As you can see, Mr. Caton, I brought my fans along as well—[Interruption.] Unfortunately, I cannot control them, as I am sure the record will show.

I am pleased to have secured this debate, but it is unfortunate that we have to discuss the possibility of up to 200 offices of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs throughout the UK closing. Many Members have turned up today, but I know that many others would have loved to be here to join the debate and make their arguments on why it is wrong of HMRC to close many of its offices.

The possibility of up to 200 offices closing was announced two or three years ago. Some have closed already and more closures were announced in December. To give an idea of how many offices are to close: the eastern region would lose 18, the south-west 19, Yorkshire and Humber 9, Northern Ireland 5, Scotland 20, Wales 11 and the north-west 11. The spread of closures will have a huge impact on all parts of the United Kingdom.

I am sure that other hon. Members will relate stories from their own constituencies, so I shall concentrate mainly on the proposal to close Havenbridge house in my constituency. As a result, not only will people suffer poorer service, but staff in Great Yarmouth will be faced with the prospect of losing their jobs, which many of them have been doing for more than 20 years. The situation in many constituencies throughout the UK that are facing similar closure proposals will be identical.

Against that background is the fact that we in Great Yarmouth have already suffered from public sector job moves. In the past two years, we have lost the criminal justice unit—approximately 50 jobs moved to Norwich—and the Department for Work and Pensions has streamlined its Jobcentre Plus services, resulting in the closure of the office in Yarmouth house, Yarmouth way.

My hon. Friend and I are both in a good mood this morning because Norwich City managed to get three points last night and may yet escape relegation. Despite the bad news, there is some good news as well.

If jobs were to move from Great Yarmouth, which is a centre that desperately needs support because of deprivation, would they go to Norwich? The last thing anyone who represents constituents and working people in Norwich would want is a competitive environment in which jobs are taken from one place and put in another. Jobs are needed in both places.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on job moves, which will affect the whole of Norfolk; for example, the office in Dereham is also up for closure. I believe that we would all say exactly the same thing: we do not want jobs to be taken from other areas. I shall discuss the deprivation indices in my constituency, but first I want to develop my argument a bit further.

As I said, Great Yarmouth has already lost many offices and jobs to other areas. The last closure, just recently, was of Norfolk mental health care trust’s adult unit in Northgate hospital, which was moved to Carlton Court hospital in Lowestoft. There has been a migration of jobs from my constituency to other areas—not a million miles away, but problems are created for the staff and, in the case of Norfolk mental health care trust, for patients and their families.

The debate about the HMRC closures is not new. People in the local branch of the Public and Commercial Services Union have been writing to ask for my support ever since the announcement in 2004 of the consultation. As well as asking questions, I had a debate on the subject in May 2007 to which the present Minister for Local Government, who was then the Minister responsible, responded. I shall quote from that debate later. I have had meetings with three Ministers with responsibility for the matter over that time. The last was with my right hon. Friend the Minister who will respond today. He has been given a poisoned chalice, as it will be on his watch that many people will see the demise of their livelihood.

During the consultation, there were written agreements about jobs. I quote from the response that I got from the Minister for Local Government on 2 May 2007. He stated:

“As part of the staff support process, managers will meet their staff to discuss whether the moves that result from the decisions are reasonable in the light of their circumstances and, if not, HMRC will provide work for them in a location that is within a reasonable daily travel distance or it will consider other arrangements such as alternative hours or home working. Staff will not be made redundant as a result of the announcements; that is entirely in line with the current no-redundancy agreement with the trade unions.”—[Official Report, 2 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 477WH.]

On the face of it, there appears to be a guarantee that employees and unions alike would find acceptable; in practice, however, that is not the case. For example, what is a reasonable daily travel distance? In negotiations last year, the PCS and HMRC concluded an agreement on staffing, working conditions and job security. The process was designed to establish, on an individual basis, the reasonableness of expecting members of staff to move to another office. A journey time of one hour each way—to and from work—was adopted as the limit beyond which it was not reasonable to expect any individual to travel. HMRC accepted that although reasonable daily travel should not exceed one hour each way, individual personal circumstances—for example, disability and caring responsibilities—could mean that less than one hour each way might legitimately be beyond a reasonable daily travel limit.

To achieve consistency and fairness, the process called for every member of staff situated in an office whose closure was proposed to be interviewed by their manager, on a one-to-one basis, to provide an indication of whether they were within or outside the reasonable daily travel limit. The preliminary indication from the one-to-one interview was then to be quality assured by a moderating panel of more senior managers, who would decide on the issue of reasonable daily travel and notify each individual of their decision. Those deemed to be within the reasonable daily travel limit would be instructed to move to another office. However, experience has shown that, far from providing an assurance of fairness, the moderation procedure has consistently delivered perverse outcomes. I shall give examples.

One part-time single mother has two children, both of early school age. She is an administration officer—the second lowest grade—and works during term time only for 20 hours per week. Despite having a planned journey each way of between one and one quarter hours by car or two hours by bus and train, and fixed working times due to child care commitments, that member of staff was told that she is within reasonable daily travel of Norwich. Although part-time workers do not have their travel time calculated pro rata, like their pay and holiday entitlement, they are expected to undertake the same length of journey as their full-time colleagues, in effect making a disproportionately longer day. In that person’s case, the proposed travel time is four times longer than at present and would make up one third of her working week, albeit one third that is not paid.

The present child care arrangements further complicate the situation. No child care is available in the village where my constituent lives. To maintain her working pattern, her two girls would have to attend pre-school and after-school child care in the nearest town. That would mean that the girls would have to travel to and from the child care facilities by taxi. The member of staff has estimated that that would cost up to £31 a day, or £124 a week—just under £500 a month out of a take-home wage of £756. The only other option would be to reduce her working hours so that she could continue to take her children to and from school herself. That option, however, would result in her having to work nine hours less a week and suffer a 24 per cent. reduction in her take-home pay. I would call that constructive dismissal.

Another member of staff has long-term care responsibilities for a disabled parent who is housebound and who receives no support from social services. The individual has a back injury and therefore cannot drive very far. Despite the fact that public transport will take 85 minutes each way and obviously have a particularly detrimental effect on the individual’s ability to carry out their caring responsibilities, HMRC has not deemed them to be outside the reasonable travel limit.

Another individual who lives in Great Yarmouth transferred to Havenbridge house from Norwich because of elder care responsibilities. Even by HMRC’s questionable method of calculating journey times, the travelling time to the new location exceeds one hour each way, but it is still deemed to be reasonable daily travel. HMRC’s moderating panel ignored the individual’s changed circumstances and simply decided that because they had once done the journey, it was reasonable to expect them to do it again.

Although HMRC is prepared to make a contribution for a period to an individual’s additional travel costs once they are compulsorily transferred, the daily travel allowance is regarded as income and taxable. Other colleagues will lose tax credits because of the daily travel allowance, so they will be financially disadvantaged.

Another example is that of a 62-year-old male part-time admin assistant. He did a financial breakdown of the effects of having to relocate to Nelson house in Norwich. His monthly wage of £852 will increase due to the daily travel assistance of £90 a month—the amount is higher, but these figures refer to the actual increase in net pay after the employee has paid tax and national insurance on the gross sum. The increase in total earnings, however, means that the individual loses £75 a month in tax credits, because the daily travel allowance counts toward total income, so it reduces his tax credit entitlement. He will incur further financial detriment, as the increase in gross income will reduce his housing and council tax benefits by £29 a month. This constituent will be £104 worse off every month owing to the relocation of the office to Norwich—and that is before he actually travels.

My hon. Friend carefully paints a very accurate picture of the difficulties that PCS workers and others face during the programme. Is it not true, however, that even before the formal proposals are introduced, offices such as Centurion house in Dover, from where business streams are being transferred to other areas, face closure by default, and that its employees face, as my hon. Friend says, constructive dismissal?

Yes, absolutely. As I said earlier, everything that is happening to us in Great Yarmouth is replicated throughout the country. I shall prove that point when I develop my argument about the issues that were not taken into account when assurances were given.

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent case, and we can all make strong cases for not closing tax offices in our constituencies. Penzance, in my constituency, sits at the poorest end of the poorest region in the UK, so cutting jobs at the present time is not especially wise. The specific problem, however, is the bizarre way in which HMRC has treated its main asset: its human resource. The people in the Penzance office’s compliance team, for example, provide the service with the type of stability that will not be replicated in the new centres, where job turnover will be much more rapid. That stability among HMRC’s human resource is its greatest asset, and it is going to lose it.

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head in terms of experience, because, in my constituency, the average number of years that people have worked in the department exceeds 20. I do not know of any other industry or profession with such consistency, and over those 20 years, people have built up their professionalism, contacts and local knowledge. However, if we put in their way obstacles such as travel or care responsibilities, which do not allow them to strike a work-life balance, we will lose that professionalism.

My hon. Friend mentions local knowledge, and it is particularly important in tackling tax evasion, because local knowledge is a major factor in the success of compliance. Today, and every day in this country, a minimum of £100 million in income tax payments is evaded, but compliance officers typically obtain an extra £600,000 to £700,000 tax each year through their work. If we distribute those people to the winds, to areas that they do not know, we will seriously weaken that valuable compliance role throughout the UK.

That is a very valid point about compliance offices. The proposal creates other issues, problems and, indeed, questions about what will happen within the compliance units when they are moved away from their localities, where they know local businesses and people and can keep their finger on the pulse. Bridging the gap created by the huge amount of businesses and business people who may evade tax is, indeed, an issue. Another perverse point is that, Mapeley, the managing agents of Havenbridge house, is based in the tax haven of Guernsey.

And whether or not the tax offices are left open, we still have to pay rent.

Absolutely.

I really wanted to give those examples, because we can multiply them hundreds of times over, and individuals find themselves in such situations throughout the country.

The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful case on behalf of his constituents. Does he agree that the proposal, as well as having a devastating effect on current staff, has a knock-on effect in our areas, where jobs will be lost for ever? That will affect future generations. In my constituency, tax offices in Rothesay, Oban and Dunoon provide employment in remote areas where alternative employment is often difficult to find. The losses will have a devastating effect on those communities for generations to come.

Absolutely. I could not have written the script much better if I had asked hon. Members to intervene. The hon. Gentleman raises another issue that must be looked at. I expressed my constituents’ concerns about these job moves, because they weaken the base for young people to come through and take up jobs in what they consider to be good, long-term professions in the civil service or public sector. They will not have that opportunity, and, once the skills are gone, they are gone for ever. Great Yarmouth thrived on the herring industry for centuries, then on oil and gas, and now we are into renewables. We were able to adapt those skills, but, in the case under discussion, it will be almost impossible. We will lose people with 25 to 35 years’ experience. In the Public Gallery, there is one gentleman with 39 years’ experience. He is coming up to retirement, so does he really want to move to Norwich? I suggest not. We will lose that experience, but we will also lose—the other side of the coin—the opportunities for young people to move from education into a profession, and, in an area such as Great Yarmouth, that will have a devastating effect.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the campaign that he has waged in Great Yarmouth. I particularly enjoyed the PCS stick of rock at Yarmouth market; it was an effective tool. The anecdotal evidence that we have from all our experiences is that the job cuts and their impact fall disproportionately on women, largely because of carers’ issues and the amount of women who work for HMRC. Interestingly, there is a contradiction, because the Government are going to introduce their Equality Bill in May, in which we will focus on how we protect people, particularly women, on an equal opportunities basis; yet, here we are introducing a policy that will put large numbers of women at a financial detriment and, often, out of employment.

Again, that is an extremely valid response to an issue that affects Great Yarmouth, as well as other areas. Many of the jobs are part time, and people took them because they were flexible and allowed them to strike a work-life balance. I commend the Government’s moves on equality to give women the opportunity to go back to work, but here we have the perverse opposite. The profession contains a large proportion of women, and I have anecdotal evidence of single mothers who will not be able to continue with their work but may be penalised by further legislation for not actually going to work. We are not giving them many opportunities, and, in area such as Great Yarmouth, that will have a profound effect on the economy.

During the 2007 debate, the then Minister said that management would meet staff and discuss whether the proposed moved was

“reasonable in the light of their circumstances”. —[Official Report, 2 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 477WH.]

I do not believe that that has happened, or that it was considered important. From my discussions and the letters that I have received, there is no doubt that many staff will not be able to commute to their new place of work.

When I met the then chief executive, Paul Gray, at the insistence of the then Minister, Mr. Gray confirmed that those issues would be taken into account when considering the possibility of office closures. I left his office with a degree of comfort and thought that we had won the argument, because I knew the cases, arguments, difficulties and unemployment levels in my constituency. Back in 1989 we were at 20 per cent. unemployment. We constantly have the highest unemployment level in the eastern region and there are severe deprivation factors. Fortunately, during the last 10 or 12 years significant sums of Government money have been pumped into the regeneration of our new harbour and the integration programme, for example, and dozens of other projects, which have created a new impetus in the town to give us encouragement that we are combating unemployment there, even in the dire circumstances of the recession. I do not want another arm of the Government creating other difficulties in the difficult circumstances of the recession.

The problem is that there are low-level businesses, such as the ones that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members are speaking about—like the one in my constituency on the Isle of Wight—and then there is something up at the top. There is a difference between hon. Members from all parties and what is being said at the top. Those differences need to be brought together gradually and the people who organise things should not allow the opportunity to do so to run away.

I can develop an argument about the procedure that was missing from the consultation. During the post office closures, for instance, criteria were laid down saying that a post office in an area with deprivation could not even be considered for closure unless there was another one within a mile and, if that was so, it was taken out of the equation all together. However, no account has been taken of different socioeconomic circumstances in the areas I am talking about. If the Department says that those have been taken into account, it has been given the wrong information or it has had the wool pulled over its eyes by the officers who have taken the process forward. Other hon. Members’ constituencies have suffered in the same way and are losing jobs.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He paints a bleak picture, but I fear that it may be even worse, because in Great Yarmouth, like Southend, jobs are moving away from constituencies with serious deprivation and unemployment levels that are higher than regional and national levels. The Government, through the Lyons review, are saying no to relocating other Government offices within those areas, but at the same time the Department for Communities and Local Government is pumping in regeneration money. That is incoherent and inconsistent and it is bad for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine.

That is a point, but as I just mentioned the millions of pounds that have been put into my constituency have created further employment opportunities. I find it perverse that, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, we are supporting regeneration in our communities—mainly seaside ones, by and large—and a huge amount of investment is going in, yet because of the peripherality and transport links the Department seems to say that it is more convenient to move away into city centres, forgetting the difficulties that it will face. I suppose I am thankful that there are no forced redundancies and job losses in this area, although there are thousands of job losses across the civil service. Obviously, there is a degree of concern about that.

As I said earlier, the proposal that I am talking about is constructive dismissal in a different format. If I was a trade union official in a factory and was faced with this argument and told, “We are moving, this is fair,” I would say, “It is constructive dismissal.” We are not making people redundant and I applaud the Government for not enforcing redundancies, but they are forcing people in these circumstances into deciding that they cannot continue in their employment for whatever reason.

After my meeting with Paul Grey he gave me the assurances that I mentioned. But recently the new chief executive wrote to PCS on a question about impact assessments, saying,

“Impact assessments were carried out on all offices proposed for closure, including Havenbridge House…all impact assessments in the same criteria to assess socio-economic impact.”

It is clear that that comment on the socioeconomic impact did not feature at all in the decision-making process, otherwise there would be clear indications of the unemployment levels that we have in Great Yarmouth, which are the highest in the eastern region, albeit much lower than in the past two decades.

The tragedy is that answers and solutions that the Department could have used to make significant savings across the board have not been taken into account. The PCS Norwich taxes branch issued a document called “Change we can believe in”. What a title! It is a change that I could believe in. It advances clearly and concisely in dozens of pages the argument about how the Department could save millions of pounds in respect of office space, among other things. The PCS was disappointed that it did not even get a response saying, “Sorry, we disagree with your argument, which is wrong because of A, B, C and D.” When I challenged the Department, saying that office space in Great Yarmouth is substantially lower in cost than that in Norwich, I was told that such information is commercially confidential. That is a constant argument. We can never get to the bottom of what the difference in cost is. So how can we come to a conclusion about the savings that the Department will make?

There is another disturbing point. I have kept details of nearly every single letter and debate and of arguments advanced by many hon. Members in questions. Every time the answer comes back:

“HMRC recognises that there will be short-term costs, including staff relocation costs, associated with the closure of Haverfordwest”—

this is in reply to a question asked by the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb)—

“reliable figures will only be established once solutions have been found for all staff and the building has been vacated.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 909W.]

So it does not know what the saving will be, and so we go on. How can an alternative be prepared when the savings are not known? It is like saying, “We know that there will be savings, but we don’t know how much.” Yet there has been a clear indication of where the savings would come from in respect of the three offices at Dereham, Great Yarmouth and Norwich. To my knowledge and from the information that I have received nobody has said, “Those figures are wrong.” I can only assume that the savings, which are in excess of a third of a million pounds a year, and running on, must be true or even on the low side, and that is not taking into account the extra costs for travel. I understand that there is no figure in HMRC’s budgets for redundancy payments. So where somebody cannot take their job up and we make them redundant how do we pay them? Is there a costing for that? I do not believe that there is any evidence that there has been a true reflection of costs and savings across the range.

On savings, my hon. Friend will be aware that the location of some offices is dictated by their geography and they cannot relocate, but even in those cases there are moves being made to privatise certain elements. For instance, in Priory court in Dover, which is a highly sensitive high-security centre, the Department wants to get rid of the highly regarded security systems and put in private companies. Is my hon. Friend aware, and does he agree, that not only will that undermine the security of such places, but there is no proved saving at the end of a difficult process? Does he not think that the Department should think again about these matters?

Absolutely. Using the argument about the recession and what my hon. Friend has said, the latest closure programme covering all the offices that I have mentioned should be ceased forthwith and the Department should have another rethink. Let us get the answers to this problem and find out what the savings will be, compared with the alternative advanced by the unions. The union in this case is open to negotiations and clearly accepts that we need to modernise and save the taxpayer’s money. I think everyone would agree, and I cannot understand why we are going into the matter blindfolded, not knowing what the savings will be. When questions are asked about differences in rent, one is told that the information is commercially sensitive, and no answer is forthcoming. Unless someone gives me the figures, I say clearly and categorically, without the evidence before me, that Yarmouth office space is far cheaper than Norwich office space.

I had a meeting with the owner of the building. HMRC rents five floors, but for the past two years only three floors have been used. The rent could have been negotiated down—considerable sums are involved—because only 60 per cent. of the floor space was being used and 40 per cent. was being wasted. I know that there are contractual obligations and so on, but I also know that the owner wants to negotiate with Mapeley because they could put someone else into the accommodation. There are issues, but the evidence in the report has been put into the consultation process, to which there has been no response, and there is no dispute about the figures and so on, so will my right hon. Friend reconsider the whole programme of closures, not just at Havenbridge house, but throughout the country?

There are deficits in the consultation process, and I am sure that savings will be made, but at what cost? I do not want that cost to force some of my constituents, who may be on the lowest pay and have severe difficulties with their life-work balance, to have no option but to leave the profession that they have worked in for 25 years because they cannot travel to Norwich. I urge my right hon. Friend to reconsider the issue seriously for that reason, and because this is a difficult time with the recession. I am not saying that there is ever a right time, but now is not the time for uncertainty.

I will keep my comments brief, because many hon. Members feel as I do. There are many similarities between Great Yarmouth and Southend in the stories and problems related by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright). My personal interaction with HMRC started in 2006, shortly after my election in 2005, when the executive summary of a technical office accommodation review said:

“No jobs will be lost directly as a result of this proposal.”

However, buried in the document, reference was made to 344 jobs, which I was told were nothing to worry about because they would go through natural wastage. How offensive it is to discuss people’s livelihoods as being naturally wasted. That is insulting to anyone.

In 2004, 2,491 people were employed by HMRC in Rochford and Southend, East, but the 2011 figure is projected to be only 1,500, a loss of about 1,000 jobs. It is now clear that one of the two major office blocks in Southend—Alexander house and Portcullis house—will close entirely. The Mapeley saga could not be made up. If it was in Private Eye one would think it satirical that the Inland Revenue was offshoring its property arrangements. That is shabby and duplicitous, and if anyone else did it, no doubt the Treasury would examine the arrangement to see whether it was tax avoidance or something more serious.

In Southend, unemployment is higher than the regional and national average, as it is in Great Yarmouth. There is enormous inconsistency, with some Departments not recognising the value of local jobs in pockets of deprivation in the east and south-east of England, but recognising it in the need for regeneration. All credit to the Department for Communities and Local Government for recognising that Southend, Great Yarmouth and other seaside towns with pockets of deprivation need regeneration. Some money comes forward in one hand, but is taken away by the other hand through all the administrative costs associated with the changes.

The Lyons review needs further consideration, because for our constituents the situation is even worse than the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth said, not only because of the jobs that are going, but because when there are future big infrastructure projects in towns consideration will be given to areas with deprivation over a longer period. Opposite Portcullis house in Southend are some tower blocks where the occupants are in the bottom 10 per cent. of deprivation in the whole United Kingdom. For many of them, work is hard to find and they have difficult family situations. They are exactly the sort of people whom we should be helping. The Government are trying to get young, single mothers back into work, as we will if we are in government, and jobs in HMRC, which are predominantly part-time, are critical, yet the heart of them has been ripped out.

Constructive dismissal has been mentioned, because people will have a journey of one and a half hours. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth is right in saying that they are being treated shabbily by being expected to travel long distances. In Southend, in addition to part-time work, there is also monthly periodic work with VAT returns, and dealing with peak flows and so on. Over 20 or 30 years, many people have changed their personal arrangements to fit in with HMRC, which is now jettisoning them because those arrangements are no longer convenient for it.

The relationship and merger between Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue is not working well. It is certainly not working well in Southend. The cultural clash, with misunderstandings and constant change, is difficult. Only last weekend, I sat down with someone who told me that she used to enjoy her job and used to be able to do a good job, but with the changes, and with IT infrastructure and files in a different place, she is completely demotivated and cannot do her job as well as she did it in the old-fashioned way. The merger is not working.

I had a meeting with the acting chairman of HMRC, who was then Paul Gray, but the relationship locally between management and Members of Parliament is appalling, certainly in Southend. That is a criticism not of individuals, but of the structure. Southend has a relatively small but important IT operation, an anti-fraud operation, a VAT processing operation and some slightly more traditional operations. Because of the reporting lines, many different people are in charge of different departments, but no one in HMRC in Southend is in overall charge, so it is impossible for me, as a Member of Parliament, to have a relationship with a local employer of 2,500 people.

I encourage the Minister to appoint one senior individual in HMRC’s hubs in constituencies to represent it in the local community. I am not the only person who wants such a relationship; the chief executive of Southend borough council, the leader of the council and other civic and community groups want HMRC to integrate with the community. There is much to be done, and it is clear from hon. Members’ comments that there are many problems.

rose—

Order. Five more hon. Members have indicated that they would like to contribute to the debate, and we must start the winding-up speeches at 10.30, so I appeal for brevity from Members.

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on behalf of my constituents, who are directly affected by the closures. As hon. Members are aware, the intention is to close more than 200 offices nationally, and 25,000 jobs will be lost by 2011. It is clear from the number of hon. Members in the Chamber today that many people throughout the country are worried about the proposals.

I shall be brief, but I want to put on record my concern about the relationship between MPs and their local tax offices. In the west of Scotland, some MPs have had difficulty visiting tax offices during the past few months to speak to management and the work force about the difficult processes that are going ahead. That is not what we expect in the public sector, and I hope that the Minister will take the matter up because it has made a difficult process worse for those involved.

In Scotland, 19 tax offices are under threat, and their closure was announced on 4 December. The tax office that probably most affects my constituents is at Greenock. The Greenock customs house is an historic building and there is great concern locally about the fact that so historic a building, a working customs house, with its own museum and history, is being closed. It is in an area of high unemployment and high deprivation, so there are serious questions about how much money will be saved as a result of the closure. The belief is that the amounts will be quite small. Will the Minister respond, perhaps after today’s debate, about the amount of money that will be saved by closing the tax office at Greenock?

As I said, the tax office is in an area of high unemployment. Both Inverclyde and Ayrshire, which will be directly affected if the closure goes ahead, are areas of historically high unemployment—areas that traditionally had huge levels of employment in manufacturing and industry, which have closed over the past 13 years. Of course, over the 18 years of Conservative government there were massive job losses and the area has not recovered. At a time of recession, when things are already difficult, job losses of the type that we are discussing are far from helpful.

Women workers are particularly affected by the closures. Greenock is in a geographically remote area where the transport links are not good and public transport links in particular are very poor. The women who are affected are well educated and most of them come from the local area, so they have worked for that employer for many years—decades, in many instances. The reality is that they simply will not be in a position to travel to the alternatives that might be available to them, because of child care and other caring responsibilities. From a public policy point of view, that does not seem consistent with the Government’s other policies.

The other issue that has been raised is tax avoidance. The TUC estimates that £12 billion is lost each year through what is called tax planning, and indeed tax avoidance, by the largest 700 corporations in Britain. I understand that it is equivalent to one tenth of all households paying over their entire annual income to plug that tax gap. Anything that causes us to lose experienced staff and moves us a step away from ensuring that we see proper payment of tax must be regretted.

I know that my colleagues have many points to make on behalf of their constituents, but I want to raise a few issues that have been raised with me by constituents who are directly affected—in particular, the lack of assistance from HMRC in obtaining alternative employment with other Departments. Those people are being treated as voluntarily moving their employment, whereas in fact they are being forced into a new job. If a job with similar terms and conditions and similar pay is not available, what will happen to them? The reality is that they will have to take a lower salary or an alternative job. Will the Minister spell out the plans for members of staff who are left stranded with no alternative employment at the end of the exercise?

We need to consider what is happening in other areas. For example, Cumbernauld, one of the tax offices to which it is suggested that my constituents move, is training staff to learn new skills. We are losing staff who have a wealth of experience gained over many years, but we are taking on and training people who do not have those skills. The issues that I have raised are of great concern and I ask the Minister to reconsider the policy.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) on securing an incredibly important debate. I shall speak for only a few minutes and restrict my comments to my great concern about the imminent proposed closure of the tax offices in Kendal in my constituency, although many of my constituents work in the tax offices in Barrow and Lancaster, both of which have also been put down for closure.

It has been a privilege to work alongside the many people who work in the tax offices in Kendal and to see at first hand their dedication to their role. Over the years, I have seen the number of staff working at the tax offices in Kendal go down from almost 100 to about 40 at present. Because of the proposed closures of Barrow and Lancaster as well, the powers that be have agreed that there is no possibility of a reasonable travel-to-work distance to an alternative tax office at Carlisle or Preston, for example. Although there is still, thankfully, the promise of no compulsory redundancies—we shall hold the Government to that—that means closure of an office by atrophy over time, which is appalling and demoralising for all the people there during that time.

Does my hon. Friend not agree that in such a situation, which is comparable to ours in Alnwick in Northumberland, where the work will be relocated to a business park more than 30 miles away, the Government ought to have a programme of decentralising other work, because they are pulling the heart out of many small towns—the main source of office employment? As Governments have sometimes done in the past, the Government could have a programme to take work from central locations into small towns.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government appear to be sucking public sector jobs into areas that already have plenty of them and taking them away from smaller areas that desperately need them. Those jobs will be lost to our area—that is the bottom line—and in an area such as South Lakeland, where average house prices are about 13 times average annual wages, the possibility of decent well-paid work is essential. The proposal is a huge blow to South Lakeland and Kendal. I ask the Minister to please rethink, for the reasons that I have given and for two other reasons.

There are two other reasons why the decisions generally and those specifically affecting my constituency are foolish. The first relates to the economic situation. As has been mentioned, the plans were drawn up before the recession. Now that John Maynard Keynes, a great Liberal, is fashionable again, I remind hon. Members of one of the many wise things that he said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind.”

The facts have changed. Why on earth would the Government disinvest in parts of the public sector in the middle of the recession? That is the one part of the economy that they really can control, so why on earth would they withdraw from public sector investment in this way?

The second reason relates to HMRC’s own business case. We have already heard that the employees whose jobs are at risk are doing an outstanding job in bringing revenue in for the tax man—for the Exchequer. In my area—the lakes and dales and Kendal—many small and medium-sized businesses in tourism and retail do not have the money for their own financial advisers on tap and in-house. They rely on the excellent service they receive from the tax office in Kendal to ensure that they pay the right amount of tax, and they want to pay the right amount of tax.

The outcome of the closure programme will be mistakes and reductions in revenue. It is a counter-productive decision and move on the part of the Government. In the interests of my constituents in Westmorland and Lonsdale and, indeed, in the interests of the wider economy and the Exchequer, I plead with the Minister to rethink.

I shall be brief. The consultation was a complete sham. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) and I, Lancaster city council, the chamber of trade and many local organisations objected to the closure of the Lancaster office, but it was still announced on 4 December. May I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister why we always do such things before Christmas? Is it to cause the maximum stress and upset to staff at that time?

Some 61 per cent. of staff in Lancaster have no viable option for future employment, because the nearest office that carries out work that they can do—I am talking about the processing teams—is at Salford, so at present they are surplus to requirements. They are told that they may be offered other jobs outside the current business stream, but so far none has been brought to their attention. They have not been given viable alternatives, yet voluntarily leaving the service is not an option in the current economic circumstances. We should be doing all we can to help those people.

I want to ask the Minister about the costings. How long will it take to make a saving on some of those offices, given all the relocation costs, severance pay and everything else that has to be taken into consideration?

I believe that in our area there is a solution. The original proposal for the Lancaster office was to withdraw from Charter house and relocate the staff to other offices within a reasonable daily travelling distance. Preston was to have been the main office, but the department has now withdrawn that option, which leaves the majority of staff stranded in Lancaster. I believe that the Preston option has been withdrawn because HMRC has finally realised that there is no capacity in Preston because of the redevelopment of the city centre. Preston has 2,000 staff because it is a national centre for tax credits, and those people need to be relocated now that their offices are to be demolished.

I and my hon. Friends the Members for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope), who was here earlier, would like to meet the Minister. We believe that there can be a Lancashire solution and that people can be relocated; many of those in the Preston office already travel in from other parts of Lancashire, such as Lancaster, Morecambe, Chorley and Hyndburn. Let us get together to reach a solution and help them. At the moment, they do not feel that the Government are on their side. We should be on the side of public sector workers, doing all we can to help them in these difficult circumstances.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) for introducing the debate. This is a very important subject, as we can see from the fact that hon. Members from all over the United Kingdom are here to tell the Government that they have got it wrong.

That is nowhere truer than in Chorley. I am still waiting for answers from my right hon. Friend the Minister. The big question is why the Government are doing this. They talk about uncertainty and they have said that they do not want to create uncertainty, but he has created more uncertainty than ever. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) said, there is a question over Preston. There is a major redevelopment. What about sharing the work out, sorting out the problems in Lancashire and working towards a solution?

There is no greater asset than the people my hon. Friend represents—the hard-working staff at HMRC. The Government have built up a reputation claiming to be—[Interruption.] Shall we give the Minister a minute? The Government have built up a reputation for being a caring employer, but all that has been thrown to the wind. We encouraged people to go part-time and we encouraged family-friendly working hours and practices, but all that has been thrown to the wind. That should not happen.

The big question is why the offices were ever down for closure. It made no economic sense to close them, but they have somehow suddenly closed. Will the Minister investigate whether there was political interference that closed our offices but kept offices open in the constituencies of right hon. Ministers, particularly given the fact that those offices cost more to run than ours? Something smells and something needs to be investigated. I hope the Minister will take the issue away and come back to us with honesty. We need transparency about what has happened, but we have not seen any yet. It makes no sense to close purpose-built offices and throw award-winning staff out of their jobs, particularly when they are cheaper. What has changed? What has gone wrong? Can the Minister look into that? Will he promise to come back to us?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale said, there is work that can be put into our offices. Will the Minister please look at the issue and rethink? Will he start standing up for the staff we represent?

Will the hon. Gentleman name the Ministers and constituencies?

Blackburn and St. Helens were down for closure, and they both cost more than Chorley to run. My office was never down to close, and it was the same with Lancaster and Accrington. Something has gone on, and we need to know why. The Minister should stand up for Back-Bench MPs like us and for the people and constituencies we represent. It is unfair to treat us like this, and it is certainly unfair on the staff we represent and on the Public and Commercial Services Union. We want some fairness, and it is time that we were shown some.

I cannot explain the issue any further, but I will tell my right hon. Friend that we are not giving up now. We have to keep going. The sooner we can have a meeting the better. Will he please meet us so that we can discuss the issue and see what we can do for the people we represent?

I add my voice to those of hon. Members who have complained about MPs’ lack of access to HMRC offices. It seems that a ministerial decision is almost required before MPs are allowed into local offices; when my constituents met me, there was certainly a bit of skulduggery about it, and they were clearly frightened to disclose to management that they were meeting their MP. That is unacceptable, particularly in the public sector.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister to hear that I want to talk about the closure of the Ayr office. Under the initial proposals on the potential for change in Ayr and Irvine, Ayr was the preferred option to stay open because it was far more cost-effective and best suited to business needs. As others have said, however, the staff who first contacted us were more concerned about the jobs situation and did not want any offices to close.

For time reasons, I will not repeat what hon. Members have said about that, except to echo what has been said about local jobs and family circumstances. I appreciate that family circumstances are being taken into account to an extent, but I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright), who illustrated the circumstances of his constituents. Again, I will not go into the individual circumstances of my constituents, which are very similar, except to say that, in terms of the Department’s consideration, the situation of families is neither as positive nor as straightforward as it appears practically or financially.

Understandably, staff in Ayr were surprised, as I was, when it was decided to close Ayr and keep Irvine open, given that we had all been told that Ayr was the preferred option. I have requested the facts and figures behind the reason for the change, but the Department has given me only a bland response. HMRC has said that the decision was finely balanced, but the information to date does not show why it was decided that the Ayr office was less viable. There must, for example, be a record of the running costs of the two offices over the past three years and of the projected costs for the next three years and into the future. I would be grateful if the Minister could at last supply those figures. I also understand that the lease on Russell house in Ayr is not due to expire for a considerable time, so there must be a sizeable penalty if it is vacated before the end of the lease. Again, I would be grateful for information on that.

It has been suggested to me that socioeconomic factors are partly behind the decision, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) has campaigned long and hard for civil service jobs in his area. However, I would make two points. First, I doubt whether the majority of staff who work in Irvine actually live there and I am also sure that few, if any, staff from Ayr will move to Irvine if the final decision is taken. That is for purely practical and, given the current economic climate, financial reasons. It is not, therefore, a question of protecting jobs for local people.

Secondly, and more importantly, however, my constituency has an unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent, while Central Ayrshire has a rate of 5.7 per cent., so unemployment is higher in my constituency. As a result, I fail to see how that can explain the decision. I therefore plead with the Minister to give us a proper detailed explanation of why Ayr is no longer the preferred option.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) for triggering this debate. Although I am speaking from the Front Bench, I also want to speak on behalf of the hard-working, diligent and loyal staff at Duke’s house in Southport, who have been sorely affected by this issue.

The justice of the case is well illustrated by the fact that we have an array of some of the most caring, diligent, thoughtful, industrious and independent members of the parliamentary Labour party here, all of whom have spoken with no aspiration—or, frankly, realistic hope—of promotion.

Some consistency.

Well, there is a clear and consistent explanation behind all this, because it all started with the then Chancellor’s announcement of the Gershon review in 2004. At the time, he was involved in a Dutch auction with the Tories, who had the James review, and both sides were working to more or less the same formula: there would be job losses in the public sector, a reduction in the estate, shared services, increased use of IT, outsourcing and smart procurement.

When the issue was debated in 2004, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), in his usual prophetic way, pointed out the sheer irresponsibility of announcing figures for job cuts without saying how they would be made or whose jobs they would be. It was all broad-brush, big-canvas stuff about the direction of travel—there were no detailed plans. The result is here with us today: it is that decisions made at the top have had to be implemented somehow, on the ground, by third or fourth-tier civil servants. And so it is in the Treasury. I do not think that any serious calculation has been made of how many officers are needed, or how many people need to be involved in the process of tax collection. There is a general suggestion that the Treasury can be rationalised; its estate can be rationalised, its staff reduced and its processes simplified on Henry Ford-style principles, through the breaking down of the complex business of tax assessment. I remember when tax inspector jobs were advertised by saying that it was a job appealing to reason. That can no longer be put in the advert, because what we are talking about now is reducing complex tasks to simple tasks done through the lean process, in what one might call tax factories.

The process of change from workshop to factory has, to the credit of HMRC, been carried out as sensitively as it knows how, which may not be that sensitively in the end. HMRC promised—the same has been promised in this Chamber—detailed personnel analysis before any move was made, and guarantees to be given to the union. It said that it hoped for heavy reliance on natural wastage rather than redundancy. However, there are strong arguments to be made about the process in principle. The lean process in taxation is relatively new, and it has hidden costs. Most of the larger institutions have poor recruitment, high staff absence rates, an increased carbon footprint for the people who work there—which is also a concern for the Treasury—and reduced public satisfaction with the handling of complex and non-standard cases. The standard cases go through as they do at DVLA and similar places, but the more complex and troublesome ones take longer. The evidence for the lean process is not overwhelming. It can be argued that fraud detection will be better with a local presence; it can also quite reasonably be argued that the protection of vulnerable customers, such as the digitally excluded, the elderly and migrant workers, cannot exclusively be dealt with through a process of central data matching. It is good, useful and worth having, but it is not enough to get the tax job done efficiently. In an IT-enabled, carbon-aware, family-friendly world, warehousing workers is neither necessary nor particularly smart.

The one argument that counts, and counts now, is whether the costs of change outweigh the assumed benefits. The guarantees given to staff about such things as deployment, disability, family responsibility and travel, which were all given with some degree of sincerity, have in some cases been pushed through. Some rearrangements have been made in a brutalist fashion, but by and large a process has been conducted—a fallible process that lacks credibility in certain respects. However, even where only lip- service has been paid to the procedures and closures, it has become apparent that some were very hard to carry out. In the short term, if relocation and other costs such as voluntary redundancy are added in, they are very expensive. If to that is added the fact that it will not be easy to pull out of property that the Treasury no longer owns, but holds under the public-private finance initiative, particularly given the collapse of the commercial property market and the present financial difficulties of the owner—it is a tax-dodging hedge fund but it still has severe financial problems of its own—the true cost of all the rearrangement is simply not known. It is obviously shrouded in confidentiality.

One thing is emerging—and it is certain that it is emerging, because of the extent to which the pace has slowed down in some places: some closures make no savings in the short term, but just bring added costs. Some closures—I suggest that Southport is a quite good example—bring no savings in the medium term. Despite all this, third-tier officers may press on blindly following orders and implementing what they assume to be the master plan from above; but with an election nigh, I should be surprised if, higher up, some people were not having second thoughts.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) on securing the debate. He has clearly touched a nerve, given the number of speeches by Members of the House from all over England and Wales, representing all parties. There is clearly great concern among hon. Members about the impact of the HMRC office closures. Several hon. Members have set out the difficulties of their constituents, and the problems created by office closures. Some have raised concerns about the manner in which the process has gone forward. I was very struck by the remarks of the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) when he made the serious allegation that the details of the office closure programme have been driven not solely on efficiency grounds, but also on the grounds of the constituencies where offices were.

I want the matter cleared up. One can only suspect political interference because the case was made that the Chorley office cost less to run, which was why it remained open. Suddenly it is closing and the two offices that were down for closure remain open. That is what leads one to ask, “Is it political interference or something else?” I want it cleared up; I want transparency and I want the Minister to reply honestly about it.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for setting out his suspicions. Let me put it no more strongly; I do not think that the hon. Gentleman wants to put it any more strongly than that. It would be helpful if the Minister would discuss that concern and any representations the Treasury and HMRC might have received from the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Watts): I think that that would be the basis for the suspicions of the hon. Member for Chorley.

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth set out well the detailed concerns of his constituents, and gave some significant case studies—examples of the difficulties created for some of his constituents. There is strong local cross-party opposition to the closure of Havenbridge house. I have been in touch with Brandon Lewis, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Great Yarmouth, who has been heavily involved in opposing the proposals for some time. He has made representations to the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), who visited Great Yarmouth a week or so ago. I do not know whether the Minister has had an opportunity to meet representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union in Great Yarmouth and discuss the proposals with them, but if he has not done so I suggest he should visit Brandon Lewis’s website, on which there is a video of an interview with Lee Sutton of PCS and a clip from a public meeting that Mr. Lewis attended with employees at Havenbridge house. There is agreement across the board in Great Yarmouth about the damage that may well be done.

No Government or putative Government would rule out ever making any office closures or staff cuts. However, there are questions that the Minister should address, many of which have been raised during the debate. I want to highlight three areas on which I would be grateful for a response from the Minister. Some of them have already been touched on. First, how much will be saved by the consolidation of offices? The consolidation and closure of offices is part of HMRC’s transformation plan. The National Audit Office considered the process and published a report in July, but the figures for March 2008 stated that of the £2.4 billion of savings that it was hoped to achieve, the benefits were largely from programmes that were under way when the transformation programme began. Since last year there have been significant changes in property values. It would be helpful if the Minister were to give the House some details of the impact that changes in property prices will have made; I suspect that the savings may have been reduced as a consequence. It would help if we were to be kept fully informed.

My second point is that HMRC faces various initiatives, such as reorganisation, office closures, staff movement and so on, and they appear to be having a significant impact on staff morale. I have met many HMRC employees and trade union representatives during the past year or so, and there is no doubt—I think that the Government recognise the fact—that HMRC has a problem with staff morale.

I shall highlight two sets of figures, which I know that the Minister will be aware of as he gave them to me in answer to parliamentary questions. Many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, said that experienced and skilled staff were being lost. Staff turnover at HMRC is 8.77 per cent. overall. In contact centres, it is an astonishing 15.76 per cent. The figures for sick leave, too, are striking. The average is 10.37 days a year; at contact centres, it is 17.45 days a year. Those figures raise a number of questions, but they are certainly indicative of a failure in staff morale.

My next point relates to taxpayer contact with HMRC. Much of our debate has focused on the concerns of employees—understandably so—but what about the quality of service being provided to the taxpayer? Will the office closures and staff reductions have an impact on that? We should remember that the tax system has been moving towards self-assessment; and the past 10 to 12 years has seen the introduction of the tax credit system, which imposes considerable demands on claimants and HMRC. It could be argued that greater self-assessment, tax credit claims and so on will result in the need for a more face-to-face service, with more people needing to meet HMRC staff in order to deal with their tax.

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman. Is he suggesting that the Conservative party manifesto will propose an increase in public-sector jobs rather than what we have been hearing for a number of months—billions of pounds-worth of cuts in the public sector?

In this part of my speech, I am relying heavily on representations that I have received from the low incomes tax reform group of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. I question whether the reforms of HMRC are being done in the most efficient way. In representations to me, the group said that

“by diverting resources away from front-line services, HMRC are not only making life more difficult for unrepresented customers at a time when the tax system is becoming at once more complex and more unforgiving of error, but also creating the necessity for more expensive interventions into taxpayers’ affairs. Alternative ways of contacting HMRC do not always work well, and exclude a considerable proportion of the taxpaying population who find the telephone or the internet beyond their skills.”

What assessment have the Government made of the reforms? Do they accept that services are being transferred away from the front line, and do they consider that to be the best way for HMRC to be managed?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The one thing that we have done wrong is to remove front-line services; as a result, jobs have gone in the Department for Work and Pensions and in other areas. Over the past two and a half or three years I have been working extremely hard on the consultation, and I have come to know many of those in HMRC who work with individuals. It is clear and apparent that we need to increase the number of face-to-face contacts rather than diminish them. I merely ask whether the Conservative party spokesman agrees with that point of view. Is it his party’s policy to increase front-line services in the public sector, and specifically within HMRC, should the opportunity arise?

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says, but I believe that HMRC needs to be more efficient and more effective. The professional bodies are concerned that HMRC is not becoming more effective, and that problems are being stored up for later intervention. That is the point that I wish to put to the Minister.

A number of helpful points have been raised in the course of this morning’s discussion. It was useful for the House to have had this debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for initiating it. I want to give the Minister as much time as possible, to enable him to respond, but it is perfectly legitimate to ask serious questions about the effectiveness of the proposals.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) on securing this debate and on the consistent and determined way in which he has defended his local tax office. I have not heard of anyone with a name like Mr. Brandon Lewis speaking on the subject. However, I am pleased to have the chance to respond to the points that have been made. I shall set out the rationale behind the exercise, but before doing so, I shall comment on what my hon. Friend said when highlighting the issues that face individual members of staff.

HMRC exists for taxpayers. It has to provide its service in the most efficient way. I shall set out later why it needs to restructure in order to become more efficient, but not the least reason is that it has to deal with the big challenges of tax evasion that have been mentioned today, as well as other challenges. It also needs to plan its office structure to suit its new business models. Many private sector organisations would expect staff to move to where the work is; in contrast, HMRC has gone to great lengths to work with staff, taking personal circumstances into account whenever it can. However, HMRC has to keep those office buildings that are the most useful to it from the business point of view.

My hon. Friend and others made the point that now is a difficult time for staff in any office that is to be closed. I put it on that record that what is proposed is not a reflection of the performance of those staff. Most HMRC staff, particularly those in smaller towns, have a large amount of valuable experience, which is why staff are being asked to move with their work, whenever that it is possible.

Throughout the programme, senior HMRC management have been, and continue to be, committed to being open with staff, explaining the options to individuals and exploring how their expectations can be matched with the need to make business operations more efficient. After decisions are announced, individual staff members have the opportunity to discuss their personal circumstances with managers and to determine their suitability for relocation. That is backed, as it should be, by a trade union-supported appeals process.

In making those judgments, HMRC takes account of personal circumstances, such as the caring responsibilities rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend, as far as is possible, given the constraints of the need to rationalise the office network. HMRC will provide staff with as much flexibility as it can—for example, by allowing a change to working patterns, provided that it meets the needs of its business—but I cannot give my hon. Friend the assurance that no member of staff will be inconvenienced by the changes. None the less, a great deal is being done to minimise the difficulties.

We are not talking about an individual member of staff; I know of dozens of members of staff who are finding things extremely difficult. I can understand perhaps that one or two might fall through the net, but about 30 or 40 per cent. of the 135-strong work force at Havenbridge house are going to find things extremely difficult. Multiply that across every other constituency, and we have a considerable number of people who will be given no alternative but to lose their jobs. They have not been taken into account. Will the Government not admit that they have got this wrong? Perhaps we should review the estate and make savings there.

I think that the circumstances of 103 members of staff at Great Yarmouth are being looked at. HMRC is considering how best to accommodate those who cannot move with their existing business while continuing to do appropriate work. A range of options and support is being offered including, for example, redeployment to another business stream in HMRC within reasonable daily travelling distance, assisted home moves for staff to fill posts elsewhere in the Department, a public sector release scheme that offers grants to staff leaving for other front-line public sector jobs and, where available, moves to other Departments.

In January, HMRC signed an agreement with the Department for Work and Pensions. For reasons that we all understand, Jobcentre Plus needs to recruit additional staff. Until a solution can be found, work will continue to be fed back to staff in this position. HMRC is phasing the closure of buildings by partial vacations, which will help to achieve some financial savings, and to accommodate in the interim those staff who cannot move for the types of reason set out by my hon. Friend. The work of reviewing the position of each member of staff will be complete by the end of the month, and it should then be possible to be much clearer about the likely time scale for individual offices to remain open, given our determination to minimise, or preferably avoid, compulsory redundancies. Staff at Great Yarmouth have been told that the office will close by spring next year, but it is pretty clear—he drew attention to some of the reasons—that a number of staff will continue to work in the Great Yarmouth office well after that. As I said, however, details should become clearer next month.

I understand the strength of the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend and others, but I would like to set out the context of the work force change programme. We have long challenged—I know that my hon. Friend supports this—all Departments to increase their effectiveness while making significant efficiency savings. In HMRC, as elsewhere, that can be done only by making radical changes. That was a key reason behind the merger of the two former Departments—Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise—in 2005. The merger was designed to create efficiencies by cutting out the duplication of function and effort. Was that an easy change to make? The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) criticised the way in which that merger has worked out. It is true that these are difficult changes to bring about, but if our aim is to have the most efficient possible delivery of public service, that is the sort of change that we must be willing to make and we must ensure that it succeeds. We are now enabling the combined organisation to reduce the size of its office network. HMRC recognised from the start that it would have to set itself up on national business lines to achieve the benefits of integration and to be in a position to respond more quickly and effectively to changing demands.

The old Inland Revenue was a geographically-based regional organisation, and it was clear from the start that that was not an appropriate way of organising HMRC, which inherited two separate office networks comprising nearly 600 office buildings across the UK. The former Inland Revenue’s network of small local offices had developed historically to meet the needs of local employers and taxpayers. Originally, most local offices had a local customer base, but even before the merger that had largely ceased to be the case. The old idea of a local tax office simply serving the local community has long been obsolete.

I want to cut through some of the information that the Minister has provided. What is the difference in rent between offices in Norwich, where it is proposed that people from Great Yarmouth will be housed, and those elsewhere? When will we know? Is he in possession of a document containing such information, or must we use the Freedom of Information Act 2000?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because the exercise is not about simply finding the cheapest offices in the country. That has been a serious misunderstanding throughout this debate. The question for HMRC is: how best can it organise its business to deal, for example, with the challenges of tax evasion? That is not about finding the cheapest possible office space in the country. That has not been a driving consideration.

For a long time now, we have not had local tax offices whose job it is just to serve the local community. Thirty years ago, work on pay-as-you-earn for those working in London was moved out into large regional centres. That did not damage customer service, because PAYE work does not require local knowledge, and nor does the other high-volume processing work that HMRC is concentrating in a much smaller number of large units. Most staff in local offices, therefore, do not have regular contact with local customers. An increasing number of people prefer to do business with HMRC by telephone or over the internet.

In response to the question from the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke), some taxpayers and claimants—tax-credit claimants, for example—want the reassurance of being able to call in to a local enquiry centre, and they must continue to have that opportunity. Inquiry centre services, where people can get free face-to-face advice, will continue to be provided at or near all their current locations, including in Great Yarmouth. In the current economic climate, which has been referred to in this debate, it is more important than ever that HMRC uses its resources to best effect. The Conservative party argues that £5 billion should be cut from public spending, with effect from next month, but that is an extremely ill-advised policy. We must continue to improve customer services while managing costs downward. One way to do that is to consolidate teams of staff in particular businesses into a smaller number of locations. That can introduce new and more effective working practices, resulting in more work done by the same number of staff.

HMRC has to achieve efficiency savings that roughly equate to a reduction in staff of about 25,000 between 2004 and 2011. Very substantial staff savings—down from 105,000 to 89,000—have been made already without any compulsory redundancies. Furthermore, it was clear that 40 per cent. of the office space with which the organisation started would no longer be needed by 2011-12. For example, the office in Great Yarmouth can accommodate more than 250 people, but it currently houses just over 100. We need to manage the process of ensuring that the organisation has the necessary office space to do its job.

Will the Minister meet the Lancashire Members?

I am very happy to talk to my hon. Friend about a possible meeting. What I will not do, however, is give hon. Members the impression that these things might change.

I am delighted to have secured this debate on abusive images on the internet. The internet opens a window on the world in a wonderful way, enabling us to find information and communicate with others, but we must be vigilant about the ways in which it can be misused. I shall focus on three areas today and ask the Minister to crack down further on access to images of child abuse on the net; to put pressure on the social networking sites to take down and monitor proactively disturbing videos; and to continue to promote the education of young people about safety on the net.

A huge amount of work on all those matters has been done in the UK by Government, internet service providers, children’s charities and the police. I pay tribute to all of them and to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing is to reply to the debate, as he did a massive amount of excellent work when he had direct responsibility for policy in this area. I also thank John Carr, secretary of the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, who first alerted me to the issues and briefed me for this debate.

First, I come to images of child abuse. In my own area and elsewhere, we have people who use the internet to download thousands, or even tens of thousands, of images of child abuse. Recently in my patch, a GP was convicted of such a crime—the second such case in my area. Each image of child abuse represents a real child or a baby being raped or otherwise abused. The crime is not one of someone innocently looking at a Lolita-type image. The Internet Watch Foundation tells me that half the images uncovered are of children under 10 and more than half depict the worst categories of abuse, which makes it almost impossible for any normal human being to watch. The idea of someone downloading the image of a baby being raped for their sick gratification is extraordinary.

The UK has an exemplary record on dealing with child abuse images on the internet. We can all feel justly proud that no other democracy in the world can match our achievements. Many other countries are copying the British approach and, as we know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

When records of such images first started to be kept in the late 1990s, something like 19 per cent. of all the child abuse images found on the internet in the UK were also being published by servers physically located in the UK. Today, that proportion has gone down to around 0.2 per cent., which is a fantastic success. That is in no small part due to the work of the IWF, which was founded in 1996 by the internet service providers.

For those who do not know the history behind that development—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister does—I will explain how the system works. The IWF receives a report of an alleged illegal image. The staff look at the image and if they confirm that it is illegal and it is housed on a server within the UK, a notice is issued to the UK host and the police. No UK ISP has ever been prosecuted for child pornography offences because they all act immediately to remove such images the instant they receive a notice from the IWF. British ISPs also block the Usernet newsgroups of which they are notified by IWF when abusive images keep reappearing.

To eliminate nearly all abusive images on servers hosted in the UK is a great success, but the other 99 per cent. plus of child abuse images reside on overseas servers in which the IWF writ does not run. The local police may be notified, but whether or not action is taken depends on the way in which the police operate, on the systems in those countries and on the speed of response. Child abuse websites hosted overseas are available via the world wide web to anyone anywhere in the world, so they are available to UK residents to download. That in turn puts UK children at risk, because a proportion of the people who download such images are likely to go on to act out in real life some of the sexual fantasies involving children that have been fuelled by those images. Do not think that such people just look at those images, appalling though that is.

At the Derbyshire safeguarding children board annual meeting last Friday, Jim Gamble from CEOP discussed some recent research, which may not have yet been published. Of those sent to prison for downloading child abuse images, only 26 per cent. said that they had been involved in a contact offence. Obviously that is bad enough, but when they were re-interviewed using polygraphs, 90 per cent. were found to have gone on to engage in contact offences. Therefore, they had committed offences both online and offline.

The problem is not just that someone might go on to commit contact offences, but that the trade in such images puts UK children at risk of abuse. By definition, those images are evidence of a crime that has been committed against the child depicted in the image. Every re-publication of the image is, in a sense, a way of re-abusing the child. Very often, people say. “Why are you taking action against people who are just downloading and looking at images?” They do not understand the seriousness of the crime. The crime is one of children and babies being abused and raped solely for profit and sexual gratification, and that is just unbelievably appalling.

It is very difficult to identify and locate those children. Interpol says that it has identified and rescued 900 children, but many more are out there being abused to service the trade. Anyone who downloads such disgusting images is contributing very directly to keeping in business a commercial trade that is often run by organised criminal gangs. Moreover, they are ensuring the continuation of other methods which may not involve criminal gangs but which involve the trade in images of children being abused. They are directly contributing to the abuse of the children shown in the images; they are abusers by proxy.

Many of us have been considering better ways to disrupt and reduce the traffic in child abuse images. In 2004, in Prime Minister’s questions, I was able to welcome the steps taken by BT to develop its cleanfeed technology. It showed how it could take the IWF’s list of known child abuse websites and use the cleanfeed system to block access by all its customers in those sites. Anyone using cleanfeed technology to access the internet would not be able to access any of the sites notified by the IWF, including those hosted overseas from which most of the images come. Obviously, such a system is not foolproof, but it clearly has limited hugely and prevented a range of illegal and accidental access.

In April 2006, the Government, in the form of my hon. Friend the Minister, said that they wanted all internet service providers voluntarily to adopt a cleanfeed system, enabling them to envisage a time when 100 per cent. of UK-based ISPs were doing their bit to reduce the volume of images being traded over the internet. The Government gave the industry until 31 December 2007 to come into line with that policy, adding that if providers were not willing to do that, “other means” would be considered to secure that end. The matter has been considered at various times since then. The Internet Services Providers Association told me that it has discussed with some providers the difficulties of such a measure. None the less, the providers have now had 18 months in which to get their house in order.

In an answer to a parliamentary question last month, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran), who has been very involved in this issue, the Government confirmed that only 95 per cent. of UK households with broadband connections belonged to ISPs that use the technology to block images. That sounds like a great success, and I applaud it. None the less, that 5 per cent. difference means that nearly three-quarters of a million UK households with broadband connections still have unfettered access to the child abuse websites. That is too many, and I hope that Minister will say what we can do now to crack down on those last few ISPs that are not taking the matter seriously and honouring the pledge to clamp down on this evil and appalling trade. Self-regulation has clearly not worked. It is no good having a code that says it can be ignored. The time has come for action.

I have been approached by the ISPA and the IWF, who say that some small firms may have some technical difficulties. To be frank, however, car producers who say, “I am unable to fit a brake system in the car that I am producing,” are not allowed to produce cars. The onus is on us, the trade and the industry to find ways to enable companies that say they have problems to block access to the images. It is not acceptable for ISPs to allow households access to those evil and abusive images. The ISPs that have taken action should be annoyed about those that have not done so. If 100 per cent. of ISPs do not take action, the pressure for legislation will become irresistible. I hope that the Minister will say that we will crack down on ISPs that have not taken such action.

The trade in these images is evil. I could not bear even to look at them, so I applaud those who do so on behalf of our society. The IWF and others look at those images and take action with the police and service providers to stop people carrying on that evil and appalling trade, which causes so many children and babies to be abused in the most horrendous way. The time has come to crack down on that last remaining group so that the UK can have a really proud record of saying, “We stop our citizens from being able to access those images.”

I want to raise a couple of other related issues, the first of which concerns disturbing videos on social networking sites. The Derby Evening Telegraph, one of my local papers, uncovered videos posted on YouTube including videos of attacks by teenagers on youngsters in Belper, dangerous stunts by young drivers in Derby, animal cruelty and dog fighting. A recent BBC radio documentary stated that 90 young people have received police cautions because of images of themselves that they have posted on the net. Some social networking sites, including MySpace, proactively monitor their sites to take down disturbing videos, but YouTube, which is part of Google, and others just wait for complaints, saying that it is too difficult to proactively monitor their sites. To be frank, a person who enjoys watching such videos is hardly going to complain and ask for the sites to be taken down.

Those sites are not taking action despite Home Office guidance for social networking sites issued in 2008, following recommendations made by the clinical psychologist, Dr. Tanya Byron, who was directly commissioned by the Prime Minister to look at how children could use the net safely and avert risks and dangers. Her recommendations were endorsed by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, so there is a lot of force behind the idea that social networking sites have a responsibility to look at what is being posted and to take action to take down unacceptable sites.

The new UK Council on Child Internet Safety, which was recommended by Dr. Byron, has now had two meetings. It will look at social networking sites and some of the mechanics of taking action. However, I take this opportunity to say to YouTube and other social networking sites, “You have to take your responsibilities seriously. You have a responsibility to the many people that use your sites to ensure that they are used responsibly.” Again, I ask the Minister to take that on board and to continue to put pressure on such sites to follow UKCCIS’s advice. Sites should take on board the recommendation that they proactively monitor sites and take down those that are not acceptable.

That leads me to touch briefly on the question of the education of young people and their parents in how to use the net safely. The internet is an incredibly exciting place, but it should also be treated as an open space, like a park. We must learn how to avoid dangers and take sensible precautions against those who would do us harm. They could be strangers posing as friends—the CEOP site has a very graphic demonstration of somebody talking to somebody, another child, talking to somebody else, another child, talking to somebody else, who seems like a child but is in fact a 30-year-old man. People do not know to whom they are talking on the net, so they do not know whether people are merely posing as friends. We need to know how to deal with bullying on the net, which is common, and how to ensure that people do not post images of themselves on the net that will come back to haunt them, say, in a job interview 20 years later, or because people have seen embarrassing pictures.

I assume that the 90 young people who, I am horrified to hear, have police cautions, posted images of themselves in sexually provocative poses on the net, and that they are very young people. Clearly, they would not have cautions if the images were not classified as illegal. They will have been child abuse images or child pornography images, if we want to use that phrase. If social networking sites proactively monitored their content, they could ensure either that clearly illegal images did not go up, or that they were taken down straight away. Obviously, that raises the question of how to ensure that young people are not foolish and that they know how to use the net, what is acceptable and how to stop themselves getting into real danger.

I was delighted that the Derbyshire safeguarding children board conference last Friday had Jim Gamble as a speaker. He talked about how CEOP’s website contains advice for children and their parents on how to work safely. I was also delighted that 140 social workers and teachers in Derbyshire have been trained by CEOP to go into schools to talk to children about how to behave safely when using the net.

For the great majority of youngsters, use of the internet and social networking sites will be perfectly safe and enjoyable. We do not want to be damp squibs or to pour scorn on the internet and say that it is dangerous, appalling and awful and that people should not ever use it. However, just as people take some care when they walk around in the real world, so they need to take care when moving around on the net. Following a few simple rules we can ensure that the internet is a place where young people can enjoy themselves safely. I am sure that the Minister and his colleagues will continue to promote the education of young people and their parents in how to use the net safely.

These are the three things that we should be doing: cracking down on child abuse images; cracking down on social networking sites and ensuring that they act responsibly and monitor what is on their sites; and ensuring that young children are educated. We need to ensure that the internet is indeed a wonderful place, and not a place where all sorts of dangers and uncomfortable things lurk.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) on securing this hugely important debate. I pay tribute to her work with John Carr, who has done an excellent job, and many other people in highlighting this matter. She has not simply come to it in the past couple of weeks, but has worked on it dedicatedly and passionately for a number of years. People should be aware that if it was not for the campaigning that she and a number of other hon. Members have done, notwithstanding the challenges that she has made this morning, we would be far behind where we are now. I want to put that on the record. Sincerely and genuinely, children are safe today who would not have been but for the actions of such people.

I will address my hon. Friend’s points as I go on, but to reassure her, the Government want 100 per cent. blocking and we will consider legislating for it. We believe that the companies responsible for social networking sites have a responsibility to monitor and act proactively to ensure that the sites conform to the various codes that have been produced.

We also believe that the role of parents is crucial. They should know what is happening in their child’s bedroom with respect to the internet. We want to encourage parents to take responsibility for that, as many do. The education of children themselves is also hugely important. I reassure my hon. Friend on all the direct questions that she raised. Blocking in particular is something that we will be taking forward proactively.

We are appalled by the continuing misuse of the internet to distribute images of child sexual abuse. They are not virtual images of fictional activity; they are images of real children being abused, whether in the UK or elsewhere. We are fully committed to tackling the creation, sale and possession of such images. As most people already know, for a substantial period of time the UK has completely prohibited the production, possession and distribution of images of child sexual abuse.

Shortly after use of the internet became widespread, it was recognised that it was being misused to spread such images. The UK industry responded in 1996 by setting up the Internet Watch Foundation to operate the world’s first dedicated hotline for reporting images of child sexual abuse. With the support of industry, Government and law enforcement, the IWF has been very successful in tackling hosting of such images in the UK.

As a result of that partnership approach, the percentage of child sexual abuse content reported to the IWF or found by the IWF to be hosted in the UK has been reduced from approximately 18 per cent. in 1997 to less than 1 per cent. now. That means that sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad. To protect UK users from inadvertent exposure to such content, the IWF also facilitated an industry-led initiative by blocking access to it through the provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse internet addresses. I draw to the House’s attention the fact that the UK internet industry was the first in Europe to commit voluntarily to blocking access to such images. We should recognise that the vast majority of the industry has joined together responsibly to do so. The process is now being considered and recommended in countries all over Europe and elsewhere.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, 95 per cent. of our broadband services use the blocking list. I am grateful to the industry members whose efforts have contributed to its success for their continued support for the Internet Watch Foundation. However, the Government are committed to achieving a target of 100 per cent. blocking on all commercial networks. At a Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre conference last week, the Home Secretary made it clear that we want the target to be met and that we are happy to discuss with the industry any genuine issues that need to be resolved to see how we can help. If that approach does not work, we are considering a number of other options, including legislation if necessary. We hope it will not come to that, but if more formal regulation is needed, we will consider it.

Has any time scale been put on that process? The industry has had 18 months and most internet service providers have gone along with it. Does my hon. Friend have any idea how long we will give them to come back with their problems and discussions before taking more drastic action?

We said originally that it should be by the end of 2007, as my hon. Friend is aware. We thought it appropriate to wait a year or so to see whether we could meet the target voluntarily and tell the industry that we need it to do so. The issue will not go away. We will now take it forward much more proactively to address the problem and resolve the issues. As she said, the industry says that it is having problems, but to the public, access is available to abusive images of the vilest kind, which none of us wants to see.

One of the ways in which the Government have responded to the issue is by setting up CEOP, one of the first such centres in the world. CEOP has had marked success in targeting online predators and in forming crucial partnerships with international law enforcement agencies, meaning that the UK continues to be recognised as a world leader in serious online protection. I pay tribute to the work of Jim Gamble and all the people at CEOP.

The Government have never been complacent about the potential threat to children from those who would seek to harm them online. We have been active on the issue for a considerable time. As a result of a recommendation by the Home Secretary’s taskforce, we introduced an offence of grooming in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which makes it an offence to communicate with a child and arrange to meet them for sexual purposes. Again, we were the first country in Europe to introduce such an offence. Other countries have now introduced or are considering introducing similar offences. Only a few weeks ago, four and a half years after the introduction of the offence in the UK, the European Parliament recommended that all European Community members do so.

Another issue raised by Jim Gamble at the conference on Friday was the need to ensure that all sites have a clear and easily available child abuse alert button, so that if a child feels that something is going on that they are not comfortable with, they can press the button and be put through to the appropriate agency to report it. I know that a number of sites have such buttons. Will my hon. Friend ensure that point is taken on board so that there is consistency and all available sites have such a facility for children to report abuse?

Again, my hon. Friend knows that CEOP has been campaigning for the provision of a “report abuse” button on social networking and other sites. We have encouraged it, and a number of companies, including social networking sites, are now providing such buttons. We wish to see their number increase, and we are actively pursuing that with CEOP.

As well as law enforcement, CEOP has been successful in its educational initiatives. Its educational programmes have now been delivered to more than 3 million children in schools around the UK. That is another way in which we can protect young people from harm on the internet.

In April 2008, Dr. Tanya Byron published her report “Safer Children in a Digital World”, and the Government accepted all her recommendations in full. In September last year, we launched UKCCIS, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, a key Byron recommendation that brings together industry, charities, law enforcement and Government to help protect children online. I would like to put on record my personal thanks to Dr. Tanya Byron for her excellent work.

The council will consider issues such as social networking sites and how to ensure that harmful and inappropriate content can be kept away from children, and it will work with content hosts to establish an independently monitored, voluntary code of practice for the moderation of user-generated content. Sites will be encouraged to sign up to specific, public commitments on how long they will take to remove content violating their acceptable use policies after it has been reported to them.

Through UKCCIS, the Government will raise awareness of e-safety issues through a public awareness campaign targeting parents and children as part of a £9 million investment. We will also implement sustainable education and children’s service initiatives to improve e-safety skills in children and parents. The initiatives will promote the use of filtering software, particularly the British Standards Institution kitemark launched in April last year. The Government strongly support the kitemark and encourage companies to apply for it.

My hon. Friend is right that we have led the way on the issue. There is a lot more to do. We want the 100 per cent. target to be met. We want more action to be taken across borders in Europe, the United States and other countries so that we can work together globally to tackle the movement of such appalling imagery across networks. The fact that it is not hosted in the UK is a cause for great celebration for us, but we know that it is still accessible on sites hosted overseas. That is of concern to us, and we need to continue to work together to address it. My hon. Friend is right. It is a priority for us all.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton. I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for granting me this debate and to colleagues from all parties who have come this afternoon. I am also grateful to the Minister, as I have had some conversations with his office, which I hope will be helpful, to explain my approach. This certainly is not a party political matter, and I am sure that we will conduct the debate in that spirit.

My main reason for securing the debate is to celebrate and put on record the incredible contribution of the Christian community to the life of our country in every one of the 646 constituencies, particularly the work that it does to serve the poorest, the most vulnerable and those in the greatest need. We do not always recognise that work enough, so the debate gives us an opportunity to celebrate it and to say thank you to the many people who do fantastic work, without which we, as Members of Parliament, know our constituencies would be worse off.

It is a given for me that we are a country of many faiths, that some people have no faith, and that quite a lot of people are somewhere in the middle—perhaps searching or having a greater or lesser degree of faith at different points in their life. I have no problem with that. Occasionally, it is said that we are a secular society; some people would like that to be the case, but I do not think that is an accurate description of the UK in 2009. I would say that we are a diverse society, made up of the groups that I have mentioned. There are some who would like faith, including the Christian faith, to be an entirely private matter that is practised at home and that is left at the front door when one goes out to work, especially if one has anything to do with public life. I dispute that position and want to state a contrary view, but will do so very much in the spirit of considering the contribution that people of faith make to the life of our country.

The BBC recently undertook a poll that seemed to show quite widespread public support for the notion that I am expressing. A quote from the BBC’s report on the poll caught my eye. It said:

“Many Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and members of other minority religious groups would rather have a Christian-based framework to national life, than one that is entirely secular.”

Sometimes, when we consider these matters, we worry about privileging one faith over another, but more important is finding a framework in which we can all co-exist happily. The Church of England, which happens to be our established Church, produced an interesting report last June in which it claimed to take only “a place” in public life in this country. I and many others are entirely happy with that: we are not seeking a dominant position or special favours; we merely want to be at the table when it comes to working in communities and engaging with local and central Government.

When I asked the Library to look at the extent of Christian involvement in the charitable sector, I found out that there are more than 15,000 Christian charities in this country, which is a fantastic number. I also found out that more people do unpaid work for Church organisations than for any other organisation. Indeed, 8 per cent. of all adults undertake voluntary work for Church organisations, while 16 per cent. of adults belong to a religious or Church organisation. The report, “Charity Market Monitor”, has estimated that 18 per cent. of all income that was raised by charities in 2006-07 was raised by faith-based charities. That was the second-highest proportion for a generic group, behind health charities. Those facts are worth putting on the record.

I am sure that the Minister is aware that his Department partly sponsored the excellent report, “Faith in Wales: Counting for Communities”. There is one Welsh MP present—the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams); perhaps he has read the report and will have a chance to express the view from Wales later. The report, which has been endorsed by the Welsh Assembly First Minister, who is from the Labour party, celebrated the fact that the faith communities in Wales contribute an estimated £102 million to the economy. If that figure is extrapolated to apply to the UK as a whole, the total is £2 billion.

In work on poverty and social exclusion, the UK Christian community has an effect beyond these shores, as well as within them. During the huge protests in Edinburgh before the G8 summit at Gleneagles, a significant proportion of the people who went up there and challenged the Government—indeed, all politicians—on those issues were from different Churches in the Christian community. There will also have been people of all faiths and of none, but a significant proportion of the people there were Christians. I know that the Government welcomed that pressure, as all politicians welcome pressure on issues that we want to progress. That is significant.

The hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting speech and I strongly agree with what he is saying. I agree particularly with what he has just said, because it is a departure from times past, when quite senior people in the Conservative party said that the Church must keep out of politics, as though it should have nothing prophetic to say about the issues on which he has rightly commented. I welcome his remarks.

I am grateful to right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I think that there will always be a tension between faiths and Governments of all parties. They are not supposed always to have a perfect relationship, but perhaps that is a reflection of the Church’s prophetic role, as he put it. I have no difficulty with that; we are grown up, and we can accept differences of opinion.

There is also a view, is there not, that politicians should keep out of the Church and out of religion? Was it not rather depressing when the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that he could not talk about religion when he was the Prime Minister for fear of being called a nutter? Is that view changing? The current Prime Minister mentioned the story of the good Samaritan in his speech to Congress, and Delia Smith is doing a blog on the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development website. Does my hon. Friend think that politicians should speak out and talk about their faith in a natural way, as he is doing?

I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from. I think that he, like me, heard the Bishop of London speak yesterday, when he advocated that politicians show a degree of reticence about speaking a great deal about their personal inspiration. We lead by example and we should be open about these matters, but that tradition of British reticence has something in it.

Let me return to my central point, which is the contribution of the Christian community to the marginalised and the most disadvantaged. I wonder whether other Members do the same as I do when constituents come to see me on a Friday, having found that their benefit application has not been processed. I say that with the best will in the world and I know that Jobcentre Plus staff work hard, but a family in that position might have no food in the house for the whole weekend. That was a real problem to me when I was a new MP, because I did not know what to do, until someone helpfully pointed out that Salvation Army centres often have food to give out in such circumstances. I am extremely lucky to have in my constituency Salvation Army centres in both Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable, so I know what I can do to help my constituents. A colleague told me today that the Vineyard church does the same in her constituency.

I praise the work of food banks up and down the country. I have had contact with the Trussell Trust, from Salisbury, which also operates in Swindon. It is trying to set up a network of food banks across the country and it happens to be run by a Christian organisation. That sort of work is tremendously valuable. We all accept that there are limits to what the state can or even should do, but that sort of partnership working is critical if we are talking about families who might otherwise go without food on a Friday night.

On work with the homeless, last September I spent some time with the Watford New Hope Trust, an organisation that involves a group of Christians from many different churches in Watford doing the most fantastic work. In the field of criminal justice, I wonder if the Minister is aware of the excellent street pastors initiative? I do not know whether it operates in his constituency, but it is starting to set up in mine. It has some support from the Home Office and I saw in a written answer that it received a small grant. That organisation works closely with police forces across the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate. On the subject of street pastors, he might be aware that yesterday there was a reception for co-ordinators from the initiative. There were 90 representatives of areas from Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight, Chelmsford to Bristol, and all the areas in between. Street pastors is a growing initiative that practises what most people only preach. It shows compassion in action by reaching out to the community, and it produces wonderful results in reducing and helping to drive down crime rates.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I want to move on to exactly that point now. That initiative sounds excellent and I hope that street pastors help the police, but what are the results? We now have results from across the country on the operation of street pastors. I understand that within the first 13 weeks of the operation of street pastors in Lewisham, there was a 30 per cent. reduction in street crime. There was a 95 per cent. reduction in street crime in Camberwell—I am not quite sure if something of extra significance happened there that did not happen elsewhere—and a 74 per cent. reduction in Peckham. In Lincoln, during the first six months of the operation of street pastors, there was a 7.5 per cent. reduction in street crime, and in Cardiff, on Fridays when the street pastors operated there was a 13 per cent. fall in violent crime related to drunkenness.

That initiative is doing the most fantastic work. If there is less crime, police resources are freed up and our communities are better places in which to live. I hope that police forces will co-operate with the initiative, because street pastors have a valuable partnership-working role. My hon. Friend and I are pleased to be able to pay tribute to them. As I have said, a group from that initiative is, I hope, about to be set up in my constituency.

In relation to charities, I would like to give some praise to the Cabinet Office because it has done some good work with the faith sector and Christian organisations. The problem that some of the 15,000 Christian charities I mentioned a moment ago find is that when they work at local authority level with local authority officers, who generally do extremely good work, there is sometimes a lack of understanding of where such charities are coming from and their motivation.

The case of a charity in south London that works with single mothers has come to my attention. The charity works with single mothers of all faiths and of no faith. It operates absolutely no discrimination in terms of the services that it provides, but its website contained something about the Christian basis of what it was doing. It therefore received a letter of rejection in response to its application for funds to extend its work with the local authority. The letter stated:

“your assistance for single parents includes extending Christian comfort and offering prayer”.

That was the reason for the charity being cut out of any form of funding for its excellent work.

In another case, a woman who was a very successful foster parent to older children was told:

“your beliefs do not allow you to actively promote another religion for a child”.

She was therefore not allowed to continue. The last example I shall give is that of a small charity in Norfolk that does useful work in relation to prostitution in that county. Again, that charity felt that it had been discriminated against and has stated that it feels such discrimination comes from

“people who probably have scant knowledge of the Christian faith and principles”.

I draw the Minister’s attention to a remark that one of his ministerial colleagues—the Financial Secretary to the Treasury—made during a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research on 29 January 2009. He said that there is

“A challenge to progressive politicians to show they recognise faith-based perspectives and contributions as valid and mainstream, rather than irrelevant and marginal. That means recognising that faith cannot be relegated to the private sphere and—as the IPPR has already argued—addressing faith literacy in central and local government, so that officials can deal intelligently with input from faith communities And it means thinking hard about identity, recognising the part faith plays, and getting beyond ‘We don’t do God.’”

I agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman. Is it not ironic that many of the faith-based organisations that operate with no sense of discrimination with regard to the background and viewpoints of the people whom they support are themselves discriminated against? That makes it more difficult for them to do the cross-party and no-party faith activities that, as he said, clearly add so much value to civil life.

I am delighted to hear that contribution from the hon. Gentleman. I completely agree with what he says. Being a charitable-minded fellow, I think that such discrimination often comes from ignorance. People do not set out to be difficult and to stop the excellent charitable voluntary work of the Christian community across the country. Such discrimination is sometimes just the result of ignorance, which is why I pin great hopes on what the Minister will say today. I hope that he can give some gentle reassurance to many of our excellent colleagues in local government and elsewhere that there is nothing to fear from such organisations and that they simply add greatly to the quality of life of the communities that we in the House are privileged to serve.

At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he talked about Christians and faith groups helping the marginalised in society. However, the current situation means that Christians themselves and members of other faith groups are being marginalised. On his point about the relationship between those working in faith-based charitable organisations and the public sector, does he agree that the case of Caroline Petrie, who was a nurse suspended for offering to pray for a patient, was appalling? That sort of utter overreaction gives an indication of the values of the public sector and its oversensitivity to these matters.

I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned that. There was also the case of the school receptionist and the debate on what children can say to each other as part of education. There are a number of questions that need to be dealt with. I think that the case he has mentioned had a happy resolution. I do not know the details of what happened in the school, but I hope that an equally sensible solution can be found. I thank him for making that important point.

I shall wind up by making one final point. I was talking to the vicar of a large, growing church in London that does incredible work in all the communities that it serves. He had been dealing with his local authority in relation to a planning application for the church premises. The officer from the local council had asked, “What is the community benefit from enlarging part of your church here?” The vicar told me that the church has 19 ex-offenders in its congregation and only one of those has reoffended. I went to the Library to check the reoffending rates across the United Kingdom for adult and juvenile prisoners, and I understand that the reoffending rates are 46 per cent. for adults and 77 per cent. for juveniles, so there is a pretty obvious answer to that local authority and the people who live in the community where that church is: people are less likely to have their car broken into or their door kicked in on a Saturday night if they have a church doing that sort of work. There are ex-offenders in every community. The example I have given is a small sample and we must not extrapolate too far on the basis of it, but if such work is being done and that sort of data is being collected across the country, that is the community benefit.

I shall draw my remarks to a close now. I am delighted that so many hon. Members have attended the debate and I look forward to receiving reassurance from the Minister on some of the issues I have mentioned.

I thank the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for initiating the debate. I am delighted to be able to speak in a debate on Christianity in public life. I am proud to say that I am a Christian. I am a member of the Christian Socialist Movement and I am pleased to say that I am also secretary of the all-party group on Christians in Parliament.

My faith is integral to who I am and is part of who I am. I believe that the endless discussions about secular society are misplaced and that religion and public life remain inextricably linked. The Church and the wider Christian community continue to play an important role in shaping the way in which public policy is discussed and enacted. That can be in respect of what takes place on our own streets as well as far away on other continents.

I want to make two points in this short contribution. First, I wish to rebut the claim that ours is a secular society, and, secondly, I wish to back that up by highlighting the work that God inspires us to undertake, and the contribution that that work collectively makes to society.

We hear a great deal about our multicultural society, some good and some bad. I have always seen myself as living in a Christian country with a multicultural society. The two are not mutually exclusive, and both are good. Our heritage and values as a Christian nation are not only intrinsic to our democracy but are part of our national psyche. Our commitment to fairness and freedom from oppression have their roots in our faith. To my mind, so too does the emergence of our multicultural society. The grace to allow others freedom of expression is the bedrock of such a society, and we must stand up for our heritage and our future by continuing to build inter-faith dialogue.

I attend Eid and Diwali events in my constituency and enjoy celebrating those festivals with the many people for whom they are a happy time of year in which to rejoice. Celebration is common to all of us, and we should share in it wherever possible. It is part of living in a multicultural society, and we should embrace it without ever apologising for being Christians in a Christian country.

Given that not all that long ago our former Prime Minister Tony Blair was told that “We don’t do God”, this afternoon’s debate gives us a welcome chance to speak out about why we should “do” God. I can, of course, understand why that decision was taken. The role of religion in public life is not always a favourable one. Politics driven by faith alone can attract fundamentalism in many guises, none of which are welcome, but we should not pander to those who want to silence our voice. Keeping an ear open to the murmurings of middle England, one hears people bemoaning the decline of religion in today’s society. Feral youths roam the streets, they say, morals litter the wayside and no one ever sets foot in a church nowadays except to admire the architecture. But should we believe them, especially when there is evidence to the contrary?

Such people tell us that the loss of Christian values has skewed our moral compass and driven our emergence as a secular society, but the facts do not back them up. The statistics show that we are not really living in the secular, faithless society that many wish to portray. The last census revealed that 70 per cent. of Britons would describe themselves as Christian, and that there are more Jedi knights than secularists on our shores. For many Britons, belief is in the bones and cannot be separated from actions, whether public or private. After all, even secularists believe in secularism. That saint of secularism, Richard Dawkins, has acted with vision, passion and conviction to create a platform for his beliefs in a way that many others have done before.

Like it or not, secularists often sing from the same hymn sheet as those whom they seek to silence. Their insistence on the privatisation of religion is as dogmatic as any other creed. If we are to create a public square where all voices are equal, we must accept, when it comes to politics, that those who do not believe in something would find themselves with no opinions and, therefore, nothing to say.

But faith is not just about discourse—it is about action. Christianity can play a key role in acts of social justice, social transformation and social engagement, and we should encourage such actions. A recent article in The Times said that “Africa needs God”. The article discussed the humanitarian work done in Africa by Christian charities such as World Vision and Tearfund and said that it is largely unparalleled by other organisations.

Closer to home, in my constituency, the Gateshead-based Christian charity Aquila Way provides housing for homeless and vulnerable young women in the borough. I visited the charity in 2006 and was particularly touched by its compassion and desire to help others. The project specifically reaches out to young women who are pregnant or have very young children, and it aims to give them the skills and ongoing support to live independently.

Many churches now run parenting courses and seek to encourage families. Cornerstone is an independent fostering and post-adoption support agency based in the north-east of England. It seeks to place children with Christian families and hopes to provide permanent homes for as many children as possible. That stability is important for many children, and the charity has helped many families in the north-east. Those examples show that the Church is not afraid to engage in challenging, long-term work that makes a real difference to people’s lives.

My Christianity forms an integral part of my vision for society and how we view the world around us. When we realise the worth of our religion and its message of compassion and equality, the relevance of Christianity is clear. Of course we need to be careful about how we talk about our faith and the discourse that we use. We need to learn to translate our faith to make it better understood by modern Britain.

A recent poll by the BBC showed that two thirds of Britons believe that the role of religion in public life should be respected. That figure will grow if we can devote our energies to living out our faith through our politics and having a noticeable impact on people’s lives. That means conveying our message through tangible action and portraying our vision through the changes that we seek and for which we fight.

I have highlighted just a few ways in which Christians engage in public life. Other hon. Members have mentioned and will mention many more. There is a renewed willingness of politicians and public figures to speak up for our Christian traditions and to allow people to embrace that part of our national identity. We need a living Christianity to carry on in the 21st century.

Let us not lament the absence of faith in society, or even lambast those who promote it. Instead, let us embrace and nurture the potential for growth that a living faith brings to Britain and the world.

Order. It might be helpful if I say that I have a list of Back-Bench Members who would like to contribute to the debate, and that we will want to start the winding-up speeches at 3.30. If hon. Members can be brief, we will get more speakers in.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate, which I know has been raised in the main Chamber as well. As he said, some would say that Christianity is both personal and private. I, too, would have to disagree with that. Christianity is certainly personal but it cannot be private.

I thought that it might be appropriate to hear what Jesus himself said in Matthew 5:16:

“In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

The reason that I wanted to use that verse and actually read it out of a Bible is because after my recent election, I was presented with this Bible by the Gideons, who do extremely worthwhile work throughout the country.

Elsewhere, the Bible says that we should always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is in us, but that leaves us with a question: if Jesus wanted us to be up front and public about our faith, how did he see faith and public life relating, and how would he expect the Church to relate to society?

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said:

“For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

From such passages, it seems that Jesus expected the Church to be a minority group in society. Historically, it has tended to be stronger and to grow more when it has been under pressure. A clear recent example of that is the Church in China. One could argue that, in the world today, the Church is weakest in Europe, where it has generally been accepted by society and has been close to the state. I shall not go so far as to say that I want the Church to be persecuted, even though in the long term that might benefit it, but those of us who follow the Christian faith do not fear being persecuted or imprisoned.

For many years up to the Reformation and since, it was assumed by many that the Church and the state should go hand in hand. At the time of the Reformation, both main parties, and the likes of Luther, Calvin and so on, assumed that that would continue to be the case. At that time, the relatively small group of Anabaptists who originated in Switzerland, south Germany and the Netherlands held out for a stricter separation of Church and state. They were persecuted for their efforts by both the Protestants and the Catholics, but it is to them that I look today for an example of what we should be doing.

In many ways, it was a mistake for the Church to link up with the state at the time of Constantine. I very much enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson), although she used the term “Christian country”. I would dispute whether such a thing is actually possible, and whether there should ever be Christian countries.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that the lineal descendants of the dissident religious groups that he describes are the Amish in the United States of America, who recently experienced a terrible school shooting, which the hon. Gentleman may remember. When the shooting happened, among the volunteer firemen who came to the scene were members of the Amish community. They have preserved a separate relationship but, even to their way of thinking, must sometimes engage with the state to a limited extent. They are remarkable people.

Yes. We could have a long theological debate. The Amish, the Mennonites and others have taken a more distinct view, but I want to be involved in the life of the Church and of the state. There is a danger that parts of the Church are becoming too separate from society, but it is not the Church as a whole but individual believers who should engage in society.

The state’s role should be to treat all people equally, whatever faith they have, or lack. The state should not favour Christianity over other faiths, but secular humanism should not be favoured over those who have faith, and nor should any other faith be favoured over Christianity. The briefing for the debate contains examples of places where Christians are discriminated against, and it could be argued that, because Christianity has enjoyed a favoured place for centuries, it should balance that out by suffering a bit. I confess that there may be some validity in that, because the Church has abused its position in many countries, including this one. However, we must surely want to move to a position whereby the state is even-handed.

Some in the Churches want to return to the old days, with Christianity as the state religion. Others fear that it is no longer possible to have a strong Christian faith in public life. Faith became quite a major issue during my by-election last July, and it was encouraging to find that a number of people realised that it was still possible to be open about one’s Christian faith and, first, to be selected by a mainstream party, a category in which I include my party, and, secondly, to be elected by the public.

Since arriving at Westminster, I have been interested in the vestiges of Christianity around the place. For example, there is Prayers at the start of each sitting. Is that a good thing? I have mixed feelings about it. Some attend only to book their seat for whatever business comes next, and I fear that the prayers themselves give a dry and dusty view of Christianity. However, I decided on the spur of the moment to have a prayer at the opening of my constituency office in January. My pastor turned up unexpectedly, and I suddenly thought that I would ask him to pray. The reaction was interesting. One unbelieving friend walked out and argued that it was totally inappropriate, while the guy from the local newspaper thought that it was appropriate. So there we are.

Where should those of us with a Christian faith look for a model of how faith fits into society? Some look to Israel in the Old Testament or even to European society in recent centuries, where the state and the Church were strongly interlinked. However, for those who know the Bible, I suggest that a better model might be Daniel, and others such as Joseph and Mordecai, when God’s person was in a fairly hostile environment. Daniel stood out as a light in a dark place, and we as Christians should do the same. We are not Christian believers because we are born in England, Scotland or any other country, any more than somebody born in a coal mine is a piece of coal; every one of us has to make our own personal decision about faith. All I ask from society and the state is that they treat us even-handedly.

I apologise to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for being late for the start of the debate; I was away with a Select Committee, as I think he knows. I shall be brief, because I want to make only two points.

I welcome the debate. As a Christian, I think that it is important that one tells people of one’s faith, because people should register it. I have always found that Christians like to know that one is a Christian, and that people of other faiths and of no faith respect it, too. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have been attacked. Sadly, it has happened recently, but that is because the battle between secularism and Christianity has created heightened expectations among the latter, and we as Christians must address that.

Like others, including the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason), I pay due regard to the Christian charities that go places where no other group will go. In my constituency, Marah, which runs a homeless charity, works not only with people who have no home, obviously, but with people who are alcohol or drug dependent, or have other social problems. I have real respect for Marah, because the group does such work day in, day out, and in the most difficult circumstances.

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on to his second, and probably unrelated, point, will he take this opportunity to pay tribute to the quite outstanding international humanitarian and advocacy work undertaken by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, with which he and I are both personally very familiar? If he is inclined to do so, will he also pay tribute to that beacon of hope in an often difficult world, the organisation’s south Asia advocacy officer, Ben Rogers, who is a quite remarkable human being?

I will. Even though we do not agree politically, we both respect Ben and all he does, and I thank my hon. Friend—in this respect—for highlighting what that wonderful organisation does in all parts of the world. We must recognise that aspect, too, because we are talking about Christianity in public life not just in this country, but in the wider sphere.

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is not directly responsible for the role of religious buildings in communities, because that has been parked with the Treasury. However, it is worth mentioning their role because it affects communities. We underestimate the fact that a religious building is often the single most important building in many communities. All hon. Members know that we have been arm-wrestling the Treasury for some time on the subject of Anglican churches. I respect the fact that that does not include other denominations, such as Catholicism and non-conformism, or other religions, but we have been trying to arm-wrestle money, or at least tax exemptions, to secure recognition that in many of our communities such buildings are crucial institutions.

Religious buildings are often the last to receive any form of public support, which is quite wrong when they undertake huge amounts of community work. I am quite happy to have the condition laid down that if they receive public money, they should be available to the public. That is what Christian institutions should do anyway; they should reach out to people of all faiths and none, but we cannot allow those cornerstone buildings of our communities to be funded almost literally on a wing and a prayer. Many of them are enormously important in terms of their architectural heritage and their whole being—the way in which communities relate to them and use them—so I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will chase that up with the Treasury and clarify the issue.

There are three different bids on the table: the Treasury’s own analysis, one from the Church of England, and one from English Heritage. I hope that a few heads will be banged together and that we achieve some clarity, because we cannot have Christianity in public life unless we have a place to go to witness it and to talk to people, regardless of whether we do so for a religious purpose. I hope that my hon. Friend will take that as a nudge to talk to the Treasury, as we too often lose such buildings not because other people take them on but because they fall down. They have to be turned into mausoleums, but they are really important buildings, so I hope that my hon. Friend will take on the issue, and that those buildings will become a real edifice for the way in which Christianity functions in our society.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for securing this debate and for his tremendous contribution to the life of the Christian community in the Palace of Westminster day in, day out. He is an example to many of us.

What is the purpose—the point—of Christian involvement in the public square? What do we seek to achieve? The first thing to say is that we do not seek to achieve a theocracy through such engagement. We tried that in the 1650s, and it was a bit of a disaster. We do not want that. Someone once said that the Church is at its worst when it has power, but at its best when it has influence, and I agree. The object is not to take over, but to influence decisions made in the public square according to the principles from scripture that the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) read out so effectively earlier.

At least one hon. Member sitting at these tables will agree that Christians do not have a monopoly on compassion or integrity—the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) did not expect me to say that. Many secular people demonstrate such qualities in abundance; in fact, when I reflect on my 16 years in the House as a fairly overt Christian, I am reminded that some of the most difficult and judgmental people we have to deal with in our constituencies can be Christians, although that is beginning to change. It is important that we, as believers, demonstrate our faith in the way in which we act and speak, because we sometimes let ourselves down.

I believe passionately in believers engaging in public life through the political system, if that is their calling, but the Christian faith is so much bigger than any one party or ideology and cannot be hijacked by any one side and used to poke others in the eye. We need believers in every party, and the Bible is supportive of all the ideologies reflected in this room.

Perhaps my most important point is that the unique thing about Christianity—the reason why it equips us to engage in public life—is that it is not about a book or a doctrine, but about a living person; it is about a journey or a walk with Jesus Christ, not about a set of rules. It cannot become old-fashioned or stuck in the past, because the person we seek to follow is alive and just as involved in and aware of current events as he was 2,000 years ago. Again, I have to say that the Church has not always reflected the fact that we come to a person, not a book or a set of dusty rules, but we are getting a little better at that, too.

I come now to my main point, although I will be brief because others want to speak, and I am particularly keen to hear the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), who speaks eloquently on this subject—no pressure there then, Andy. As has been said, one reason why we should engage in politics is that our faith is the faith of “Love your neighbour”, the faith of the good Samaritan and the faith of understanding that every individual is unique and created by God, and therefore special and not to be put on one side or brushed under the carpet as a statistic.

We have heard that many charities throughout the past 200 or 300 years were founded by strong believers and we know that many charities operating in this country are Christian charities. I want to say something to the Minister. The Government and local government are getting better at engaging with faith communities and Christian charities; they are getting better at understanding that the faith motivation that makes such groups successful—that takes them the extra mile and means that they engage with hard-to-reach people and do the work that many other groups do not want to do—must not be squeezed out by Government or council contracts. Authorities want the results, but they do not like the way in which people achieve them.

I totally accept that it is crucial that public money is not used for evangelism, but we must be grown up about that. If Christian organisations get results because of the personal commitment, passion, power and faith of those involved, it is stupid to engage them to help the most vulnerable while denying them the means to do so by saying, “Ah, but you can’t do things that way any longer.” I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government are aware of that. Of course there are dangers, but I think that the Government are moving on the issue.

Like others, my hon. Friend is making an extremely thoughtful and interesting speech. I can well understand and empathise with the concern that he and my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire have expressed about the obstacles that are sometimes put in the way of faith-based groups that seek not to proselytise but to deliver results. However, does he accept that whatever his views about gay sexual practice, for example, it is a bit much for people to say, “As Christians, we are being discriminated by comparison with others”? All that people such as me and the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon would say is that Christian faith cannot trump an Act of Parliament dealing with human rights, which are universal.

If my hon. Friend visits Christian projects in his constituency, as I am sure he does—indeed, I can take him to a few in south-west Devon if he would like to come with me one weekend—he will see that there has been movement on that issue in most Christian work over the past few years. Most Christian charities are open to all comers and want to serve everybody, irrespective of their background or the condition in which they find themselves. There has been a maturing in the Christian Church and the charitable movement in recent times, so my hon. Friend may be a little out of date.

My final point is that we are living through turbulent times. People often talk about getting through the recession and back to normality, but I do not want to go back to the normality that we had in 2007 and the immediately preceding years. I and others want a new normality—we do not want the debt overhang or the rampant materialism that drove us into our present difficult position. Christian principles of more sharing, more community engagement, more sustainability and less addiction to consumer principles and rampant materialism can help to guide us through this stormy period and into a better normality on the other side, rather than just taking us back to what we had in the past.

It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter)—and I do call him my hon. Friend in this case.

I stand here as a Christian. In fact, my hon. Friend and I took part in a meeting this morning. A group of us regularly meet to pray and spend time together. I will not share any confidences, other than to say that my hon. Friend has come a long way, having read “Das Kapital” this week and recognised that Marx predicted the collapse of our international financial system 150 years ago. So there is always room for him on the Labour Benches.

I join my hon. Friend in some of the comments that he has made. I feel a bit like a Liberal because I want to criticise both wings in the current situation, although the danger of being in the middle is that one might get run over by both sides. There is a real problem for the Church. As Christians, we have to find the right role in the public square, but that public square changes over time, and we have not really kept up with those changes.

Just a few months ago, Theos produced a fantastic publication called “Neither Private nor Privileged”, and I want to read a quote from it that sums things up and helps us to see where we are. It is from a friend of mine, the American evangelist, Jim Wallace, who says:

“Christianity is a public religion and nothing is going to change the Christian imperative to public proclamation, public assembly, public action, and, if necessary, public confrontation. However, the precise role that Christianity plays within the public square can and does change.”

There is no single model of how that would work. I agree with many hon. Members here in that I would like to see the disestablishment of the Church. It is unhealthy to be part of the state process; it is much healthier if we have a voice outwith the state and are allowed to proclaim and sometimes confront.

Jim Wallace is very clear about that. He was a close adviser of Obama’s in the lead-up to the election, but he felt it much better as a Christian leader to be slightly outside the political process as it moves forward so that he can challenge Obama and make him accountable to the many Christians who, through initiatives such as the Matthew 25 Network, have changed their allegiance. There was an idea that a right-wing evangelical alliance was part of the American psyche, and we probably sometimes associate that with the word “evangelical”, but things have shifted somewhat, and there is greater recognition of that in America.

Perhaps I can use Daniel’s time in a foreign land as a model for our public engagement. I have actually had four days of talking about this, because I spoke at spring harvest about the similarities between Daniel’s time in a foreign land and our position in the public square. Our situation is very similar. We are in a foreign land where much of the language that we use is difficult for people to understand. They have difficulty with the way in which we do church, the way in which we profess ourselves and, more often than not, the way in which we interact with this place. I am sure that if I asked hon. Members to put up their hands and say where their worst letters come from, they would say it was from our Christian brothers and sisters, who write to us in the most terse of terms. I can understand why many MPs, and other people, who do not have a faith, are very turned off by that. We are seen by people who do not have a faith as hypocritical, sometimes. I think that Yancey says it in his book on grace. A prostitute he talked to, to whom he suggested it would be a good idea if they went into the local church, said she felt bad enough about herself, and asked why on earth she would want to go in there to be made to feel even worse.

We can hold up examples of fantastic Christian-based projects across the country. I am on the Evangelical Alliance council, and was challenged because there is a new book and some prayer thoughts coming out, to be circulated to churches, with the subtitle “Would anyone in your community notice if your church ceased to exist?” In all the examples that we have heard today, probably people would notice; but let us be honest about what would happen in many places if the church ceased to exist. There would be derelict buildings, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) said, but in reality the community outreach does not happen everywhere. There is a call on us to live in deeds, as James says—it is about our deeds and actions, as much as our proclamation and faith, and the word. It is about making the Bible a living document, not just the written word.

There is great pressure on us, if we are going to ask for a position in the state, to live by what we say we live by. As the hon. Member for South-West Devon says, in the old terminology, which I think is still fairly relevant, each time we stand, we say “What would Jesus do?” It is important for every one of us who carries out our faith to ask what Jesus would do in the same circumstances. We know from the Bible that Jesus would be a bit of a rebel; going into the temple and throwing out the money lenders. Perhaps we should have sent him into the City to throw out the money lenders a little earlier. He would be there, decrying the way we have run society for the past 40 or 50 years. There are many people concerned with simplicity of living who have recognised that for a generation. There has been a shift into green issues; but the Bible has been there for the past 2,000 years, and many Christians have felt deeply what is needed, and have wanted to make it part of the agenda. There is an enormous opportunity for us, but the position must be that the Christian faith is neither private nor privileged. It is a private faith that must be lived out in the public square. We do that by example, not necessarily by just demanding our right to those words, but by our life, and because people want to give us the public square and the ability to say those things. It is fundamental.

As to the problems of fundamentalism and the fundamentalist secularism that I have come across, I have been shocked in the past two or three years in which I have been involved in this debate at how aggressive some of my Christian colleagues can be, and how offputting that can be to others. It is strange, because I get on really well with most of the secularists in my constituency, with whom I have a very healthy debate; but I have also been shocked by aggressive fundamentalism on both wings, which is unhealthy. However, that is what happens in public debates; they are the ones who get attention. In reality, most debates on this issue would be healthy debates, like ours today. If I sit down soon enough to give him his six or seven minutes, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) will contribute in a very thoughtful way.

There is much more to say, and I feel passionately about this subject. Christians have an imperative to learn how to use the public square and to proclaim from outside, leading by example. In that way we do not get privilege, but we get a fair deal in the public square, which allows us to profess our faith. It is part of our DNA. It is part of who I am. My Bible notes this morning and yesterday were about the good Samaritan. My conscience was pricked throughout the day by what I read, in the same way as last week’s reading of “Das Kapital”. Those things are part of who we are, and our faith must be part of who we are. Not to be able to say those things in public would be deeply damaging.

Finally, I do not believe in the sense of Christian tradition. Our faith evolves and reacts to the society we are in. Christians must change with the times to meet growing changes and demands—the way that we do church is a classic example. I could go on for ages about that. We need to find the words to make sure that we live in grace when we act and react in the public square, and give others the space to criticise us; but let us leave it at that. Let us make sure that we walk away as friends when we disagree about our role in the public square. I thank the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for helping us to get this debate. We are not asking for more than a fair deal, and to make sure that most of us lighten up a little about the issue.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, and to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for introducing it. I also welcome the tone of the speeches. I shall give a secular point of view and I invite hon. Members to see whether it is extreme, because it is the secular point of view.

First, I want to ask about the definition of terms. The confusion starts with the title of the debate. I could understand and indeed sympathise with a debate about Christians in public life. As the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) said, Christians and other people of religion should be encouraged to engage in public life. I agree with that. I do not think that they are shy in coming forward. Our democracy and public policy-making are better for it. People of all perspectives should come forward; there should be no discrimination—and I do not think there is—to prevent people of religion from coming forward and playing a role.

Secondly, should Christian values play a role in public life? Yes, they should, of course, in the battle of ideas, just as any others should, whether humanist, socialist or conservative, because we base our policies and moral standpoints on values. Whether there should be a monopoly for one set of values I very much doubt. Some countries have such a monopoly, whether through political dictatorship or theocracy, and we know that in theocracies some groups, such as women and gay people, do very badly. That is predictable and identifiable. However, there are clearly shared values. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “Love thy neighbour” predate the New Testament. They are central tenets of Christianity, and also of most secular moral codes. They are something we should embrace. People may understand them as Christian and may argue that they should play a central role in public policy, but that does not mean it should happen because they are Christian. They are just a rational and sensible approach.

Arguing for Christianity in public life is equivalent to arguing that there should be a role in public life for Islam, socialism or liberalism; but I do not think there should be such a role, because it is a set of ideas and should not have privilege simply because it is religious. We recently debated blasphemy laws, which not all but many religious organisations were desperate to keep, although in fairness I do not think that many of them are represented here. Many hon. Members voted for their eventual abolition. Those laws gave protection in the battle of ideas and discourse for a particular set of ideas.

The other confusion is that the option is either relegation of religion to the private sphere—also labelled the privatisation of religion, which I do not believe in—or the privileging of religion. However, there is a middle way. The privileging of religion, which I oppose, would be to allow religious organisations that deliver public services to discriminate against their employees when they were delivering such a public service. I am not talking about proselytising or discrimination on religious grounds against vicars; I am talking about the people who provide the soup kitchens, shelters, and so forth. They should not be discriminated against on religious grounds, and we should not give money to organisations that discriminate against gay people or people of religion when delivering public service. They should not discriminate against service users on religious grounds. They should not have the right to do that, and should not be allowed to proselytise on the state, as it were, using public funding, or while delivering a public service.

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has been called to speak, because he is putting the contrary case, to an extent, and it is right that he should. I just want to take him back to the small charity in south London, and the piece on the website: the reason for denying funding—I paraphrase slightly—was that the charity extends Christian care and offers prayer. That was the reason for a rejection. What is the hon. Gentleman’s view on that example?

It will be fact-specific. We have heard a lot about the anecdote, and I do not blame hon. Members for that. I think Nurse Petrie is a better example, because the facts are more clearly available to all of us. She was a district nurse in a position of responsibility, going into a patient’s home. Doctors and nurses in that situation are performing a function as a doctor or nurse and their primary responsibility is to their patient, who is in a vulnerable position. As I understand it, there had been a series of complaints against Nurse Petrie, not just one. It is very unusual for an elderly person receiving district nursing care to think to complain unless something pretty obvious has happened. What took place had happened more than once. It was inappropriate, and I believe that the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council would also argue that it is inappropriate for a person delivering care to say, “Would you like to pray with me?” If a person feels that prayer helps, that can be done separately by them; they do not need to be engaged in that. If it is thought that someone could help, a patient can be told, “If you are religious, you might like to talk to your priest about this”—whatever the religion is—“to see if you can get spiritual support that way.” But a medical professional employed by the NHS or any other body needs to have a clear boundary, otherwise there is a feeling of pressure being put on someone.

My hon. Friend seems to exclude a conversation that would be quite common in many professions, including medicine, where a patient who knows a doctor says to them, “You are a churchgoer—a Christian—aren’t you? Is prayer any use in all this?” The doctor may say, “What I believe is this.” Should the doctor say, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you about that. You’ll have to make a separate appointment with me on another occasion.”?

I am in difficulty over time, so I will not have a chance to respond. [Interruption.] Well, I am happy to do so, but my right hon. Friend will accept that I have to wrap up this minute.

There is a balance of rights and freedoms and we have to be aware that people feel strongly about their religion. But a line should be drawn. People should be allowed to practise and manifest their belief as long as it does not interfere with the rights and freedoms of others and where it does the state has a role to protect the freedoms of others from discrimination—even well-meaning discrimination in the name of religion.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate. He made a measured intervention at the start of the debate and I am grateful to him for setting a measured tone.

I particularly enjoyed a number of speeches. The hon. Members for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) and for Glasgow, East (John Mason) made thoughtful, reflective contributions to the debate. A couple of the things that the hon. Lady said struck a chord with me. I represent the most ethnically diverse constituency in the country. On going about my daily duties in Brent, I do not recognise the argument that we live in a wholly secular society. I engage with many of the organisations that I meet on religious terms. That surprised me, as a new Member of Parliament. At a West Indian function the dinner will invariably begin with a prayer—probably several—and probably a hymn. Ghanaian functions are similar. A Pakistani function, even in a secular community centre, will begin with a recitation from the Koran and every secular speaker will begin their speech with the Arabic words, “Bis millah arahma nirahim”, which mean, “I speak in the name of God the most gracious and most merciful.” I recognise all that from my own constituency.

I was reminded of what Madeleine Bunting said in her article in The Times about the disjunction between the adverts on the atheist bus and the often poor immigrants sitting on the top deck of the bus returning from a night shift with their prayer books open on their laps. There is sometimes that disjunction in respect of a debate in one place that does not touch people at all in some areas of the country.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire used the words “Christian community” a lot in his speech. Under that umbrella, we need to be aware that we are a heterogenous group. The contributions to this debate have come from hon. Members with different theological backgrounds. The denominations in the UK have different histories and traditions. Those traditions and theologies inform what we believe about what it is to be church, how we should engage with society, the kind of language that we use and our role, particularly in politics. The great dissenting traditions have always been counter-cultural, but other Christian traditions are focused much more on dialogue.

My hon. Friend is right in saying that dissent is often associated with faith, but she must also remember that Jesus himself was something of a dramatic radical in his day. Does she agree that what was radical 2,000 years ago has been so successfully embraced in British society that there is an underlying narrative based on the Christian faith? Although there must be tolerance of all different faiths in this country, nevertheless we live in what must reasonably be called a faith-based society with Christianity at its core.

I accept my hon. Friend’s point about Christian values. If I have time I will return to that point.

Within Christian groups—I see it most clearly in the Catholic tradition—there are different views about how we should engage with politics and with the world. That depends a little on how people read the different traditions of Aquinas or Augustine. People may prefer Augustine’s model of two cities, with a real disjunction between the world and the kingdom in heaven or they may take a more positive view, from the Thomist tradition, about engagement with politics and politics being part of the good life. Those two disjunctions exist and they follow right through all the different Christian modes of thought. I see that, in the Catholic tradition, in the changes apparent between one pope and another in terms of the type of language used and whether they are particularly anti-modernity or more focused on negotiation and dialogue. We need to be aware of that, rather than grouping all Christians into the same group.

I am uncomfortable with the idea that Christians are, in some way, discriminated against or persecuted in the United Kingdom. There is a long tradition of martyrdom in Christian thinking that we tend to take upon ourselves with great ease. I wonder, when reading the Daily Mail, whether it would draw the wounds on itself if such an image were not too Catholic for most of middle England. I accept that Christianity and faith are often misunderstood—the Von Hügel Institute said that in its report, “Moral, But No Compass—Government, Church, and the Future of Welfare”—but whether that always equates with discrimination is a moot point.

I agree entirely with the hon. Lady. Does she agree that God is big enough to deal with not having a Christian stamp and those sorts of things? That is not persecution compared with the persecution that I see as a member of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, having visited people who genuinely die for their belief.

The hon. Gentleman puts the point well and I agree. There is a tendency to lump the three recent cases together—the woman and her cross at Heathrow, the school receptionist and the praying nurse—as if they are all examples of discrimination. What those cases all have in common is a complete breakdown between the employer and the employee and a tendency to get the whole thing grossly out of proportion in the media. But they are about different things. One case is about whether religious symbolism should have a place in the public sphere, but the other two cases are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) said, about the difficulties of defining the boundaries of people’s dual roles. Those debates are beyond faith and not only about faith.

The symbolism issue has been portrayed by many people as being about Christians needing to be treated on a par with other faiths, and about our being free to practise our faith entirely as we choose in the public realm, subject to the requirements of good public order, with all faiths being treated the same. However, all faiths are not the same. Some faiths have an absolute requirement regarding strict dress codes, but Christianity does not. I heard the words from the Bible that the hon. Member for Glasgow, East used about the need for people to proclaim their faith in public, but there are plenty of other places in the Bible where we are told to beware of practising our piety in front of others. There are occasions on which we would do well to remember that. I am more convinced by some of the arguments that hon. Members have raised about local authorities sometimes misunderstanding the importance of Christian organisations in delivering local services and misunderstanding the contributions that those can make.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned faith literacy. That was a sensible contribution. A number of hon. Members said that it is difficult for people in public life to speak about their faith. This is a debate in Parliament. So in a sense we are calling on the Government and the state to respond. However, we have to be aware that there are limits on politics and on what we should expect the political realm to intervene in. Whether it is difficult for people to speak about their faith is a matter for society as a whole, not for politics specifically.

When we speak about politics in public life, we are in danger sometimes of collapsing all of political space into the state and those organisations immediately surrounding it, rather than considering the wider issues of political community and civic society. I felt that particularly when listening to my hon. Friend speak about public space. There are lots of different tiers. We have politics and Parliament, think-tanks and Churches as a body corporate and those play a role. Then there is the wide political community, including organisations that act through the voluntary sector, and those whose individual vocation will affect how they work.

Churches have a particular role in influencing policy decision making, particularly in moral formation, which we should all welcome. The very essence of the message of the incarnation, which is central to Christianity, is about the importance of human beings. The Christian Churches should have a unique ability to remind us of the human face when we make political and policy decisions that affect the whole of society. The hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) mentioned Daniel’s narrative about being in a foreign land, and the Christian narrative of exile has a lot to teach us about how we treat asylum and immigration.

My final point is cheeky and a little provocative. We have discussed Christian values in Britain, and perhaps the most fundamental, which I accept have been embedded in secular society, are solidarity and equality before the law. They are original Christian principles, and if we are going to get into a flap about the loss of Christian values in Britain, our priority should be to focus on them. We should worry less about secular society damaging them, and more about the state encroaching upon them.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Caton, to see you in the Chair. The contribution of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) has reminded us all that this has been a debate of extreme theological literacy. I think everyone in the Chamber this afternoon would agree that some of our debates, sadly, are a little too short and I would have been very happy to hear many of the hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon expound their ideas at greater length. It was a particular pity that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) had to compress his thoughts, because I would have liked to hear him speak at greater length. I have no idea whether I am unusual in that, but that is my view.

I should start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on conceiving this debate as a sort of procession that would honour the work of the Churches and faith communities. He succeeded completely. There have been some fine speeches. I naturally assume that all speeches from my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches are fine, so I will single out, perhaps unfairly, the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson), who clearly put a lot of thought into her speech, and the carefully worked-out speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) who made a number of interesting points about Church and state.

Many Christians seem to believe that there is new scepticism, even new hostility, in relation to Christians and the Churches, and about organised religion as a whole, and perhaps Christianity in particular. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon spoke for that point of view, and made it clear that he has nothing against organised religion, but simply believes that it should not have a privileged place in the pubic square. He gave that view with great intelligence and acumen. It reminded me of the recent campaign by the British Humanist Association, which sent buses around the capital, and perhaps elsewhere, proclaiming that there is probably no God, so people should stop worrying and enjoy their life—the presumption being that if there is a God, one should start worrying and stop enjoying life. I will not be drawn, nor presumably will hon. Members, into the logical fallacies of that argument.

At the Conservative party conference last year, the National Secular Society had a stall for the first time, and I think that represents how secularists are beginning to come into the public sphere to make their argument. The society states on its website that some delegates said, “Thank God you are here”, which is a peculiar way of expressing gratitude for its presence, but perhaps that is a sign of the times.

What is making Christians, members of Churches and others so nervous? There are three reasons, and I will run through them quickly. First, the elephant in the room is violent extremism claimed in the name of Islam. No one can claim that the effects of 9/11 and of 7/7 in the UK have not had a significant knock-on effect on the tone and content of public debate. We saw that in passing in the recent debate on whether faith schools should be compelled to take 25 per cent. of pupils who do not practise the faith that the school in question stands for. We obviously do not view Islam with hostility, and I want to put it on the record that the Conservative party believes that Islam is a great and ancient religion, which has an invaluable part to play in modern Britain, but we must acknowledge that factor, and that it has influenced debate in recent years.

Secondly, aligned with that factor is the rise of fundamentalism. Conservatives have nothing against people who want to return to the fundamentals of their faith, but data from across the world show that it is generally true that the more liberal elements in mainstream religions are not recruiting members and worshippers as rapidly as the more fundamentalist streams. Those fundamentalist streams, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, can have negative aspects. I referred to violent extremism in the name of Islam. Some Jews—fortunately, a minority—seem to believe in an enlarged state of Israel that would encroach on the life of others. Some Christians in the United States, against that country’s traditions, believe in a theocracy.

I was ticking off three reasons for today’s scepticism and hostility towards organised religion, including Christianity. I ticked off the rise of violent extremism and fundamentalism. The third reason is a general anti-establishment movement against religion, to which the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West referred, when she mentioned the Jedi knights, which as she knows the 2001 census found—extraordinarily—to be the fifth-largest religious denomination in the UK.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) said, Christian and religious believers obviously have no monopoly of virtue, and it would be deeply insulting to atheists, agnostics and people of no faith to suggest otherwise. He was quite right about that. However, I would simply observe, as a constituency Member of Parliament, as well as a Front-Bench Member, that if the faith institutions and Churches disappeared from my constituency tomorrow, much of the tapestry of civil society would simply unweave. The contribution of Churches and Christians, now and over the centuries, to schools, hospitals, charitable work in prisons and voluntary work generally, which many people have illustrated, has made Britain a better country, and continues to do so. If by an act of the imagination Christianity were removed from its place in the public sphere—a settled place that is respected, particularly in England—this country would be the poorer for it. I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say, in particular about their faith strategy, and once again I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire on securing the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate, which I am sure every Member will agree has been stimulating and thought-provoking. A leading member of the all-party group on Christians in Parliament, he has brought his experience and knowledge to this debate.

I shall begin by stating what I believe. Britain today, as it has been throughout its history, is a wonderfully diverse country with a number of faiths, but it sees itself predominantly—I choose my words carefully—as an implicitly Christian nation. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) mentioned the 2001 census in her tremendous and thought-provoking intervention. In the last census, which was not too long ago, people of this country had the opportunity to register the fact that they had a faith or that they had no faith. Some 74.6 per cent. of people chose deliberately to describe themselves as Christian, and 5.4 per cent. claimed adherence to a religion other than Christianity. At this point I should like to say that I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the Jedi knights, on which the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) elaborated.

Not all those who identify with a faith are regular worshippers. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that for a great many people, religious background is an integral part of self-identity. Their faith can provide them with a comfort and a sense of moral purpose. One of the key themes of today’s debate is that a number of people are drawn by their faith into public life as a means of bettering the condition of society. The relationship between politics and faith-based morality has been and is a strong one.

Politics should not be merely bureaucratic or managerial in its intent and purpose, but should be enlivened and deepened through a sense of value, principles and morals. Harold Wilson famously said that the Labour party is a moral crusader or it is nothing. Today’s Labour party, which was born of the marriage of trade unionism, nonconformist religion and politics in the age of the industrial revolution, remains strongly committed to the principles of furthering progressive politics through such means as eradicating poverty, increasing equality and improving opportunity for all.

Some people draw their moral compass through faith and others through secularism. Let me elaborate on that. Very often people are drawn to public life through their faith. Certainly in the fields of international development, environmental campaigning and the politics of climate change, faith groups have played an enormous role, particularly in the Jubilee debt campaign and the hugely successful Make Poverty History campaign, which the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned in his opening remarks, as well as monitoring progress and putting pressure on politicians to achieve the millennium development goals.

In my own constituency, the Hartlepool for Global Peace and Justice group, which is a predominantly Christian group, works hard and effectively to promote international development. It was instrumental in ensuring that Hartlepool became a fair trade town, which is something that councils and local housing institutions now push actively. It is appropriate to mention that, given that fair trade fortnight has just finished. Such groups have a real role to play in local politics.

I agree with the Minister that faith at its best creates practical results in the community. Does he agree with me that churches such as Hope Community church in my home town of Newtown make faith into a 21st-century event in a non-dogmatic way by reaching out in exactly the way in which he said? I invite him to Hope Community church, where he can join us in celebrating the very best of faith in mid-Wales, and no doubt we shall pray for his career.

I am certainly heartened by the hon. Gentleman’s invitation and look forward to visiting his constituency.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. In 21st-century society, there is a range of different groups, such as residents associations, voluntary organisations and faith-based groups, which pull together the web of society and help to improve the lot of many, including those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire pressed that theme strongly in his speech.

I want to draw a balance. I am not suggesting for one minute that humane values and good works are the preserve of religious people. Humanist non-believers such as Bertrand Russell have a proud record of service, too. None the less, the Christian faith has very often been the motivating force behind our great reformers. The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) mentioned prayers at the start of business in the House. We continue to pay tribute to that Christian inspiration as we start business in the House of Commons every day. That is an important point. Some choose to participate in the daily prayers, others do not. It is not compulsory, but it can be a source of great comfort and solace for many hon. Members.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned the idea of a secular society. He expressed some distaste for it as something that is as non-inclusive and unfeeling as a strict theocracy. With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think that he has missed the point. British society is indeed secular, in that religious belief and practice is no longer a prerequisite for advancement or public office. I think that we would all agree with that. The idea that Benjamin Disraeli could not have become Prime Minister had he remained a Jew and had not become anglicised is anathema to most hon. Members today. We no longer expect our university dons to have taken holy orders or for all witnesses in court cases to swear on the Bible. I am sure that the whole House would agree that that is right, but I would go further. The Government are clear that religious practice, still less conversion, should never be a precondition for people benefiting from services offered by faith-based organisations.

None the less, we are self-evidently not secular, in that great numbers of religious people still live and worship in Britain. They are entirely free to do so and their freedom of worship is at the core of our system of law, as was mentioned earlier in the debate. This Government have introduced tough legislation to punish any incitement to hatred or violence on the grounds of religion or belief. Although there has been a long decline in churchgoing—it is now showing signs of levelling off in some denominations—the majority of regular and occasional worshippers are still Christians. Other faiths respect that and so should the non-observant majority.

One often reads in the media a lot of hysterical talk about the banning of Christmas or Christmas decorations by local authorities. I should like to take this opportunity to restate the Government’s policy, which is to encourage local authorities to respect the religious beliefs and perspectives of people of all faiths and none. Although certain local authorities may adopt different approaches when marking significant festivals and religious occasions, the Government strongly advise local authorities to respect traditional and widely observed celebrations such as Christmas, which are valued by the majority of citizens in this country.

As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire outlined, there can be circumstances in which public authorities shun Christian religious celebrations because of the perception that it may cause offence to other religious groups. The Government strongly believe that that rationale and the actions taken as a consequence are not only rubbish, but downright dangerous. I draw the House’s attention to a statement made last year by the Christian Muslim Forum that

“Those who use the fact of religious pluralism as an excuse to de-Christianise British society unthinkingly become recruiting agents for the extreme Right. They provoke antagonism towards Muslims and others by foisting on them an anti-Christian agenda they do not hold.”

I agree with that stance. The Government strongly echo those sentiments and caution those who make judgments on what may or may not offend particular communities to examine the wider impact on community cohesion that their actions may have.

The hon. Gentleman said, as did other hon. Members, that he wants Christian-based organisations to be fully integrated into the delivery of services to disadvantaged people. The Government agree with that approach. We know that faith is an important driver behind volunteering and civic participation. As I have said, many faith-based organisations provide essential services to their local communities, through the local voluntary sector, and we applaud that. We want to ensure that when faith-based bodies are ideally placed to deliver services to those whom Government find it hard to reach—often in the field of homelessness and rough sleeping, for which I have ministerial responsibility—funding is available to allow them to do so effectively. In short, we want to harness better the energy and practical contribution that faith communities bring to our society.

One of the themes of today’s debate has been the concern about the way in which some local authorities manage their relationship with faith communities. We have heard those concerns directly through our engagement with faith communities, including Christian Churches. To be frank, there is a belief that some local authorities feel somewhat squeamish about putting money into faith-led projects. That arises partly from ignorance—I think the hon. Gentleman used that word in his speech—and partly from a suspicion that such projects might use public funds for inappropriate purposes in a way that is not properly inclusive.

I understand those concerns, but I believe that they are usually misplaced. The vast majority of faith-based projects offer services out of a simple desire to serve disadvantaged or vulnerable people. We are therefore working closely with faith-based groups to identify how we can improve the participation of faith communities in local public partnerships. We are seeking to refresh the guidance published by the Local Government Association in 2002, “Faith and Community: A Good Practice Guide for Local Authorities” which sets out existing good practice in relations between local authorities and faith communities.

There is also a need for local authorities to understand faith communities better, including the fact that they are racially and culturally diverse. That has an impact on how local communities manifest their faith. To that end, my officials are working with Churches Together in England and other faith community representatives to develop and roll out faith literacy training for local authorities. Regionally, we are delivering similar training to Government offices; and at the centre, the Department for Communities and Local Government is developing its capacity as a centre of expertise for Departments across Whitehall. Finally, we have said that we will develop a charter of excellence for faith communities in service delivery. That undertaking will be similar to the model of the existing faithworks charter, which Christian and other faith-led organisations sign to assure funding providers that services will be delivered in accordance with the relevant equality legislation.

I hope the House will agree that that approach is entirely reasonable. We are not saying that organisations in receipt of public funding cannot be open about their religious motivation, display religious symbols or tell beneficiaries about their faith. We understand that the principle of mission is central to religions, including Christianity and Islam. However, we are saying that the provision of services cannot be conditional on participation in religious activity, nor can services be provided in a way that does not conform to equality legislation and nor can public money pay for worship or activities specifically designed to do that.I am grateful to have had the opportunity to clarify the Government’s position on those important matters.

I am delighted to have secured a debate this afternoon on the use of interpreters by police forces in England after several weeks of trying. I am particularly pleased because earlier this week I had the opportunity to submit a petition to the House on behalf of 282 interpreters who are concerned about the prospect of police forces in the north-west outsourcing interpreting services to an agency and about the impact that would have on the quality of interpretation services.

The issue was brought to my attention by a constituent, Marc Starr, who is a registered public service interpreter of Spanish and Portuguese. He contacted me because he and his colleagues were concerned that Greater Manchester police and other forces in the north-west were considering outsourcing interpreting services to an agency. There was clear evidence that when that happened in other parts of the country, there was a massive increase in the use of non-registered interpreters, in contravention of clear guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers. The recommended best practice is that qualified interpreters with a diploma in public service interpreting or equivalent should be used. The ACPO guidance is drawn largely from the “National Agreement on Arrangements for the Use of Interpreters, Translators and Language Service Professionals in Investigations and Proceedings Within the Criminal Justice System” as revised in 2007.

The agreement was issued by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. It was produced in consultation with the interpreters working group, which includes representatives from ACPO, the Crown Prosecution Service, Her Majesty’s Courts Service, the probation service, the Home Office, the Magistrates’ Association, the Bar Council and the Law Society, and representatives of interpreter bodies, and replaces the national agreement issued by the Trials Issue Group in 2002 and a Home Office circular of 2006.

Paragraph 3.3.1 of the agreement states:

“It is essential that interpreters used in criminal proceedings should be competent to meet the ECHR obligations. To that end, the standard requirement is that every interpreter/LSP working in courts and police stations should be registered with one of the recommended registers, ie the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI)”.

Importantly, paragraph 10.1 states:

“Police forces and other CJS agencies that are contemplating outsourcing the provision of interpreters must ensure that this does not compromise compliance with the standards set out in this Agreement. In particular, where the fees payable to interpreters—as distinct from those paid to the intermediary agency—are lower than those contained in the recommended Terms and Conditions for Interpreters in the CJS…they are likely to be unattractive to fully qualified interpreters who are on the NRPSI and CACDP Registers, with the result that the contractor resorts to unqualified interpreters who may not be competent. This is not acceptable.”

Finally, annexe B states:

“Any interpreter used within the CJS should be able to prove a measurable level of competence and quality assurance. NRPSI registration provides this, which is why NRPSI registered interpreters are recommended.”

For several sectors of the public services, the National Register of Public Service Interpreters acts as a database of interpreters whose competence is not in doubt. The move towards contracting out interpreting services by some police forces is a departure from recommended best practice, and information gathered through freedom of information requests has provided irrefutable evidence of a link between outsourcing and low levels of use of interpreters who are registered with the NRPSI and who hold the DPSI qualification.

The majority of police areas that have not outsourced have an almost exemplary record, and even in the South Wales police force, which uses the lowest number of qualified interpreters, as many as 61 per cent. of interpreters have a qualification. There are reasons why the South Wales police find it particularly difficult to find qualified interpreters.

We can compare that with figures for forces that have outsourced the work and have contracts with other organisations. The number of unregistered interpreters used by police forces that have contracts with Cintra, for instance, ranges from 51 per cent. up to 71 per cent.—the latter figure is for Lincolnshire. An average of 61.8 per cent. of unregistered interpreters are used in such areas. The range of registered interpreters in areas where other agencies have been used is from as few as 12 per cent. up to 49 per cent.—those are the figures for Northumbria and Sussex respectively. The most recent information available is for Cheshire and shows that 29 per cent. of interpreters used in 2007 had the qualification, and 38 per cent. in 2008.

Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming evidence that outsourcing results in non-compliance with the guidance, GMP has not been dissuaded from considering it. Superintendent Wilkinson wrote to me on 5 February. He stated:

“The North West Police Forces, led by GMP, have collaborated to explore the possibility of outsourcing the provision of interpreting services. We are aware of the standards required and will take steps to ensure that outsourcing the service does not compromise compliance with the standards set out in the National Agreement, before any contract is awarded. To date no company has been awarded any contract in respect of interpreter services for GMP…Managing companies will be expected to provide interpreters that are qualified and fully vetted for police work and use NRPSI as first tier. Only in exceptional circumstances would they be allowed to deviate from this specification.”

Superintendent Wilkinson also explained that one reason why the force is considering contracting out is that sourcing interpreters is time-consuming and costly. He went on to say:

“Front line policing is supported by many other agencies and third party providers who are experts in their own fields. In respect of interpreting, a lot of police resource is deployed in accessing, engaging, checking, administering and paying large pools of self employed interpreters.”

Engaging an agency is clearly about saving time and money, yet there is no evidence to back up the assertion that non-registered interpreters will be used only in exceptional circumstances. Evidence from all the other police forces points to the contrary. Unfortunately, GMP is ignoring that evidence for the sake of saving time and money. That will result in ACPO guidance not being followed. I am due to meet the assistant chief constable at the end of the month to raise my concerns about GMP’s plans, and I hope that GMP will take notice. However, what is required is for the Government to intervene and strengthen the guidance or, if necessary, to legislate to ensure that police forces comply.

In fairness to the Government, in their response to me on 2 October last year, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) acknowledged that there was room for improvement and assured me that her officials were looking into the matter. That was five months ago, however, and I have heard nothing further. In her reply, will the Minister let the House know what progress has been made?

The Under-Secretary also acknowledged in her reply that the guidance was clear and that

“all police forces in England and Wales were recently reminded of the current guidance by the Association of Chief Police Officers. It is unambiguous, especially in terms of quality, and states that ‘Forces that do or are considering outsourcing the provision of services to a commercial agency who act as an intermediary for booking and hiring interpreters, are reminded of the need to ensure this outsourcing process does not compromise compliance with the standards set out in the National Agreement. Consideration should be given to ensure that rates of pay and terms and conditions do not act as a disincentive for qualified and/or registered interpreters, preventing them from offering their services and thus damaging service quality’. The guidance makes clear that the agencies concerned should use registered interpreters and police forces are strongly encouraged to ensure that their contract stipulates the use of qualified interpreters.”

Unfortunately, that is simply not happening. Pay and conditions are lower in agencies to which interpreting has been outsourced in other police authorities. That acts as a disincentive, preventing registered interpreters from offering their services.

In this short debate, I do not have time to go into the various examples of the problems caused by the use of non-registered interpreters. If the debate were about whether registered interpreters should have priority over non-registered ones, I would address those issues, but the Government have accepted the case for using registered interpreters. Unfortunately, the Under-Secretary made it clear that she believes that the decision to use agencies lies ultimately with chief constables and that it is not appropriate to legislate. That is where I disagree with her. If the use of agencies results in the guidance not being followed, surely it is the job of the Government to intervene. If the Minister is in any doubt about the evidence, I will happily supply her with more facts and figures.

The problem is not new, but the recent move by GMP and other north-western police forces has brought it firmly back on to the agenda. I urge the Minister to re-examine the impact of outsourcing on ensuring the use of registered interpreters and to introduce further guidance against the use of agencies and outsourcing. If that fails, I urge her to legislate against it. If she is not prepared to go that far, will she at least consider taking action where outsourcing and the use of agencies is resulting in a reduction in the use of registered interpreters? Will she also commit to discussing the implications of outsourcing with GMP and making it clear that if GMP’s commitments to maintaining the use of qualified interpreters are not kept, the force will be expected to scrap the use of the agency employed?

In conclusion, my constituent Mr. Starr says:

“Interpreters are aware that it is a freelance industry and what is not expected is a guarantee of work—this depends on too many factors. All we are after is that if there are three interpreters in a region in which a region requires an interpreter five times, an NRPSI interpreter is contacted first on all of those occasions”.

That just does not happen when police forces outsource to agencies.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton. I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) for raising this debate. Other hon. Members have spoken to me and to my hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing about the issue, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd), who has spoken to me about it on behalf of a number of Manchester colleagues. Clearly, there is some concern in the Manchester and London areas in particular. I am aware of the issue, and I welcome hon. Members’ interest in it. I also welcome the chance to debate it today.

It is useful to start by outlining the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 requirements on interpreters. The responsibility for providing interpreters at the police station is an operational matter for the chief officer of the force concerned, and the Home Office has no plans to change that. Code of practice C issued under the Act for the detention, treatment, and questioning of persons by police officers states that chief officers are responsible for ensuring that appropriate arrangements are in place for provision of suitable qualified interpreters for people who are deaf or who do not understand English.

The code indicates that a person must not be interviewed in the absence of a person capable of interpreting if they have difficulty understanding English, if the interviewer cannot speak the person’s own language or if the person wants an interpreter present. I know from my constituency that it is sometimes a challenge to find an interpreter in the right time frame who has the right qualifications and professional skills to do such demanding work. Interpreters do not have an easy job. Some of the issues that they deal with can be quite harrowing.

The Minister makes the important point that it is not an easy job. One problem is that some non-registered interpreters are not qualified to interpret. They may understand the language that they are asked to interpret, but they are not qualified interpreters.

I have not discussed the issue widely, as I am not the policing Minister and it has not been a topic of conversation when I have visited police throughout the country, but from personal experience in my constituency, I can say that the police are anxious to ensure that interpreting is of good quality. They are aware of the sensitivities and issues. If they get someone who cannot do the job properly, a case might not stand up in court and there could be issues involving service to the victim or injustice to the perpetrator. There is a strong awareness among police of the need to get the right sort of interpreting. If the hon. Gentleman will let me continue, I will explain a little about some of the issues that he mentioned and what the Government are doing to work with the police to ensure that the concerns that he and other hon. Members have raised are addressed.

PACE code C contains specific requirements aimed at ensuring that information gathered may be admissible in court and, importantly, that the detainee understands what is happening at the police station and which matters are being put to them. That is a fundamental right. Access to an interpreter at the police station is a key safeguard in compliance with our responsibilities as a Government and as a nation under article 5 of the European convention on human rights, which states that everyone who is arrested shall be informed promptly, in a language he or she understands, of the reasons for his or her arrest and of any charge against him or her.

The national register is an important and useful source of interpreters. The reality is that there is a shortage of interpreters, which is one issue that the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice alone cannot resolve. PACE code C requires that the outcome in article 5 of effective communication between police and the detainee is met, and advocates that, wherever possible, interpreters should be drawn from the national register. That is something that I think we would all wish to see as a paradigm.

The use of interpreters in criminal proceedings, including at the police station, is governed by the national agreement on arrangements for the use of interpreters and translators in the criminal justice system, which I shall call the national agreement. As with PACE code C, the national agreement requires not that an interpreter from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters must be used, but that they should be drawn from the register where possible. That is important, because if no one from the register is readily available, there can be big challenges, and that leaves the police in a difficult position. They have to consider how long they can wait when they have someone in custody, as there are, quite rightly, legal requirements on how long people should be kept in custody. That protection is in place, and interpreting is relevant to the delay and cost to the police and criminal justice system if justice is not carried out properly or fairly.

I am aware that outsourcing, and the engagement and use of interpreters outside the national register, has been an issue in some police forces since about 2005, so it certainly is not a new issue. The hon. Gentleman has raised it about his area. Interpreters understandably object to outsourcing because they receive less money under that system. The average pay range for an interpreter on the national register is between £35 and £50 an hour, but could drop to as low as £15 to £20 an hour if they are employed through an agency. I can see the economics of the situation: if an interpreter has a choice of jobs, they will clearly take the higher paid rate if they can, so there is a problem with getting them to do interpreting through outsourcing. However, outsourcing is often used because forces cannot get someone from the national register to do the work.

There is anecdotal evidence that outsourcing has led to a drop in the quality of interpreting being provided, because interpreters are not prepared to work for the money available. We recognise that, and we know that work needs to be done to help to resolve the issue. ACPO’s lead official on interpreting issues, Assistant Chief Constable Douglas Paxton of Staffordshire police, wrote to all police forces last year, reminding them that they should use interpreters from the national register where possible. Forces were also reminded of the need to ensure that outsourcing did not compromise compliance with the standards set out in the national agreement. We must allow ACPO to play its role, working with police forces, but I shall address the hon. Gentleman’s comments about legislating in this area later.

ACPO acknowledges the invaluable contribution of the work carried out by interpreters in police forces and across the wider criminal justice system, but it also points out that outsourcing does not constitute a breach of the national agreement. Police forces are duty-bound to secure best value, and ACPO is not aware of any outsourcing activity that does not seek to operate in accordance with the national agreement.

Does the Minister accept that the figures I have given her provide clear, irrefutable evidence of a correlation between outsourcing and the proportion of interpreters being used who are not on the national register?

I agree that it is an important issue that we need to consider in full. My point is that the national agreement has some flexibility, and that it is right to explore the options. ACPO says that it is not aware of any outsourcing activity that does not operate in accordance with the national agreement, and I am keen to hear from hon. Members, as I have been doing, about how it is working in their areas. The national agreement says of outsourcing:

“Police forces and other CJS agencies that are contemplating outsourcing the provision of interpreters must ensure that this does not compromise compliance with the standards set out in this Agreement. In particular, where the fees payable to interpreters—as distinct from those paid to the intermediary agency—are lower than those contained in the recommended Terms and Conditions for Interpreters in the CJS…they are likely to be unattractive to fully qualified interpreters who are on the”

national register,

“with the result that the contractor resorts to unqualified interpreters who may not be competent. This is not acceptable.”

Those are ACPO’s words, and the point is fairly clear, but the critical issue is that the national register currently lists about 2,000 interpreters—a figure well below what police forces in England and Wales would deem appropriate. I see the problem in my area of London, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham in his area, and he has raised the issue with me. Clearly, it is also an issue in Manchester, as a number of Manchester MPs have raised it with me too. There is a challenge, but it is a little beyond the Home Office’s remit. The Government need to look into the matter, and interpreters, as a profession, need to work out why relatively few of them go into that type of work.

Police forces are outsourcing their requirement for interpreters as a pragmatic approach because they need to progress investigations. They have to get the balance right, to make sure that investigations are carried out fairly, with a high level of proof, and to make sure that people are not spending time in custody unnecessarily. We must all recognise that those issues are difficult to balance, while ensuring that we maintain the quality of interpreting. ACPO has started work on national scoping exercises with forces to assess current requirements and service improvements, and how they could be met. We hope that will give a clear indication to the interpreting profession of the opportunities for fully qualified interpreters in that valuable area of work.

We recognise the benefits that the national agreement provides, and we need to ensure that its framework delivers the necessary service to the criminal justice system. The Government will work with key stakeholders in the criminal justice system and with the representative bodies of the interpreting profession on reviewing the current guidance. My hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) will lead on that work. The focus of the exercise will be to determine how we can ensure that suitable, qualified interpreters are available for use throughout the criminal justice system. I repeat that the Home Office cannot solve the problem alone, but the Government can take a role in encouraging people to take up those important positions.

The rising demand for interpreters is due to a number of factors. We are living in an international world, and we expect that our cities, particularly Manchester and London, will be diverse. Interpreters are sometimes called because the police are concerned about their ability to understand someone who thinks that they can speak English, and because they need to be clear that their message is getting across. There are a number of reasons why interpreters are used, and it is right that we should consider the issue seriously and closely. We need quality services at a reasonable cost, and there should be no incentive to reduce quality. Responsible police forces will take that into account, but outsourcing alone is not the problem.

The hon. Gentleman asked why we do not legislate on the matter. There are no immediate plans to do so, but it is an important option, and we are considering amending the PACE code of practice on detention to require the use of interpreters from the register only. My hon. Friends in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are considering that, but before we can make that change, we must ensure that sufficient, trained, able and competent interpreters are available to enable the police to progress their investigations and ensure that detainees are not in custody for too long. The danger with hastily introducing legislation is that if we do not have sufficient bodies on the ground to deliver what we are legislating for, we will be in the same position as we are now, with too few interpreters. That is a key issue.

The key driver in ensuring quality of result for the victim and fairness for the perpetrator in any case is having good-quality interpreters. I am sure that view is shared by the hon. Gentleman and by other hon. Members who have raised the issue with me—indeed, I know it is from my conversations with them. I hope that they will all welcome the work that we are doing to address these important problems. My hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing is aware of hon. Members’ concerns from his conversations and correspondence with them, and I know that he will keep them updated about our thinking and progress in this area.

I intend to address the definition of the identity cards project and its procurement. I shall not discuss the principles behind the project, nor shall I attempt to persuade the Minister that it might harm civil liberties. I have never bought that argument and I did not make it during the passage of the Identity Cards Act 2006.

The concerns that prevented me from supporting the Government on Third Reading were far more prosaic. I was concerned about whether the project was good value for money and whether we were proceeding in a way that limited the risk of failure. The first point is complex, partly because of uncertainty about the project’s cost. I recall during the Bill’s passage speaking to a group of IT specialists, who immediately agreed with me that the estimates given by the Government and by critics of the Bill were entirely speculative.

Are we better informed now? The answer is: perhaps a little. The project is better defined than it was. One major aspect of the technology—iris recognition—that carried both risk and uncertainty has been omitted from the original list of specifications. A sensible deconstruction of the project has taken place and it has been divided into more accessible elements, often linked to existing passport activity. An initial low-volume activity serving foreign nationals will test aspects of the programme. Of course, that deconstruction will make the monitoring of the precise cost of ID cards beyond the passport project hard to assess. I still argue that we are some distance from having any reliable figure for the marginal cost of ID cards as a project and we are certainly—I will expand on some of the reasons why in a moment—a considerable way from understanding the ongoing costs of maintaining a national identity register for UK nationals. Within acceptable bounds, we do not know what the project will initially cost and how much it will cost to maintain.

The other uncertainty in the calculation of worth is rather more profound: what exactly will the register and the cards offer? Again, when discussing the genesis of the project with IT professionals, I found the unanimous view given was, “I wouldn’t have justified it this way.” The confused melange of arguments about stopping terrorism, tackling illegal immigration and fighting crime have appealed to those looking for quick-fix politics, and they have helped the idea to build some base of preliminary popularity. However, such arguments have also created a substantial base of hostility and they would be rapidly demolished or severely weakened by even the most cursory scrutiny.

The 7 July bombers were proud of their identities and would have been holders of ID cards anyway. Illegal immigrants, by definition, live in the shadows of our society, and to operate in the open they would currently need to show legitimate identity. Giving false identities to the police is a problem affecting a minority of crimes. Thankfully, we have moved on to the more adult argument that should have been at the heart of this project from the start: that proving one’s identity is increasingly a necessary part of life—not all the time, but frequently enough to cause inconvenience and a simple tool to do that would help. However, there is a counter-argument: that relying on several disparate sources of identity proof makes us more secure than relying on one tool alone. Having one supposedly authoritative source will make it certain that its vulnerabilities are tested.

I have noted from the technical discussion of the project, that phishing—with a ‘ph’—has already been identified as likely. It is helpful that the Home Office have looked at that. Presumably the target will be card holders who are foolish enough to place elements of their data in circumstances where they are made available for someone else to exploit. The staff involved in the maintenance of the data and the design of the technologies will also be an obvious vulnerability; the behaviours of card holders themselves are a further vulnerability. Those who are far cleverer than I will, no doubt, be working already on the perceived frailties of the scheme.

One critical element is required to sell ID cards as a tool for the citizen: trust. Bearing in mind the significant and technically resourced opposition to the project, weaknesses will be both sought and given high-profile exposure. It is wholly unrealistic to expect a project of such a scale and complexity to avoid error and failure. Trust damage is extremely likely, and we have not made a terribly promising start. Government and private sector data management does not have a good reputation. PA Consulting, which I understand is the firm advising the Government on the project, as I am sure many other firms are, recently lost the personal details of the entire UK prison population. In the company comment, one root of its problem is disclosed:

“the challenge of managing necessary confidential information held by government, and in particular eliminating human error, is industry wide.”

Procedures and processes are fine, but human beings do not necessarily conform.

The other unspoken root problem, which I have already stressed, is reliance on one encompassing technology rather than dispersal of risk. The role of the national identity scheme’s commissioner also remains undefined. That element will either build trust in the project or—if the appointment is weak or the terms of reference of their activities are poorly defined—be a means of subtracting trust. Before cards are given to any UK nationals, we need to know who that person will be and exactly what they are supposed to do within what budget.

The public’s trust must be won. The intellect workshops that were held two years ago when the genesis of the project was established made it absolutely clear that, for the project to work, clear uses and benefits must be explained to the public and a high level of trust won. As I said, we have not made a desperately promising start. Tentative attempts to sell the idea have provoked ridicule in some cases. The brief appearance of the website www.mylifemyid.org, which was aimed at young people, became a predictable target for opponents. Selling the project to its potential customers will be tough and expensive. In addition, one has to say that it almost certainly has not been properly costed in the programme.

The responses of the first recipients of the cards who can speak up—foreign nationals have been carefully chosen because, arguably, they are a group that cannot complain—have been either hostile or deeply unenthusiastic. Airline pilots have vigorously contested the need to have the cards at all, and Roger Wiltshire of the British Air Transport Association has said

“we do not see the ID scheme bringing any security or business benefits”.

One might imagine that the financial sector, which requires ID proof more than most, would be vocal in its enthusiasm. Of course, that sector has other things to worry about at the moment, but its virtual silence speaks of extreme caution at least.

Those concerns have, of course, been reflected in supplier behaviour. The political controversy over the project, its muddled, incoherent justification, and the lack of endorsement from potential users has been noted in the supplier community. The careful design of the scheme to incorporate more consensual and current activity, which is a sensible route to take, within discrete projects related to existing Identity and Passport Service work has ensured that some interest is retained. However, the drop-out from the initial pool of potential suppliers has been notable. The survivors—those who are prepared to lead consortiums—would be wise to price in the risk of interruption, diversion and reputational damage.

Let me illustrate one obvious problem in procurement. The Government have sought to engage the private sector in the initial data capture exercise through a competitive marketplace. The training and security checks of staff involved will, of course, be a substantial cost, as will the acquisition of data capture centres dispersed around the country. Understandably, the IPS states that such centres have been located in places of high footfall

“such as high streets or large shopping centres”.

This will not be a low-cost activity.

The Home Office website specifies the sorts of people who might be involved in the exercise. Providers will need to have a strong brand that customers know and trust. Unless the initial suspicions about the project are dispersed and opposition melts away, I know of few strong brands whose customers trust them deeply that will voluntarily enter a market where conflict is assured, and, what is more, for the relatively modest marginal profit that they might achieve in a genuinely competitive marketplace.

One suspects that what is actually meant by the statement is that a public sector brand such as the Post Office, which might be obliged to take part, might be the provider of choice, but then one needs to consider that most of the Post Office network lies in private hands. Persuading a group of sub-postmasters, who would have some difficulty assembling the skills that are necessary to do such a job anyway, to participate is beyond the imagination of even those behind this project.

Let me now touch on one of the features of the national identity register which highlights some of the confusion in the thinking: the inclusion of the holder’s address. That is the feature of a person’s identity that will change the most and the most frequently. Passports do not currently require that identifier. Presumably, the successful identity service currently offered by the IPS for verifying passports when presented as proof of identity for employment or other purposes includes no address obligation within the process, or the person must produce some associated document alongside their passport to demonstrate that the address at which they claim to live is actually the one to which bills are sent and so on. Cursory consideration reveals why there is a difficulty with including such data on the national identity register.

It is an offence for driving licence holders, as it will be for ID card holders, to fail to notify a change of address. Someone might innocently think, if they did not know much about our citizenry, that we always notify. It is an offence not to do so, so we report our change of address. However, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency thinks otherwise, with some substance. It estimates that nearly 20 per cent. of the driving licence addresses held on its database are inaccurate, and that is with a sanction attached to failure to notify a change of address—exactly the same as for ID cards—and with at least some likelihood of a failure to notify being identified. If one is stopped and required to produce one’s driving licence to demonstrate who one is, it is perfectly possible that a failure to notify will be spotted.

Anyway, how would such data be verified on an ongoing basis? When the card is presented to prove identity, will accompanying proof of address be required? As I have demonstrated, there is no reason to suppose that the address held on the national identity register from the initial capture will be right. Those who are likely to have to prove identity regularly might well have an incentive to maintain an accurate address for fear of penalty. Will those who seek verification of an address report offenders? That is a substantial question. If the person who seeks to verify the identity detects an error in the address, is he obliged to inform a third party of it? Those who wish to lose themselves in our society—I do not wish to stereotype the presumed targets of the project, but there must be some—could readily avoid such interfaces, so exactly what purpose is served by holding the address? The accuracy of the register will be questionable, at best. The maintenance of the data will be costly and will introduce risk—for example, the risk of addresses being mistakenly allocated to another identity, as in the miserable case of errors over the address of one of my constituents. The transposition of her address with that of another debtor by a third party led to her committing suicide.

I note that Department for Work and Pensions customer information system technology will be utilised as a base of biographical data. I am not sure, but I would be surprised if I were the only MP who regularly encounters difficulties with the DWP CIS database. There is already confusion over people’s identity. I can think of two problems in my constituency that have been drawn to my attention in the past six months. There has recently been an attempt to clean up the data, and I would be interested to know what the outcome was. In a written answer to me, the Home Office estimated that each year 14 per cent. of people change address. The task of ensuring the accuracy of the process will be substantial and the cost huge. For what?

I would also welcome some information on the availability of reader technology. The cards will be of little value unless card readers interfaced with the register are widely available. One presumes that that will involve market-led technology and that several companies may produce the appropriate kit. However, for what must be a significant investment, certainty as to the scale, timing and specifications of the opportunity are required. I have not noted producers of such kit emerging.

Some sensible decisions have been made since the passage of the Bill—to simplify the project, to deconstruct it and integrate it with existing IPS activity, and to change the disastrously ill-thought-through justifications for it—but I doubt whether it is realisable in its planned form. Hard though it may be to reverse course now, that would appear to be the wisest approach. At the very least, further elements of risk—the inclusion of addresses, for example—should be removed and the project should be drawn still closer to the core passport process.

I am pleased to speak for the second time this afternoon, Mr. Caton.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) has raised this debate. Unbelievably, this is actually the first time that I have had the chance to debate the matter as the Minister responsible since I was appointed to take responsibility for ID cards in July 2007. I very much welcome his calm and rational discussion of some important points.

My hon. Friend was right to highlight the fact that during the process of the legislation and beyond, there has been uncertainty about some of the reasons why we are introducing ID cards. The Government have not been clear enough about their reasons.

We have had a period since the Identity Cards Act 2006 became law, after it was debated in Parliament twice in 2005, when perhaps we were not communicating enough to the outside world about our plans. Inevitably, such a vacuum is filled with people’s concerns, and there probably was not a strong enough counter-voice from the Government about the benefits. I hope that I can put that straight today.

First, to pick up on my hon. Friend’s comments about uncertainty over costs, this is one of the most reported cost areas in government. Every six months, a cost report is laid before Parliament. Sometimes I think that it is an inflexible way of reporting costs, perhaps for some of the reasons that he raised, because it tends to lead to people jumping on a particular large figure. Over a 10-year period, the cost of the scheme will be £4.785 million. About 70 per cent. of that, however, will be the cost of implementing secure passports with fingerprints, something that we are doing to meet international requirements that make life more convenient for British citizens travelling abroad. The operational cost of issuing the cards and maintaining the register will be recovered from fees, as we are currently required to do for passports, so there is no big pot of money waiting to be spent. I know that my hon. Friend understands that point, but it is worth highlighting for others following the debate. We do provide that level of detail, and, were we able to break out of the cost report straitjacket, perhaps we could explain it more clearly. Too often, however, people jump on that large figure and consider it a major area for criticism, but, if we divide it by 10, the figure is considerably lower in any case.

My hon. Friend’s point about the rationale is important. Convenience is a major factor, but, when we polled the public, they were very clear that safeguarding their identity from fraud was a concern. On the subject of immigration control, messages from other parts of the Home Office about maintaining our borders were also a key factor. When we get a job, use a bank, purchase goods and access services, we need to prove our identity. Currently, we use numerous documents, and, when I was last at a parcel collection office, I saw 11 listed documents, most of which were not forms of identification. A birth certificate is not a suitable form of identification to prove who one is, because anyone can buy it from the General Register Office or their local council, and utility bills can fall into the wrong hands.

I carry my passport around with other documents, and that is not very secure, so having one single way of proving one’s identity will be incredibly useful to people. If I have time, I shall mention how we might do so automatically. The scheme will reduce needless bureaucracy, so the long-winded process of proving one’s identity by, for example, handing over various documents to one’s local council for a parking permit will no longer be the only option. Someone may take those documents to a back room to photocopy them, keep the copies and, perhaps, lose them, as sometimes happens even with good councils. In the future, however, there will be a simple way to prove one’s identity.

My hon. Friend highlighted the fact that the identity documents that we currently present reveal a lot of information about ourselves. For example, all the information on my bank statement is not something that I want someone to see when I try to prove my address. It can be difficult for many married women who operate under different names to find a utility bill in their name, and, certainly, that is increasingly difficult for younger people who do not have a telephone landline or who live in shared accommodation. The information about one’s address is on many of those documents, but it will not be on the face of the card.

In producing an identity card, there will be safeguards that do not exist for the many other ways in which we currently prove our identity. It will be a voluntary scheme, so people will be able to choose to continue to go down the cumbersome route of producing sheaves of paper; or, they will be able to register with the scheme. We hope that the first British citizens will register in the autumn. We will soon invite early expressions of interest and then decide the areas in which people will be able to sign up to the cards at the same time as some airport workers will receive them.

The Identity Cards Act 2006 is explicit about the information that can be held—it is information that proves identity. There will be no requirement to include, for example, blood group, criminal record or health issues. Interestingly, however, some young people to whom I have spoken wondered why we were not including that information. Different groups in the population have different attitudes, but I want to be very clear that there is no intention, either by the Home Office or by the Government, to extend the information that will be included on the identity card. As the Minister responsible, I am very clear that we do what we say we will do, and no more. We are very clear about that.

The card will display only minimal information but, using the fingerprint and digital images, link one person to one identity, which is the key point. Making life easy and more convenient is one area, but, for public sector organisations and private businesses, it will improve efficiency, too, because procedures will be quicker and easier. As one council chief executive told me, they will be able to spend more time on the people who are difficult to deal with, because they will be able to process many people whose identities will be easy to check if they choose to produce a card. Of course, under the 2006 Act, they will not be required to show the card. No one will be required to show the card to access a public service, but they can choose to do so if they wish to be dealt with quickly.

The message about ID fraud is important. It is a growing concern, about which I get more letters now than I did when I started this job. People are aware of ID fraud issues, and we will soon launch work to remind people to maintain their identity securely, pointing out the various measures that the Government, across the board, can undertake to help people do so. We already have a very trusted Identity and Passport Service—71 per cent. of the population trust it to hold their information. Information from our passports is held on a database, but we will provide a far more secure database and far more secure updated information, making the card a much more useful product. In many ways, the identity card programme involves an update similar to what we have done with passports—automating the process, rather than having an old-fashioned paper-based system.

My hon. Friend is right that one could counter-argue and say that several documents are more secure than one, but that is why we must get the first identity check right. The IPS is very good at doing that. We recently introduced interviews for first-time adult passport applicants, and there have been some successes, with people often faltering when asked, either prior to or after an interview, for further information to verify that they are genuinely who they say they are. We have a trusted Government organisation already doing that work, and the same organisation will run the identity card scheme.

My hon. Friend is right that trust is a key factor. It certainly bears on my mind as the Minister responsible for the work, and we need to ensure that we build and maintain public trust and show that we have clear and transparent approaches to tackling any breach of trust. The scheme’s commissioner will soon be appointed—we hope by the summer. His or her role is clearly laid out, and I shall happily send details of it to my hon. Friend, if he wishes. The scheme commissioner will work alongside the Information Commissioner’s office, with which we have had several discussions to ensure that the scheme works properly. Several legal protections are in place—for example, regarding the handful of staff who will have direct access to the register. They will amount to about 100 people. My hon. Friend rightly raised the issue of human error, but, if somebody tampers with the register, they will face a severe legal penalty, including a prison sentence.

No personal information will be downloaded to USBs or discs. In fact, generally, there will be no terminals on people’s desks, as that would allow them to look up an individual with the card present. That puts the power in the hands of the citizen. If I present myself, my card and my PIN, I am clear that I have given permission for some information about me on the register to be verified by the person, bank—whomever I have a relationship with. No one else should be able to look up information, except in extreme circumstances, such as suspected terrorism or serious crime—and only then, when clear proof is given to the custodians of the database that the information, or a certain amount of information, is required. There will be no opportunity—not even for the police—to fish around the register to see what information can be found. It will be as secure as a military database. Nothing is ever risk free, however, and it would be irresponsible of us to suggest that. Nevertheless, it is important that I highlight those points.

Foreign nationals have been very receptive to the scheme. I stress that they were not chosen as an easy, soft-touch first group; other work was going on in the Home Office, so we decided about a year ago to align both projects. Rather than leave out the immigration scheme, there seemed to be much more sense in aligning the two as part of the same scheme. It was clearly part of the same approach.

Airline pilots have sought portability for their security passes, and we have had some constructive conversations with a number of air industry organisations—perhaps more constructive than with those few that have chosen to criticise the scheme publicly. I am always happy to consult people and to discuss their concerns. It is much more helpful if they talk to us directly, rather than just going to the newspapers. The business benefits to airlines will be enormous. The scheme speeds up checks, and that benefits employers and employees, because they will be able to start work sooner and their salaries will not be late.

I have little time to go into what is a big area, but the suppliers went through a rigorous procurement process and, if they fell by the wayside, it was because they did not meet requirements. Hand on heart, I can say that one of the best procurement teams in the Government is dealing with the scheme. We went through a very effective procurement strategy. We set up a competition, and five companies ended up on our team of contractors which will bid for smaller contracts. That strategic suppliers’ group went through such rigorous testing that we now know the standards that we expect from it, and it does, too. There is much more collaboration in the team now, and its members are competing heatedly for various contracts that are now being sub-let.