views on how their area can best be developed. It is their community, and the Government have given them the opportunity to have a full say in how its future should be shaped.

Let me come on to the points raised by the hon. Gentleman. He mentioned the important issue of the green belt. The Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-regional strategy, which was adopted following extensive public consultation, states that

“exceptional circumstances require a review of the green belt around Luton, Dunstable, Houghton Regis to provide headroom for potential development needs to 2031 and specifically to accommodate sustainable mixed-use urban extensions, which support the continued regeneration of the existing urban area.”

That review will be taken forward through the local development framework process with full public consultation. I should also like to confirm that, while green belt boundaries may be reviewed in a small number of locations, it is not our intention to alter green belt policy as set out in planning policy guidance note 2. It has been a good policy framework for the past half a century, and I think that it will continue to be so. It has had the direct and personal commitment of the Prime Minister.

I was interested in the hon. Gentleman’s statement about making housing growth more equitable and wondered whether he was taking a contradictory position. I may be wrong, but I took that to mean urban sprawl. Green belt is a planning designation that is specifically designed to avoid urban sprawl. It allows us to concentrate as much development as possible in brownfield and, if necessary, greenfield sites. I should be interested to know whether the two views are contradictory.

As the Minister becomes more familiar with my area, he will realise that almost all those houses are in urban extensions. We can only accommodate a very small proportion of them on existing brownfield sites. We just do not have the space to do otherwise. May I ask him in his remaining minutes if he could address the issue of the ongoing funding of the community hospital? We were promised infrastructure. If the Government were not forcing 43,000 houses on us, we would not need the infrastructure. Will the Minister address the hospital, train capacity and water bill issues in the remaining three minutes?

I shall address the wider point about infrastructure, because it is very important. The hon. Gentleman mentioned road links as well. The point about road links, community facilities, health services, utility facilities and the wider infrastructure is vital, and I should like to address it, as it is very much on my mind as the House goes forward with the Housing and Regeneration Bill, on which we start our detailed clause-by-clause considerations tomorrow. One of the things that we will consider is the establishment of the Homes and Communities Agency, which will provide infrastructure. We have defined that provision in the widest possible sense, so that road links can be addressed. That has happened with the A41 in Bedford, not a million miles away from the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, to free up space for 2,500 homes. In other respects, that could follow on from what English Partnerships is doing.

English Partnerships has funded 11 schools in the country over the past few years as a means of regenerating an area and freeing up land that developers want for housing. The Homes and Communities Agency could undertake such exciting and ambitious projects to ensure that the infrastructure is there to free up space and to provide commitment to developers that housing is available. As we go through the Bill, I think that we will be looking at that issue more and more. That is a tremendous opportunity.

I implore the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Transport about the A5-M1 link. At the moment, the Government are going to widen the M1 without putting in junction 11A. Will the Minister address that as well?

My understanding is that, when the Government asked the East of England regional assembly to identify the schemes that it wanted to deliver in the next decade or so and when it wanted to deliver them, it programmed the A5-M1 link for the period after 2011. As part of the process of devolving greater power to the regions, we accepted the regional assembly’s recommendation, while recognising—the hon. Gentleman is indicating a bit of dissent about this—that we would prefer the scheme to go ahead earlier if funding could be found.

I understand that, in consultation with the Treasury, my Department and the Department for Transport, the Government office for the east of England has been exploring alternative ways of funding the scheme. Partners in the region are increasingly interested in pursuing the possibility of increasing the total funds available through combining private and public sector resources. In the longer term, the Homes and Communities Agency could be involved as well.

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