I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Martlew; it is a pleasure to serve under you today. I am delighted to have secured this debate, particularly given the timing, because there is a meeting next week on 12 June to confirm the proposed location that affects my region.

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright). It is always a pleasure to see him. I did my level best to prevent him from taking his seat in a previous by-election, but he is welcome today. I hope that he is able to share with hon. Members the reason that the Minister for Housing felt unable to be here. I raised this issue in business questions just before the House rose for the recess. To my certain knowledge, the Minister for Housing has never presented herself to the House to make the case in person for eco-towns, take questions from hon. Members and respond to our constituents’ concerns. I am sure that there is a good reason for that and I am sure that the Under-Secretary will be able to share it with us. However, it bodes ill for the Government’s policy when the Minister mainly responsible for it and who presents it on occasions in the Cabinet does not feel able to attend.

This sorry scenario started on Thursday 3 April at 9 am, when parliamentary convention was breached in the first instance. Rather than the Minister for Housing coming to the House to make an oral statement—there was no pressing business that would have prevented such a statement being made, as is normal practice—I was invited for the first time ever to a conference call with a Minister. I showed willing. I had never experienced such a call before. I found it a little offensive and insulting that the constituents I have the honour to represent were excluded from the process of open parliamentary scrutiny. I was kept on the phone for a full three or four minutes before deciding that this was not the best way forward. So we were faced with a written ministerial statement on Thursday 3 April.

The first noteworthy point is that in the written statement the Housing Minister mentioned the prospectus that the Government announced on the web in July 2007, which set out the key criteria for eco-towns:

“Eco-towns must be new settlements, separate and distinct from existing towns but well linked to them. They need to be additional to existing plans, with a minimum target of 5,000-10,000 homes”.

Presumably, the Government consulted on the basis of that prospectus. So it was surprising that in the written ministerial statement the Minister mentioned new settlements of between 5,000 and 20,000 people. Therefore, the size of the settlements already consulted on had doubled or quadrupled. That goes to the heart of my concerns about the eco-towns policy and the process of presenting it.

I was fascinated to hear that the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) had the benefit of a conference call with the Minister for Housing, albeit that she feels that that was an inadequate process. I share her view on that. I have just discovered that another Conservative Member in this Chamber has had the benefit of a conference call. However, I have not. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that this process is opaque and lacking in any public transparency? Does she also share my concern about the time scale over which this is happening? Critical decisions are being reached that will affect local communities substantially without proper time for scrutiny of the procedure.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because what he said goes to the heart of my concerns about this matter. The Minister for Housing paid hon. Members a grave discourtesy by not presenting herself to the House and, indeed, by not inviting the hon. Gentleman to the conference call that I was unable to attend. The consultation process is flawed.

Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), I took part in the conference call. I was on the line for about 20 minutes, although for the first 10 minutes it was difficult to get through to the Minister for Housing’s office. However, it gets worse. Not only did the Minister for Housing try to make her announcement by telephone on a day when Parliament was sitting, but she failed to make a transcript of the call, so there is no permanent record of what the Minister said. I give my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York my word for what the Minister said, but it would be nice to have an official transcript of that official ministerial statement.

I hope that the Minister in the Chamber today will give a commitment that never again will hon. Members be faced with this procedure, which is wholly inadequate, insulting and offensive. That is not why I stood for Parliament and sought to be elected to represent the people of the Vale of York. I do not know whether the Minister wishes to comment at this stage.

indicated dissent.

Perhaps he will comment at the end.

The press reported that the Minister for Housing said that she would:

“await the results of a study by councils to find suitable sites before deciding which to shortlist”.

Although I know the Vale of York quite well, I was mystified to find, in the ministerial statement, that it is now split between two regions: Leeds city region and another one somewhere else further to the north. I discovered that on a shortlist of 15 locations,

“A number of eco-town proposals were submitted for locations within the area of Leeds City Region.”

I took that point up with Leeds city region and received a nonsensical reply on 25 April from Councillor Robert Light, the Leeds city region leaders’ board chair—I do not know whether he brings the table with him—who stated the blindingly obvious, saying that the boundaries of Leeds city region include 10 local authority districts of which York is one. He did not tell me whether the eco-town on the Clifton Moor-Skelton site was going to be within the City of York part, which is in the Vale of York.

Only having secured this debate did we have the courtesy of a proper response. My office contacted Leeds city region again and this time we heard from Colin Blackburn, the project manager for the Leeds city region eco-town study, telling us which four locations, all within the Selby district, were going to be included. Incidentally, I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) in his place today. Mr. Blackburn stated not that the City of York or the Vale of York were included, but that,

“No other locations within the City Region are now being considered.”

This process, which takes parliamentarians for a ride, is unfair. I know for a fact that the then leader of City of York council had tremendous difficulties trying to find out which site was included.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on securing this debate. She has mentioned that the Government should make a commitment that there will be consultation and agreement with local authorities. Is she surprised to learn that the proposed eco-town on the Curborough site in Fradley—which incidentally will not be eco in any event because by the time it is ready all buildings will have to be ecologically sound—has no support, either from the West Midlands regional assembly or from Lichfield district council? Moreover, it will cause a huge strain on the local infrastructure and will be ecologically unsound. It will not even be an eco-town.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. There are two separate issues. First, the democratic process has been completely flouted. There has been a flawed consultation process and neither parliamentarians, local residents nor those elected to represent them in local councils have access to the information. The second issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) said, is why these towns will not be sustainable and the fact that they are not environmentally friendly. Interestingly, if the chosen sites were all in Labour heartlands, one would have some sympathy with the Government’s point of view and policy. However, all but three sites are in Conservative-held constituencies.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she not agree that there is a housing crisis and that the Government are right to set an ambitious target for the building of about 3 million new homes by 2020? Should not at least a proportion of those be in rural areas, even if they are in brownfield settings? Otherwise, people will be penned-up in urban areas and we shall have more ugly, unpleasant urban sprawls, such as Greater Nottingham, which intrudes into the north of North-West Leicestershire. Is there not the potential for eco-towns to contribute to solving our housing crisis?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The point is that if the measures were genuinely about building eco-houses and towns, and constructing homes on brown-field sites, I—and I am sure many of my hon. Friends—would be willing to support them. However, an eco-town was to be located—I am delighted to say it has now finally been excluded—in the Skelton part of the Vale of York in the city of York on a green belt site that is prone to flooding. More roads and houses would have needed to be built and one of the few green belt parts of the city of York would have been concreted over. Most of the towns are to be built on green belt or greenfield sites, on prime agricultural land, or on land that is likely to flood or is at risk from flooding. Obviously, I do not know all the locations, but according to the Government’s prospectus, eco-towns do not appear to be separate and distinct from existing towns but well linked to them. Most of the proposed sites seem to be miles away from existing settlements.

My hon. Friend makes her points well and reflects many of the issues affecting West Sussex, where the Government are trying to impose a development of 5,000 houses. Doing so would turn rural countryside into a vast suburban landscape directly linked to other towns, and would merge villages and such developments into one huge suburban landscape. That is completely against the wishes of local people and would completely contradict the draft local development framework and subvert the local and democratic basis of our planning system. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate so that we can raise these issues in an open forum.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I hope that the Minister is listening because we are being moderate and temperate in tone. I can only express the anger that is being felt and has been made known to me from those who wish me to make these points on their behalf—not just those in the Vale of York, but hon. Friends and those who have been kind enough to have written in. Let us consider the views of someone who is perhaps a floating voter. For example, Ben Fogle wrote recently in The Daily Telegraph that the Government say that the eco-town in his home village of Ford, West Sussex,

“will be on brownfield land. This is not the case. Arable land constitutes more than 640 acres of the proposed site and that is where most of the homes will be built…Last year, wheat was grown in more than 40 per cent of the fields”.

Although the Minister represents an urban constituency, he must be aware of the present cost of wheat and food generally. Building in such locations will substantially aggravate that problem. Will the Minister put our minds at rest about what stage the consultation is now at? The consultation period from 4 April to 12 June, when the announcement will be made on the city of Leeds region and the rest of the country, has been very short.

My hon. Friend makes a good case. I congratulate her on securing a timely debate. As she knows, stage two of the consultation process concludes at the end of this month. I do not know about her eco-town, but in relation to Middle Quinton, which is right on the border of my constituency, all we know is that there will be 6,500 houses. Yet the second stage of the consultation process concludes at the end of this month by which time the Government will decide how to shortlist 10 towns from 15. If that process is anything like that of getting down from 57 to 15 it will be done in secret. That is completely unacceptable.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is why people up and down the country are genuinely angry and feel so aggrieved—[Interruption.] I am sorry for hitting my microphone—I am very angry. We have been excluded from the process and the Minister for Housing has not even got the grace to be with us today. There has not been a lengthy consultation period and the Government even appear to be flouting the usual planning procedures through which people can have their say.

On one or two of the points raised in interventions, will the Minister confirm whether eco-towns will be located in areas that people want to move to and whether there will be jobs for people in these towns? Otherwise, they will have to travel further to work than they do where they currently live. Will people want to live in these houses, and will they be economic to run and maintain? Will the houses be affordable in the present climate? Does the Minister believe that these houses will be built and if they are built, will they be sold?

On the affordability factor, environmentally sustainable housing is more expensive to build, even taking into account the economies of scale proposed by the Government. How will the Minister avoid the eco-towns of today being the sink estates of tomorrow, and what do the Government mean by carbon-neutral? That does not appear to be defined anywhere—either in the prospectus or subsequent Government missives.

In giving her chronology, my hon. Friend needs to draw hon. Members’ attention to an important issue: the planning policy statement. I do not know whether she will come on to that matter, but the process will involve a departure from any planning situation that has occurred since the second world war and the introduction of the present planning system. The Government intend to issue a planning policy statement that lists the 10 shortlisted eco-towns. That statement will then supposedly be a material consideration for local authorities when they consider planning applications. For the first time since 1945, the Government will effectively direct local authorities that they have little alternative but to approve planning applications for those eco-towns identified by the Government under the planning policy statement.

I have not mentioned that simply because I do not know whether that is the case. The question has to be asked about that. If there is such a planning policy statement, why has it not been published, at what stage will it be published, and can local authorities or groups of residents appeal against it? Those questions are important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) does the House a great service by pointing out that there has not been a planning policy statement. We have had planning policy guidance on just about everything else but not on eco-towns. Perhaps the Minister could tell us when he intends to publish one. Will the eco-towns attract new business, because in the prospectus that does not appear to be the case? What will happen if businesses are not attracted to these towns as commercial developments? Will they be unsustainable without jobs or amenities, and simply become isolated blots on the countryside? Will work units be provided, and why are some of the proposed shortlisted sites to be located on greenfield, rather than brownfield, land? That is, after all, part of the Government’s criteria.

Before my hon. Friend leaves her comprehensive list, should not the Minister be asked another question? If a town is to be ecologically sound, it must take everything into account, including, as my hon. Friend has pointed out in her excellent speech, distance to work, transport facilities, whether there are adequate roads, whether there is rail and whether there is all the other infrastructure required. Even if a town were ecologically sound, it might be made unsound as a whole by virtue of the fact that people had to move to and from that town. Have all those factors been taken into account? They certainly have not been at Curborough.

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend pre-empts the points that I want to make on transport, because currently there is not much reference to transport and infrastructure generally in the prospectus. There are what might at best be described as indifferent public transport facilities available in most of the rural areas where the towns are proposed. That means that those living in the countryside depend more on the motor car, and we know the costs of driving, particularly for those who drive diesel cars.

And the carbon footprint.

Obviously, one is concerned about the carbon footprint, too. Similarly, eco-towns that are proposed to be developed on isolated sites in rural areas will no doubt suffer from a lack of connectivity to nearby towns and cities, which is likely to lead to new infrastructure such as roads and possibly railways, and related infrastructure. As regards other services, each new town will have to have its own schools and presumably there will be access to hospitals. The harsh reality is that schools, particularly small schools, in rural areas cost more and are currently threatened with closure in great numbers.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about transport. That relates to the issue of housing need, which was raised earlier. In my area, 4,000 households are on the waiting list for social housing, but of those 4,000, 1,600 want a house in Bognor Regis and 861 want a house in Littlehampton. There is no demand for housing in a rural isolated spot without transport links and, indeed, without jobs for the people to go to.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Surely people would prefer to live in an established town such as Bognor Regis, which is so well represented by him, if I may say so. I do not see what the attraction would be to the new towns.

I have received a number of representations. Some of the most interesting ones, to which I would like the Minister to respond because I am sure that he has received them as well, are from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the wildlife trusts, which are very concerned not only that eco-towns should have regard to newts and other such creatures, but that they should have a concept of being eco-friendly and having green credentials in that regard. The Campaign to Protect Rural England is very disappointed at the eco-towns shortlist, because the eco-towns are being put in the wrong place; they are remote and unsustainable.

I have welcomed the opportunity to have this debate. I understand that the city of Leeds region will confirm its proposals. I am delighted that it has excluded Skelton as an eco-town site, because that would be completely inappropriate, for the reasons that I have given. The timing of today’s debate is very opportune. I regret that the Minister for Housing is not in her place and that the Minister who will respond to the debate has been put in this difficult position, but I am sure that he will rise to the occasion. Not once has the Minister for Housing come to the House and defended her decision, put herself under scrutiny or taken questions from colleagues. I hope that this Minister will send a firm message from this Chamber today that there is no place in parliamentary procedures for a conference call that involved my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and I being kept hanging on for up to 10 minutes, without a formal record being made, even by the Minister’s colleagues in the Department, of what was said in the call.

I put it to the Minister that the consultation process is flawed. It is a sham. It barely pays lip service to democracy. It flouts normal planning procedures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, we have not even had sight of a planning statement, which should be the very essence of the consultation at this stage. It is very difficult for parliamentarians to consult and be consulted on this matter. It is very difficult for the elected councillors to be consulted. It is very difficult for those residents whose properties will be blighted. The Minister must respond to that point. What message is his Department giving to those such as the Henman family, who have vigorously opposed the proposed site in Oxfordshire? What response will the Department give if their property prices are blighted?

These eco-towns are neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly. That poses the question why most of them—all but three—are to be built in Conservative-held seats, not Labour areas. If the Government feel so strongly about them, their flagship policies should be in their flagship constituencies.

Which are they?

There are not many left, but we will not mention Crewe and Nantwich at this stage; we just will not go there.

Most of the towns are to be built on green belt or greenfield sites, on prime agricultural land. If the Minister for Housing is so convinced of the case for eco-towns, she should be here today to defend the case and promote her policy herself. I would like this Minister, in making the case as to why eco-towns are good for the environment, to respond to the points that have been raised both by me and by other hon. Members in interventions—I look forward to other contributions.

These eco-towns appear not to have regard to adaptation for climate change. The Minister must make the case in that respect. They should certainly be built from permeable materials and be resilient to flooding. I visited many areas that were flooded in the summer last year and I would like to know who will say which materials are resilient and flood-proofed. Will someone in the Department give them a kitemark? Does that mean that if someone is subsequently flooded, having used those materials in an eco-town or an eco-home, they will have a case against either his Department or the manufacturers of the materials?

These eco-towns will increase congestion. People will have long travel-to-work distances and there will be huge infrastructure implications—I am thinking of the new roads, new schools, public transport routes and access to hospitals. In short, the case for eco-towns has yet to be made. I regret that it falls to this Minister to make the case, but I am waiting to hear, once and for all, why these eco-towns should be built and why this process has been followed, flouting all normal parliamentary channels and all planning procedures.

rose—

Order. A considerable number of hon. Members wish to speak. I hope that hon. Members will bear that in mind in relation to the length of their speeches.

There are two drivers for the Government’s policy on eco-towns. The first is the rising demand for homes, especially in areas of high economic growth or high population growth and places with a severe problem of housing affordability. The hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh)—I will call her my hon. friend—knows well that those strictures apply very strongly to the city of York. The second driver for the debate about eco-towns is the environmental imperative to build in the future in different ways. I want to say a few words about both drivers.

In my response to the housing Green Paper in October last year, I pointed out that City of York council estimates, based on a housing market assessment carried out by Fordham Research, that the population of the city of York will grow over the 10 years to 2016 to 192,600—a 9.5 per cent. increase—and the demand for homes over the same period will increase by some 20 per cent. The study estimated that York needs to build 982 additional homes a year for each of the next five years.

At the time that I made my submission to the Department, the regional spatial strategy agreed that the city of York should have a target of building 640 new homes a year—far short of what is needed. I am pleased to say that the spatial strategy has upped that figure to 850, which is much closer to the figure that City of York council believes is needed. The regional spatial strategy is about to be reviewed once again to take account of the Government’s new housing policies, and I would expect a further increase for York.

I say to my friend, the hon. Member for Vale of York, that there can be no doubt or disagreement among those from the City of York on the demand for new homes. We know from our surgeries that there is a substantial demand. We hear it from local families, who cannot afford somewhere for their children to live. Children in their late 20s are still living at home as a result of housing pressures in the city. The question is not whether we need these homes, but where and how to build them.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s last question and the implied statement contained within it. Is he aware that there are 673,000 empty dwellings in England? Is he aware of the number in the City of York? Does he not think that the Government and city and borough councils ought to ensure that proper use is made of those empty houses before looking only at another solution?

The answer is both/and; it is not either/or. The City of York has an extremely low rate of unoccupied council housing, although in some cities massive estates built in the 1960s are no longer used or needed because of city flight—another real problem. We have seen some good projects in the City of York. One was the living above the shop scheme in the city centre, which was an attempt to open up the upper floors of Victorian and early 20th century buildings to make more housing available. We need to do that, but however much effort we put into it, that alone will not be enough to meet housing needs in all our constituencies over the coming decades.

Secondly, I want to speak about the environmental imperative to build in different ways. In his report on the economics of climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern told us that the world needed to halve its current CO₂ emissions by 2050. We know that countries such as China and India are rapidly increasing their CO₂ emissions as they industrialise, so the already industrialised countries with the highest emissions—the UK’s emissions are much higher per capita than China’s—need to cut them by more than 50 per cent.

Sir Nicholas estimated that a cut of between 60 per cent. and 80 per cent. would be needed in the UK, which we will discuss in a week or two when the Climate Change Bill comes to the Commons. I recently heard Sir Nicholas speaking on the radio, saying that if he had known then what he knows now he would have estimated that we needed a cut of more than 80 per cent. To achieve those cuts in our carbon emissions, in order to limit the global temperature rise by the middle of the century to a level that does not impoverish hundreds of millions of people around the globe, we need to change the way that we do many things in Britain—including the way that we build homes.

The hon. Gentleman makes a cogent case. The Government will improve the standard of all new houses, so that they are built to the same standard required in the eco-towns. Therefore, the eco-towns are simply a con, to allow new towns to be built in locations where they would otherwise never be permitted.

I am not persuaded by the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The Government rightly set out the ambition of achieving zero-carbon homes, but they will achieve that aim only by pushing through pilots to show how it will be done—to test the new technology in order to discover what works on the larger scale and what does not.

The Government have financed some important small-scale pilots. In my constituency, City of York council recently gained funding from a developer, as a result of planning gain, for a new headquarters for its neighbourhood services direct works department. However, there was only enough money to build a conventional building. The council wanted to do better than that, and it sought funding from the Government. The Government provided £681,000 to allow the new headquarters to be built with environmentally friendly technology. It has a timber-framed construction, with straw bale cladding—my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York will be pleased to hear that the straw was grown in the Vale of York. It has low-energy under-floor heating, a wind turbine and photovoltaic cells, and it collects rainwater for washing the council’s vehicles. It is designed to high environmental standards.

A second small-scale housing pilot is being built in Victoria way in York by York Housing Association with Government funding. Eight new homes are being built to the German PassivHaus standard, which includes high levels of insulation. They will gain heat from the sun through windows that allow the greenhouse effect to warm them; they will have excellent airtightness, using a whole-house ventilation system which will extract 95 per cent. of the heat of the warm air from the house and put it into the cold air being drawn from outside to save energy. It is expected that no fuel will be used for 10 months of the year, and fuel use will be much lower than normal for the remaining one or two months.

Those small-scale pilots demonstrate the technology that will be required when building homes for the future. It is not something that can be left for 10 or 20 years: once a house is built it is difficult to retro-fit such high environmental technology. We will be left with those houses for 100 years. We have to make the changes now. It is one thing to make changes on a small scale by piloting the technology, but we need also to do it on a community scale so that we can deal with the sort of issues that the hon. Member for Vale of York so rightly pointed out, such as the environmental impact of travel to work or for shopping. It is not quite as simple as she suggests—that one should not build in rural areas because it is bad; and that one should build in urban areas because it is good. One must balance the whole environmental envelope, including, of course, the transport issues that she raises.

Unless we find places to pilot that new technology on a community scale, we will not learn enough, or learn it quickly enough, to meet the goal of zero-carbon housing set out by the Government. I support the Government on the principle of piloting environmentally sustainable building on a large scale. They clearly need to consult carefully over locations, and take account of local views—although almost any large-scale housing development will attract opposition. However, I also ask them to consider putting money into the building of eco-districts in existing towns and cities—and they could certainly be Labour towns and cities.

When the first eco-towns prospectus came out, I discussed the requirements with people in York and asked whether it would be possible to make a bid, using two large brownfield sites in York—one a large site on old railway land about two thirds the size of the area within the city walls; and the other on a large site currently occupied by British Sugar. At the limit, those two sites, which are almost connected, would together be enough for 5,000 homes. I took the view that the area was probably too small for what I imagined would be the one Yorkshire eco-town pilot. However, if the Government want to pilot the ability to create viable communities within urban areas as well as the countryside, they should be piloting eco-districts within existing towns.

Many colleagues wish to speak, so I shall conclude with some specific questions for the Minister. The latest “Eco-towns: Living a greener future” document identifies the Leeds city region as an area for an eco-town. It says that eco-towns will have a 30 to 50 per cent. affordable component and that they will include social housing to rent. If the 10 local authorities of the Leeds city region work together, identify a site and build a new community, the nomination rights of that social housing will lie directly with one of those local authorities, yet it is clear that the entire sub-region will need to work together. The north Leeds-Harrogate-York triangle is often called the golden triangle—housing pressures are most intense in that part of Yorkshire. Will the Minister tell us whether the nomination rights for social housing will be shared by authorities in the region once a site has been identified and built?

City of York council has put forward a bid to the Government for housing growth point status for the combined railway land and sugar factory site, which is called the York Northwest project. The plan appears not to fit the criteria for eco-town or eco-district status under the Government rules, so will they support the growth point bid?

Clearly, York has enormous housing demand, huge problems with housing affordability and a lack of political consensus about where to build, partly because it has never defined the green belt—that did not happen under the Conservatives, Labour or Liberal Democrats, nor under the current hung council arrangements. I have asked the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust to organise a round-table conference to bring everyone together to build a consensus on where the housing in York should be built. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York will attend, but will the Minister ensure that Yorkshire Forward, the Government regional office and DCLG are represented at the meeting?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on securing this timely debate—it is only four weeks until the end of the consultation on the original shortlist of eco-towns.

The Government announced last July that they were in favour of eco-towns. The Prime Minister said that he wanted five and for the first to be built at the Oakington barracks in my constituency—the Minister has visited the site—which will become the new town of Northstowe. We welcomed that and said that we wanted Northstowe to be the first eco-town. However, since the announcement, an outline planning application for Northstowe that does not meet eco-town standards has been submitted.

As the Minister knows, a high-quality guided busway is being built to provide a rapid transit solution to Cambridge’s major employment sites. Northstowe could certainly accommodate 8,000, and the outline planning application is for 9,500. The new town ought to be the first eco-town, which would mean that it meets a higher standard for sustainable homes, for example, but the outline planning application came in at level 3, so the local authority is having to go back and say that it wants at least level 4 to begin with. Ministers said that the development ought to be powered by solar and wind, but the application is for only 20 per cent. renewable energy, so the local authority has had to say that it should be better.

The Government do not lack control over the situation, because English Partnerships is a principal partner in the new town. We in Cambridgeshire wanted Northstowe to be in the eco-town list and for it to be the first eco-town. If the Government get behind Northstowe with English Partnerships and support the local authority—we have high-quality transport and the housing growth fund is examining new biomass combined heat and power for energy supply—we could create the first eco-town and begin building homes perhaps within only two years.

We were therefore surprised, when the Government published the shortlist of eco-towns, that Northstowe was not in the list after the Prime Minister said it would be. By contrast, Hanley Grange—for the benefit of my constituents who will read the Official Report of the debate, it will be at Hinxton Grange—is in the list. Why is Northstowe, which could be the first prototype eco-town, not in the list, and why is Hanley Grange, which is in my constituency, in the list when it should not be? Time will not permit me to go through all the reasons why the Hanley Grange proposal does not meet the criteria for an eco-town—the consultation will demonstrate that—and this is not the occasion on which to set those out in detail.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) rightly pointed out, the policy is the planning framework that the Government are creating to bring the list forward. The county structure plan inquiry in Cambridgeshire went through all the sites of potential new towns and established that Northstowe and Waterbeach were the first and second priorities respectively and that the third, which is being actively promoted by Cambridge city council, is for an urban district like that described by the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley)—for an urban extension of 12,000 on the east Cambridge site on the airport to have an eco-town that is part of Cambridge city. We are actively working toward that, as set out in the county structure plan. The developers for Hanley Grange put forward their proposal for the county structure plan—it was submitted in April 2004—but it was rejected because there was no infrastructure south of Cambridge to support the development. The only green thing about the proposal is that it has been recycled since 2004.

The critical point is that we have the planning structure in place. We have the county structure plan and the local development plan has been adopted, but three weeks ago the Minister published a regional spatial strategy that said that the infrastructure south of Cambridgeshire would not support a large new settlement. The RSS said that an examination leading to the next RSS of the possibilities for a large new settlement with the associated changes to infrastructure necessary to support it should begin.

We supposedly have a plan-led system and the whole of the local plans have been adopted—there is no bit of draft planning outstanding. The plan in Cambridgeshire is for 42,500 new homes, of which 17,000 will be affordable, and I must tell hon. Members who talked about urban and rural areas that my constituency is the combined urban and rural district in which new homes are being built faster than anywhere else in Britain. On what basis can Ministers say, “Hang on a minute: do something that isn’t in the plan, that slows the process of development locally, and that every local authority believes will impede progress in building the homes that are required for the local population and for the employment growth in the area”? Why is Northstowe not in the list, and why is the plan-led system not following the established plans?

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), on securing the debate. I would certainly not keep her waiting on the phone for 10 minutes for a conference call, but I have taken great pleasure in co-operating with her on a large number of issues in North Yorkshire in recent years.

I am conscious of the time and how frustrating it is to sit here and not get the chance to speak, so I shall condense my remarks. I support eco-towns in principle and I should like to see what is possible in the Selby district—there are several possibilities. Two types of people come to my surgeries to talk about housing issues. In the first category are people who are desperate for housing. They could be among the nearly 2,000 on the council house waiting list in Selby district or those who simply can no longer afford to buy in the district. When I first became an MP, the average house price in the district was about three times the average salary, but it is now about seven times, so many of my constituents who want to start a family and get on the housing ladder cannot do so.

The second category of people who come to speak to me about housing are those who are worried about unplanned development in their villages. People in Church Fenton and Sherburn in Elmet, for example, complain that the infrastructure does not necessarily come with the housing that is built. I thought that eco-towns would be a way to square that circle—they would bring much-needed housing and infrastructure to the rural area of Selby, including the necessary public transport, schools and medical services.

We are part of the wider Leeds city region. The regional spatial strategy that has been agreed by councils and the Government for Leeds shows that we need to build 13,800 houses annually, but we are building only 9,000 at the moment. An eco-town would not solve the problem entirely, but it would make a big contribution towards solving it.

I congratulate the councils in the Leeds city region on their approach. As the hon. Member for Vale of York said, they are meeting on 12 June. They have commissioned the consultants GVA Grimley to look around the Leeds city region to find the best site. Four sites in the Selby district are being considered. Burn, which has a big airfield on which economic development is planned, and Church Fenton, where a third of British pilots are still trained, are probably not the front-runners. The choice probably boils down to the site at Eggborough and Kellington and the site at Gascoigne Wood. The rumours are that the consultants will recommend Gascoigne Wood to the Leeds city region next week, but we will have to see. I have not had sight of the papers and I do not know what the Leeds city region will decide.

Eggborough and Kellington has been debated a great deal, but the Gascoigne Wood site has been debated less, so let me put on record what I think it consists of, having spoken briefly to UK Coal. The total area of Gascoigne Wood is 640 acres. The site is an old mine, and its core was previously a rail-head—all the coal from the old Selby mine came to the surface there. About 200 acres of the 640 are farm land. There is consent for commercial use on 150 acres, which would result in a net area of 100 acres for development, according to UK Coal. The remaining land would be used for screening mounds and green areas on the eco-town site.

If the city region backs the site, a lot of questions will have to be answered about road access and about improving public transport and the existing rail link between Hull and Leeds. There is therefore an awful lot of work to do, but having backed the policy in principle at the national level because of the housing shortage, it would be absolutely hypocritical of me to turn around and say that there should be no possibility of our having an eco-town in the Selby district.

If Leeds city region backs a site in the Selby district next week, I hope that the Government will add it to their 15 sites. They have already allocated one of the sites to the Leeds city region, but I hope that they will confirm the site that the region puts forward for further work and development. As I said, my support for a particular eco-town site is not unconditional, and a lot of work must be done on the planning, roads, infrastructure and so on. My starting point, however, is that I want the proposals to work, such is the urgent need for housing in the Leeds city region and in Yorkshire and such is the urgent need for environmentally friendly housing.

rose—

Order. I would like to start the winding-up speeches by 10.30.

Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on securing this Adjournment debate. As she said, this hapless process began on 3 April, when the Housing Minister telephoned us in that ridiculous conference call, before publishing her document “Living a Greener Future”, or whatever it was called. An O-level student would have had that document sent back to them if they had presented it as an exam piece. It has all the hallmarks of having been pulled together very quickly; indeed, it was probably put together in the previous 24 hours—the wonders of computer printing now enable Departments to do such things. The document’s intellectual content—particularly as it relates to the eco-site in my constituency, which the developers call Pennbury—demonstrates to all of us in my constituency that this is a pretty shoddy process.

The process did not, however, begin on 3 April. In 2006, a number of secret meetings—secret is perhaps an emotive term, but it is accurate—were held by the developers of the site, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), to see whether their previously withdrawn application could be reheated as a sustainable urban extension. Once the Prime Minister returned from his trip to China, however, the developers decided to change their application and to propose an eco-town of 15,000 dwellings, rather than a sustainable urban extension of 5,000 dwellings.

The site is sometimes described as brownfield by those with an interest in developing it. English Partnerships owns 400 acres of prime grazing land, which used to be part of the farm attached to the Stretton Hall hospital. It is still prime grazing land—it is not brownfield land in any possible understanding of the term. The Co-operative Wholesale Society owns not quite 5,000 acres on the site, which are also prime farm land. That estate contains Stoughton airfield, where there is a private aerial club belonging to a number of individuals—I cannot say what the club’s membership is, but a substantial number of people belong to it. The only bit of brownfield land, properly described, is the two runways. There are also some airfield buildings, which house the clubhouse, and a control tower. The land within the perimeter of the airfield is farmed. I was there not long ago with my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), who is my party’s shadow Housing Minister. We went on to the top of the airfield buildings and saw tractors cutting hay within the airfield’s perimeter. This is not, therefore, a brownfield site, and the concrete and tarmac cover approximately 6 per cent. of the entire development site.

If I were the owner of 5,000 acres of prime agricultural land and I thought that income from farming was not too hot, I would of course do my best to maximise the return on my capital and use every lawful means to apply for housing and other forms of commercial development. However, I would do that on the basis of the facts and I would be candid with members of the public—particularly those who would be affected by the development.

Time does not permit me to repeat what I said in my Adjournment debate on the Floor of the House on 29 January—the Minister also responded to that debate, although he was cut short by the half-hour knife. Unfortunately, the level of public knowledge about the process and the particulars of the site in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton has not improved one iota. Representatives of the Co-operative Wholesale Society gave us a briefing in November 2007—English Partnerships has kept remarkably quiet throughout the process. They gave us a pretty little PowerPoint slide show in Market Harborough, with lots of birds and butterflies and all sorts of things of that nature. It was hugely reminiscent of the slides that they showed us in 1990, when they were trying to develop the very same site, although they called it Stretton Magna in those days; it is now called Pennbury. However, there was no detail, because those who gave us the slide show said that such things were commercial in confidence and that it would be embarrassing for them to have to reveal too much.

The short point, however, is that the development would provide us with 15,000 dwellings and 12,000 jobs. Fifteen thousand dwellings would mean a town of approximately 40,000 people, which is the same size as Banbury, twice the size of Cirencester and just a little smaller than Lichfield. This town will go nowhere other than on top of prime agricultural land, but what is it that we need more than anything else at the moment? We need food that is grown and processed in this country for the home market. If this ludicrous proposal goes through, 5,000 acres of some of the finest agricultural land in England will go under the bulldozer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York powerfully set out our arguments against this process. I urge hon. Members, the Minister and the Housing Minister to reread what I said on 29 January. Not even a moron in a hurry would put an eco-town—or any town—of this size and nature on the site in my constituency. I urge the Minister to get it off the list of 15 sites before the credibility of the Government and the two developers goes beyond and below basement level, which is where it is at the moment.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on securing the debate. As we have seen from the involvement of hon. Members—and I am happy to receive interventions from those who have not yet had the chance to speak, and want to raise local concerns—the subject is causing great alarm in several areas where proposals have been put forward quite quickly. Some of those are for sites that have been subject to the threat of development in the past, as we have just heard from the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). In other cases, the spectre of unplanned development, in the context of the local development plan, has arisen quickly.

The hon. Member for Vale of York raised several points, including the speed with which the proposals have been advanced, and the lack of consultation with elected representatives at all levels. Of course there is then the concern that the media get hold of it straight away, and no one is prepared to respond, or to react to the concern and alarm among constituents.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware, from parliamentary questions that I have tabled, that the Government have a major interest in seven out of the 15 sites, and stand to make nearly £1 billion if the proposals go through?

I am certainly aware that the hon. Gentleman has been pursuing the issue through parliamentary questions, and, as we have heard from other hon. Members, there could be a bonanza for landowners, whether they are in the public or the private sector.

Hon. Members including, I think, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, have raised in interventions the matter of empty homes, and I sympathise with that point, as I represent a constituency where, in addition to empty properties, the growing number of second homes is a huge problem. The issue of environmental standards has also been raised. We need those to be tightened, and of course we welcome the fact that the Government are gradually, inch by inch, moving to the sort of environmental standards that other countries have had for many years. However, the point has repeatedly been raised that eco-towns will not be doing anything over and above what other developments will be required to do in the not too distant future.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) raised an important question: do the bids that have moved to the next stage—because, let us be honest, the amount of scrutiny to which they are subject is limited by the time scale—meet the original criteria? That is a crucial question and I hope the Minister will consider it. Will the towns be sustainable? Will there be the required public transport links, which are being developed in existing communities and would be present to a far greater extent in the eco-district developments that the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) described? Will they be built on sites with great environmental value for the community, whether that is agricultural or other community value?

We spent a long time last night and yesterday afternoon debating major projects, and the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) played quite a part in that debate. My party’s great concern is that the current process represents another part of the trend to ignore the local consultation process and all the investment that has been made in consultation and building the community’s confidence that its views—whether on large-scale infrastructure projects or housing development—matter. That is all being set aside by the quick imposition of new development that does not meet the criteria within which local authorities must demonstrate that they are working.

Some of the settlements that we have heard about in the debate may have some value, but it is difficult for people to scrutinise the bids and put forward their views in the tight time scale. There is a proposal in Cornwall, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor). Initially he was suspicious about whether the bid would be able to provide all the benefits of a true eco-town, as one might understand the concept in relation to links and the use of brownfield land. As things have moved forward, he has become more confident that it will, but like everyone else he is concerned that local consultation should play its full part in what happens.

As the hon. Gentleman says, he and I took part in the debate on the Planning Bill yesterday. Would not a better idea, in the interest of sensible planning, be to pilot a few of the towns, particularly in areas where they are wanted, and not to proceed with towns in areas where there is huge local opposition and huge opposition from all the authorities involved, as is the case in Middle Quinton, next door to my constituency?

The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible proposal, and a bidding process that involves local authorities, representing their communities, is a far more effective one. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire explained how it had been hoped that one proposal would move forward with the full benefit of Government support; however, those hopes were dashed, and to add insult to injury, another site not too far away, which does not necessarily meet the criteria, was selected. That seems bizarre.

We must be sceptical about whether the transport links can bring about truly sustainable settlements that will offer the country the benefits it wants in meeting CO₂ reduction targets. It is not only that the houses that are built need to be energy efficient; there are questions about the materials that will be used, and whether the techniques will be available for sustainable building practices. The hon. Member for City of York mentioned a public building in his constituency that meets those standards, and houses that are intended to do so. However, that will not necessarily happen, and I will welcome any reassurance that the Minister can give about how the building is to take place, and whether the settlements will truly be able to be called eco-towns.

My party wants reform of the planning system, not along the lines that we discussed yesterday, but more to ensure that local authority development plans are sustainable, incorporating targets for CO₂ emission reductions to encourage the development of renewable energy facilities, and accounting for the climate change consequences of policies, including transport. Of course, strong feeling was expressed in the very close votes last night about whether the Planning Bill goes far enough, with respect to major infrastructure projects, in putting climate change at the heart of what is happening.

We believe that we should move much closer to the PassivHaus standard that Germany has had for some time, which the hon. Member for City of York mentioned—certainly no later than 2011. If we did that, carbon emissions from new homes would be reduced by 95 per cent., compared with existing stock. That would bring us far closer to where we need to be. As the CPRE has pointed out, even if the eco-towns provide the number of houses that are being suggested, that is only about 7 per cent. of the homes that will be built in the relevant period. That will not have a huge effect. It is somewhat tokenistic as far as fulfilling a commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

Planning policy must be based on evidence, on local and regional need and on consultation, and carrying the community along. I am reminded of a recent debate on large-scale housing development, in Northamptonshire. We discussed exactly the same issues, and exactly the same point of view in the community, whose hopes of having their views listened to were raised and then seemed to be dashed. Planning policy does not deliver for those communities. The process that we are discussing is not based on evidence or need, and is certainly not based on consultation.

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairmanship, Mr. Martlew. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on her eloquence and passion in making her case, and on securing this important and topical debate. I congratulate also my hon. Friends who have spoken, as well as those who have not and who have campaigned on the issues on behalf of their constituents in the past few months. My hon. Friend made a valid point about parliamentary accountability, and in particular the ludicrous conference call. I caution her to count her blessings: she could have received a one-on-one 6 am conference call from the Prime Minister.

The Opposition have taken a pragmatic and practical view of eco-towns. We are not against them per se, but we have set a number of key indicators and measures to test their efficacy, and as I shall say later, if time permits, we believe that the Government are failing those tests. We will support on a cross-party basis locally supported measures to build sustainable, eco-friendly communities on genuine brownfield sites. The precedent in respect of the 2003 sustainable communities plan is not strong. If anything, it is not sustainable. We will certainly not give carte blanche support to controversial and unsuitable developments that have merely been re-badged as eco-towns—one possible example is Ford in West Sussex—or those that seek by a circuitous route to meet the Government’s centralised, top-down housing targets.

We believe that there should be strong local support based primarily on the local authority’s agreement. Measures should not be imposed by Whitehall or regional quangos, and there should be a clear benefit to the wider community. We also believe that there should be supporting infrastructure. Even if the town is eco-friendly, there must be sufficient infrastructure around and near it, including sufficient transport capacity. I shall come to those issues later when I speak about Cambridgeshire in particular. Front-line public services such as schools and hospitals are also important, as is water supply, for which demand will increase. We will need incentives from central Government and support from developers.

We believe in environmental protection. Eco-towns should not be built on green-belt land, in areas of special protection such as areas of outstanding natural beauty or sites of special scientific interest, or in areas of flood risk—my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York made a powerful case in that respect—unless new and additional flood prevention measures are put in place. We believe that eco-towns should champion new green technologies, low and zero-carbon technologies, technologies to reduce water use and sustainable building materials. In Curborough, for example, that is certainly not what is happening. I shall refer to that later.

We believe in real communities. Eco-towns are being plonked in the middle of rural areas without any affinity for local communities or the people who are supposed to live there and with no real thought for those people’s medium-term quality of life. Social housing should be included, and we should be championing flexible forms of tenure such as private rent and do-it-yourself shared ownership as well as private ownership.

Those tests are being failed. It is as well to consider the rationale for eco-towns. Only last month, Lord Rogers of Riverside said at the Building Centre in London:

“I think eco-towns are one of the biggest mistakes the Government can make… They are in no way environmentally sustainable.”

He argued that they will damage both rural and urban environments while increasing road congestion and carbon emission.

Brian Berry, director of external affairs at the Federation of Master Builders, said that

“building brand new eco-towns outside existing towns and cities is a really bad idea when there are 675,000 homes in England alone sitting empty”—

a point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier)—

“and ripe for refitting with green technologies. Given that demand for housing is right across the UK it makes more sense for every village, town and city to have new housing rather than creating brand new settlements.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who may be an old cynic but who has been in the House for 16 years, made an important point in questioning Ministers about the issue of the capital receipt that will accrue to the Treasury from the sale of several Ministry of Defence sites such as Ford, and Middle Quinton in Warwickshire. It is a shame that my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) is not here, as he has made a big contribution to that local debate. I hope that the Minister will answer those questions as he goes along.

We need to focus on infrastructure. It is as well that the Campaign for Better Transport has made a valid contribution to the debate. It considered the situation in its document “Lessons from Cambourne”. Cambourne, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), is described as a proto-eco-town—

It is a village.

Well, it has been described as a proto-eco-town. In fact, owing to the lack of transport infrastructure, car use there is higher than it has ever been: 95 per cent. of households own a car, 56 per cent. own two or more and 81 per cent. of the working population drive to work. That is a powerful lesson. Unless the Government get transport infrastructure right, they are disregarding the whole concept of the eco-town. I hope the Minister will consider that issue.

Dermot Finch, the director of Centre for Cities, supports that view on the lack of infrastructure:

“Most of the new eco-towns will be plonked in the countryside, miles away from the concentrations of jobs, shops, and services found in existing city centres…symbolic measures like low-speed limits won’t stop them from getting into their cars to commute to work, generating both congestion and emissions in the process.”

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I need to make some progress and conclude in order to let the Minister answer.

Openness and transparency are key issues. The CPRE feels strongly about the

“unwarranted level of secrecy surrounding the initiative so far; the fact that it appears to lie outside the planning system, and a lack of evidence demonstrating that these schemes will offer truly sustainable models of living and working.”

That is important: the proposals seem to be outside both local plans and regional spatial strategies. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) made that point in his eloquent remarks during his Adjournment debate on this issue not long ago. Professor David Lock and the Local Government Association made the point that the planning system is being circumvented in order to drive centrally imposed housing targets. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s viewpoint. The proposals have sadly lacked accountability in respect of Parliament. Local accountability and transparency have been non-existent and there is a great deal of ignorance about the proposals at all levels. Frankly, an arrogant disdain has been showed towards democratically elected local councillors, residents associations and others.

The Government have failed to make the case for eco-towns coherently, transparently and with the benefit of strong local support. Indeed, they have not commanded the support of Members of the House: early-day motion 920, tabled earlier this year by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), indicated his concern about consultation on eco-towns, and the Minister will know that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) has objected strongly to proposals in his area. The Government need to think again about eco-towns in order to win the support of local people and the House in their laudable aim of delivering homes for people who need them. They have failed to do so. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, who I hope will address some of the key issues raised by me, my hon. Friends and other hon. Members.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship yet again, Mr. Martlew. We seem to be permanent fixtures in this Chamber. I have enjoyed today’s debate and the contributions from the Conservative Members lined up in front of me. I now know what it feels like to be before a firing squad, but their contributions were valid and worth while. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on securing this important debate. I know from seeing her in the Library from dawn till dusk that she works incredibly hard on behalf of her constituents. It is fair to say that she has demonstrated that again today with extremely pertinent questions.

I am disappointed, however, at the point that the hon. Lady made today, and in business questions last Thursday, about how she was disappointed to see me responding to the debate. I shall respond to that important point about the availability for this debate of the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), and to the one about her conference call mentioned a number of times by hon. Members. The hon. Lady will know that it is entirely within the confines of parliamentary convention for Under-Secretaries to respond to debates in this Chamber, which is entirely fitting—I think that she knows that and was being slightly cheeky in raising that point. However, I am profoundly disappointed that she was disappointed to see me.

The hon. Lady also made a very important point about the conference call, and suggested that it showed a disregard for parliamentary convention. I believe passionately that quite the reverse is the case. My right hon. Friend wrote to all MPs ahead of the announcement on 3 April, on the day of publication, made a written ministerial statement, which fell entirely within the confines of acceptable parliamentary convention, and wrote to hon. Members whose constituencies would be affected by the eco-towns list. The offer of a telephone briefing was made over and above the written ministerial statement, because she believed—rightly, in my opinion—that the availability of hon. Members at Westminster on the last day before recess might be low. She actually moved in advance of parliamentary convention, so I do not accept the point made against her that that amounted to a lack of clarity or transparency.

I am never disappointed to see the Minister, whether in the Library or in his customary place responding to debates. However, what is the right hon. Lady frightened of, and why will she not subject herself to parliamentary scrutiny? We all have to do it, whether as a humble Back-Bencher or from the giddy heights of a Cabinet Minister. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said, it is one thing to write a letter, but another thing to present herself to her peers and take questions from them—we are only asking them on behalf of our constituents who feel so strongly about this issue.

I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but, on 20 May, my Department answered questions in the House, and I seem to recall that she herself asked a question about flood risk in her area. My right hon. Friend was available to answer questions on eco-towns and other matters, so she is not running away at all; she is available to be scrutinised by Parliament on the Floor of the House at departmental questions. That is obvious to all.

Since I last had the opportunity to speak on this matter, there has been a great deal of activity in the Government’s eco-towns programme. I shall bring to the Chamber’s attention the work going on in this significant area and respond to points raised by the hon. Lady and other hon. Members. Before that, however, it is worth repeating, as other hon. Members have done, what we are trying to achieve by building eco-towns.

The official in charge of the eco-town policy, Henry Cleary, gave evidence last week to Arun district council’s scrutiny committee inquiry. He said that the planning policy statement, to be issued at the end of July, would be “location specific”. Does that not change the nature of planning guidance, which ought to be about general principles, rather than turning them effectively into central Government directives that subvert the locally and democratically based planning process?

I would like to draw out of this debate two essential themes: one is the important point about process, which the hon. Lady mentioned quite a lot, and which I shall go on about quite a bit too. The second important point is about location-specific issues, which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) has raised with me and others on many occasions and in an excellent fashion.

I shall start from the beginning, however, and explain what we are trying to do with eco-towns. As my hon. Friends the Members for City of York (Hugh Bayley) and for Selby (Mr. Grogan) mentioned, eco-towns give us a unique opportunity to tackle in tandem two of the greatest challenges facing the country: to ensure that we provide the homes so sorely needed for the people of this country, and to address climate change and environmental and sustainability issues—two extremely important points. Eco-towns have the potential to deliver vital, affordable housing to tens of thousands of young people and families. We want to build 10 eco-towns delivering up to 100,000 new homes, with a significant proportion—between 30 and 50 per cent.—being affordable homes.

For the record, I am on no circulation list, even though my constituency abuts Middle Quinton. Could I be put on one? I also suggest gently to the Minister what I said to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson): out of this debate the Government should trial one or two eco-towns, learn the lessons about where they are wanted and then roll out the programme. That is what the Chinese are doing at Dontang, just outside Shanghai.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I think that we can build in new thinking to our eco-towns policy, as he suggested, on a variety of things, such as health, community empowerment, age-friendly development—as a country, we are all getting older—and cutting resource and carbon use. The eco-towns will, and should, be designed around the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users, so that residents have more flexibility in how they travel, rather than no option other than to drive everywhere.

The hon. Lady mentioned the importance of process, with which I agree wholeheartedly. In April, the Minister for Housing made a statement to the House outlining the process so far. We have received 57 expressions of interest for eco-towns, and have looked at proposals across Government and with other agencies, particularly to assess flood risk—I know that the hon. Lady is very interested in that—and scarcity of natural resources. We have also considered effects on the natural environment, the green spaces that we all have the right to enjoy and the protected landscapes or species that inhabit it, which was a point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough. Crucially—this theme has emerged in today’s debate—we also looked at sustainable transport, which is essential to the new eco-towns. Submissions must clearly demonstrate how they will encourage a reduction in the reliance on the car, and a shift towards other, more sustainable transport options.

In the expressions of interest, we looked for high-quality offers on accessible public transport and developments designed around the needs of pedestrians and cyclists. As the Chamber is aware, following that initial scrutiny, we are now conducting a full public consultation on the 15 shortlisted locations, and we will take every opportunity to engage with local authorities and the general public during this time to ensure that all views are heard. The consultation document elicits views on the benefits and principles of eco-towns, and we are asking people to tell us what types of technologies, development standards, housing, green space, travel and wider benefits they would like incorporated, as well as to give us their views on the 15 shortlisted locations. We will feed outcomes into the second round of consultations.

The Minister touched on the sustainability of transport, but has not mentioned where the jobs in such towns will be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) asked, will people have to travel further to work?

The hon. Lady raises a very important point. We do not want a mismatch between employment, business activity and homes. With technological advances, there is an ability to work from home and so on, but that is another very important point to be considered.

The hon. Lady ignores the fact that at the moment people travel large distances because of housing shortages. Poor people, who supply the service jobs in York for the rich incoming professionals, often travel from Selby or Goole by car. Additional housing, which we need, might well be closer to where people work.

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to answer many of the points raised, but I promise to write to hon. Members. Building a new generation of towns is a tough challenge, but one that we must meet if we are to achieve our goal of meeting the demand for housing, which is so sorely needed, while tackling climate change and sustainability issues. We have a real opportunity to do something new and innovative, to create some great places for people to live in and to leave a tremendous legacy. Eco-towns can provide that, but decisions will not be made in some darkened room, but as part of the full planning application process. I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate and for providing an opportunity to give further guidance on the Government’s policy on eco-towns.

I want to start a debate and challenge what I think is a too-cosy consensus among all the political parties about the unchallenged supremacy of market forces. I also want to challenge the dominant idea—again, held across the political stage—that there should be automatic support for the free movement of capital, goods and, in the context of today’s debate, labour. We must also therefore discuss the role of the Government in—some people would say interfering, we would say intervening in—the market. Today, we are talking about the impact of the free movement of labour on people working in this country, but I also want to consider the impact of economic conditions on determining and dictating the situation for migrant workers.

All political parties and leaders applaud the theory of flexible labour markets. I, for one, do not share their enthusiasm, because in the current climate of weak employment regulation, it means low pay and diminished employment rights for both migrant workers and resident workers. I draw the House’s attention to the recently published House of Lords Select Committee report that dealt with the economic impact of immigration. It made it clear that what I would argue to be under-regulated migration has sustained, and is helping to sustain, an economy that, again, I would argue—the facts seem to substantiate this—is increasingly dominated by employment that is low paid, insecure and leaves workers, resident and migrant alike, vulnerable and ill equipped to face the rising costs of living and all the increasing challenges of today’s period of economic turbulence.

The recent TUC report “Hard Work, Hidden Lives” makes it clear that the proposed agency worker developments—the Government’s discussions with the TUC and the CBI—may not make any meaningful difference to the status quo. The Minister will be pleased to know that I shall look at that issue, I hope, in some depth. Perhaps my colleagues will join me.

My hon. Friend will recall the 2004 Warwick agreement. Is he as disappointed as I am about the lack of progress on the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, introduced by our hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), which would tackle some of the concerns that he is about to detail to the Chamber this morning? I congratulate him on securing the debate, which is very important indeed.

I share my hon. Friend’s reservations about the 12-week period affecting agency workers. I hope that we will discuss it in detail. I hope—perhaps against hope—that the people who negotiated on the side of the trade unions got some real plums out of the agreement. If they did not, it will have to me the faint whiff of a Munich agreement, and we may well regret that instead of pushing for a six-week European directive, we settled on 12 weeks. I hope that other Members will comment on that.

I called for the debate because in Yorkshire and Humber, and particularly in the city of Leeds, where my constituency is located, evidence of low pay and abuse of migrant labour is crystal clear. Yorkshire and Humber is the third worst UK region in terms of its percentage of low-paid workers. Something like 26 per cent. of the work force fall into that category. Currently, 24,000 workers in my region are known by central and local government not to be receiving even the minimum wage. That figure does not include the unquantifiable number of temporary and agency workers, many of them migrant workers, employed on varying contracts or on no contracts at all in Leeds. To put the issue in context, despite strong economic growth in Leeds—under a Labour Government, I might add—149,000 people are designated as deprived and wage inequality is really sharp.

I have some facts to buttress that argument. The median gross weekly wage for all employees in Leeds is £367—the highest-paid 10 per cent. receiving £775, the lowest-paid 10 per cent. receiving just £121. The median gross weekly wage for men stands at £429, compared with £290 for women. The highest-earning men in Leeds, leaving out MPs of course, receive £865 weekly, and the lowest, £202. The highest-earning women receive £595 weekly, and the lowest—incredibly—just £84. That disparity increases dramatically when part-time work is measured.

I should like to place on the record some balance: my encouragement and appreciation of the Government both for their recent moves on agency labour, although many of us have reservations about how effective those will be, and, to be fair, for their hard work over the past decade to introduce extra employment rights, such as the national minimum wage, paid holidays, health and safety regulations, statutory maternity and paternity leave and sick pay.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. On the measures that the Government have introduced over the past decade, he will also be aware of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. Indeed, today the Gangmasters Licensing Authority has clear evidence that the exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers is far deeper than we expected. Even the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, is now calling for the Act to be extended to other sectors, in particular the construction industry, where migrant workers are being exploited.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and pay tribute to his work. He has played an outstanding role in bringing the issue to the forefront of public debate.

The hon. Gentleman touched a few moments ago on the subject of those people who were being denied the legal protection of the national minimum wage. Would he care to elaborate on that and to tell colleagues what evidence he has of the incidence of straightforward non-payment among migrant workers? Secondly, Mr. Martlew, if I can try my luck, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would care to say something about the phenomenon, highlighted in the TUC report, of what might be called bogus self-employment, and how it impacts in particular on migrant workers and on those for whom English is an additional language.

I shall attempt to cover those two points as I develop my argument.

I mentioned the Government’s achievements, and I shall come back to praise not the Minister but the Government, of whom he is a representative and we are, too. They are all good, solid achievements, but they are not enough for the most vulnerable in our work force. At this point, I shall give the Minister a chance to assert his independence, because I was somewhat disappointed to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform say to the Fabian Society last week that the Government had

“reached the end of the era on considering major new regulation as the best way to improve standards”.

I am sure that the Minister agrees that, perhaps, his superior has got it wrong, so I shall give the Minister a chance in his summing up to say, “Yeah, on balance, the Member for Elmet is right and the Secretary of State is wrong.” Any suggestion—[Interruption.] On balance, yes. Any suggestion that this, or any, Government could have sealed the end of the era for new laws to protect workers is very worrying, and such a move would be incredibly short-sighted in these turbulent times. On a serious note, I ask the Minister to respond to those particular comments when he sums up.

Today’s debate should be seen in the context of the recent publication of two important reports, to which I have already referred, relating to low pay and migrant labour in the UK. They are the TUC’s “Hard Work, Hidden Lives” report and the House of Lords Select Committee report “The Economic Impact of Immigration”. Whether we like it or not, the Lords report—despite the overwhelmingly negative comments in the media and in this House—lends weight to the objective conclusion that increases in net migration have contributed to the creation and expansion of a low-pay economy. By enabling employers to hold down wages at the lower end of the labour market and facilitating a net expansion of low-paid jobs, migration has been an important contributory factor in shoring up a status quo that is unacceptable to low-paid residents and migrant workers alike.

Let us consider the effects on the resident population. A core conclusion of the report is that increases in net migration to Britain have resulted in winners and losers among the resident population. The report cites evidence that while migration has had a “positive absolute wage effect” on native residents of the UK, recent studies suggest a negative effect on the wages of the workers employed in the lowest-paid jobs, and those most in need of Government assistance. Evidence submitted to the Committee by Professor Dustmann and others suggests that every 1 per cent. increase in the ratio of migrants to natives in the working-age population ratio leads to a 0.5 per cent. decrease in wages for the lowest 10 per cent of wage earners. For example, evidence submitted to the Committee by the City of London Corporation stated that a concentration of immigrants in low-paid jobs in the capital had led to

“significant downward pressure on wages at the bottom end of the market.”

Far be it from me to say that, in effect, the Government have an unofficial incomes policy but that incomes policy only affects those towards the bottom of the wage scale.

The incomes policy does not affect only low-paid workers, but all public sector workers in this country. Effectively, public sector workers are under pay restraints at this moment in time and have been for at least two years.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Yesterday, The Times reported that a large number of migrant workers are now employed in the care sector, which has massive repercussions for workers in that sector. In the Lords report, Professor Nickell says that negative wage effects are felt in the social care and cleaning sectors, in which low hourly-paid work is most concentrated. That reflects the existing economic theory as presented to the Committee. The report notes that it is typically assumed in conventional models that in

“a simple short-run model of the labour market, immigration lowers the wages of local workers”

with whom they compete. It goes on to say:

“Importantly, immigration creates a positive income effect for the resident population in aggregate only if immigrants are, on average, ‘different’ from existing residents in terms of their skills and human/physical capital.”

The report notes that the bulk of recent immigration in the UK—more than 75,000 are workers from the A8 EU nations who gained free access to the UK labour market in May 2004—are employed in jobs that offer roughly the national minimum wage. Often those jobs come from employment agencies. As Professor Dustmann and Professor Ian Preston say,

“immigrants appear to be most concentrated at precisely the same points where we find the most negative wage effects.”

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of the minimum wage. Although the minimum wage went some way towards easing poverty pay, some would argue that it did not go far enough. I should like to answer the point raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) about the evidence that suggests that people are being denied the right to a minimum wage. He will be aware that people in the service sector are being denied the national minimum wage because their tips are included in their pay. Therefore, the public are subsidising unscrupulous employers and helping to pay service workers the national minimum wage.

Once again, my hon. Friend makes a very telling intervention. As I progress, I want to discuss the possibility of inspecting the average employer on the issue of the minimum wage, given that we have a regime in place to enforce it.

The report provides evidence to suggest that the bulk of net immigration into the UK has led to short-term competition between resident and migrant workers for low-paid work. Crucially, the report suggests that the downward pressure on wages at the lower end of the labour market has, over the long term, encouraged growth in the number of low-paid jobs. The number of low-paid jobs as a proportion of the British economy has increased and continues to do so. If that is the effect on resident workers, what is the effect on migrant workers, because they should not be left out of the equation?

In addition to highlighting the potential negative effects of increases in net migration on resident low-paid workers, the Lords report offers substantial evidence regarding the plight of many migrant workers in the UK who face insecure employment conditions and wages that often fall below the legal requirement stipulated by the national minimum wage. The report cited evidence that vividly illustrates the unequal employment conditions associated with employment in employment agencies, in which intermediary companies perform services on behalf of the user company. Current estimates suggest that there are 1.4 million agency and temporary workers in the UK, but the lack of reliable data means that the true figure could be far higher. Hopefully my colleagues will agree that such agencies have been a key means for employers to hold down wages at the lower end of the labour market. The report also cites evidence confirming the widespread abuses of minimum employment standards associated with many employment agencies.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the debate. He must be aware that a major factor is the way in which the Home Office does not process wholly legitimate applications for long-term residence and family reunion in this country, which means that many migrant workers are grossly exploited, their children are denied access to health care and all the other services that we believe to be right, and also many are working in a twilight sector way below their skills and capacity, which increases the pressure on the cleaning and the catering sector. Does my hon. Friend not think that the Home Office needs to be brought into this debate to ensure that all workers in this country are legal workers and recognised as such?

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Coming as he does from the London perspective, in which this issue is seen in a much harsher light than most other parts of the country, he speaks from experience.

I hate to disrupt a superb opening speech, but does my hon. Friend agree that one of the industries where the abuse of migrant workers is particularly rife is the food processing industry? If he ever saw the film “Ghosts”, which talked about the cockle picker deaths in Morecambe bay, he would have seen clear evidence of gangmasters who were providing accommodation at exorbitant prices and transport to work at super-exorbitant prices. That is the way in which they are getting round the minimum wage legislation.

Further to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan), whose work on gangmasters has rightly been paid tribute to by hon. Members in this Chamber this morning, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority needs resources and needs a political priority coming from the very top. I hope that the Minister will announce some initiatives in that regard later on.

Once again, my hon. Friend has raised issues that the hon. Member for Buckingham was edging around asking me to address. The report cites practices whereby agencies impose various charges on immigrants’ salaries for such things as accommodation, uniforms and, as my hon. Friend said, transport. That brings their salaries well below the hourly requirement stipulated by the national minimum wage.

The evidence from the House of Lords is supported by evidence from the TUC commission on vulnerable employment and the Government’s vulnerable worker enforcement forum. Government measures coming into force in April 2008, which aim to halt such abuses by allowing agency workers to opt out of services provided alongside a job, may just remedy such abuses. We discussed that matter with a Minister in Committee. Again, the take-up of such provisions is likely to be hampered by the widespread ignorance of labour rights—we have raised the issue of language problems and so on—in the immigrant and resident communities who staff the employment agencies.

Again, I reiterate that I welcome the move on agency worker legislation: I hope that it is the beginning and not the end, as the Secretary of State seemed to indicate. But unfortunately, it is by no means clear that the recently announced Government commitment to give greater rights to agency workers will make anything like a significant difference to the suffering of migrant workers caught in the trap of the widespread two-tier employment system, which has depressed wages for resident workers, and the associated social tensions that are often exploited by the far right. The far right chooses to mobilise opinion against Poles or Latvians. We on the left say that these people are driven by huge economic forces and that we should be trying to understand the forces that drive these people and then to frame policies to address some of the issues.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making an excellent speech and has been generous in allowing colleagues to intervene. I confess that I am wary of highly burdensome regulation, but I do believe that once Parliament has passed legislation—I think that the minimum wage legislation is good legislation—it ought then to enforce it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian effectively summed up the problem when she said:

“Poor pay is inextricably bound up with a culture of institutional negligence: no one ensures workers know their rights or how to find out about them; a myriad of enforcement agencies with tiny budgets confuse everyone”?

Is it not unsatisfactory that while millions of pounds are devoted to advertising for benefit fraud, the amount allocated to advertise the national minimum wage was, until a recent increase, one sixth of the sum spent on a Government campaign urging people to use tissues when they sneeze?

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. He should join us now and again on these—

indicated dissent.

Well, it was worth attempting.

Returning to the agency workers legislation, which we will be dealing with, I understand that after 12 weeks in work, temporary and agency workers will qualify for the same pro rata pay and conditions as full-time workers, but will they qualify for the other in-work benefits, such as sick pay and pensions? I should like some clarification from the Minister on that point.

On the potential impacts of the agency workers legislation, it is interesting that John Cridland, the deputy director general of the CBI, told the media:

“Half of agency assignments will be unaffected as they last less than 12 weeks.”

If he is right, we are effectively saying that 700,000 people—the ones we know about—will be totally unaffected by the new proposal. I do not want to class it as a Munich agreement, but it is something of a damp squib when compared with the expectations that many of us had.

I look forward with great hope to the proposed anti-avoidance measures, which are meant to stop employers evading the regulations. We know from our experience of such laudable measures as the national minimum wage that principle, enforcement and reality are often very different. For example, in November 2007 I asked in a written question for details of the number of national minimum wage enforcement officers policing the entire Yorkshire and Humberside region. I was told that the two offices at Shipley and Sheffield, which service the entire region, had seven each, and that by 2009 the figures would be increased—to seven in Shipley and eight in Sheffield. Given that our region is the third worst in the country for low-paid workers, and that the offices are based some way from Leeds, low-paid workers in Leeds are as likely to spot a minimum wage enforcement officer as they are to see Lord Lucan.

Clearly, even on a minimum level there is a huge amount of work to be done. I bring to the attention of hon. Members the fact that on current trends the chance of an employer being inspected is now once in every 330 years. I think that we could do a bit better—perhaps we can get it down to every 300 years; that might be satisfactory. The Lords report highlighted the problems associated with enforcement of the national minimum wage, and the evidence shows some ways in which employers contravene the minimum wage provisions.

I urge hon. Members to look at the report: it is a very good read. It confirms the fact that the national minimum wage regularly fails to provide a wage floor for low-paid workers, and that alongside a more general pressure to hold down wages at the lower end of the labour market it allows wages to be depressed below the legal minimum. However, although I have extolled the virtues of the report, it is strangely silent on the vulnerability of workers—both resident and migrant—in the informal economy; yet as the Low Pay Commission makes clear, the Government have no idea of how many are working in it.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform recently announced new measures aimed at reforming the minimum wage and cracking down on rogue employers, including fairer methods for dealing with minimum wage arrears, the toughening of penalties for those who break the law, and increasing the maximum penalty for non-payment of the national minimum wage to an unlimited fine. The Department states that the most serious cases of non-compliance will be tried in the Crown court, yet I would argue that those measures are corrective and are therefore dependent on rogue employers being caught in the first place. As we have heard, the sparseness of the resources devoted to discovering and tracking such employers, coupled with a range of barriers and disincentives that inhibit closer working between enforcement agencies, is likely to undermine the effectiveness of the measures. Indeed, the TUC says that it is a “national scandal”.

The TUC report, “Hard Work, Hidden Lives”, published last month, says that up to 2 million workers in Britain are still at risk of exploitation because of their vulnerable work status. Its research found some employees being paid £1 an hour, some working 70 hours a week, and others facing sexual abuse. The TUC also said that exploitative employment practices seen in the 19th century were still being used today. It found home workers being paid £1 an hour, fast-food employees working 70 hours a week, and domestic staff facing physical and sexual abuse. It is exactly those types of jobs that vulnerable migrant workers and serial low-paid and low-skilled resident workers fall into.

As part of the TUC study, a Community union survey of 8,000 workers found that three out of four workplaces used temporary and agency workers, with some on contracts of a week or less. Some were on only two hours’ notice. Will the Minister tell us how the proposed strengthening of agency worker legislation will help workers on one-week contracts? Will the Minister tell us how the proposed strengthening of agency worker legislation will help workers on one-week contracts? Again, I look forward to his explanation on that.

Particularly at this time of economic difficulty and global turbulence, which hits the poorest hardest, I ask the Government, as a matter of urgency, to be bold—we are best when we are bold—

And we are best when we are Labour.

I agree with that comment—do not get me into trouble. I ask the Government to ensure a continuation of the effectiveness of the minimum wage by taking forward recommendations from organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Fair Pay Network. Those recommendations include maintaining the value of the national minimum wage to at least remain in line with average earnings growth over an economic cycle, and guaranteeing tougher, robust and meaningful enforcement of the minimum wage. Other proposals include incrementally increasing the present lower rates for young workers, offering skills and career advice to all low-paid workers in receipt of working tax credit, and improving their pay and prospects at work.

Critically, we should also build fair-wage commitments into central and local Government contracts and the huge financial transactions that national and local Government engage in. We—local and national Government—should be the agency that drives up terms, conditions and living standards for poorer-paid workers across the scene.

I shall end on the following point. At root, we are discussing a situation that I believe will not be improved through market forces. We have mentioned the word “agency” many times today, but the only agency that will bring justice and fairness into the arena of work is the Government, and they should not abdicate that responsibility. During the rough economic times into which we are moving, people expect a Government to defend them. It is the very least people should expect and I hope we can do so.

I know it is customary as part of the protocol on these occasions to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) on securing the debate, but I also wish to do so because of the content of his contribution. He touched on some profoundly difficult territory in terms of race, class and demographic change in this country, but he navigated through those issues creatively and touched on some public policy remedies that need to be part of the mix—not least, because of the point he made at the end of his speech.

As we enter more difficult economic waters, there is a possibility that the scramble over scarce resources and the race to the bottom that is arguably occurring in certain sectors of the labour market will become more intense and racialised. That raises real issues for the future in terms of what is euphemistically called community cohesion. My hon. Friend touched on that creatively. In the community that I represent, these are not abstract matters, and the issues of migration, low pay and insecure work need to be centre stage in terms of our public policy debates—not least because, as my hon. Friend mentioned, certain forms of compound abuse are involved. Often that relates to systemic failures in the Home Office, but forms of landlordism that I thought had been abolished 20 years ago, and forms of exploitation at work also compound the insecurities of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate because we often ignore such issues. We convince ourselves that we have presided over an economic miracle during the past 10 years, but the problems will not go away when we hit choppier times during the next few months and years.

I, too, listened to the programme on the radio this morning about the report from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority that painted a much worse picture of exploitation than it had imagined a few years ago. Last year, the authority revoked the licences of some 20 gangmasters for abuse and it expects to revoke about 60 by the end of this year. There has been a series of dreadful abuses in terms of transport and accommodation deductions, which make people’s relative poverty even more intense than in terms of their nominal hourly wage cost. The TUC commission on vulnerable employment estimated that 2 million people are in such employment across the economy. It defined vulnerable employment as

“precarious work that places people at risk of continuing poverty and injustice resulting from an imbalance of power in the employer-worker relationship”.

We cannot have this debate without a broader discussion about poverty in the UK today. Let us consider the broader context in terms of in-work poverty. I refer hon. Members to the recent Institute for Public Policy Research report entitled “Working out of poverty: A study of the low-paid and the ‘working poor’”, and the figures that it has provided for us. More than 5 million people—more than one in five of those in work, or 23 per cent. of all employees—are paid less than £6.67 an hour. That is in the formal economy. Some 1.4 million poor children—the same number as in 1997—live in working households. Although since 1997 the number of poor children in workless households has fallen from 2 million to 1.4 million, the level of working poverty has been maintained and, as a proportion of total poverty, has increased over the last decade.

Arguably, therefore, we have seen a Government anti-poverty strategy that has been an in-work strategy. We need to develop a more systematic working poverty strategy that confronts issues relating to people’s day-to-day employment. Half of all poor kids are in working households, up from 40 per cent. 10 years ago; and 57 per cent. of poor households are working households, up from 47 per cent. 10 years ago. The issue of working poverty, which relates to some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet, will not go away. Indeed, as a proportion of total poverty, it is rising, which means that different remedies are needed from those based simply on getting people into work. The poverty that people face in work now needs to be addressed.

The report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, “The Economic Impact of Immigration” refers to the role of immigration in the creation and expansion of a broader low-paid economy. I refer, too, to some of the evidence that my hon. Friend recited, as sent to me by the Fair Pay Network. There were three pieces of evidence that he used to describe a contemporary, modern-day incomes policy. The use and abuse of migrant workers in that respect is demonstrated by some of the specific empirical evidence that he documented.

The first piece of evidence is from Professor Dustmann: every 1 per cent. increase in the ratio of immigrants to natives in the working age population led to a 0.5 per cent. decrease in wages for the lowest 10 per cent. of wage earners. Secondly, my hon. Friend used evidence from the City of London corporation that reinforced the argument that significant downward pressure on wages at the bottom end of the labour market is occurring through the abuse of migrant workers. Thirdly, there was evidence from Steve Nickell that negative wage effects are concentrated in sectors, including social care and cleaning, where low-paid hourly work is most concentrated.

A series of different empirical studies reinforce the idea that migrant workers are used in certain segmented labour markets to reinforce patterns of low-wage, low-skill employment, and that the bulk of recent migration to the UK is gravitating towards jobs that are low paid—around the level of the minimum wage. Professor Dustmann concludes that immigrants appear to be most concentrated at precisely the same points where we find the most negative wage effects.

All of that reinforces the evidence in academic economic texts over some years of the intensification of what is called an hourglass economy—growth at the top end of the labour market, but a broadly expanding low-wage, low-skill labour market. It is often linked to patterns of public service contract structures and is interlinked with patterns of net migration and abuse by employers.

For me, as I said, this is not an abstract debate. Our borough has the lowest-cost housing market in Greater London and is the lowest-cost wage economy in terms of the wage rates of the resident population, so we have seen the effects at first hand. Our community is the fastest changing, not least because of right to buy, which has created a private housing market that we have never had before. Over the past few years, there has been an intensified scramble for limited resources—most noticeably housing, but also public services more broadly.

In the workplace, we have seen a race to the bottom, with tensions over access to, and the quality of, paid employment. That takes us back to the empirical evidence that employees are being paid below the national minimum wage, as was mentioned earlier. The best example of that, which we pointed out to the Low Pay Commission when it was gathering evidence for its recent report, involved Lithuanian employees on a public contract in London at the back end of 2007 who were paid about £2.50 an hour, or barely half the minimum wage. They were eating cold beans from a tin for their lunch while they were on the job. That is not a unique experience; such stories ricochet around the community, so everyone knows them, which creates a heightened sense of vulnerability across broader labour markets.

There is thus the challenge of massive demographic change, intensified insecurity in the workplace and a scramble for limited public services, with a legacy of poor public services in a poor community. The collision between change and that legacy of need is creating a rich, fertile ground for the far right to inhabit, so it is no surprise that the fastest-changing community in Britain is also on the front line of the battle against the far right, which is moving in and intensifying the racialisation of access to public services. There are also tensions over workplace activity and insecurity, and unless the Government step in to provide remedies for the heightened sense of vulnerability in the workplace, the situation will become more intense.

I hope that I have not misunderstood what the hon. Gentleman has just said. We are all familiar with the problem that illegal pay in the informal and, by implication, often invisible economy makes the situation that much more intractable. However, am I correct in understanding his reference to a public contract to mean that he knows of cases of people being paid illegally as part of a service provided under contract to central or local government? If that is the case, it really is scandalous. Those organisations should be named and shamed and should not be on any list of contractors supplying services to central or local government.

I tentatively suggest that it would be naive to assume otherwise, especially given the whole supply chain involved in public procurement. I would not be shocked to the core by the possibility that the House, through its contract regime, was employing unregularised migrants, or paying migrants and indigenous employees below what was set out in statutory terms and conditions of employment. My unscientific take on things is that such forms of abuse are rampant across environments such as the community that I represent.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to that point. I am sure that he supports the “Strangers into Citizens” campaign, which, if it is successful, will help to reduce the exploitation of migrant workers. If such people ever complain to an employer of any sort—be it a gangmaster, agency or anybody else—they find themselves before the Home Office threatened with deportation.

That is right. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet referred to the fact that there might be a different combination of forces in London, as opposed to other parts of the country, and it is worth dwelling on the situation in London, which I touched on earlier. There are compound abuses. There is the Home Office’s systemic failure and the fact that people are often provided with appalling legal advice. Employers and landlords abuse those most vulnerable workers, and criminality is often interlinked with that. There are therefore five or six elements to the compound abuse, and we need a remedy that goes above and beyond simple labour market remedies of the type that we mentioned earlier.

There are issues about how we deal with the legacy of unregularised migrants in cities such as London. Some informed estimates suggest that the number could amount to 500,000 or 600,000 people, which is why people must become involved with the “Strangers into Citizens” forum, like my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and me. The forum involves vibrant coalitions of trade unions, Church groups and political activists speaking on behalf of those who most need help, namely the most vulnerable, who are abused most systematically, especially in the workplace, which is the subject of the debate.

Remedies could be provided to the intense exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people, but it is an exercise in political will—such things do not fall out of the sky and they are not God given. My colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet, mentioned some proposals. We could have a low-pay benchmark that is higher than the minimum average, for example 60 per cent. of median full-time earnings of £6.67 an hour; we could expand the role of the Low Pay Commission to monitor and report on low pay, or set out an ambition to tackle low pay as an active public policy. The procurement regime could be altered—billions of pounds worth of public contracts are on the runway every year—or we could have fair employment conditions based on a living wage in London, and enforced by the state. Those things would mean that the state is on the front foot in saying that we should not tolerate such forms of compound abuse in our city. As was discussed, we could examine the regulation of employment agencies, which more often than not are a Trojan horse to deregulate further other employment relationships, or we could extend the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to other sectors. A series of remedies could be provided if we had the political will to do so.

To go back to some of the points touched on by my colleague, if we do not provide such remedies, I worry about the combustible combination of forces that we are developing, namely patterns of migration, and the intense exploitation of some of the most vulnerable and fastest changing communities in our society. It should be incumbent on a Labour Government to remedy the combination of forces that leads to the immiseration of the most vulnerable in our society. I commend my colleague for raising the profoundly complex issues of race and class—we who are involved in politics here in Westminster cannot ignore them or swerve around them.

I shall be brief because other colleagues wish to contribute. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) for obtaining this timely and important debate and congratulate him on doing so.

Like my hon. Friend, I shall begin by putting the issue into context. Migrant workers in the UK are grossly exploited, by and large, but they make an incredible contribution to the economic well-being of our society. Our standard of living is largely dependent on migrant labour, so those newspapers, in particular the Daily Express, that constantly cite bogus immigration figures and distortions about the impact of immigration and about net migration from this country, would do well to reflect for a moment on what kind of public services, science, transport and manufacturing industries we would have if there had not been significant migration to the UK over the past 50 years. We do well to remember that we are a multi-ethnic, multicultural society that draws skills and abilities from people from all over the world, and that we have all benefited from it. We should be proud of that, not ashamed of it, and we should not allow xenophobia to take over the debate.

My hon. Friends the Members for Elmet, and for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) mentioned the appalling nexus of poverty, lack of effective regulation of the national minimum wage and the issues that arise from those things. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), I am a former official of the former National Union of Public Employees, which is now Unison. The union campaigned strongly for, and finally achieved, a national minimum wage. The wage is actually very low—it is a low benchmark—so it is disgraceful to expect anyone to work for less, yet many people are expected to do so. I pay tribute to the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for forcing the London living wage of £7.20 per hour through all aspects of public procurement by the Greater London authority. That is considerably more than the national minimum wage, but it set a benchmark for other employers in the capital, which is important. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will give us an undertaking that the Government will do their best to ensure that in all aspects of procurement, wherever the supply chain comes from, national minimum wage conditions, at the very least, will be enforced by employers all the way down the line. I should not be surprised to find that even in this very building, which seems to be developing a culture of agency working, people are working for less than the national minimum wage. I have no evidence one way or the other; I just think that it is worth inquiring into the matter.

The issue of migrant workers is not new and is not confined to the UK alone. Last autumn, I represented the Inter-Parliamentary Union at a conference on “Migration: the human rights perspective”. I was elected rapporteur for the conference, which was attended by delegates from 35 countries around the world. Unfortunately, they were mostly from Africa, Latin America and Asia; disgracefully, most European countries did not bother to attend—it is hard to get from Paris or Berlin to Geneva, so obviously, the journey was far too great for them. It was disappointing how few European countries were represented. I will not go into all the details of the lengthy statement that we issued at the end of the conference, but I draw to the Minister’s attention a couple of points from it.

We made the point that

“we as parliamentarians and opinion leaders need to speak more clearly and publicly of the important—and often indispensable—contribution of migrants to growth and prosperity. This also requires us to confront fellow parliamentarians when they appeal to emotional negative stereotyping of ‘the migrant’ for political gain.”

We must stand up against xenophobia in all its forms. We have a responsibility to do so. Specifically,

“fundamental international labour and human rights norms apply to migrants without exception…the ILO Conventions, in particular Nrs. 97 and 143j. and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families provide an international charter”

that gives some degree of security for migrants.

Can the Minister assure us not only that the UK supports those conventions, which it has signed, but that he will ensure that they are actively carried out? When I reported to the conference on the success of the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan), which became the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, it was well received. A lot of people were very interested in the concept of introducing some regulation for people who are grossly exploited in the workplace.

My final point concerns the role of the media. About 3 per cent. of the world’s population are migrant workers of some form. They are shunned and treated disgracefully in many countries whose economies they have built. Many of the glittering 19th and early 20th-century skyscrapers of New York and Boston were built on the backs of migrant workers. When we look at the great edifices of the world, we see the contribution made by migrant workers. This country, too, relies upon them. We have a duty to ensure that those people are fairly, decently and properly treated.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham pointed out, the far right and racists within our society exploit issues of low pay and access to jobs and services. The way to confront that is to end the nonsense in the Home Office, which seems incapable—in my view, almost deliberately—of dealing with wholly legitimate cases involving long-term UK residents. Employers can exploit that situation by threatening those who complain about conditions with removal from this country. We need to develop a much greater sense of solidarity within the entire community to end such division and exploitation. We can do it. Through the national minimum wage, effective inspection, the licensing of gangmasters and through public procurement policies, we can ensure that a scar on the lives of many people who are badly paid and badly treated can be removed. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet, and congratulate him on securing this important debate.

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) for securing this debate, but it is a shame that we have to have it. The issue should have been put to bed. Our Government and party have done fantastic work in the past 10 or 11 years, on the introduction of the minimum wage, as has been mentioned, as well as on the working time regulations, the extension of maternity pay, the right to paternity leave, sick pay and paid holiday entitlements, the right to trade union membership and the gangmasters legislation brought in by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan). Clearly that raises issues, but the agenda has all been positive.

It is sad that we are here today talking about an agenda that, to me, is about going back to the future. It is about going back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, when, as a local trade union official in Newcastle upon Tyne, I was faced with the reality of telling care workers, hospital cleaners, school workers, school meals ladies and school cleaners, “I’m sorry; you have lost your contract. I’m sorry; your pay is going to be reduced. I’m sorry; you will no longer be seen as a member of the national health service. You will be working for Joe Bloggs’ cleaning company.” I thought that we had done away with those days, and put them behind us when we got rid of things like compulsory competitive tendering. I thought we had got away from those days, and what we went for in this country was value-led, not cost-driven, services. It would appear from the debate today that sadly that is not the case for far too many people.

In the mid-1990s, as a national official of Unison, I worked with people who, to use their language, rescued Filipino nurses from working in care homes. Those Filipino nurses were educated to degree level and were brought to this country under false pretences, being told that they would work as qualified nurses. They worked as basic grade care workers and were treated and paid in that manner; but, even worse, they were made to pay for accommodation. They were even made to pay for the lend of a bike to ride to work. They were made to pay a bond back home in the Philippines and they were made to pay a bond in this country. The term that we used then when we got those people out of that employment and into proper public service work was rescue. We should not be back in that situation today, talking about having to rescue people from exploitative employers. It is all so sad that the impact on today’s labour market is not just on those workers. It is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet said, on other people in the work force. We have still not resolved the disgraceful situation by which seamen in this country are not paid the national minimum wage.

[Miss Anne Begg in the Chair]

Also, many people are losing their jobs. One of my constituents, for example, is a man who spent most of his life working in shipbuilding on the River Tyne, earning about £12 an hour as a skilled engineer. Because of a lack of orders, including Government orders, shipbuilding hardly exists now on the River Tyne. My constituent, at 63, is now faced with the reality that he might have to work offshore to make a living wage, because, in his trade as a plumber, he cannot compete with the ridiculously low wages that have appeared in the north-east of England because migrant workers are being exploited by employers. That does not help him or the work force and it does not help our party or the Government.

The workers of this country are concerned about the issue, which is a core issue for Labour party members. It is about why we are here and what we represent. In the real change that has happened in our party and Government in the past few years to become business-friendly, have we forgotten we should also be worker-friendly? If we have, that is a disaster for us, and not only for the people who are the traditional workers, but the millions of new workers who do not understand the history of our party and do not have the relationship with it that they would have had if they had come here many years ago and integrated into the work force as people did over centuries.

I was sorry to hear in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet that the Secretary of State had said effectively that we are at the end of employment legislation in this Parliament. I hope that that is not true, because we need to put resources into making things like the vulnerable worker enforcement forum work. We need to take real action. If we need to legislate to make sure that those things work properly—and it sounds from what has been said today that we do—we should not be frightened to do it. We should do it for the right reasons.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) on securing the debate. He made a very interesting and detailed speech, and it is obviously something that he feels passionate about. It will not surprise him to hear that I am not sure I agree with all of his philosophy. I agree with some of his solutions, but disagree with many.

Not all migrant workers are vulnerable. The CBI’s 2007 employment trends survey shows that demand for skilled and managerial professional workers remains strong. Most firms hiring staff from the new EU member states, for example, expect them to be skilled, so although many migrant workers fall into the category being discussed today, it is important to make it clear that many are highly skilled and do not fall into that class of vulnerable workers. I certainly welcome, however, the focus on vulnerable workers, who are an issue in my constituency, but it is important that we distinguish between those working illegally and those working legally but being exploited. The outcome might be the same, but the solutions are clearly different.

The hon. Member for Elmet quoted the TUC and Lords reports as examples of recent reports discussing this issue. However, another recent report, by the Work Foundation, provided a highly academic analysis of the impact of migration on wages and employment. I recommend that all hon. Members interested in this issue read that report. It reached slightly different conclusions from the House of Lords report and quotes the OECD meta-analysis of all the work done in the developing world and found a very limited impact on employment and wages. Certainly on employment, if anything, the impact was found to be slightly positive, although that is a temporary effect. On wages, it found that the impact was negligible for most countries—the exception being the USA, where there is no effective minimum wage law. That is very important.

The Work Foundation also examined the trends in wages in low-paid employment, particularly in the hotel, catering and construction industries, and found great transience in wages, but the pattern largely followed the trend in minimum wage rises. Wage rises slowed when the increase in the national minimum wage also slowed. The picture is obviously very complicated, and it is difficult to demonstrate an overall effect at the macro level, but that is not to say that there are not local impacts. A number of hon. Members have discussed local impacts in their own constituencies. It is also very clear that there are particular impacts where there is abuse of migrant workers working legally. The hon. Member for Elmet and others spoke about the chances of being inspected for breaching minimum wage legislation—the figures are shocking—and about other abuses of existing legislation. The question is: how do we deal with that? There is always a temptation to legislate further, which has been part of the debate so far. I agree with the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) when he said that there is a tendency to instinctively legislate, but we can enforce existing legislation. There is no point in creating new legislation if we cannot enforce existing practices.

I welcome the agreement between the CBI, the TUC and the Government on temporary agency workers. I look forward to seeing the details, however, because it is difficult to see from this vantage-point exactly what we are dealing with without knowing the detail of the behind-the-scenes discussions. We will certainly look at that when legislation is published, later this year, I assume. However, I am concerned that the rights of many people already working legally for an agency for more than three months are not enforced, and I question whether tightening up the legislation will necessarily yield our desired outcome. New legislation will not necessarily create a change in practice. The priorities must be a change in the levels of information and enforcement.

The hon. Lady is right to remind us, as I sought to do, of that which exists but is inadequately enforced. On the subject, to which much reference was made, of media hype and scaremongering, would she agree that whatever the claims of the media, it would be extremely unwise and entirely arbitrary simply to impose a national limit on the number of migrants admitted to the country on, for example, an annual basis? It would very likely be wrong, and there is no good cause for it.

I completely agree. Immigration—in particular with respect to work gaps—must depend on the gaps in the market. I can see us imposing an arbitrary limit and then finding that Chelsea want a new footballer for their team—when we have already had the quota of immigrants for that year. What on earth would we do then? I am sure that there would be an outcry from the very same papers that said there should be a quota.

Not from Leeds fans.

But not from Leeds fans. I am sure that that is very true.

On enforcement, will the Minister comment on Citizens Advice recommendations for an enforcement commission to consider other areas that legislation covers in practice, but where it is difficult for people to exert their rights because of a lack of information and of a practical system?

Does the hon. Lady also agree that it is important for public and local authorities and Government agencies to ensure that everyone whom they employ is at least on the minimum wage and properly employed, rather than turn a blind eye to it and accept the lowest possible bid in this contract-culture era that we are in?

I absolutely agree. The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point.

I shall move on to the issue of illegal workers, which the hon. Members for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) and for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) spoke about extensively. I feel particularly strongly about it because I see it in my constituency. If there is an impact on the low-paid, that is where it comes from, because illegal workers are neither covered by minimum wage legislation nor protected by employment legislation. One only has to take an unlicensed minicab in London and have a conversation with the driver to understand that we have the most over-qualified minicab drivers in the world. The number of people I have spoken to who are doctors or professors in their home country but who in this country are forced to drive minicabs illegally is particularly shocking.

In my constituency, on Chichele road, whenever the media are looking for a story about illegal casual labour, they tend to film the number of casual labourers waiting, sitting on walls outside people’s homes from dawn each day. Some of them are legal and just looking for casual labour, but many are not, and as successive waves of immigrants have been unable to regularise their status, we have seen the change in the nature of those people sitting on that wall on Chichele road. It is a tragic situation and those people are very vulnerable.

The Government’s own estimate is that there may be as many as 600,000 irregular migrants in the UK. Many of them are working illegally. Several hon. Members talked about the churches’ campaign, “Strangers into Citizens”, which is a very good and interesting campaign. It is good to have a coalition of people campaigning on behalf of vulnerable people who are often overlooked. We really must face the facts about that group of people: we simply cannot deport all the people who are here illegally. It costs about £11,000 for each deportation, and I have seen a number of shocking examples of botched deportations, when people should have been sent home but the Government have been unable to manage it. No way are we going to deport them all, so the Government should concentrate on those who are criminals and make no contribution to the UK, ensuring that we bring the others out of the shadows so that they have an opportunity to integrate. They should be paying tax in this country.

If one has been in the UK for 10 years, has not committed a criminal offence and can speak English, one should be eligible for a two-year work permit, which should be the beginning of an earned route to citizenship. We should ask people to demonstrate their long-term commitment to the UK, enable them to do it and fast-track them on to indefinite leave to remain.

Complementarity is the argument used by employers for the need to recruit workers from overseas. Everybody says that it is a short-term solution to the lack of skills in this country, but we are not doing anything to ensure that we aim that work at areas where there are skills shortages. I would like the Government to consider the possibility of increasing the cost of those work permits but ring-fencing the money to be used in targeted areas to increase skills, particularly where there are shortages in the economy. That interesting solution might meet many people’s concerns.

The hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) raises an important subject today, about which he spoke strongly.

The protection of migrant workers is, of course, important. I am sure that all hon. Members in the Chamber today want to do everything in their power to put an end to the exploitation of certain sectors of the migrant work force and to prevent a rerun of the Morecambe bay tragedy. I agree with the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) that the issue needs to be looked at in a broader context, as it raises important questions about the control of immigration and dealing with poverty. I would add to that list, although the hon. Gentleman might not, the environment that we have created for employers—namely, the job creators.

What should not be a factor is xenophobia, as was strongly suggested by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn). Given that unemployment has risen for the last three months in a row and is predicted to rise increasingly over the next year, I agree that the subject needs to be analysed carefully. The challenge is to deliver action to prevent the exploitation of migrant workers without putting further strain on our already overburdened businesses.

We should certainly be looking to improve conditions for migrant workers by the better policing of existing legislation. Rights already exist, such as those in anti-discrimination law, health and safety legislation and employment and tax law, to protect vulnerable workers. It is important that Departments in charge of administering those areas work together efficiently and effectively to enforce those laws to achieve the intended effect. As the TUC recently argued, it is also important that employees are made aware of their employment rights. The trade unions are in a strong position to increase such awareness among workers, and their contribution is recognised in the recent report of the TUC’s commission on vulnerable employment. Indeed, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), the shadow Secretary of State, were pleased to have contributed to that report. One area where the law needs to be more strictly enforced is on the operation of gangmasters. They can fulfil an important role in providing flexible short-term labour, but there is much evidence of illegal gangmasters breaking the law in various ways.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) said—it was also argued by the hon. Members for Elmet and for Brent, East (Sarah Teather)—there is little point in having tough legislation if it is not adequately enforced. That, I would add, is despite the fact that such a failing is a hallmark of the Government’s administration across the board.

The Conservative party supports the proper monitoring of the legislative provisions that relate to the payment of the minimum wage. It is currently estimated that 292,000 workers are being paid less than the minimum wage. I shall be joining the Government in speaking on behalf of workers who need to be protected from such exploitation when we debate the topic in more detail in the forthcoming Employment Bill, which is now wending its way through the other place. However, it must be appreciated that there is much conflicting opinion on the effect that immigration has had on wages.

I agree with the hon. Member for Brent, East that not all immigrants are poor, but today’s debate is about those who are poor, and I speak in that context. The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee examined the issue and found, as various hon. Members said, that although immigration has had a positive effect on the wages of better-paid workers it has had a negative impact on those on lower pay.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. One can argue the toss—there is scope for different theses—about the impact of immigration on national income and whether or not it has made the country richer. I think, on the whole, that it has. Would my hon. Friend nevertheless agree that it is critically important to recognise, against the manic rantings of the red-top tabloids, that the evidence clearly shows that immigrants contribute more to the national cake than they take from it?

I agree that immigrants have contributed a lot to this nation, but whether every immigrant contributes more or less to the national cake is something that has to be considered on an individual basis. I am arguing that when it comes to pay, the evidence is definitely at odds. The 2008 report of the Low Pay Commission, which investigated the influx of migrant workers to Britain, was more on the lines set out by the hon. Member for Islington, North, noting that

“it appears that migrant workers are contributing to the success of the UK economy by filling gaps in the labour market and that, in general, they have not displaced UK nationals in the workplace”.

That is more like the argument proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham. The evidence, however, is not conclusive. The report also dispelled the idea that migrant workers are routinely paid less than the minimum wage. It said that

“the vast majority of employers support and comply with minimum wage legislation”.

It is important that we make that point. The effect of immigration on wages in the UK is uncertain. While that remains the case, we need to be wary about introducing new legislation that will distort market flexibility in a difficult economy.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the importance of the national minimum wage, will he support me in welcoming the London living wage introduced by the former Mayor? Will he assure the House that the current Mayor of London will continue that humane and decent policy of ensuring that the reality of high costs in London are recognised in payment?

The general point is that there is a case to be made that the public sector should have a say on a voluntary basis in setting standards. That is generally to be encouraged.

What is the answer?

It is not for me to give the hon. Gentleman an answer. He needs to ask the Mayor.

We now have an economic climate in which employers often have to employ migrant workers because they find it too expensive to employ British people. The hon. Member for Elmet said that the Government strategy affected the lower paid. However, the proposed agency workers legislation—the Minister might want to put me right on this—will not only capture the low paid. Between 1991 and 2006, a net 2.3 million immigrants arrived in Britain. In 2006 alone, 130,000 non-EU nationals were granted settlement. That represents a significant strain on our country’s infrastructure. Whether such an influx is for good or bad may vary in different cases. The Conservative party has proposed that there should be an annual limit on immigration with admission based on the benefit to the wider economy.

Protecting migrant workers from exploitation is important. However, that is only part of the story if we are to tackle the underlying reasons for the need for such workers in the first place. The Conservative party proposes not only to cap non-EU immigration and bring in a more effective border police, but to look at ways to get the 1.61 million British people who are currently unemployed back into work—not least through welfare reform. We also propose providing the means to reintegrate into society the 25,000 under-18s who are currently not in education, employment or training. We would also make it easier and more attractive for businesses to take on employees. As the economy worsens and unemployment rises and wages are eroded by inflation, action needs to be taken to encourage employment, yet the Labour party is proposing further changes to employment law that will make employing staff an even greater burden for business. For example, the Government recently increased the rights of temporary and agency workers, and that is before the next round of the Warwick agreement. Labour, therefore, has adopted a very damaging attitude towards business.

Increasing working rights may be acceptable, but it will mean that more businesses will have to employ temporary workers to cover shortfalls. However, the recent beer and sandwiches deal means that employing such temporary workers, many of whom will be immigrants, will now be more expensive and burdensome for businesses. The unions may think that by demanding tougher monitoring of immigrant labour, it is less likely that companies will employ immigrants. The hon. Member for Elmet called the current position unacceptable, but that is too simplistic. Put in a wider context, more businesses are likely to be priced out of employing workers legitimately and may even be pushed into employing illegal immigrants.

To conclude on what we agree is a complicated issue, the protection of migrant workers is important for the Conservative party. Although a general legislative framework exists to tackle the problem, more should be done to improve policing in this area.

As is customary, I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) on securing the debate. He spoke with great thoroughness about a difficult set of issues. He began by saying that there was a basic consensus between the two Front Bench spokesmen on these issues. I am not sure whether he still holds that view, having heard the contribution of the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly). However, that is for him to decide.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) was right to say that the politics of the issue can be toxic—the debate feeds into some difficult political issues. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) and the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), raised some issues that I hope to be able to cover.

The issues are important, because any decent society and any good economy demands that all workers, whether they were born in the country or not, get decent treatment at work. Migration is not new. People have always sought to move around the world for a better life; it is not an ignoble ambition. People come to the UK in search of a better life. The starting point for any discussion of the issues—certainly on the Government’s part—should be to acknowledge that there are some 3 million more people in work today, compared with 11 years ago, and all of them enjoy better employment rights in a number of ways than was the case more than a decade ago.

I start by mentioning the minimum wage. On coming to power, one of the Government’s central ambitions was to put a decent floor underneath the labour market. Warnings of disaster emanated from the Conservative party, but they did not come true. However, simply beginning the minimum wage was not the end of the story; it is also about how things have been handled since it came into force. The minimum wage has grown, both in real terms and as a proportion of national average earnings, since it came into being almost a decade ago. The Low Pay Commission model has worked well. The Government are committed to ensuring that all workers who are entitled to the minimum wage get it.

Let me say something about enforcement and the resources for enforcement—a point raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). Last year we recognised that there was a legitimate issue. An extra £2.9 million per year, over the course of the current spending review, has been put into national minimum wage enforcement. We have seen some of the fruits of that, particularly over the past year. The money is spent in two areas: on the staff who enforce the legislation and on promoting awareness of the minimum wage. That is critical when dealing with migrant workers, many of whom arrive in the UK not knowing the employment rights to which they are entitled. For example, in the past year we were able to fund extra publicity in some non-English language newspapers, in radio advertising, and in a bus that visited 30 towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom, making contact with tens of thousands of people, to advertise better people’s entitlement to the minimum wage. However, that is not all.

Hon. Members have mentioned legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon said that we should not fear legislating on such issues. We do not fear that. In fact, the Employment Bill, which is about to be introduced in the House, will address a number of these issues. First, where people are paid below the minimum wage, the system of arrears will be improved so that we no longer have a situation in which people are, in effect, giving an interest-free loan to a bad employer who pays below the minimum wage. Secondly, the penalty regime will be stiffened for employers who do not pay the minimum wage or who contravene the agency regulations. I look forward to holding Opposition Front Benchers to their indication that they will support the Bill when it comes before the House.

What the Minister said about interest gives me very belated gratification. As long ago as March 1998—at approximately five o’clock in the morning during our debate on the Floor of the House on the Report stage of the National Minimum Wage Bill—I tabled an amendment to the effect that employers who were eventually forced to cough up in cases of non-payment should have to pay interest. Given that the Minister believes in the Low Pay Commission model, however, will he tell me why the Government are resistant to the idea that 21-year-olds should get the full adult rate? That seems to be a basic matter of fairness.

The hon. Gentleman made two points. First, there was the issue of the interest-free loan, and we are, as I said, correcting that situation through the Bill that is coming before the House. Secondly, we take the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations very seriously. The issue of 21-year-olds is probably quite marginal either way, but we will continue to examine it. However, we are also alive to the need to ensure that younger workers have a chance in the employment market, and that factor must be taken into account.

On resources, one of the issues that has been raised, including through the Government’s vulnerable worker enforcement forum, which I chair, is where people go to report an abuse, how they do so and how any decision is enforced. In line with the Employment Bill, the Government have allocated £27 million over the coming three years to expand the work done by ACAS in resolving disputes at work. ACAS offers a high-quality service, which will now be expanded, and we want to encourage employees and employers to use it to resolve disputes at work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and several other hon. Members mentioned agency workers, and the issue has been high on the agenda for a number of years. The backdrop is a European directive. My hon. Friend and I may not take exactly the same position on the matter, as I suspect his position is that we should have signed the directive that was put before us. We did not want to do that, however, because we wanted to achieve two objectives: fair treatment for agency workers, and the kind of flexibility for UK employers that has been important in ensuring that we have 3 million more jobs in the economy. Against that backdrop, we brought together the TUC and the CBI and negotiated an agreement to ensure equal treatment on basic pay and conditions after 12 weeks, with the possibility of local agreements outside that.

My hon. Friend asked specifically about occupational benefits. They are excluded from the deal, which is about basic pay and conditions. However, the agreement does secure our two objectives of fair treatment for agency workers and flexibility for employers. The story is not over yet, however, because we must now reach a satisfactory agreement in Europe that recognises the validity of the social partner agreement so that we can introduce the legislation to implement it. Those European discussions are going on at the moment.

The hon. Member for Brent, East said that she had not seen details of the agreement, but I remind her that there was a written ministerial statement. A copy of the proposals has also been published and is available in the Library.

Rights for migrant workers have been increased in many other ways. When the vulnerable worker enforcement forum publishes its findings, we will have more to say about this important issue.

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this issue before the House. I begin by recognising the progress that Mozambique has made in many areas since 1992, after a long and savage 16-year civil war. I would also like to recognise the leadership of President Guebuza. However, the European Commission has rightly recognised that corruption is still an issue in many parts of the public administration of the current Government and, indeed, in many of the agencies of that Government.

I would like to counterbalance that by mentioning the European Commission’s recognition that on many macro-economic issues there has been more stability in relation to and better management of some areas of public finances. Nevertheless, as the Commission and other European Union partners recognise—and as I hope the Minister will say later—there is still much more to do. Corruption is still a cancer that eats away at the heart of some areas of the Mozambique Government and their agencies.

Through the Department for International Development, the British Government are the largest donors in Mozambique. The total aid programme is £60 million for 2007-08 and £41 million of that will go directly to Mozambique’s Government. Running the machinery of the Mozambique Government is very much in the hands of the UK Government and, indirectly, the British taxpayer. DFID, quite rightly, has large programmes in health, education, and infrastructure to combat the problem of HIV/AIDS and to deal with many of the victims of the disease in that country. In fact, between 2008 and 2012, DFID’s five-year programme is worth about £240 million. The British Government and British taxpayers have put a not insignificant amount of money into Mozambique.

May I ask the Minister whether Her Majesty’s Government are confident that there are enough checks in place to root out and expose corruption in Mozambique and whether they have confidence in the willingness of the Government of Mozambique to deal with those issues? Where is the evidence of them dealing with such matters? I see that the right hon. Member for Streatham (Keith Hill), the former Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has just entered the Chamber. The former Prime Minister did an excellent job with other partners on the Commission for Africa. The commission quite rightly recognised that corruption is one of the key issues facing aid and development programmes in not only Mozambique but many other parts of Africa.

We know that the current Prime Minister is, at least for the time being, a supporter of Mozambique and that he has a close interest in the country. If that extends to ensuring that the right financial controls are in place to try to reduce corruption, I welcome that. However, to date, there has been no evidence that the Prime Minister has publicly stated his concerns about that. Given his close interest in the country, that is perhaps a little surprising. I am not being adversarial or party political, I just think that the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron) should take this opportunity to put the Government’s position on that on the record—from the Prime Minister downwards.

A few weeks ago, in May this year, the European Commission warned that corruption and excessive bureaucracy were still problems facing Mozambique. On corruption in Mozambique, the World Bank said:

“The harmful effects on corruption are especially severe on the poor”.

Oxfam said that corruption

“diverts public money to rich elites; raids resources for poverty reduction; and distorts the economy - with the biggest impact felt by the poorest people”—

because—

“poor people bear the brunt of petty forms of corruption, having to pay a greater share of their income in bribes than rich people do”.

Today, I shall focus not on the wider issue of corruption, but on police corruption in Mozambique. In particular, I shall consider the Amnesty International report on the Mozambique police entitled “Licence to Kill”. In that report Amnesty International identifies a

“systematic pattern of human rights violations by the police and police impunity”.

It goes on to say that

“the use of torture and other cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment or punishment”

can be seen in various parts of the country when the police come into contact with local people. The range of human rights abuses includes torture, extortion, beatings, taking bribes, violent interrogations, punishment without trial and the unlawful use of weapons. There is also evidence of police death squads, which I will come to.

I recognise that the Minister for the Interior in Mozambique and the Ministry generally have introduced some modernisation programmes, but they seem to be slow to reform the police or to bring about greater accountability. Those reforms and the transparency of the police need to be speeded up and made a high priority by the President of Mozambique.

I should like to put on record my thanks to the Government of Spain, who have over many years provided a great deal of funding to Mozambique—it ceased two or three years ago—specifically for police reform and to help to establish the police academy for officers. They need to be recognised and acknowledged for that. I hope that Spain, with the United Kingdom and other European Union partners, recognise that there is a problem in Mozambique. For the record, I am not talking about every police station or every police officer, but the problem is widespread enough for the Government to take action and to discuss the issue directly with the Government of Mozambique. It would be a helpful step forward if EU partners, the UK and Spain were to extend the funding for the police academy, and if DFID funding were linked to police and wider penal reform.

The Amnesty report also mentions the lack of mechanisms for internal police discipline, which needs to be addressed, and that there is an inadequate chain of command. Certainly, to date, we have seen inadequate leadership. The international community, through the report and this debate, the media and non-governmental organisations are reporting more on Mozambique, so there needs to be strong leadership of the police and the Ministry of the Interior, and an end to police impunity.

I should like to mention particularly the case of Abrantes Afonso Penicela, about whom the Minister will doubtless have been briefed. He was abducted by the police, given a toxic injection, beaten, shot in the back of the neck, doused with petrol, set alight and left for dead. Miraculously, he was able to crawl away from the scene—sadly, he was half dead—make a call and get to hospital. He gave testimony and evidence to his relatives and the police about who was involved. Sadly, he died later that day. That brutal, savage and murderous act by police officers, whom Mr. Penicela named, has still not been investigated fully or conclusively. More importantly, no police officers have been arrested or charged, and there is no sign that they will be. I speak today for the justice that is required by the late Mr. Penicela, his family, Mozambique’s constitution and laws and, indeed, by international norms as we know them.

In the brief time available I should also like to mention the Costa do Sol case. On the evening of 4 April 2007, three police officers took three detainees—Sousa Carlos Cossa, Mustafa Assane Momerie and Francisco Nhantumbo—from a police station in Laulane, Maputo, to a sports field in the Costa do Sol neighbourhood, outside Maputo, where they shot and killed them. The officers say that they were shot while trying to escape, but an inquiry by the Mozambique procurator general revealed a different story entirely. An autopsy concluded that the three had been shot in the back of the neck at close range. In the words of the procurator general, they had been “summarily executed” by the police.

The autopsy findings were incompatible with the events described by the accused police but, despite an arrest warrant being issued by the office of the procurator of Maputo city, and discussions with the commander general of the police, it took quite a while before the police officers were arrested. There was much to-ing and fro-ing. They were originally arrested, but then other police officers released them. They were finally re-arrested, but to date they have not been brought before the courts. In the interests of justice and the rights of the families involved, a date should be set as quickly as possible to bring the police officers before the courts.

In the Costa do Sol case, the police alleged that they were simply—

Order. According to my notes, we are debating the UK’s aid programme in Mozambique. Unless the hon. Gentleman can link his comments with that topic, I am afraid that he has strayed quite far from the debate’s remit.

I am grateful for your advice, Miss Begg, and can assure you that my comments are very much linked to DFID funding. If you will bear with me a little longer, I am sure that the picture will become clearer.

It is important that justice be heard in this place and, indeed, in Mozambique, for the victims of such savage crimes. In that case, the police suggested that they were acting under orders. Who gave those orders? They cannot hide behind that excuse.

My concern about DFID funding to Mozambique is that the country might well be regressing to disorder in some places if it fails to deal with important issues such as those I have outlined. As the continent of Africa’s image and international reputation improve—certainly in the most part—it would be embarrassing for the President of Mozambique if his country was to be one of the few sub-Saharan countries to let down the continent. I speak as a member of the executive of the all-party group on Africa, and as a friend of Africa and Mozambique. It is noteworthy that on 23 May this year, two of Mozambique’s programme aid partners—Sweden and Switzerland—reduced their aid because of fears of corruption in the governance of the country.

On replacing former President Chissano, President Guebuza promised to fight corruption, bureaucracy and poverty, but that promise is lacking delivery. With Mozambique’s legacy of landmines and amputees, it would be historically embarrassing if the legacy of the current Administration was one of turning a blind eye to injustice and the plight of the poor. The Mozambique Government should be given a mutually agreed deadline by which police and penal reform should be implemented, and corrupt police officers arrested, charged and brought before the courts, and, if convicted, forced to serve full sentences as appropriate. People who have been imprisoned unlawfully should also be released immediately—today, in June 2008. I also believe that independent police oversight and human rights performance monitoring mechanisms need to be put in place.

Individuals or families affected by the actions of corrupt police officers and community police councils should be given reparation and compensation for their personal and financial losses and hardship. If that does not happen, DFID’s contribution to the country should be reviewed. The President needs to challenge the commander general, the procurator general and the Minister for the Interior to do their jobs and to bring those murderers and corrupt police officers to book. Do the British Government want to continue to walk by on the other side and allow British taxpayers’ money, through DFID, to fund a regime that allows death squads—as, indeed, has been admitted by someone in that very Administration—to roam the streets of Maputo and rural areas and, with impunity in many cases, murder, injure and disable people?

I support DFID’s funding programme in Mozambique, but I should like it to be linked to performance criteria to reduce corruption in the parts of the Administration where it occurs and, most notably, as was set out in the Amnesty International report, in the police. Justice must be done, and the British taxpayer demands justice for every pound spent in Mozambique. If the Mozambique Government will not act, I suggest that the British Government should take a note from the Swiss book and perhaps review their current level of funding.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining the debate. Does he agree that far too often decisions on aid are made on the spur of the moment? Surely, by fulfilling our obligations on Mozambique, we can prepare the way for a swifter and more comprehensive approach when, for example, Zimbabwe’s time comes, as it inevitably will.

The hon. Gentleman always makes helpful and pertinent interventions, and lives up to his reputation. I completely agree; justice can be done in this case and, as he mentioned, I hope that the Minister will say that DFID funding needs to be linked to the reforms that I have suggested.

I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing this timely debate. Perhaps I may immediately reassure him about UK Government action with respect to all the concerns that he has set out, by saying that our job is to support the poor people of Mozambique. I am sure that he will join me in that view. I have just returned from Mozambique where I attended the annual meetings of the African Development Bank, visited communities where UK assistance is making a difference and met the DFID team to discuss future strategy and the focus of the UK’s aid programme.

Mozambique, as we have heard, is a country that has made great strides, but it still faces multiple challenges. Since peace in 1992 the country and its people, with our assistance and the assistance of others, have been meeting those challenges. The country is often rightly described as something of a development success story of post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction. There has been real progress, to which the UK aid programme has contributed. Before I address the important issues raised by the Amnesty International report and the particular concerns about corruption I want to say a few words about where the UK Government, through DFID, have already made a difference in Mozambique, and to give a sense of our future direction. I want to do that because those factors have a positive impact on the realisation of human rights, the tackling of corruption and the promotion of good governance.

Basic services are the focus of DFID’s work in Mozambique, because our job is to bring about real improvements in the lives of the poor and to be completely focused on that. As to education, our programme has contributed to getting an extra 270,000 children into primary school. UK development assistance on health has enabled the Mozambique Government to meet their 2007 target of an extra 35,000 women giving birth in a clinic, and ensured that more than six out of 10 children under the age of one were fully immunised against the five priority vaccine-preventable diseases: diphtheria, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and measles.

On HIV and AIDS, in a country where the infection rate is estimated to have reached about 16 per cent. of the adult population, DFID has worked with the Government and other donors to reach the Government’s target of about 79,000 adults receiving antiretroviral treatment and more than 6,000 children receiving paediatric treatment. I am glad that yesterday, at the launch of the UK Government’s updated strategy on achieving universal access, the representative of the Government of Mozambique welcomed that, and saw the real difference that UK plans and action will make to the people of Mozambique.

To me, the changes are about improving vulnerable and excluded people’s chances to claim their rights, but it is true that those changes alone are not enough to encourage a robust and accountable Government. To address that, we are actively supporting civil society, with a focus on people’s rights, and have funded an anti-corruption watchdog, the Centre for Public Integrity. Through that support, we are generating a demand among the people of Mozambique for greater Government accountability and effectiveness.

Of course, there is so much more to do. Mozambique ranks only 172nd out of 177 on the human development index, which measures well-being based on economic, social and health issues. The Government predict that by 2010, 2 million people in Mozambique will be living with HIV and 300,000 children will still not be in school. Those challenges and others are the reason that our aid programme will rise from £60 million in 2007 to £70 million in 2010-11, and that our core approach is based on improving service delivery.

Will that rather large increase be a cheque given to the Mozambique Government without strings attached, or will it be conditional on certain reforms to address some of the issues that I have touched on?

As I continue, I shall assure the hon. Gentleman of the stringent measures in place. I hope that he will take comfort from that.

The Mozambique Government have correctly ambitious plans in respect of health, education, HIV and social protection. We need to support the Government in delivering them, but with a much stronger emphasis on accountability. Of course, as Mozambique is a country vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods, droughts and cyclones, which damage property and livelihoods and increase disease, we will increase our work on tackling climate change.

Our focus is on achieving results for the people of Mozambique, whether that involves access to clean water and decent health care or the opportunity to go to school, be safe and access decent work. DFID Mozambique has clear measures of success, using the targets for 2009 taken from the Mozambique Government’s own poverty reduction strategy.

It is appropriate at this point to refer to the points raised by the hon. Gentleman about corruption. Indicators of corruption are included in the performance framework for budget support, and constant dialogue about them takes place in which all 19 budget support donors engage. We have a particular approach in Mozambique, which I am happy to outline and hope will be of interest to the hon. Gentleman.

DFID’s national corruption strategy has four aspects. The first is supporting the Government of Mozambique in their reform programmes, which aim to narrow the opportunities for corruption. For example, we are supporting the introduction of a new electronic public expenditure management system, which will reduce opportunities for embezzlement and theft. Secondly, as I have mentioned, we are supporting the demand side of good governance and anti-corruption efforts by supporting the people of Mozambique in claiming their rights and having a voice. Thirdly, anti-corruption plans are being introduced at the sector level as a key strand of our programme. Our focus is on health, where there is evidence of the highest level of political commitment. Finally, we are supporting initiatives called mega-project deals to improve transparency in relation to minerals and revenue flows. In 2007, we worked on new mining and petroleum fiscal laws, and we are now considering how to improve transparency on new investments in the energy sector.

It is important to put on record that there have been some positive steps recently. That is the evidence that the hon. Gentleman asked for. For example, a new computerised expenditure management system has been introduced, as well as a new public procurement law and a census of public-sector workers, all of which will help ensure that Government money is used effectively. It is the poor people in Mozambique who cannot wait for progress. Therefore, we will continue to support them through the aid programme while using every appropriate safeguard, as I have already described.

The hon. Gentleman rightly and understandably expressed his concern about human rights. The UK Government share the concerns outlined in the Amnesty International report about the lack of police accountability. It is unacceptable for the police to commit human rights violations. When they take place, it is also unacceptable for them not to be investigated and for the perpetrators not to be brought to justice. Following the report that was recently issued, officials from DFID and the high commission in Mozambique, who work very closely together, met with Amnesty International to discuss their findings. We will continue to work with Amnesty.

We and our EU partners are having a robust dialogue with the Mozambique Government about progress on human rights. We will demand to see the recommendations of the Amnesty International report put into action. Our UK high commissioner, Andrew Soper, has requested a meeting with the Minister of the Interior to discuss the report. The matter will also be raised at the forthcoming meeting between EU ambassadors and the Foreign Minister.

Despite reports that the human rights situation in Mozambique is worsening, there have been positive developments and it is important to put them on record. For example, the number of prisoners being held without trial has been falling consistently. The 2005 family law made important strides towards equality for women, especially in the ownership of domestic assets. We were also glad to see the introduction of a Bill against human trafficking, which was recently passed in the Parliament of Mozambique after a concerted campaign by international and local non-governmental organisations, and supported by donors. Such a move is evidence that, by working with others, it is possible to shift Government approaches to the critical aspects of human rights. Within the dialogue and the performance-monitoring machinery of budget support, the human rights focus is very much on access to justice, including access to legal aid and faster processing of court cases.

Improvements were seen in 2007 with a 24 per cent. increase in the productivity of the courts.

Will the Minister put on record whether she thinks that the principle of compensation and reparations for the victims of police officers and for the families of those people who have been murdered should be enshrined in law and should be something that the President himself is involved in to ensure that the families do not continue to suffer through the loss of income from those whom they have lost?

I have already set out very clearly what is and what is not acceptable. I want to focus on getting the Government of Mozambique to take on the recommendations of the Amnesty International report. Aside from that report, however, we are pressing for progress in a number of areas in the near future. Reform of the penal code, which dates from the 18th century, is crucial and needs to be harmonised with new laws and international conventions, which have been ratified by Mozambique’s Parliament.

There needs to be greater protection for women and children under the law—including the introduction of a new law on domestic violence—and the promotion of their rights, as well as the establishment of a human rights commission. The Mozambique Government and Parliament have already started to discuss those issues and we look forward to progress soon. We will continue to assist them.

The UK remains committed to this agenda and will focus on four priority areas: child rights, in particular child trafficking; political freedom; police accountability; and improving human rights awareness in the management of prisons. We recognise that even stronger mechanisms of accountability are important to maintain a commitment to reduce corruption, provide responsive public services and ultimately reduce poverty and bring fairness in a country that is on track to meet the majority of the millennium development goals. With the continued support of the UK aid programme, we will work to make that achievement possible.

I am delighted to introduce the debate at this time. I wish that my thinking about the issue at the same time as the Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting takes place in Rome were more than a coincidence, but these things sometimes conspire for all the best purposes. At least the presence of Mugabe has given the meeting some added piquancy, although I would like to have thought that the presence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and another friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), would have been enough to generate some interest in it.

Food and food politics are highly contentious issues at the moment. We all know that recent price increases have raised the issue to a new height of awareness, and I wish mainly to talk about the UK scene, although I shall finish by saying a few things about the international scene. I am well aware of what the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), speaks on, and I wish to keep the debate mainly in the domestic context.

It is quite difficult to define food policy, let alone food policy security, but I am clear that we have a problem in this country and in the western world, and I want to highlight some things that we ought to take account of. As always with these debates, I can raise the issues, but I hope that the Minister will respond with some answers about the Government’s thinking.

There is obviously a question from the outset, because it is difficult to identify which Department and which Minister will take responsibility for the issue. My hon. Friend is in the Chamber to answer today, and in the true sense of joined-up government, I hope that he will talk to other Ministers about it, because the Food Standards Agency reports to the Department of Health, the Cabinet Office is spending a great deal of time on the issue of food co-ordination, and other Departments—such as the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Children, Schools and Families—are involved with the issues about what we feed our children in schools. A panoply of Ministries take partial responsibility for the matter.

I am going to cheat and not come up with my own definition of food security, because it has been very well done in the recent Cabinet Office paper, to which I shall give some publicity, because it is very good at trying to settle the old differences and delineate how to take the new strategy forward. The Cabinet Office says:

“The term ‘food security’ is used in different ways but it is essentially a matter of identifying, assessing and managing risks in food supply.”

It continues:

“The multiple dimensions and interpretations of ‘food security’ can hinder any discussion.”

It then looks at the six key criteria by which food security should be measured. They are: availability, which is to do with production, supply and so on; access—to do with affordability and physical accessibility; affordability in its own right—to do with what households can and cannot afford; safety—to do with what we eat and feeling secure in the knowledge that what we eat will not poison us or do long-term damage to our bodies; resilience, as the food chain has to be capable of being protected and supported; and finally, confidence, as there must be public confidence in all those issues, so that people feel that they can purchase the food.

There is so much that I could say in the debate, but I shall keep to the main bones of my contention, whereby I hope that the Government are moving towards a proper food policy based on addressing the current problems of where we get our food from and how it can be supplied at a reasonable price. We all know that people are becoming increasingly aware of the issue globally, but we have seen rising food prices over the past few months in this country. Questions are being asked of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as to how we can perhaps forestall some of the increases or at least put them in the context of how we can make progress. The price rises vary enormously.

I will go on the record about this. I have said it before; it is not something that I mind being reported. I always saw the dangers of a cheap food policy. We became pretty complacent, believing that food prices would always stay low. We were not asking enough questions about where that food was coming from and we certainly never foresaw what might happen on the world stage. We did not foresee what could happen if we suddenly moved away from a cheap food policy and began to realise that that was not ordained from above; it was something that we had to make work and happen. Supply had to be put in place and we had to look at who was demanding it and why.

We have seen prices going up. Bread and cereals are up 8.5 per cent. and milk and cheese are up 15.7 per cent. Those are dramatic increases. I have never been one who takes a cheap food policy for granted, because it has been my belief that suppliers in this country have had something of a raw deal. I could argue as to why they have had a raw deal, but at least now some of those suppliers may begin to get appropriate rewards, which could change our food provision for the better. However, there are other aspects to the issue that are increasingly worrying.

We have seen self-sufficiency decline. It has not declined dramatically, but it has declined, and I think that we need to consider whether there should be a requirement for a minimum proportion of our food to be supplied from within this country, because of the dangers of relying on imports. Also, I feel strongly that this is not just about a national policy but about local food chains, which I very much support.

The other aspect is rising fuel prices. That issue takes two forms. People are paying more to move food around. I am referring to food miles—the Tim Lang phrase that is now in common parlance. More particularly, one of the reasons why food prices are rising is that we have chosen to turn land over to biofuel. I personally think that that is completely explicable and I strongly support it. I know that there is a debate on the issue later in the week—the Minister may respond to it, too—but I am worried by the exaggeration that takes place. Everyone said, “This is a jolly good thing because we are moving away from our dependency on petrol and diesel,” so we move to another product and then there is a huge row. People say, “This is terrible. We should stop it immediately. It is a completely inappropriate use of our land space.” I do not go along with that. I think that there is a role for biofuels. We need to find other ways in which we can move vehicles about but, again, anyone who thinks that that is the answer per se will be sadly disillusioned.

The other aspect of food coming from abroad that worries me, as the Minister will know because I have asked him about it and there have been various DEFRA investigations, is the threat of animal disease. I have felt for a long time that we underestimate that. We could be seen to be obsessed with terrorism. One aspect of that could always be the threat of animal disease being deliberately put into our food supply, but more particularly, we are talking about accidents of fate. This country has had foot and mouth and we are threatened currently by avian influenza and bluetongue. It costs huge amounts of money to deal with such matters. I am proud that the Department has strategies in place and we are working incredibly hard but, again, we ignore those threats at our peril. That issue must be part of how we deal with security and evolve a proper food policy.

One of the criteria must be food safety. Of course, that is linked to animal disease. It involves what we eat and who supplies it. However, there is a more general issue to do with safety. If we take the widest definition of that, we are talking not just about what is safe to eat, but how much people eat. The obesity debate—the obesity epidemic, some people would say—is part and parcel of the debate about where we supply, what we supply and how much we supply.

This issue is topical. The Chancellor wrote to Dr. Andrej Bajuk, the Minister of Finance in the Slovenian Government. He did that because Slovenia will shortly take on the EU presidency; indeed, it has already taken it on because it is 1 June—[Interruption.] It is finishing off its presidency—I thank the Minister for reminding me of that. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit Slovenia, so it is a bit distant to me. However, I congratulate the Chancellor on sending that letter, which at least raised the question of how the common agricultural policy relates to the issues before us.

As a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic, I feel strongly that we are, yet again, not asking the pertinent questions about the common agricultural policy. I know that these recent developments have upset the National Farmers Union because they look as though they will lead to more instability. We must, however, ask whether we have the appropriate policy in place at this time of rising fuel and food prices to provide most of Europe’s food, and I would say that we have not. The Chancellor is therefore to be congratulated on at least opening up a debate on the issue. We have, of course, chosen to subsidise food, and I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with the way in which we subsidise it in the EU. We need to look carefully at whether there are better policies and mechanisms and at whether those that we do have are appropriate as we go forward in this century. At the very least, the jury is out on that.

Let me put food security in the context of wider food policy. As I said, we do not have a lead Department on the issue in this country, although food is one of the three points of delivery for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As I said, however, the responsibilities of other Departments abut food policy, and we need some clarity about where food security fits in our wider food policy. I hope that the Minister can at least begin to provide that.

I want to move on to a couple of final points about where we are going in terms of food. We have more choice than we have ever had, although that choice will perhaps become a bit more limited as food prices rise and people eat out less often. However, there are also issues such as obesity and the changing nature of food. Clearly, there is the debate on genetically modified food, and the Government are right to have been incredibly hesitant in their approach to GM, although I would like them to be even more hesitant because I do not agree with GM, which is the wrong way to go. However, GM does not represent the totality of the way in which food is provided. We now live in the era of functional foods, some of which can be incredibly important to people with health-related problems, who can, in effect, eat to overcome those problems. However, I am somewhat worried about other aspects of functional foods and about what is being supplied to whom. Such issues matter in terms of security, because there is only so much food that we can produce.

On the world context, I am not going to second-guess what comes out of the Rome conference. It is important that the conference is seen as a significant staging post in terms of how we look at what food is available. It is extremely good that food supplies have risen more quickly than population. However, there is the problem of climate change, and there have been conflicts in places in Sudan that I know very well, as well as in Bangladesh. Is that a sign of things to come? Much though I am talking about the national need to highlight food security within a wider food policy, the international context must be writ large. If there is a lack of food and an ongoing population increase, the relationship between food supply and demand will increasingly become one of disequilibrium, and that will have a huge impact on us. We have been rather complacent in believing that food will be available to us and that it will be cheap and plentiful, because what happens elsewhere in the world—either in the developed or developing world—has huge ramifications for us.

Will the Minister examine the issues that I have raised? This is part of an ongoing debate and the matter is worthy of further examination in an international context when Ministers and others return from Rome. It is about time that we in this country spelled out what our worries are and the need to highlight food security. As I said throughout the debate, we should say where that fits into the wider food policy debate, which is as close to our basic integrity as human beings as we can get.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on his impeccable timing—he rightly referred to the high-level summit that is taking place in Rome over the next couple of days. We await the summit’s conclusions with anticipation. The Government believe that the international response to the food price situation must be ambitious and comprehensive and that it should address the short-term, long-term and underlying causes. I hope to reflect those things in my speech.

We take food security extremely seriously. The UK enjoys a high level of food security: we have access to enough quality and nutritious food from the UK and from the range of countries with which we trade. In addition, recent CAP reforms mean that European farmers are much better able to respond to market signals. However, there are increasing pressures on land use arising from climate change, the need to feed a growing global population with changing consumption patterns, and competition from other uses such as biofuel production, which my hon. Friend mentioned—his remarks were considered and appropriate.

We are not complacent. The recent increase in food prices has put the spotlight on some of the challenges that we face both in the UK and overseas. High food prices have been caused by a combination of supply and demand factors—some temporary, some structural. For example, poor harvests resulting from bad weather, particularly in Australia, and low stocks account partly for the increases. Other factors include the steep increase in the price of oil, and increased demand from China and other rapidly growing countries. Much of the Chinese population used to have a very basic diet, but now, like us, they seek more luxury items, because they have developed a middle class. We have enjoyed the fruits of that growing economy through cheap goods, but it means—for us and the rest of the world—more pressure on our resources, including food.

We recognise the effect of high global food prices for consumers around the world, but the developing world feels the impact most. As my hon. Friend said, that is important, which is why the Prime Minister wrote to the Japanese Prime Minister, who chaired a G8 food summit on 22 April. We need a coherent and holistic response from the international community. Helping the worst affected is an immediate challenge. Food is becoming increasingly unaffordable for, and inaccessible to, poor households around the world and the humanitarian agencies that provide food aid. Every day, 25,000 children die because they do not have enough to eat.

Food prices are expected to fall from their current peak, but they are likely to remain above recent levels in the medium term, so we need to tackle the underlying causes and long-term challenges of poverty and hunger facing 850 million people on our planet. We agree with the World Bank that there is enough food in the world to meet demand, but there are clearly problems with distribution—there is not enough food in the right place—and affordability.

We must also prepare for the impact of climate change on agricultural markets and the livelihoods of the poor. Any response to the current situation must be environmentally sustainable in the medium and long term. We must not jeopardise the long-term availability of our natural resources or exacerbate the climatic changes that already threaten food production in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations. For example, harmful land use changes, particularly deforestation, contribute to climate change.

Although rising food prices are a global problem, we are conscious that UK consumers have been seriously affected too. However, the increase in commodity prices is already stimulating an increase in agricultural production around the world, which is a good thing. British farming is responding to market signals, resulting in a fall in prices on agricultural futures markets in the expectation of higher volumes. That means that the rate of food price inflation, currently 6.6 per cent., is likely to fall again in the near future. My hon. Friend said that he did not want to upset the National Farmers Union by referring to CAP reform. I have not found that the NFU is upset when we discuss CAP reform. It is always eager to engage in constructive dialogue on the matter.

The latest UK household food expenditure figures—for 2007—show that the impact of the rise in food prices on the amount that households spend on food is still relatively minor compared to the long-term downward trend. The proportion of average household expenditure on food was 9.2 per cent. in 2007. That is still 1.5 percentage points below the level 10 years ago, which was 10.7 per cent. If current commodity prices are maintained throughout 2008, we might expect the proportion of expenditure in 2008 to rise to around 9.5 per cent., the level in 2001.

We recognise that low-income households spend a greater proportion of their household income on food. The lowest quintile spend 15 per cent. We also recognise that rising energy and fuel prices are putting pressure on consumers. My hon. Friend asked where food security and the issue of food sit, and referred to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Food is a cross-Government issue; for example, many Departments have been involved with the year of food and farming.

I was at a farm earlier this week meeting children who were seeing livestock to understand where food comes from. It is pertinent to the global debate about food production and consumption and vital that the generation of our children now in school grow up understanding and valuing food, not just so that they eat healthily—another cross-Government issue—but so that they do not waste food. We waste around £10 billion-worth of food every year. What would my hon. Friend do if he had a phone call from the Chancellor saying, “We’ve stopped wasting all the food and we’ve got £10 billion to spend”? It would all go to Stroud, of course—that is what my hon. Friend would do.

Those are important aspects of the debate. We are engaging actively with consumer representatives to explore what further can be done for low-income consumers, who are particularly affected by increasing food prices. As a Minister, I hosted such a meeting earlier this month. The Government are considering their response to the recent Competition Commission investigation into the groceries market, referred to it by the Office of Fair Trading, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend.

We will continue to investigate allegations of price fixing. The investigation into milk prices found signs of collusion between certain major supermarkets and dairy producers, which led to fines of more than £116 million. We take the matter seriously. In the longer term, we need an open global trading system, and an end to trade-distorting subsidies and export restrictions.

As for reform of the common agricultural policy, we do not want subsidies for food production. We want subsidies or public money being used for the public good. That is why we have seen an increase in the rural development programme for England. That is the future for public subsidy, not production. We are not alone in that view among member states. As a member of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend will be only too well aware that the debate divides member states, but I believe that we are in the ascendancy; the Commission has planted its flag on future reform.

My hon. Friend raised a number of questions. He is concerned about animal disease coming into the country. People bring in food that they should not, and it gets into the waste chain; that is a serious concern, and we are taking action. My hon. Friend mentioned bluetongue and the purchase of vaccinations. There is a model partnership between Government and industry, with a core group making the important decision to purchase the vaccine. It will be done on a voluntary basis, because that is what the industry wants. My hon. Friend said that he wanted to focus on the domestic agenda, but his remarks and mine show only too clearly that in today’s world we cannot operate food security in isolation.

We have an abundance of different types of food. My hon. Friend mentioned local produce and local purchasing. There are more farmers markets, and people are now far more discerning and enjoy a better quality of food. However, in contrast, we are also eating more unhealthily; we have that juxtaposition within society. The Government, through the Department of Health, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and even the Cabinet Office—my hon. Friend mentioned its recent publication—seek to inform, to educate and to promote better food, better consumption and less waste.

Against all that, one thing is clear. Farming and food production matter. We want a flexible, skilled and market-oriented domestic agricultural sector that makes a positive contribution to our environment. Our farming industry has much to be proud of when it comes to the environment. We are now celebrating 21 years of agri-environmental projects. On open farm Sunday last weekend, a farmer showed me that the margins he had created were producing ladybirds that in turn were eating the aphids; as a result, he did not have to use so many pesticides. It is cheaper for him and better for the environment. We want to champion British food. We want the skills and innovation, the investment and branding, and the quality assurance of the farming industry rather than a policy that simply maximises domestic self-sufficiency.

I am glad to have secured this debate on threatened post office closures in my constituency of East Devon. Time is fast running out and many important factors have still not been taken into account.

The local post office is a key service in an area such as east Devon, which is a rural district with a higher than average proportion of older people and pockets of deprivation. The countryside, whose essential services have gradually been systematically and unfairly decimated by the Labour Government, has suffered cuts that are often felt far more keenly than in urban areas and it is now about to see the post office network pared down once again.

Post offices provide important social and economic benefits to isolated communities across the country; they support vulnerable residents and serve as a focal point for numerous communities in urban and rural areas alike. In many sparsely populated parts of my constituency there is a greater need for local post office services. However, despite that, under the Government 4,000 post offices have already been closed and another 2,500 are to shut, with the East Devon constituency alone being threatened with the loss of another four. In fact, despite assurances both now and in 2007 on maintaining the network size, there is neither a policy in place to prevent the further shrinkage of the network, nor is the Government’s commitment shared by Post Office Ltd, which does not believe that

“it is possible or desirable to set a minimum number of fixed outlets”.

Why is that? I invite the Minister to restate the Government’s policy.

It seems to many of us that the countryside is under sustained attack. Our rural communities, which should be supported, are declining rapidly, neighbourhoods have already lost vital amenities such as general practitioners’ surgeries, jobcentres, magistrates courts, shops and schools, and now post offices are being added to that ever-expanding list. Rural services provide the glue that holds local rural communities together. In that respect, they play a far more significant social role than in towns and cities.

The decline of rural services has been exacerbated by continuing inequalities of funding. Statistics reveal that, since 1997, councils in London receive twice as much per head as their rural counterparts, with a country dweller receiving 57 per cent. of the money spent on the average Londoner. Why? Rural post offices give valuable human contact and informal support for those who are socially isolated or vulnerable. Two thirds of postmasters in rural areas each keep an eye on between one and 30 people by helping them with forms and official papers, as well as inquiring about their health if they do not make their normal visit to the post office. Does the Minister concede that this is an important but immeasurable benefit?

In 2000, the Government made a clear and continuing commitment to rural-proof their policies and programmes, yet the Commission for Rural Communities has repeatedly reported that it is disappointed in the overall performance of Departments in meeting that commitment. Stuart Burgess, the Prime Minister’s own so-called rural advocate, has warned that poorer people in the countryside

“form a forgotten city of disadvantage”.

If the Prime Minister is genuinely listening to what the people want rather than indulging in a cynical public relations stunt, will the Minister raise with him that particular point?

Although the Government pay lip service to green credentials, the post office closure programme does not consider the wider environmental impacts on rural areas resulting from increased car use and car dependency. Much of the increased travel that will result from closures can be expected to require use of a private car, given the infrequency or lack of rural bus services in some areas. That will increase carbon dioxide emissions and further reduce rural tranquillity.

Rural needs are not being consistently addressed through policy making. The countryside is facing many challenges that are not being taken into account. According to research carried out for the Commission for Rural Communities, the loss of 2,500 post office branches could entail the loss of between 560 and 900 village shops. However, since the access criteria reflect only post office provision and not the presence or otherwise of other local services in rural communities, the proposals are having the perverse effect of forcing the closure of the only local service centre or hub of the community in a locality, to enable a post office in another “nearby” location to be more viable.

The loss of the last remaining service hub in a village would be a critical threat to social interaction and the informal social support it can generate. That argues for more sensible and more sensitive criteria so that other services in the area—a village store, a petrol station with retail, a pub and so forth—are taken into consideration in any closure decision, alongside the proposed stricter distance criteria. The Government criteria have given specific protection to post offices in urban deprived areas, but they neglected to introduce a similar provision for rural deprived areas. Why? The Government must recognise that in some rural areas deprivation is just as acute and they should, therefore, reassess the need for rural deprivation criteria.

It is imperative to stress how important it is for local consultation to take full account of the needs of rural communities, if any restructuring process is to have legitimacy or prove successful. Rural areas receive a significantly lower level of per capita public investment than urban areas, even before the additional disadvantage of rural population scarcity is factored in. The way in which the closure programme is being implemented is unfortunate, because communities are being pitted against each other in a dog-eat-dog style as they are forced to work to save only their own post office. It is also wrong that the consultation period is six weeks rather than three months, as recommended by the Cabinet Office guidelines. The time allowed for local consultation is insufficient, and does not permit due consideration of those who rely on post offices. The proposed closures will serve only further to fracture community structures and make life increasingly difficult for older people and the most vulnerable.

It is hard to disagree that post offices often provide the focal point for a local community, particularly in rural villages, and perhaps that is no more the case than with a post office in my constituency threatened with closure. The post office in Offwell, which I had the pleasure of opening four years ago, is a perfect example of community cohesion. In December 2002, it was discovered that the local post office was to close and it was recognised that there was a community need for a post office. This prompted the formation of a local rural services association which, with the aid of local fundraising and grants of £28,000 secured, set up a combined post office and shop in a temporary building on the village recreation ground.

Four years ago, Post Office Ltd helped the village with guidance and grants to open its post office. Presumably, it was thought a viable business venture at the time, yet after four years of successful trading the company now considers it suitable for closure. Why? From the outset, the need for good free parking and disabled access to the shop was recognised, which has proved very popular, and the large farming community that uses the service can actually park tractors on the doorstep. A community-led and sustained effort is now being threatened by the closure proposal, and it is not certain that the shop itself can survive without the added attraction of the post office. That could have an adverse effect on the local ageing population and on local suppliers, which would spell a tragic end for a venture that was supported by the Post Office authorities from the outset and one which surely should be encouraged given the visible and sustained community involvement.

That post office is an example of rural community life at its best and has been maintained through volunteers and fundraising. With the full backing of Post Office Ltd, in the four years since the post office opened, it has become a pivotal part of the village. The village put its heart and soul—not to mention a great amount of money—into the project and it has had the wholehearted support of not only Offwell, but many surrounding villages. The variety of products on offer in the shop has increased and it has been so successful that those involved want to move to a permanent building. The post office is a much needed lifeline for elderly local people, and is a proud achievement for the entire village. That achievement is now apparently in danger of being taken away from them.

The vast majority of residents who rely on the service are over 50. Many do not drive and are therefore reliant on the post office and village shop. Post Office Ltd has quoted the fact that, as the crow flies, Offwell post office is 2.9 miles from Honiton post office and states that its criteria are that anything under 3 miles can be closed. However, it has neglected to note that the post office serves not only Offwell but the surrounding villages of Northleigh, Southleigh, Farway, Wilmington and Cotleigh, which do not have retail facilities and are more than 3 miles away from the Honiton branch. Post Office Ltd is also arguing that Offwell receives fewer customers than Honiton. However, the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee stated in its recent report that

“pure commercial logic cannot be the overriding factor here; the Post Office performs a social function”.

It went on to conclude that

“we believe that there should be a presumption against closing a Post Office where this is the last shop in the village or in a deprived urban area”.

The post office is an important part of the local community and has been maintained through the hard work and co-operation of individuals for the sake of everyone in the area. The Government are letting those people down and are undermining a well co-ordinated and important service. A clear erosion of village life is taking place. There is no disabled parking outside Honiton post office, so the nearest parking is 275 yards away and slightly uphill. A taxi fare to Honiton is £15.60 return. Therefore, the change will make life difficult for elderly and disabled residents. The route is a busy main road, which is certainly unsuitable for walking and dangerous to cross, and for many elderly people, walking 3 miles alone is simply not a viable option. Buses run through the village only four times a day and there is no direct bus service to Honiton post office. Paradoxically, if Offwell rural services association had bought or rented a plot on East Devon business park five years ago instead of having the post office beside the village hall, although it would have been much less convenient for the villagers, as it would have been more than 3 miles from Honiton post office, the Offwell post office would probably not be threatened with closure now.

The second post office in east Devon currently threatened with closure is Millwey Rise in Axminster. The post office serves the largest single housing estate in East Devon where there is a higher than average representation of those dependent on some kind of benefit—including those in receipt of state pensions. Millwey Rise also serves several local businesses at the nearby industrial park. In addition, there are plans for significant housing development in the area in the next 10 years. Axminster has been participating in the market and coastal towns initiative and a key issue is that it is one of the few towns in East Devon where expansion is possible and desired by the local community. It makes no logical sense to close down a post office in an area of proposed expansion.

Millwey Rise is a vibrant and growing sub-post office with a sub-postmaster whose entrepreneurial spirit has been recognised by East Devon district council, which has invested approximately £100,000 in the property. The council has also created a free car-parking facility and full disabled access from all directions into the shop, which already meets requirements for the disabled.

The post office and associated shop are the only retail outlets on the estate and the sub-postmaster has recently installed a free automated teller machine that has proved increasingly popular. All that has made an enormous difference for the elderly, disabled and vulnerable residents of the estate who would be unfairly disadvantaged by having to travel further. To reach the next available post office, pedestrians would have to negotiate a busy roundabout and, in places, steeply sloping ground. For those who are unable to use the bus service because of a disability, the cost of a taxi is currently £3.80 in each direction, which is a substantial sum for someone on a low income, such as a single state pension.

In Post Office Ltd’s branch access report for the post office its opening times are incorrectly recorded. In reality, the main post office in Axminster closes earlier on Saturday and does not open as late during the week. If the Millwey Rise post office is lost there will be greater use of cars in the area and more congestion in the town, and businesses will have to transport mail to the sorting office, all at increased expense to them, in addition to the associated environmental costs.

The third post office in my constituency that is threatened with closure is the Greenway Lane post office in Budleigh Salterton. Budleigh Salterton has a higher than average proportion of people who are of retirement age and 58 per cent. of households contain pensioners. That is significantly higher than the sub-regional average. In addition to its usefulness to the large number of elderly residents in the area the Greenway Lane post office is vital to disabled people. Many constituents say that parking in Budleigh Salterton High street near the post office is often impossible even with a blue badge.

In a recent consultation by Help the Aged more than half of older people said that local post offices are essential to their way of life. Closure of post office branches has a big impact on the lives of the many older people who depend on the services they provide. Those on pensions and benefits are more likely to be financially excluded, and will tend to rely on post offices disproportionately, whether they live in an urban or rural area, yet they are the very people who will suffer most from the proposed closures.

The needs of the elderly and disadvantaged are felt just as keenly in the area surrounding St. Andrew’s Road post office in Exmouth, the fourth post office threatened with closure. Exmouth, East Devon’s largest town, has a higher proportion of people who are of retirement age and 38 per cent. of households are all-pensioner households. That is, again, above the sub-regional average. It is predicted that by 2021 the percentage of those aged 65 and over will increase by a further 20.9 per cent., and that the percentage of those aged between 70 and 74 will increase by 37.9 per cent. In addition, the town has two of the most deprived wards in Devon—Littleham and Town, where St. Andrew’s road is located. They are in the upper quartile of social deprivation in the country, with 46.9 per cent. of households on an annual income of less than £20,000.

St. Andrew’s Road post office has a loyal customer base who do not want that essential service to be taken away from them. Sixty-one per cent. of customers in deprived urban areas say that they use their local post office for access to free community services, and 36 per cent. meet friends there. The post office has convenient roadside parking nearby while there is no direct bus route to the proposed alternative, which is the main, busy post office in Exmouth. At a time of rising fuel costs it simply defies logic to force people to make longer journeys.

In Exmouth alone the Government have rationalised jobcentres, magistrates courts, police custody suites, sub-post offices and NHS dental services. Enough is enough. The Government claim to be aware of the rapidly ageing population; yet in an area such as East Devon where there is, as I have proved, a disproportionately large number of elderly people, it would appear that their interests and needs are being completely overlooked while their way of life is dismantled. We are told that the Government consider the environment. However, owing to the closure programme people in rural areas are being forced into their cars to travel further, because they cannot rely on often inadequate bus services to get to their closest post office. It is simply not enough to tell people where their alternative branch is. Real solutions need to be found to very real problems, and the Government need urgently to restate their commitment to the countryside.

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) on securing this debate on post office closures. There have of course been a fairly large number of such debates on that subject in Westminster Hall, and I appreciate that it is a difficult issue. I understand that there are 33 post offices in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, of which four, which he described, are scheduled for closure. He will know—but in case he does not, I shall reiterate—that as a Minister I play no role in decisions relating to individual post offices. The issues that he raised in detail are issues for the Post Office and Postwatch as they deliberate in consultation about how to implement the difficult decision to close some post office branches in the network, including in his constituency.

The reason for the programme goes back a couple of years to a consultation that began in 2006 and an announcement in May last year by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that of the more than 14,000 branches open at the time, some 2,500 would have to close. Why was that decision made? I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but he did not touch on any reasons why our Government might have reached such a difficult decision, so I shall lay them out for him. The post office network loses £500,000 every day that it is open. Those losses are not static; they have more or less doubled in the past few years. The network has lost 4 million customers a week. Again, that is not static but has been increasing.

Will the Minister not concede that if the Government withdraw services offered by post offices, it is quite likely that the amount of business that those post offices do will decline?

I do not accept for a moment the charge that the Government have somehow created an evil use of the internet or pioneered direct debit. Those things were wanted by our constituents. I am sure that even in East Devon, people use the internet to pay bills and carry out transactions. They are not being forced to do so by the Government.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned pensioners. He is right that traditionally we have seen the post office as a venue for people to collect their pensions, but eight out of 10 pensioners no longer do so. Among new retirees, that figure is nine out of 10, and it is unlikely to reverse. I hope that he has a long and happy retirement, but I am not sure whether he will collect his pension every week at the local post office.

Other services, such as car tax online, did not even exist a few years ago. Car tax online is now used by 1 million people a month who previously would have gone to the post office to renew their car tax. It is a popular service. The question for Government is not whether to sit in the face of change and say, “We don’t want to put any of these services online”; it is whether we are behind the curve of change, not ahead of it and driving it, as the hon. Gentleman implied in his intervention. In addition, the Post Office faces competition from new outlets. That is why it lost the contract for the BBC TV licence. The decision was taken not by Government but by the BBC.

If one takes what the Minister says to its logical conclusion, eventually there will be no need for a sub-post office network throughout the country. Does he therefore agree with Post Office Ltd, which

“does not believe it is possible or desirable to set a minimum number of fixed outlets”?

Is that his view as well?

The logic of my position is not that there should be no post office network at all. It is that in the face of lifestyle change, which affects how people pay bills and receive benefits; technology, which principally involves the internet and its effect on communication; and competition, it does not make sense to freeze the post office network for ever at its former size.

As Ministers, we must also have regard to the taxpayer and the large amount of public subsidy that goes to the post office network. The hon. Gentleman asked what the Government should do and what our attitude is to the network. To answer directly, our attitude is that we should subsidise the network to maintain it at a significantly higher level than would be the case if it operated purely commercially.

As I said, there were some 14,000 post offices before the closure programme started. If the post office network operated as a purely commercial network, that figure would be just 4,000. We do not believe that we can reduce the post office network to that size. That is why this Government—the first Government to do so—have subsidised the Post Office to such an extent. In fact, by 2011 we will have put between £3.5 billion and £4 billion into the post office network since we came into government. We have invested a significant level of public support because we believe that the post office has a social and community role. However, even with that large level of subsidy and in the face of lifestyle change, in which the whole country is taking part, we cannot keep the network at its current level. That is not just the view of the Government, but of the National Federation of SubPostmasters itself. At the beginning of the closure programme, the NFSP general secretary said that the closures were necessary to ensure the viability of the remaining network.

I fully agree with that statement. It is necessary to sustain and to encourage the viability of the remaining network. However, if the Minister was being more positive about the sub-post office network, he might allude to the new developments brought about by the technology to which he refers. They include the real growth in demand caused by internet shopping. The number of post offices providing front-line services for eBay—a place in which people can deposit their things—is growing. If the Minister would allow the Post Office to compete in such areas and to do what it wants to do, he might find that, lo and behold, he has rather a vibrant service on his hands.

I agree that there are possibilities for the Post Office in the future. However, precisely because of the changes that I have been outlining, the answer cannot be to turn back the clock or to force the public to do things that they no longer choose to do—or at least increasing numbers of them. The answer must be new reasons to attract business through the door. Before I move on to the future, I want to remind the hon. Gentleman of what his own Opposition spokesman said when this issue was debated by the House in March. He said:

“We have to face the facts about the future of postal services in this country...We fully expect the network to shrink in size. We have never given a guarantee that no post offices will close”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2008; Vol. 473, c. 947.]

I am glad that on both Front Benches there is a recognition of the impact of some of the technology, lifestyle and competition changes that I have outlined. I appreciate that this is difficult for those branches that are affected, but I would also encourage some sense of perspective about the scale of what is being proposed here. The subsidy that the Government have invested will enable some 7,500 post office branches to stay open that may otherwise be placed under threat. In the area plan covering the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, over 90 per cent. of his constituents will see no change to the post office branch that they currently use, and over 99 per cent. will either see no change or remain within a mile—not as the crow flies but by road—of an alternative post office branch.

Alongside the closures, new outreach services are being introduced. They are a more flexible—sometimes more part-time—and low-cost way of delivering post office services, particularly in rural communities. There are some in the plan that cover the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

In the time that I have left, I want to concentrate on what the hon. Gentleman said on rural-proofing. He made a point that was wider than post office closures. When we started the closure programme, we could have closed those branches that required the largest subsidy per transaction. Those would be in remote rural areas in which the subsidy per transaction is sometimes up to £17 per transaction. Every time someone buys a stamp, there is a taxpayer subsidy of £17. However, because we value the social side of the network, we have used access criteria, which means that 95 per cent. of the total rural population across the UK must be within three miles of a post office branch. That preserves a service which is very far from being commercially viable. Without the access criteria, more rural post offices would close, not fewer. Despite the difficulty for his constituents, the programme has been carried out in a planned way so that we have a stable network in both rural and urban areas in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Two o’clock.