I thank right hon. and hon. Members for attending this debate. I am particularly grateful to Mr. Speaker for granting my request for this debate on human rights in Iran. That we should be holding it now will come as no surprise. Regrettably, the authorities in Iran have not chosen to build bridges, despite the olive branches that have been offered by me and so many others. In the past few weeks, we have clearly seen demonstrated both the internal tensions within Iran and the readiness of elements in the Iranian state to use violence and oppression.

I come from the perspective of the problems faced by Iran’s Baha’i community, but I note also the plight of many other Iranian minority communities and the treatment of Iranian women. And who can ignore the Iranian state’s use of capital punishment? Few nations on earth execute people as often or for as many different reasons.

Nevertheless, I want to make it clear to this House and to the Iranian authorities that my objective is not to pillory that great nation. I do not conduct politics through confrontation or simplistic condemnation of individuals or Governments. Rather, my two goals are to resolve the pressing human rights issues facing the Baha’is in Iran and to prevent a dreadful miscarriage of justice in the days ahead.

The Baha’i faith has 5 million adherents worldwide, and there are 6,000 in Britain. However, the historical roots of the community lie in Iran. Despite persecution since the inception of the religion in the 19th century, the Baha’is remain the largest single religious minority community in that country, numbering around 300,000 members.

Baha’is have historically been treated as scapegoats during times of social tension, but conditions sharply deteriorated after the Iranian revolution of 1979. Sadly, that situation continues to this day. Since 1979, more than 200 Baha’is have been killed and 15 others have disappeared—we must presume that they are dead. Repression of their community has included executions and imprisonment, as well as denial of the right to educate their youth. There have been regular and persistent attacks on their social, economic and cultural rights.

The Baha’is seek no special privileges. All they seek are conditions that accord with the International Bill of Human Rights, of which Iran is a signatory. The right to life, the right to profess and practise their religion, the right to liberty and security of person, and the right to education and work: those are not heady demands.

The Baha’i faith requires Baha’is to be obedient to their Government and to avoid partisan political involvement. Indeed, I am the chairman of the all-party Friends of the Baha’is group only because I am not a Baha’i myself. Were I to sign up to the faith, technically, I would have to leave party politics—something which I am glad to say I have not yet been persuaded to do. [Hon. Members: “Go on.”] Until this moment.

It is important to note that subversive activity and all forms of violence are not permitted by the Baha’i faith. It follows that the Baha’i community in Iran, and, in fact, in the United Kingdom, is not aligned with any Government, ideology or opposition movement. Furthermore, showing good will to the followers of all religions is a basic, fundamental tenet of the Baha’i faith. The Baha’is are not enemies of Islam nor, indeed, of Iran. One could not find a more benign and humanistic religion anywhere on earth. The faith is of a pure, gentle and spiritual giving nature. It threatens no one but holds out a hand of friendship to one and all.

Given the character of the Baha’i faith, it is all the more tragic that, in the past few years, there has been a resurgence of extreme forms of persecution directed at the Baha’i community of Iran. The upsurge has alarmed human rights monitors who fear not only for those Baha’is affected by the Government’s renewed campaign but also that such attacks portend something far worse.

International experts on ethnic, racial and religious cleansing have identified a number of warning signs that often foreshadow widespread purges. Several recent developments add to those concerns, and I shall cite them now. First, seven members of the Baha’i leadership group have been arbitrarily detained for more than eight months and still have no access to legal counsel. They form the core concern that has led to this debate. There are worrying precedents to the situation. After the revolution in Iran, the nine members of the National Assembly were abducted and disappeared. Nothing has been heard of them since then, and they are presumed dead. A new National Assembly was elected, and in 1981 eight of the nine members of that body were executed.

Secondly, arbitrary arrests and detentions are being made, chiefly by the Intelligence Ministry. Currently, 31 Baha’is are in prison, and, as of June 2009, 78 Baha’is who had been detained and then released on bail are awaiting trial. Thirdly, there has been a general upsurge in vigilante attacks against Baha’is and their properties, such as the bulldozing of Baha’i cemeteries and the torching of Baha’i homes. Fourthly, there appears to be an increase in incitement and propaganda in state-run news media to vilify and defame Baha’is as individuals and the faith as a whole. The fifth example is the deliberate policy of denying Baha’is their right to a livelihood by banning them from employment options, confiscating their means of business, and blocking their access to higher education.

Much of that is part of the Iranian Government’s strategy to suppress the Baha’i community without attracting undue international attention, as outlined in a secret memorandum from 1991 that aimed at establishing a policy regarding “the Baha’i question”. So we know that there has been a strategy behind all this in the past, and it is reasonable to assume that there is a similar strategy at present.

Little wonder, then, that the Baha’is of Iran are denied the right to practise their faith freely, which is a right guaranteed under international human rights instruments such as the International Bill of Human Rights, to which, I stress again, Iran is a state party. Baha’is recognise that there are many other oppressed groups in Iran, including academics, women’s rights activists, students and journalists. The situation of Iranian Baha’is, however, offers a special case, inasmuch as they are persecuted solely because of their religious belief, despite remaining committed to non-violence and non-partisanship and seeking only to contribute to the development of their homeland.

Our experience indicates that bilateral and multilateral scrutiny of Iran’s human rights record is the best method of engaging the Iranian authorities and preventing further deterioration of human rights for the many citizens of that country who face repression. The seven members of the Yaran—the Friends—constitute an ad hoc leadership body that co-ordinates the activities of the 300,000 strong Baha’i community in Iran. The elected administrative bodies of the Baha’i faith are banned, so these people, detained and on trial as they are, represent the focus of the matter in hand. This, despite the fact that the Iranian authorities have had regular, if informal, contact with the Yaran for many years.

The secretary of the Yaran, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, was arrested on 5 March 2008 while attending a Baha’i funeral. The remaining six members, Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm, were arrested on 14 May 2008. I expect the Minister to read out all those names as well when he responds. All seven have been detained for more than a year in Evin prison, Tehran. They have been held in section 209, which is under the direct control of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The five male members have been incarcerated in a cell with no bedding.

In June, the Centre for Human Rights Defenders in Iran learned that the seven will face revolutionary trial, and our best guess is that that will happen on 11 July—this Saturday. The lawyers have indicated that they have had the opportunity to review the related case files but have not been able to complete the process as the files are unusually extensive.

Further to the decision of Ms Shirin Ebadi of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders in Iran to serve as legal counsel for the seven Baha’is, fraudulent claims have appeared in the Iranian media that aim to malign or intimidate her and thereby prevent the Baha’is from having legal representation. Untrue and erroneous stories have also asserted that Ms Ebadi’s daughter has apostastised from Islam and converted to the Baha’i faith. Ms Ebadi has also had death threats pinned to the door of her office, one of which was signed “The Association of Anti-Baha’is”.

It is understood that the trial will be carried out under the jurisdiction of branch 28 of the revolutionary court. That is significant because the recent case of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was also tried in branch 28, in camera, in proceedings that lasted a single day, at the end of which she was sentenced to eight years for espionage.

Under Iranian law, the lawyers for the Baha’is are not allowed to reveal information they are privy to from the case file. Amazingly, it remains unclear whether the seven Baha’is have been formally charged with any offence to date—just days before the trial. However, reports in February 2009 indicated that they will be charged with

“espionage for the state of Israel”

and

“spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic”

and

“insulting religious sanctities”.

In May of 2009 it was even reported that they will also face accusations of

“spreading corruption on earth”—

a pretty gigantic charge.

The Baha’i international community categorically denies the accusations against these individuals, but fears that they may none the less face execution. So-called spying has long been used as a pretext to persecute Baha’is and as an attempt to impede the progress of the Baha’i community. Since the 1930s, Baha’is have successively been cast as tools of Russian imperialism, of British colonialism, of American expansionism and, most recently, of Zionism. The Baha’i faith has never been a part of any of these movements. There is no truth in this allegation and no evidence to support it.

That the international headquarters of the Baha’i faith is located within the borders of modern-day Israel is purely the result of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the faith, being banished from his native Tehran and sent by Persian and Ottoman authorities in the 19th century to perpetual exile in the city of Acre, near Haifa. Baha’u’llah arrived in Acre in 1868, 80 years before the establishment of the state of Israel. The Iranian Government know this but wilfully choose to misrepresent the facts.

What would we like to see? Initially, we ask our British Government to apply whatever pressure they can to encourage the Iranian authorities to release the seven members of the Yaran. They have done nothing wrong and do not deserve the treatment that they have received; they deserve justice and release from their unjustified incarceration. If a trial goes ahead—as I say, it is scheduled for 11 July, which is this Saturday—we ask Ministers to impress upon the Iranian authorities before then that it must be carried out in an open, transparent manner, according to international standards, with proper access to legal representation and with no effort to fix the outcome.

In terms of wider action by the Government, we ask for collective action by British Ministers and our European and international partners for a longer-term easing of the persecution that is being endured by the Baha’is and others, including Christians, in Iran. In this context, I cite the plight of Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh, both held in Evin prison since March 2009, apparently for being Christians. We understand the considerable difficulties in dealing with the Iranian authorities and the limitations of international pressure.

I apologise for missing the first few minutes of the hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech. Does he accept that although Christians are less subjugated in Iran they are often the butt of other forms of criticism? Christian Solidarity Worldwide did a great deal of advocacy, as it does in many parts of the world, to get those two ladies out. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take that matter up. The Baha’is are special people, but the Christians also face difficulties.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I underline the points that he has made to the Minister and to hon. Members. The church that I attend, the Hope community church in Newtown, does a great deal of international work. Alan Hewitt, the chief pastor there, shares the concerns raised by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that the Minister will comment on the plight of Christians and other oppressed minorities, not all of them religious minorities, in Iran. There are considerable difficulties for Christians, as the hon. Gentleman has underlined, but especially for Baha’is.

Scrutiny from national and international bodies has in the past helped to discourage a ratcheting-up of abuses and, hopefully, we can do so again now and in future. Our experience indicates that bilateral and multilateral scrutiny of Iran’s human rights record is the best method of engaging the Iranian authorities and preventing a further deterioration of human rights for the many citizens of that country facing repression. A number of Governments, international organisations, and prominent individuals have reacted to the announcement of the trial of the seven members of the Baha’i leadership, including the European Parliament, the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United States State Department, the European Union, the Government of Australia, a Canadian parliamentary committee and Amnesty International, which has done tireless work in this regard.

Naturally, the Baha’i international community is calling on the international community at large to request that the Iranian authorities ensure that the seven are either released or receive a fair and open public trial that will be held according to international standards.

I have no visceral dislike of Iran, its people or its Government; it has a great and noble history that exceeds that of many other countries. I have even requested permission to visit Tehran to discuss these matters directly with Iranian officials and politicians to see how we can best resolve these matters to the mutual benefit of all concerned. So far, I have not been able to secure permission to go, but I will keep on trying, despite the fact that the Iranian embassy informed me that I was not able to go due to technical difficulties and the technical impossibility of going there. I hope to overcome those technical difficulties and have a meaningful dialogue in Tehran.

Fly yourself!

If push comes to shove, I have a small aircraft of my own and I can see if I can make it in eight short hops. However, it would be safer for me, and easier for the country, if the Minister used his considerable weight and the considerable stature of the British Government to seek once again to extend an olive branch to Iran and make it clear that we do not seek to attack it, but merely want to encourage it to take a more benign, positive view towards the Baha’is and other oppressed minorities, and towards these seven Baha’i leaders in particular.

My requests are simple. I ask that the British Government do all they can to prevent a miscarriage of justice in regard to the seven Baha’i leaders facing trial. I ask the Iranian Government for engagement. Ultimately, this is the best pathway to justice. Iran can have many friends in Britain and worldwide, and I would like to be one of them. By lightening the load of oppression on the Baha’is and others, Iran will find for itself the best avenue to lead itself and its citizens into full partnership in the international community. I am sure, with all my heart, that that is something we would all like to see.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on securing this timely and welcome debate. I endorse all the points that he made about religious freedoms and tolerance, which are necessary in any modern society. In Iran, which has a plethora of ethnic communities and religious groups, that sort of tolerance is more important than in many other countries. I therefore support what the hon. Gentleman said about the rights of Baha’is, Jews, Zoroastrians, Christians, non-Shi’a Muslims, and people of other religious faiths to be able to practise their religion and to operate in freedom. What he said this morning is extremely important and it is important to have that on the record. Iran is a signatory to the United Nations charter—obviously, because it is a member of the UN—and the universal declaration of human rights. All those rights are protected in international law, so it is perfectly right and proper to exert that pressure.

These are stirring and important times in Iran. The demonstrations of the past few weeks following the election have been unprecedented since 1979—phenomenal numbers of people have appeared on the streets. I deplore the way in which many of the demonstrators have been treated—the beatings and killings. That is not acceptable in any society, be it in Iran, China or anywhere else in the world. People have an absolute right to express their views peaceably on the streets.

Coverage of the demonstrations that was received around the world was interesting. Initially, various Iranian channels reported the demonstrations, as did the BBC, CNN and others, and there was an interesting degree of opening in political debate, both inside and outside Iran, immediately after the elections. One should be pleased about that.

I was pleased to sign and support early-day motion 1755, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), which condemns

“the arrest, torture and murder of protesters…and urges the Iranian Government to accept free and fair UN-supervised elections.

I do not believe for one moment that Iran will accept outside supervision of elections, but every country in the world, including the UK, should be more than happy to accept international observers and reporting of elections. We should not be so precious about that. We send observers to other countries and we should welcome observers here. Every country’s electoral process should be open to observation, which would create a degree of equality.

These are interesting times, but it seems that after the protests about the election and the demands by Mousavi’s supporters for a recount following the declared very large majority for Ahmadinejad, the Guardian Council approved a limited and partial recount, but the Supreme Leader declared that the election result must stand and that was the end of the matter. At that point, public debate was effectively closed down, as was any attempt at serious discussion. We must express serious concern about that, not in a spirit of hostility to Iran or its history and culture, but in a spirit of co-operation and support for civil society in Iran. There is an important distinction to be drawn, which I shall discuss.

The excessive rhetoric, particularly from the Bush Administration and at various times from our Governments, has not helped the situation—in fact, it has made it worse. There must be a process of dialogue and respect. Far too little is understood of Iranian history—Iran is the inheritor of the great civilisation of Persia—and the persistent British and American meddling in Iranian affairs. During the first world war, Britain occupied parts of what is now Iran; we installed and removed various Governments of Iran; and British and Soviet Union forces occupied Iran again during the second world war, eventually withdrawing.

In 1952, the nationalist Mosaddeq Government were elected on a manifesto of obtaining equality of oil revenues from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later became BP. The British refused, there was a dispute, and a coup was engineered by the CIA and the British. The Mosaddeq Government were removed, the Shah came to office, compensation was paid to BP, and we were back to square one with a repressive regime under the Shah. Those events are remembered in Iran. Iranians do not forget British involvement and our obsession with their oil reserves. When dealing with Iran, we must remember that we do not have clean hands, and we should be prepared to admit that.

The Shah’s oppressive regime, with its appalling human rights record, used outside SAVAK forces to attack Iranian students. I remember that during the 1970s, when the Shah’s secret agents operated in British universities and tried to criticise Iranian students who were active. The Shah’s human rights record led to huge protests and demonstrations and he was eventually removed in 1979, apparently only a few weeks after the British security services and the CIA had said that it was perfectly safe for him to stay there for many decades. They misunderstood the situation somewhat, and not for the first time.

In the turmoil of the 1979 revolution, Iran did not turn into a secular democracy. It became a Muslim state under Ayatollah Khomeini and the present constitution was invoked. It is an interesting document, but the western press simply fails to understand Iran’s power structures. It assumes that President Ahmadinejad, because he is President, is equivalent to President Bush or an executive Prime Minister in the west, but he is not. He is head of the civil Government, obviously, but he and anyone else are allowed to be a candidate in the election only if they are approved by the Council of Guardians, which is responsible to the Supreme Leader. The Assembly of Experts also has a role in appointing the Supreme Leader.

There is a tripartite/quadripartite sharing of power in Iran, and we should remember that whatever the President or anyone else says, that is not the whole story; it is only part of it. One should try to understand that, and the fact that within all the complications of Iranian society and its structures, there are people who manage to speak up for civil rights and women’s rights, to organise trade unions, to pursue intellectual work, and to operate in independent universities. Like any other society, Iran’s is not a seamless whole, and we should also be aware of that, too. Western strategy on Iran is part of the problem, and I shall be grateful if the Minister says a little more about that.

After Khomeini became the Supreme Leader, Iran entered a period of isolation and US sanctions. Because of the relationship between the US and Iran following the taking of US hostages and the resulting difficulties, the Iran-Iraq war occurred. Although that dreadful war probably suited Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini in equal measure, it cost the lives of at least 500,000 people. It also made a great deal of money for the arms industry around the world. We should remember that, again, Britain and the United States do not have clean hands, because at the same time as we were trying to buy oil from Iran, we were supplying arms to Iraq to provoke that war. Our role in recent history is not clear and not clean. Whatever we say about Iran, we should have some respect for our own role.

Israel’s threats to Iran are obviously serious and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran is very strong. Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but not the supplementary protocol allowing unannounced inspections. It is developing a nuclear reactor and processor, but that is not the same as developing nuclear weapons. Although I do not want Iran or any other country in the world to develop nuclear weapons, any more than I want this country to continue to hold nuclear weapons, it is impossible to argue credibly for nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-free middle east while we remain silent about Israel’s development of nuclear weapons and its obvious ability to use them at some point. If we are serious about bringing about peace in the region, that also requires promotion of a nuclear-free middle east, which requires Israel to be brought to the table through a nuclear weapons convention.

It is important to get those general points on the record. In supporting human rights in Iran, we must build up the best possible contacts and relationships. Parliament to Parliament, there have been Inter-Parliamentary Union delegations, which have enabled some contact and the development of a relationship in that way. Much better relations must also be developed between universities, trade unions and civil society groups, and there must be support for individual cases such as those to which the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire referred.

I chair an organisation called Liberation, which was involved originally as the Movement for Colonial Freedom and is now more of an international solidarity organisation. We had our annual meeting last Saturday and we passed an extensive resolution on Iran. I shall quote some of that very long resolution. We said:

“The high rate of people’s participation in the election alerted the international community to the fact that the Iranian people wish to have and take an active role in their own destiny.”

It is important to say that. We went on to make specific requests, stating:

“The international community therefore should support the Iranian people’s struggle for peace, democracy and social justice in their country.”

We pointed out the “continued deterioration” of human rights in recent years in Iran and the “flagrant disregard” for internationally accepted conventions. We were referring to the most extreme forms of sharia law that are used, involving the stoning of individuals, amputations and public executions. Obviously, that is totally wrong and must be condemned, as I would condemn the death penalty in any circumstances anywhere in the world.

We also raised the violations of the rights to free speech, freedom of association and peaceful protest, which are important, and the continued detention of trade unionists and workers’ activists, including the leader of the Tehran Public Bus Company workers syndicate, Mansour Osanloo. I hope that a message goes out that we support his release just as much as we would support the release of any other person held on grounds of conscience or activity. We pointed out that the International Labour Organisation conventions 87 and 98 require all signatory states to allow the organisation of independent trade unions. That applies just as much to Iran as to any other country. In raising all those issues, and in supporting women’s rights and women’s activists in Iran, we have to send a message that we are serious about supporting human rights and civil society in Iran.

Our history is not clean by any means. The rhetoric used against Iran, the sanctions policy being used against Iran and the implicit military threats that have been made against Iran at various times do not force Iran to back down and operate differently. Instead, they unite Iranian people against the west, build the feeling of isolation and build the power of those who wish to pursue military options in Iran rather than peaceful options.

There must be a way for us to open a dialogue. A previous Foreign Secretary—the current Secretary of State for Justice—went to Iran and tried to open that dialogue and I commend him for doing that. I did not agree with what he did over the Iraq war, but I did agree with the fact that he was prepared to go to Iran and participate in that dialogue.

I hope that when the Minister replies, he will say that we are prepared to maintain dialogue with the Government of Iran; to co-operate in sending observers to future elections, if the Iranians are prepared to allow that, because it would be a helpful way forward; and to do what we can to take up individual cases of human rights abuse and individual cases in which people are wrongfully detained. Doing that will promote the development of the very strong civil society that has demonstrated itself on the streets of Tehran and the other cities in the past two weeks, and will help to develop the tolerant civil society that traditional Muslim countries have and the toleration that traditional Islam is all about. The Jewish community has always been present in Tehran; the Zoroastrians have always been there, as have people of many other faiths. There is much to be very proud of in the history of Iran and in the tolerance of ordinary people in Iran towards those of different faiths.

That is the message that we must send: one of sympathy, support and understanding, but above all condemnation of the abuses of human rights and the illegal and irrational imprisonment of people who are merely standing up for their cultural identity, their trade union rights or their right to demonstrate and express their political views.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on his speech. I agree entirely with its content and I congratulate him on his pronunciation of the Iranian names, which was far better than mine would be.

The subject of the debate is human rights in Iran. Let us be frank: there are no human rights in Iran unless people support the totally discredited President. That is the reality. This is not the first time that we have had such a debate. We have had many debates on this issue, because there is a band of Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords who have long been critics of the Iranian regime. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) made excellent points. He was right to remind hon. Members of a number of issues. I am not sure that I entirely agreed with every point that he made, but I agreed with the overall thrust of his argument.

I say to the Minister that the British Government’s policy of appeasement—oh, the Minister frowns at that, so I shall tell him precisely what I mean. The British Government’s policy of appeasement has had disastrous results. When the present Secretary of State for Justice was Foreign Secretary, whether he was guided by the retired former Prime Minister, I know not, but there certainly was a policy of appeasement, and it has had disastrous effects. Let the House be in no doubt at all about the election in Iran: it was a sham election. I assume that it was overseen by Mr. Mugabe—presumably he flew over personally to count the votes. It was an absolute sham. As a result of the British Government’s policy of appeasement, who did the Iranian religious leader immediately attack? The United Kingdom.

I agree with the hon. Member for Islington, North that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. I agree with part of his remarks about the retired President George W. Bush, but I also think that the British policy of appeasement has had disastrous results, and I stand here today as one of the people who listened to the former Prime Minister tell the House of Commons that weapons of mass destruction were aimed at us and other parts of the world. I believed everything that he said, and was misguided enough not to join the 18 of my colleagues who voted against that war, which has had disastrous consequences. In hindsight, it was Iran rather than Iraq that, with regard to nuclear weapons, was the real threat.

Let me return to the issue of human rights in Iran. There is no point in having debates in Westminster Hall unless the British Government listen to what we say and something happens; they must not only go through the motions. This issue has been raised countless times. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) and I turned up at a rally outside the United Nations. I think that we addressed a crowd of 4,000 people. We were demonstrating against the arrival of Mr. Ahmadinejad. The leaders in the west applauded his arrival; they now seem to have changed their view on that.

We are talking about a country in which more than 200 people have been killed by the Revolutionary Guard since 12 June. Several thousand people have been arrested following the nationwide uprising in mid-June. Since June, security forces have randomly attacked people in their homes. More than 1,000 hangings have taken place—34 people were hanged in the first four days of July 2009—and more than 1,700 death sentences have been issued since August 2005. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, more than 120,000 political prisoners have been executed—I repeat, 120,000. A further 500,000 Iranians have suffered torture in the regime’s notorious prisons. I could go on and on about those issues.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I support the Iranian opposition. One of the worst features of Iran is its attitude to capital punishment. It hangs juniors and it does so in public. It has the second-worst record after the Chinese. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way in which Iran could begin to prove that it is willing to engage is by doing something about its dreadful record?

I absolutely agree. Eighteen months ago we debated that very point in this Chamber, although another Minister responded—but there we are, that is the merry-go-round that we experience in Westminster.

I conclude with a plea to the Minister and his boss, the Foreign Secretary, as I am a born optimist. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Iranian resistance, has urged the west to reject the regime’s sham elections and the appointment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. She has also urged it to force the regime to accept a free UN-supervised election based on the people’s sovereignty, not the rule of the Supreme Leader. She has also suggested that we suspend all political and diplomatic ties with the mullahs’ regime until the suppression is completely stopped. She suggests that we impose a trade, diplomatic, arms and technology embargo on the regime and a foreign travel ban on its senior officials. Finally, she urges the UN Security Council to refer the crimes committed by the regime’s leaders—particularly Khamenei and Ahmadinejad—to an international tribunal.

The Minister frowns, and I accept that that is an extremely ambitious list—if he mentions it in his winding-up speech, he will probably say that it is not achievable. We will, however, have a general election before May or June next year, and the Government, who have made some terrible mistakes on all sorts of issues, now have an opportunity to do the right thing on human rights in Iran. As the hon. Members for Islington, North and for Montgomeryshire said, we are asking not for blind rhetoric—the time for that has passed—but for engagement. All that I am asking is that the Government speak up clearly to try to improve the human rights situation in Iran.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr. Chope. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on introducing the debate. I pay tribute to him for his work on the Baha’i community as chairman of the all-party group, and particularly for highlighting the case of the seven leaders of that faith who are languishing in prison awaiting news of their fate.

The debate is of course timely, as we reflect on the demonstrations that we have seen on our TV screens over the past few weeks since the presidential elections. However, it could have been held at any time in the past 30 years, and we have had many such debates in that time. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) reminded us, we could have debated these issues in the years before that time, when Iran was under control of the discredited Pahlavi regime, which had form on its human rights policy, given the role of SAVAK and other bodies.

The well-documented catalogue of abuses at the heart of the Iranian regime has been added to in the past few weeks. I have reflected on the need for dialogue and the case for it remains—jaw-jaw is better than war-war—but, to date at least, unless the Minister can suggest otherwise, our words have fallen on deaf ears. The Iranian regime had two strategies after the presidential elections, and the analogy that comes to mind is that of the stunned rabbit in the car’s headlights. The first strategy was to attribute democratic protests on the streets of Tehran to the British Government and western influences. That is an old tactic, which is not without foundation, given our history in Persia and Iran. In that respect, I would be interested to hear from the Minister about the state of the remaining local staff in our Tehran embassy. The treatment of our staff there is obviously part of a deliberate tactic to pass blame elsewhere.

The second strategy was to launch what can only be described as a savage attack on demonstrators and agents of free speech, and that has been the story of the past few weeks. We have heard of the alleged killings of 200 protesters. We have also heard about the historical context and the 120,000 members of the opposition who have lost their lives over the past 30 years. We are grateful to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the US State Department, as well as to the Foreign Office for the evidence that it collected in its 2007 report, which has been disseminated around the world. We are also grateful to the human rights monitoring lobby in Iran—or rather what is left of it, given that prominent members have been subjected to harassment and worse in recent weeks.

Last November, the UN General Assembly called for harassment, intimidation and the persecution of political opponents and human rights defenders to cease, and that is certainly necessary now. It also called on the Iranian Government to facilitate visits by human rights bodies, although I must say that I repeat that call with unwarranted optimism. I agree with what was said earlier about the need to have UN election supervisors in all countries, and that was certainly necessary in Iran’s elections. However, such calls will fall on deaf ears. So too, presumably, has the statement from the G8 Foreign Ministers meeting in Italy, which reaffirmed their belief in Iranian sovereignty, but made the case for human rights. I would be interested to hear what the Iranian Government’s response was, if there was one. Our Government have made 40 representations bilaterally and through the EU about specific human rights abuses in 2008.

I agree that we should not launch an attempt at poetic rhetoric, but we face a regime that is desperate to survive, and that need to survive has necessitated desperate measures. We have seen the forces of reform brutally repressed. There have been mass detentions; raids by the Revolutionary Guard and militia on university campuses; the closure of opposition newspapers; media restrictions that have made it difficult for journalists to report the protests first-hand; and attempts to close digital media. My goodness, if anything should make us grateful for digital technology, it is the hazy, fuzzy pictures that have come out of Tehran in recent weeks.

We have also seen the threats from the Iranian regime. There was the chilling warning from prosecutor Mr. Habibi, from Isfahan, who had no difficulty expounding his views in the Iranian media:

“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution”.

The unfortunate Miss Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old bystander in the protests, was shot dead on the streets of Tehran on 20 June, and another 200 people have met a similar fate. That is not to mention the countless arrests of major reformist politicians, clerics, student leaders, bloggers, journalists and human rights lawyers.

Like the hon. Member for Islington, North, I watched the coverage of the election campaign in the days before the vote and I had some optimism, despite being cynical about the Iranian regime by and large. It was good to see people on the streets talking and arguing. Mr. Mousavi’s credentials as a reformist are not particularly clear, but it was none the less good to see people on the streets. It was also good to see the Iranian footballers making their mark. We should remember, however, that Mr. Mousavi was one of four permitted candidates in the election and that the Council of Guardians did not allow the 450 other people who aspired to the job of Iranian President to stand. None the less, Mr. Mousavi did tap a mood for change, and I welcome the meetings and the debate that took place.

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that Mousavi’s campaign was different, in that the issue of women’s rights was raised for the first time in Iranian national politics and women spoke on platforms during his campaign?

I certainly endorse what the hon. Gentleman says. Mrs. Mousavi, in particular, had a proud record of standing up for Iranian women’s rights.

The upshot of recent events, however, is that the Government in Tehran will not go. Despite assertions that the turnout was high—I suspect that it was higher than in the previous election—it was a lot lower than people have suggested, and sufficient evidence is coming out of Iran to assert that there was vote rigging and the like. Those of who have had some interest in such matters in the past few years have battled against the media to bring to people’s attention what is going on in Iran and the extent of abuses. The events of the past few weeks have made the case, and there is no doubt about the human rights record. I reaffirm my belief in dialogue, and the Government should continue, through the EU and the UN, to declare the unacceptability of the state of human rights in Iran. However, we must be in no doubt about the regime. Even if there are reformist elements with the will to change things, there has not been an ability in Iran to abide by its own strictures. For example, there was a decree from the judiciary in October 2008 against the execution of juveniles, but there were reports of the execution of minors on 29 October and 30 December. There continue to be stonings, floggings, mutilation and arrest on the basis of political opposition, religious faith, sexuality or any criticism of the leadership.

Human Rights Watch noted:

“Instead of coming clean about what happened on the streets of Tehran on June 20th, Iran is busy covering up the responsibility of its security forces for the killing of demonstrators. It is clear that Iran’s supreme leader has sent a strong message to security forces to end the protests regardless of the level of violence involved.”

That is the hallmark of the regime, and it is why international pressure and dialogue must continue. I hesitate to go down the line pursued by the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). I agree with much of what he said. We are involved in the same group campaigning for human rights and change in Iran. I would hesitate to go down the route of economic sanctions, for the reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Islington, North. Given the history of the west in Iran we must tread carefully. However, at the very least I should like the United Nations Security Council to commit to an international tribunal the crimes against humanity that are happening in Iran. All of us, whatever our background, observing a country we love, whose sovereignty we respect, should none the less make our voices clear about what is happening in Iran, and its unacceptability.

I am grateful for an opportunity to speak in this important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on obtaining it. It could not be more timely. Frankly, we could have a daily debate on Iran, given the abuses of human rights and the violations that go on there. However, although talking among ourselves is okay up to a point, we want action.

I have been involved in Iranian issues for several years now. A frustrating thing was that although I thought the diaspora had very effective knowledge of the deficiencies in Iran—which was probably a reason for not living there—I wondered why the people who lived there did not do more to help themselves. Then I started to look at the repressive nature of the regime and began to understand why people who lived there were scared, and were afraid to do anything. If people can be detained in prison for something like turning up at an opposition rally, and can then be beaten and raped daily, it takes a brave person to stand up to the regime. That hideous repression is at so many levels in society that I suspect many people do not know who to trust or turn to.

With the enormous reaction to the stolen election in June, I began to feel that there was a spark of hope in Iran, and that we could have real change and perhaps bring down the regime and bring freedom to a people who deserve it. The hon. Gentleman said what a great people the Iranian people are. Yes, they are; it is the regime that is rotten and that needs changing, not the people. That is why I believe we must support the resistance movement that operates outside and within Iran.

On 1 July The Guardian gave an example of an 18-year-old, still in school, who turned up at an opposition rally. He was not really interested in politics, and his dad even supported the current President. The evidence was:

“ ‘I was kept in a van till evening that day and then transferred to a solitary cell where I was kept for two days,’ he said. ‘Then I was repeatedly interrogated, beaten and hung from a ceiling. They call it chicken kebab. They tie your hands and feet together and hang you from the ceiling, turning you around and beating you with cables.

‘They gave us warm water to drink and one meal a day. Repeated smacking was a regular punishment. In interrogations, they kept on asking if I was instructed from abroad. I believed I was going to be sent from the detention centre to prison. But they sent me to where they called Roughnecks’ Room…

‘I refused to confess during interrogations. They said: “Ask your friends what we’ll do to you if you don’t co-operate.” Others in the room were also arrested on 15 June. I was tempted to confess at this point but I didn’t. On the third and fourth day, they beat me up again. They insisted we were instructed from abroad…

‘It was on Saturday or Sunday that they raped me for the first time. There were three or four huge guys we had not seen before. They came to me and tore my clothes. I tried to resist but two of them laid me on the floor and the third did it. It was done in front of four other detainees.

‘My cell mates, especially the older one, tried to console me. They said nobody loses his dignity through such an act. They did it to two other cell mates in the next days.’ ”

I find reading that incredibly moving; to think that that is going on in another part of this world is appalling.

Executions have been mentioned. I have voted in favour of the death penalty in the past, but have now said that I would trade that in for the cessation of executions throughout the world, in places such as China and Iran. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) mentioned sexuality. When I looked at the evidence about two young boys being hanged in public, accused of being gay, I could not get over the depravity that is possible. The authorities wanted that made public as a warning to everyone else. Clearly, the public execution of teenagers has an enormous impact. There is stoning of women, and the treatment of women generally is appalling. When I and other hon. Members met Iranian politicians at an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference, thank goodness the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) was the leader of our delegation, and she put a forthright case about the maltreatment of women in Iran. Clearly the Iranian politicians did not like that, and they hid behind the mullahs on many an occasion. They have no hiding place, as far as I am concerned. If they are politicians they should stand up for the rights and freedoms of the people they represent.

The repression that has followed the elections has been mentioned in the debate, together with the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan. That 26-year-old lady is an icon at this moment for all people fighting for freedom, throughout the world where there are repression and hostilities. The latest instance to hit the headlines is in Urumqi in China. The shooting dead in cold blood of a young lady, full of hope, the way her family were told they could not have the funeral in a mosque, and that they should shut up about what had happened and must rip down the black flags indicating bereavement, outside their homes, shows the hideousness and the depths to which the regime will go to try to suppress the spirit within Iran. The spirit that we have seen in the past few weeks in Iran cannot be extinguished. The regime can suppress the people, but only in the short term. Their spirit can never be broken.

I believe that it is the duty of politicians in the free world—we who enjoy freedoms every day, and take them for granted—to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Iran in the struggle that they face. We must ensure that our Government and the Governments of all free countries do whatever they can, whether through dialogue or other sorts of action.

Fundamentally, we must see change. We must stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of a country who want the freedoms that we have. That is one reason why we were elected as Members, and I hope that the Government will be able today to give us some hope—hope that I am sure will be passed back to the people of Iran, through the technologies that have been mentioned, so that they can continue their struggle for freedom.

We now come to the wind-ups, for which we have half an hour. May I say to the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople that it is not necessary for them each to take the full 10 minutes if they do not wish to do so? If they take less than 10 minutes, it will give the Minister more time to respond to this important debate.

I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on securing this debate. He has a strong record of fighting for justice in Iran, particularly for the Baha’i, which was the focus of much of his remarks. Indeed, he chairs the all-party group Friends of the Baha’i. None the less, the debate was wide-ranging and dealt with various aspects of human rights in Iran.

All too often when discussing Iran, our thoughts turn to the important question of nuclear proliferation; it is particularly helpful that we find time to think also of human rights. I was moved by the contribution of the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) because, even in the language of human rights, it is sometimes easy to forget that we are talking about not only philosophical concepts but the horrific and unthinkable experiences of individuals in Iran and other countries, who do not have even the basic rights, which, getting up in the morning and going about our daily business, we too often take for granted. It is important to reflect upon that.

The debate is timely, given the protests over the Iranian election and the harsh repression of those protests. It is difficult to know the exact figures, but reports suggest that dozens of people have been killed and that possibly hundreds of protesters are still in prison, their families not necessarily knowing their fate. Those being held in prison do not even have good access to lawyers. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) and the hon. Member for Ribble Valley mentioned the case of Neda Soltan; those who have seen her image will find it for ever seared on their minds and consciousness as a symbol of repression. It is deeply concerning that someone should have suffered that fate.

There is a danger that when we in Parliament discuss human rights in Iran, or in any other country, it could be seen as meddling. However, in this case we are absolutely not meddling in Iran’s internal affairs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire pointed out, Iran has signed the universal declaration of human rights and the international covenant on civil and political rights. It therefore has an international obligation to uphold those conventions.

I call on our Government to uphold human rights when, in my view, they sometimes fail to do so—for example, their promotion of detention without charge and some of the murkier allegations made recently about torture and possible complicity in torture. We must be as rigorous in calling on our Government to uphold those international standards as we are with other Governments. By taking that equal and fair approach it is possible for us to call on other Governments to uphold their international obligations. That is what we hope to do.

I wholeheartedly endorse what was said by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn). If we are to ask other countries to accept international election observers we should be open enough to accept them here. Indeed, when we had difficulties with ballot papers in the Scottish elections in 2007, it might have helped if they had been here.

I know for certain that the Council of Europe would be delighted to receive an invitation from the Government to observe our next general election.

We can only hope that that suggestion is greeted positively by the Government.

We should remember that Britain’s influence in Iran is limited, especially as relations have deteriorated since the election, the worrying expulsion of British diplomats from Teheran and the arrest of the Iranian British officials. We need a degree of realism about what our Government can achieve. None the less, we still have bilateral relations, and we have relations through the European Union and the United Nations. We should use whatever influence we have to uphold human rights.

I have only a short time left, so I shall touch briefly on a number of matters. The lack of freedom of expression is one of the most concerning aspects of the denial of human rights. As has been pointed out, the lack of freedom of expression gets in the way of the upholding of many other rights, and the democratic system can fall apart.

I have to declare an interest, given that the debate is on human rights. I am a member of Amnesty International, which is fairly damning about Iran’s record on freedom of expression. In its 2009 report “State of the World’s Human Rights”, it says:

“The authorities maintained tight restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly. They cracked down on civil society activists, including women’s rights and other human rights defenders and minority rights advocates. Activists were arrested, detained and prosecuted, often in unfair trials, banned from travelling abroad, and had their meetings disrupted.”

That has come to fruition, as we saw recently on our television screens.

I hope that the Iranian media will one day be freer to report views and news that are different from those of the state media. Following the election, there has been an interesting development in the use of social media, which have been taken up in huge numbers by Iranians through blogging, Facebook and Twitter. That is handing power to ordinary people, enabling them to report what is happening and effectively giving all citizens the power to act as journalists. Crackdowns on the social media have been reported, so it is still a concern, but it is difficult to crack down on everyone, especially given the internet—as even the Chinese are finding. I believe that the internet will become an increasingly powerful tool for freedom, particularly in countries where there is repression. Those countries may employ thousands and thousands of people to crack down on its use, but ultimately they will be unsuccessful.

Jeremy Corbyn: I agree with the hon. Lady, but would she put strictures on Google and other operators that go along with regime interference and connive at censorship and repression of free speech?

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”, but there are certainly questions over whether collaborating in the repression of peoples’ freedom of expression would be living up to that motto.

I shall not rehearse all the arguments on freedom of religion. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire expertly described the situation with the Baha’i community, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious group. I have a small Baha’i community in Bearsden in my constituency, and I know that it shares our concerns for their detained leaders, particularly with the timing of the expected trial. I have written to the Foreign Secretary and the Iranian ambassador, asking them to apply pressure to get them a fair trial—and, indeed, their release. I have yet to receive a response, but our thoughts are with them. We must hope that true justice will prevail, but I am not overly optimistic about the outcome.

It is not only the Baha’i community that is discriminated against in Iran. Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians are recognised minorities under Iran’s constitution and are apparently protected by law, but they still experience discrimination. The case of the two Christian women being held in prison has been mentioned. Iranian Jews experience official discrimination. President Ahmadinejad is well-known for his anti-Semitic views and for holocaust denial. Religion is another worry.

Iran is one of only seven countries not to have signed up to or ratified the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. The others are Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, and the Polynesian islands of Tonga, Palau and Nauru. Family law imposes many restrictions on women; marital rape is not a crime; killings are regular; and the women’s rights groups that have tried to fight for equality have experienced a huge cracking down and imprisonment. That is a huge concern. I say that as the only woman speaking in this debate, but I am sure that hon. Gentlemen share my worries about the position of women in Iranian society. Furthermore, homosexuals regularly experience dreadful discrimination, and execution, in Iran, where more than 4,000 people have been executed for homosexuality since 1979. Worryingly, the UK Government still deport gay Iranians, despite the possible risk of imprisonment or execution in their home country. Although I do not have time to go into greater detail, I would welcome the Minister’s comments on these matters.

The horrendous execution of minors has already been mentioned. I am against the death penalty in all its forms, but the execution of minors is explicitly against international law. Even the Americans have stopped doing it since 2005. It is clearly unacceptable, and yet just this year three minors have been executed in Iran. So there is great concern on a range of human rights issues in Iran. I appreciate that the Government can bring limited influence to bear, but surely, given the importance of these humanitarian issues, we must continue to pursue all possible avenues to improve the human rights situation there.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Chope. I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on securing this important debate. Hon. Members might not know this, but last century, he and I were at Bristol university together: he was the chairman of the student union and I was the chairman of the Conservative association, and we had many lively debates. Since then, his has been a meteoric career, and I am delighted to see him in his place this morning.

I have waited 23 years to say this, but after all those disputes, and given that the hon. Gentleman has been so supportive and complimentary, I can finally forgive him.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those kind words; I shall mull them over and decide whether to forgive him.

I also welcome the Minister to his place. We were sparring partners when he was in the Treasury and I was a shadow Treasury spokesman, and I look forward to sparring with him now. I hope that he will enjoy some security of tenure, at least for a few months, in the Foreign Office. I say that in particular because we have just had news that Lord Malloch-Brown, a Foreign Office Minister, has announced his resignation from the Government. Perhaps this Minister will last a little longer.

Iran is an ancient civilisation that cannot easily be caricatured. It is a little-known fact that it can claim to have produced the earliest-known charter of human rights on earth, back in 539 BC. In this remarkable document, a copy of which hangs in the UN Security Council, the Persian King Cyrus states:

“Until I am alive, I prevent unpaid, forced labour… I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion. People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate others’ rights. No one could be penalised for his or her relative’s faults”.

The country is blessed with abundant natural resources, but suffers several daily power cuts. It has the world’s fifth-largest global oil reserve, but outside petrol stations, queues of cars continue often for half a mile. Its people have a thirst for change so telling that hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets to call for recounts after the recent elections, only to be ruthlessly crushed by the Government authorities. We witnessed masked paramilitaries roaming the streets on motorbikes chasing peaceful protesters, intimidating, hounding and beating them. We are still unaware of exactly how many protesters died.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), in his powerful speech, mentioned Neda, the 27-year-old music student, whom we saw, apparently shot by paramilitaries, lying bloodied on the street in Tehran. Her death was captured on video and beamed across the world in a day to millions of viewers. In many ways, she has become the icon of the clash between the old and the new in Iran. In the end, no Government can rule without consent, and this is a crisis of the regime’s making. Although it must be for Iranians to decide how Iran should be governed, it is the demands of ordinary Iranians to which the Iranian Government should respond, and they forget that at their peril.

British foreign policy towards Iran should always be based on a pragmatic and hard-headed assessment of where British interests lie. Although those interests lie in an Iran once again engaged in the mainstream of the international community, we should never lose sight of the fact that Iran has one of the worst human rights records in the world. It is ranked 145th out of 167 in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index. In the past few days, locally employed staff in the British embassy were taken captive without provocation. The unjustified harassment of staff from any embassy is a violation of diplomatic norms and utterly unacceptable. It is hard to know where to begin in the seemingly unending list of human rights abuses, a number of which were referred to by my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess).

The personal stories paint a powerful picture. Iranian authorities executed Delara Darabi in Rasht central prison on a Friday morning in May. Not only had there been no formal notification 48 hours before the hanging, as required under Iranian law, but just a fortnight earlier, Ms Darabi had been granted a two-month stay of execution by the head of the judiciary. The day before their daughter was walked to the gallows, her parents visited her in jail where she excitedly informed them that there was to be an appeal so that new evidence could be heard. Twenty-four hours later, she was dead. The Iranian people responded with huge internet campaigns and mass demonstrations—a powerful expression of disapproval of the regime.

It is evident that Iran’s head of judiciary has little ability to control his own judges. Nevertheless, I urge him to act before any of the other 130 juvenile offenders on death row are executed. The international community has a clear duty to take a stand against an act that we all agree is wrong, and the message to the Iranian regime must be clear: its actions have consequences. Amnesty International regularly reports that trial hearings are often heard in private and that political detainees are denied access to legal counsel, often despite assurances to the contrary. It is ironic that when one visits Tehran, the Iranians talk with great pride about how there are designated seats in the Majlis for representatives of the Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian minorities. That must be contrasted with the appalling apostasy laws that still exist in the provinces, and the ruthless treatment of members of the Baha’i faith, whose leaders are even now imprisoned without trial, possibly awaiting charges for which, if found guilty, they could face a capital penalty. I pay tribute to the strong case made on their behalf by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire in his capacity as the chairman of the all-party Friends of the Baha’is group.

Even the designated non-Islamic religions face persecution. According to the last US State Department report on religious freedoms, there was an exponential rise in officially sanctioned anti-Semitic propaganda, including official statements, media outlets, publications and books. So-called President-elect Ahmadinejad still pursues a virulent and outrageous anti-Semitic campaign, regularly questioning the existence of the holocaust. He also persists in chauvinistic remarks and has vetoed Bills designed by the seventh Majlis to improve the position of women.

Gender inequality and discrimination are widespread, and are perpetuated by Iran’s constitutional structures. In Iran today, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s; compensation payable to the family of a female victim of a crime is half that of a man’s family; boys inherit double what girls receive; and securing a divorce and custody of children is near-impossible for a woman. However, despite all the constitutional discrimination set against them, we again see the spirit and determination of the Iranian people themselves: two-thirds of students are women, and there are female MPs, doctors, policewomen and taxi drivers, and some 97 per cent. of women can read and write, which is one of highest literacy rates in the middle east.

Iran’s leaders face a clear choice. Either they can accept the United States’ offer of engagement and negotiation, which means dramatically improving their human rights record and suspending their nuclear program, or they can face international isolation, economic stagnation and a tightening of international sanctions. We hope that they see it as in the long-term interests of Iran and its people to choose the former.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on securing this Adjournment debate. I know that it is often said that he champions minority causes, but the House is a place in which such voices should be heard. The issue under debate is of particular importance. The hon. Gentleman specifically drew our attention to the plight of the Baha’i community in Iran. Its seven leaders go on trial this weekend. It is probably appropriate that all we do at this stage is demand maximum transparency and openness in the way in which that trial is conducted. The judicial process should be conducted along the lines of international best practice, and international observers should be allowed to witness every conceivable stage of those court proceedings. For reasons that I hope the hon. Gentleman will understand, it is probably best that I leave it at that. We will be keeping a close eye on proceedings to ensure that the leaders of the Baha’i community are treated appropriately and properly.

Hon. Members have referred to the recent elections in Iran. Although it is not for Britain to determine the outcome of such elections, it is for us to say that the will of the Iranian people must prevail. Moreover, it is entirely appropriate to say that the reaction to those who felt motivated to go on to the streets to demonstrate against the outcome of that election was entirely unacceptable. The arrest of protesters and the alleged violent assaults against those who dared to question the result of the election is not acceptable in any country that claims to have been through a democratic process.

Going back to what the Minister said about the Baha’is on trial this weekend, I understand why he takes his position. However, will he assure me that his Department will make a formal submission of that kind to the Iranian authorities? I am not asking him to go further than he has done in his comments, but I should be grateful if he made that as a formal submission through the usual channels.

I will certainly make that submission through the relevant international institutions—whether it is the EU or the UN. We have made it very clear that we want to see that happen, but it is probably best that that is done through those international institutions in this particular case.

Going back to the elections, the will of the people must prevail. The regime’s reaction to the protests following the elections is not acceptable, especially given the fact that it claims to have been through a democratic process. Part of going through a democratic process is being willing to allow people to express their objections and concerns about the outcome. The reaction of the regime is not very encouraging, particularly in the context of the recent positive overtures from the President of the United States of America, and our own Prime Minister, both of whom have said that they are willing to engage with Iran, but that it has to make fundamental choices. For example, as a nation, does it wish to become part of the mainstream international community, or does it want to remain on the margins, as defined by its human rights and other internal issues? Its recent behaviour in the aftermath of the recent elections cannot be encouraging for any hon. Member of this House who genuinely wants to see progress based on mutual respect, engagement and diplomatic processes.

Let me speak now about the human rights situation, then I will deal with the points that have been raised. Iran’s human rights record is well documented. It has consistently deteriorated over the past few years. It has the highest execution rate per capita of any country worldwide, and juvenile executions continue apace. Despite Iran’s history of tolerance and the rich and diverse mix of religious and ethnic groups that make up Iranian society, religious and ethnic minorities are subject to persecution, intimidation, arbitrary detention and denial of education. Even before the recent unrest began, the Iranian authorities had arrested large numbers of teachers, women’s rights activists, students, trade unionists and ethnic minorities on charges of propaganda against the Islamic Republic, acting against national security and organising illegal gatherings. That was all part of a rigid clampdown on any form of dissent, opposition or peaceful organised protest.

In the aftermath of the elections, people’s right of free assembly has been effectively withdrawn. Such actions are entirely unacceptable, and the European Union has made that abundantly clear to the Iranian authorities. Hard-line cleric Ayatollah Khatami’s call for those involved in recent protests to be

“dealt with severely and shown no mercy”

is cause for serious concern.

We have heard about a number of examples of human rights abuses that cannot be tolerated. They include the arbitrary use of the death penalty; juvenile executions; persecution of minorities, whether religious minorities or minorities based on sexual orientation; the denial of people’s right to express themselves freely; and the treatment of women in Iranian society. None of those issues is consistent with the stance of a country that wants to move from the margins of the international community to the mainstream. It is appropriate that at every opportunity this House shines a light on those human rights abuses and supports those who argue that there is serious need for reform in Iran. We must also recognise that it is the people of Iran who should be leading that call for reform with the international community in support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) talked about trade unions in Iran and the fact that they are not allowed to organise in a free and effective way. The symbol of any civilised society is the ability of trade unions to fulfil their functions in that way. My hon. Friend is mistaken in suggesting that the west—whether it is the United States or Britain—is responsible for the actions of the Iranian Government. That lets them off the hook and plays into the hands of the propagandists in the Iranian regime. We must make it clear that it is the Iranian regime that has primary responsibility for the way in which it behaves towards its own citizens and the rest of the international community. We should not allow it to be said that it is our foreign policy that legitimises and justifies the behaviour of Iran or any similar regime.

Moreover, I totally reject the notion that we have ever tried to appease Iran. We have tried to engage with it, and that is the appropriate thing to do. It is regrettable that the Iranian regime turned its back on that offer of engagement. Let us hope that it does not make that mistake again following the offer that has come from the new President of the United States. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) suggested that we have specifically appeased President Ahmadinejad. However, it was the UK ambassador who led the walk-out at the recent conference in Durban, when Ahmadinejad repeated his vile anti-Semitism, his unjustifiable denial of the holocaust and his suggestion that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. It is this country that has constantly condemned that kind of behaviour and rhetoric from Ahmadinejad.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) raised the question of our local staff in the Iranian embassy. One member of staff is still being held and we are hopeful that, through dialogue with the Iranian authorities, that individual will be released soon. There is no justification or excuse either for any of our staff to be held a minute longer in Iran or for the suggestion that we as a country were responsible for whipping up the public reaction after the election.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on his passionate and authentic speech, which he turned into a human story. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) focused on freedom of speech issues and the attack on minorities. I agree with most of the contribution of the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois). As he said, we enjoyed jousting in our previous roles, and I look forward to doing the same in our new roles.

It is essential that we make it clear where we stand on the abuse of human rights in Iran, which is totally unacceptable and not the behaviour of a country that seeks to come into the mainstream. We urge the regime to take a different path. If it does, it will find a willingness to engage in a constructive and positive way.

The effects of bullying on children can be devastating. Their mental and physical health can be destroyed, their self-esteem may be devastated, and they may even contemplate suicide. The fear of being bullied is a major reason for unauthorised absence from school, with all the effects that that can have on life chances.

The Cambridge-based charity, Red Balloon, which provides education and support for bullied children who have excluded themselves from mainstream education and helps them to recover and re-enter mainstream education, has helped many young people whose physical and mental health has been wrecked by bullying. I pay tribute to that charity, and I shall draw the Minister’s attention to three of its cases to illustrate what we are dealing with.

The first case is of a girl who was beaten up and locked in a toilet in primary school. That induced a complete physical and mental breakdown. Aged 11, she was admitted to an adolescent mental health unit. She was barely able to walk and suffered from a facial palsy, and had such low self-esteem that she refused even to have her photograph taken.

A second girl stopped going to primary school when she was eight after she had been humiliated and called names. She was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis and spent the next five years at home, receiving no education of any sort from the local authority. When she came to the charity aged 13, she was unable to read or write.

The third example is of a boy who was extremely badly bullied, constantly, over a long period. He was often surrounded and taunted by groups of boys. On occasion, he would lose his temper and fly into a rage, which just encouraged his tormentors to continue. Finally, one day he lifted a chair and threw it at them, and he was the one who was excluded.

All three of those stories end well. The first girl, within six weeks of receiving the specialist care and attention that she required, had recovered to the extent that the palsy had gone, she no longer limped and she was smiling. It was found that she had an excellent singing voice. Nine months later, she was performing solos in front of hundreds of people. She is now at sixth form college, and her mother says she is flying.

The second girl recovered to the extent that she is also at sixth form college doing A-levels. The boy, in the safe environment with which he was provided and the calm in which he could get on with his studies, did well and subsequently went into a good job.

However, many such stories do not end so well. Children exclude themselves from school for years and end up with no qualifications or, worse, they suffer lasting damage to their mental health and educational achievement. Of course, the most serious outcome is suicide, and such cases appear in the media from time to time. It is difficult to design studies to show a causal link between bullying and suicide, but a review of 37 studies from 13 countries by Kim and Leventhal of Yale medical school showed that bullied children were far more likely than normal—nine times more likely according to one study—to think about killing themselves.

My question for the Minister is this: what can the Government do to help bullied children and, in particular, should the Government be counteracting some of the tendencies in school funding that might act against the interests of bullied children? The first point to make is that there is uncertainty about how many children are affected by bullying to the extent that they miss school. The official returns concerning school absences do not include bullying as an official category, so we have to rely on unofficial research.

Research by Beatbullying, another organisation that does very good work on bullying, including in Cambridge, has estimated that 170,000 absences a day are caused by bullying, which amounts to about 20 daily absences in a school of 1,000 pupils. I do not know whether that is correct, but even a tenth of that number would be something to worry about. Red Balloon believes that anything up to 6,000 young people nationally could be in need of the sort of service that it provides, but we do not know for certain.

That is worrying because of the way in which provision for children not in school is funded. The Government intend that, by September this year, all secondary schools will be part of school behaviour partnerships, which will deal, among other things, with the question of absences from school and the commissioning of services to deal with them. In addition, encouraged by the Government, local authorities are increasingly devolving spending decisions on what services to provide for children not in school to those partnerships, via the devolution of funding to schools.

I am not against devolution of budgetary power and responsibility to schools. Indeed, this debate gives me the opportunity to commemorate one of the pioneers of local financial management of schools, the former leader of the Alliance group on Cambridgeshire county council, Peter Lee, who sadly died on election day this year. Peter understood that there are serious difficulties inherent in, and therefore limits to, local financial management. One difficulty with such local financial management is that it could accidentally give schools an incentive to reduce costs by reducing quality. There has to be something in the system to counteract that tendency. I am concerned that schools and partnerships could have an incentive in the system as it has been set up, to deny the extent of the problem of bullying, especially given the lack of official information.

It is important to understand that many children who are excluding themselves because of bullying do not have statements and, unlike the boy I mentioned, have not been excluded formally from school, so it is very difficult for them to show up in the numbers and easy for them to slip through the cracks. I do not want to make accusations against specific local authorities or imply that some councils are more prone to that behaviour than others, but my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) was told by her local authority that there were no known cases of pupils dropping out of school because of bullying. I cannot see how that contention is believable.

In addition, the devolution of budgets might add to an existing pressure on local authorities to adopt the view that everything necessary in the field of bullying can be achieved by preventive measures, which tend to be much cheaper than the kind of services that are required to recover children from serious bullying after it has happened. Some very good organisations work to prevent bullying. I mentioned Beatbullying, whose interventions can reduce bullying by up to 40 per cent., but I should also mention Stonewall, which deals particularly with homophobic bullying, which is the second most frequent form of bullying of schoolchildren, behind bullying about body shape and ahead of racial bullying. Stonewall reports that homophobic bullying can be 40 per cent. lower in schools that have adopted policies expressly against homophobia and in which students take part in lessons in which the equality of rights for gay people is discussed. Many other organisations do excellent work on preventing bullying. However, none of those organisations would say that it is possible entirely to prevent bullying or that we will be able at some point entirely to dispense with the services of organisations such as Red Balloon, which deals with children who have been seriously bullied.

Red Balloon’s mission is to recover such children and return them to mainstream education. The problem is that recovery is an expensive business, costing about £15,000 per pupil per year. I fear that schools and partnerships will feel under pressure not to refer pupils to such provision. We already see that sort of thing happening in parts of the country. Of course, the cost pales into insignificance when compared to the cost of not intervening, and it is important to stress that the kind of programme offered by Red Balloon is effective. Attendance levels are very high, and many of the pupils, like those I mentioned, go on to sixth-form education or further education, back into mainstream school or into employment. The success rate is high, as is the percentage of pupils gaining five A* to C-grade GCSEs.

By contrast, more conventional pupil referral units, to which such children might otherwise be referred, have very low rates of exam success. As the Government themselves say, only 1 per cent. of such pupils gain five A* to C GCSEs. It should be stressed that bullied children—it is important to remember that they are the victims of bad behaviour and not its instigators—are likely to find conventional pupil referral units at least as frightening as conventional school, meaning that such units are not the appropriate way forward.

As I see it, the problem is that the structure developed by the Government might disadvantage bullied children in two ways. It lumps them in, perhaps inappropriately, with children who have very different types of problem but who might well have access to additional resources because they have statements and the bullied children do not. It also encourages the false belief that there is no need to spend heavily on recovering bullied children and that everything can be done through prevention.

What can be done about that? I accept that the Secretary of State cannot and should not attempt to run every school in the country and that local policy making is vital, but there are three things that I suggest central Government can appropriately do.

First, the Government could bring together existing research and new authoritative research on the extent of the problem of self-exclusion because of bullying, so that schools and local authorities tempted to deny the existence or the extent of the problem can be challenged. A local authority or school that claims that none of its pupils has ever refused to come to school because of bullying should be open to legitimate challenge on the basis of established facts.

Secondly, there should be advice to schools and behaviour partnerships about the particular needs of bullied children. Such advice should point out the devastating costs not only of failing to prevent bullying, but of failing to offer effective routes to recovery to children who have been seriously bullied.

Thirdly, the Government should consider whether a policy aimed principally at changing the behaviour of disruptive pupils on the basis that, to quote the White Paper “Back on Track”,

“Primary responsibility for good behaviour sits with young people themselves”,

is at all adequate to meet the needs of bullied children, who are the victims of bad behaviour, not its perpetrators. If Beatbullying is right that one-third of unauthorised absences are caused by bullying, perhaps the central assumption of the Government’s policy must change. The costs of bullying are great to both society and victims. In some cases, it is literally a matter of life or death. I appeal to the Government to do more for victims.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr. Chope. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) on securing this important debate. We all know that he has been assiduous in pursuing the issue over a considerable period.

Bullying is hugely important. The only point that I would add to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks is that it is important not only because of the child being bullied but because of the bully. Sometimes that aspect is ignored. If somebody is allowed to continue to bully, that clearly damages the person being bullied—as the victim, they must be at the centre of our thoughts—but we must address the bully’s concerns as well.

The three cases that the hon. Gentleman referred to are absolutely appalling. They are only three out of numerous examples that could be found across the country. I am a former deputy head teacher and used to be responsible for trying to deal with such issues. I was not the most brilliant history teacher in the world; others were good at that. I was much better at dealing with the difficult disciplinary and behaviour situations that others would rather somebody else dealt with. I enjoyed it.

One important thing that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was name-calling. There is nothing more hurtful or damaging than name-calling. It is sometimes regarded as only a bit of fun or a throwaway remark, but name-calling is hugely damaging. It is an important example of bullying and should be taken very seriously. If bullying in the form of name-calling is not dealt with quickly, it can become much more serious for the person doing the name-calling and, more importantly, for the individual being bullied.

Before I move to the formal part of my remarks, I will respond to the three points that the hon. Gentleman made at the end, so I do not lose them. I will say something about what we are seeking to do in order to collect more accurate information about the number of young people in school who are being bullied or who self-exclude. Should we go ahead with our plans, as I think we will, there will be a consultation, and he may well wish to make the point in consultation that it is not only about who schools think is absent because of bullying; it is also about people who appear to be absent for other reasons when in fact they are excluding themselves. That is an important point to make.

I will write to the hon. Gentleman after checking what advice we send to schools and what guidance we send to behaviour partnerships. I am not clear whether we are as forthright as we need to be or how up-to-date the guidance is, so I will have a look at it. Otherwise, it is pointless having debates such as this one.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the position of a pupil who is out of school and in trouble with their school due to being bullied is different from that of a pupil who is out of school and in trouble with their school because they are difficult or have behavioural problems. One challenge for our education system and for any Government is how to distinguish between all the different reasons why individuals present problems in schools. If alternative provision is required, as it sometimes is, we must find a way to determine the most appropriate provision for the individual. Of course a child being bullied has different needs from a child excluded for other reasons. He is right to make that point. I would extend it, and he can probably think of other examples where that is the case.

In the best alternative provision, many local authorities take that into consideration. I cannot say that the situation will change overnight, but it is something of which I am acutely aware. When talking to pupil referral units and alternative provision with local authorities and others, I will make the point that they should not tar everyone with the same brush. Different young people in different circumstances have different needs.

The fundamental aim must be to get such children back into mainstream education. That is not always possible, but it should always be the aim. Such places should have a revolving door, as far as is possible. I am not stupid about these matters and understand that that is not always possible, but we must ensure that people who have had problems because they have been bullied are not simply left somewhere. They must be monitored, worked with and given the education that they deserve, with the objective of bringing them back into mainstream education. I hope that those opening remarks are helpful in responding directly to the hon. Gentleman’s points.

Bullying is an important subject. I have just been to a meeting of the Children, Schools and Families Committee. The hon. Gentleman may know that we are discussing the introduction of a school report card. Those who want to have a go at the report card ask why it refers to pupil well-being, when parents want to know about a school’s standards in reading and writing, how good it is at getting pupils through GCSEs, what academic breadth it offers and so on. However, I believe fundamentally that parents also want to know whether the school is safe for their children and whether it has an ethos that tackles bullying, whether it is racist, homophobic or in any other form. The schools that have good policies on such matters and can reassure parents that they can deal with those problems are usually the schools that are well regarded. They are also often the schools that have good exam results. He may want to read the debate on the report card that we are seeking to introduce, because it explores what schools should be about as well as academic results.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I take bullying seriously and I am grateful to him for raising the subject. Like him, the Government recognise that bullying is a corrosive problem that can steal years from a young person’s life if it is not acted against quickly. That is why we have made it clear and I repeat today that bullying is not and never will be acceptable in the classroom. As he knows, we are working closely through the national strategies and the Anti-Bullying Alliance to equip local authorities, schools and teachers with the information they need to deal with the problem. We are also giving staff the practical skills they need to challenge physical and verbal abuse through guidance such as “Safe to Learn”. All such support is aimed at preventing bullying from taking place.

Where abuse persists, we must ensure that young people are given the help and support they need immediately. As the hon. Gentleman said, that means having high-quality provision across the country, not just in some parts. He mentioned Red Balloon centres, which provide the high-quality provision for pupils that should be available when then they need it. There is a legal duty on all local authorities to provide suitable education for pupils who cannot attend a mainstream or special school, whether through an appropriate alternative unit or through a voluntary or private sector provider such as Red Balloon.

The Government cannot and should not decide exactly what types of provision should be used in individual cases, as the hon. Gentleman accepted. Such decisions should be made at local level by those who are closest to the pupil and their family, because they are the professionals who know what the young person needs and when they need it. However, I recognise the tension that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. He is probably a stronger localist than I am—I am not sure about you, Mr. Chope—but one problem is that when the Government back off and leave such matters to local bodies and that does not work, people say that the Government should intervene. On the other hand, when the Government do intervene, people say that they should get out of it and let local people get on with it. That is not a sarcastic remark because there is a real tension between the central and the local directions; it was ever thus and it probably always will be. Nevertheless, the Government should be concerned about the variability of provision and try to do something about it.

We cannot say from Westminster what sort of provision an individual pupil in any given town, city or rural area needs. Funding for alternative provision should therefore be left to those on the ground. Even if we were to direct the investment in individual providers, however well intentioned that might be, it could distort the alternative provision market, giving providers who receive Government funding an unfair advantage over those that do not. Red Balloon has an opportunity to market itself and the hon. Gentleman has done his best to market it, not in the bad sense of the word, but in its proper sense. The Secretary of State has written to authorities in a number of areas—for example, in South Yorkshire—urging them to consider the opportunities that the charity might offer.

I will briefly discuss how local authorities obtain alternative provision. Some authorities are worried about getting funds back from schools to help the pupils who have fallen out of mainstream education. The School Finance (England) Regulations 2008 were introduced to ensure that local authorities can access funding to set up such provision, but local authorities do not often make use of that. Local authorities, not only in Cambridge, should remember that those regulations give them the power to withdraw funding from a school when one of its pupils enters alternative provision. They also allow local authorities to retain funding centrally for alternative provision.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the commissioning of research into the number of children and young people who are out of school because of bullying. He has discussed the matter with the Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who has since become the Speaker, and Dr. Herbert recently. We are considering the feasibility of such research and intend to introduce a statutory duty on schools to record incidents of bullying between pupils. We hope to consult on whether a further duty should be introduced for schools to report all bullying incidents to their local authorities and we will consider whether the types of bullying should be recorded, such as whether it relates to race, sexual orientation or disability. The hon. Gentleman might wish to respond to the full public consultation that we plan to hold on the draft regulations later this year. We expect them to come into force early next year.

Such regulations will underscore the fundamental principle that bullying is simply not acceptable. That is why there is a clear legal duty on schools to have policies in place to prevent and tackle bullying. We expect schools to apply disciplinary sanctions to bullies. That is the other side of the coin.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured by my brief comments that as the Minister with responsibility for this area, I take bullying seriously. I accept the three points he made and will pursue them. I hope that he is reassured that we are looking again at the statistics.

I thank the Minister for his remarks. I am reassured that he and the Government are taking this issue seriously. He can rest assured that I am glad of the progress that is being made.

That is a constructive and helpful comment. No hon. Member wants any young person to be bullied. My concern is the variability in provision across the country, which should not exist. Notwithstanding the point I made about localism, it is right of the Government to ensure that there is adequate provision across the country. We must ensure that alternative provision is tailored to the individual needs of the pupil as far as possible.

I feel passionately about alternative provision for young people and it is clear that the hon. Gentleman does too. It is the sign of a good society that as well as caring passionately about the academic achievement in its schools, it thinks about what it can do for those who struggle, however that struggle is brought about. From my experience as a deputy head, raising standards in difficult schools, when the young people with particular problems are dealt with in a caring way, achievement goes up. Schools that do that are the ones the parents want to send their children to. My message to schools is, let us see what more we can do together to tackle this serious problem.

This is a very sombre moment, Mr. Chope. We have heard of the unprecedented deaths of seven of our soldiers within seven days. All our emotions are churned up by that, and there is sadness at the brutal deaths of seven unique young men. There is admiration for their bravery and professionalism, which we all salute, but there is also anger at some of the political decisions that have been made, which have led us to the carnage of NATO and Afghan civilians on a scale that was not anticipated.

We have heard today, from the new Secretary of State, that he will be resolute in the face of the situation. I believe that we are on the point of change in public opinion, in the same way that there was a change in public opinion in America when the body bags were returning in large numbers from the Vietnam war. I believe that public opinion will be tested and that the public will ask why this country should pay a disproportionate share of what is known as the blood price in Afghanistan. That, I do not believe, will be tolerated, and I believe that other questions will be asked about whether we can continue and tolerate deaths on such a scale.

The Secretary of State today said: “For Britain to be secure, Afghanistan must be made secure”. That is a repeat of comments made by past Secretaries of State, meaning that there is somehow a threat of terrorism to Britain because of the Taliban. That is part of the canard that it is much easier, or more plausible, to repeat old myths than to reveal a new truth. That is a myth: there has never been any Taliban plot against any western European city. There have been al-Qaeda plots, and the two are conflated, but there is no risk to us from the Taliban.

As was vividly revealed in James Fergusson’s book “A Million Bullets”, the Taliban are fighting us because we are the farangi—the foreigners—in their country; they are fighting a jihad to expel us from their country. James Fergusson tells a story about a conversation he had with a top leader of the Taliban, who told him, “I’ve got three small children, but I don’t visit them very often because I don’t want to love them, or for them to love me, because if they do it’ll be a greater loss when I die.” James Fergusson asked him, “Do you want to die?”, to which he replied, “Of course I want to die; I want to die like my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather died, fighting in a jihad against the farangi.” That is why they are fighting us. Their ambitions and their antagonism to us do not stretch beyond their own lands. They also made the point to James Fergusson that, “We are fighting you.” They would not kill him because of their tradition of hospitality and courtesy to strangers, but they asked him, “Wouldn’t you fight people who came to your land and killed your wives and children?” That is the reality of the position that we are in.

I shall concentrate on Helmand, because I believe that what happened there was a great turning point. I am grateful to see here in the Chamber my right hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), who was the Minister answering a debate on this subject in March 2006. I am not one to attack him or any other Minister, but having gone through the wonderful pack that the Library has prepared for the debate, which gives details of all the debates on this issue in recent years, I see one compelling truth: the Government and the main Opposition have always been wrong in their forecasts, and the critics have nearly always been right.

The intervention in Helmand took place in 2006, at which time the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), said that he hoped it would last for only three years and that not a shot would be fired. That phrase will be part of our history for a long time. To be fair to him, he pointed out the dangers, but his view was that the British should go there to ensure that reconstruction could take place, and that if there was any shooting to be done, it would be done by the Americans. However, others took a different view at that time. In a 2008 debate on this issue, it was said that what we were doing was as futile and as dangerous as the charge of the Light Brigade. This time it was

“Bush to the left of them,

Blair to the right of them,

Hollered and thundered,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die,

Into the valley of the shadow of death

Into the mouth of Helmand

Drove the five thousand.”

Those words were described as an exaggeration, but we now know that, since Helmand, more people have died there than died in the charge of the Light Brigade. At that time, the war, or intervention, in Afghanistan was going fairly well. Only seven British soldiers had died in five years, and five of those were in accidents, but since Helmand, 176 British lives have been lost. It was said then that we were stirring up a hornets’ nest, and that is what happened, but the Government blundered on, and the lives of our British troops have been sacrificed because of that.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman heard Prime Minister’s questions today; did he notice that the Leader of the House refused to call the engagement a war, and twice called it a mission instead? Would he, like me, feel more comfort if there was a definite, well-planned exit strategy for this war? Does he agree that other NATO countries, particularly our European neighbours, are not sharing their part of the burden in front of the fire?

We do not have wars any more; we rarely declare war, so the nomenclature that we use is misleading. But, certainly, by any standards, this is a war. We have always had an excessive share of the burden—quite unreasonably. We are not the policemen of the world, and our young men are not there to be slaughtered in order to correct every injustice that takes place in the world.

I am a member of the Western European Union, and I have spoken about this issue in Hungary and several other countries in Europe, including France and Germany. The view there is that they will not go to Afghanistan to do the dying. They will go there to do police work and other jobs, but they will not put their young soldiers at risk of being killed in a war that they know to be futile. I think we should accept that view. Some people did not accept that a year ago, but I believe that everyone accepts it now.

In 2006, there were voices—not just politicians’—saying that what was being done would be a calamity, and was a mistake that would rank in British history as having been as bad as Suez and the UK’s decision to join Bush’s war in Iraq. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who led 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand, before the real trouble began said:

“There is not to my mind an insurgency in Helmand. But we can create one if we want to.”

It was a peaceful area, and we created the insurgency by our presence there in 2006. Ministers sleepwalked into the hornets’ nest of Helmand and changed what was a manageable situation in Afghanistan into one that is now unwinnable.

After eight years, what progress have we made? What is this brave new world of Afghanistan that we are now asking our soldiers to die for? Certainly, there have been advances, for example, worthwhile advances in education, particularly in the education of girls. There is a frail embryo democracy and there has been some reconstruction, but the democracy itself is so frail and fragile that the Economist Intelligence Unit classified it as the 134th least democratic nation out of 167 countries. Progress has been painfully slow.

Corruption—to clean out the state—was one of the reasons that we went in there. Integrity Watch Afghanistan tells us that of the $25 billion given in aid to Afghanistan only $15 billion have been spent and for every $100 that have been spent, only $20 reached the Afghan recipient. However, there has been an extraordinary increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires in Kabul and those two events are connected. Transparency International UK points out that Afghanistan has slipped from being 119th in the international table of corruption to 154th out of 159 countries. So, we have gone backwards in that area.

President Karzai’s half brother, Wali Karzai, is head of Kandahar’s provincial council and is widely believed to be the source of drug trafficking and trade eastward beyond Kandahar. Many people in the Afghan Government and many of the provincial leaders are up to their neck in the drugs trade. What progress have we made in human rights that justifies us calling our young men to go to Afghanistan to die? Karzai refused a pardon to a young man who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for accessing an article on women’s rights on the internet. However, Karzai did pardon a group of young men who were found guilty of gang-raping a 13-year-old girl. Those trials are very rare in Afghanistan because if such a case comes before the courts, it usually means the disgrace of the victim. Yet, he pardoned those who gang-raped a 13-year-old girl. A law to legalise rape in marriage was approved by Karzai in spite of western protests, and a father murdered his daughter for having a passing acquaintance with a NATO soldier. The Afghan Government refused to intervene because it was an honour killing.

The very distinguished woman MP in Afghanistan, who has now been suspended from Parliament, Malalai Joya, visited this country last year to accept a human rights prize. Her judgment is that the rights of women in Afghanistan now are worse than under the Taliban. Is it really sensible to ask our soldiers to die for those human rights, which are the result of eight years of our presence there?

On drugs, Tony Blair was fond of saying that Afghanistan was a terrible state because 90 per cent. of the drugs on the streets of Britain came from there. I have heard almost every Secretary of State down the years say exactly the same thing. In some years, we have spent £90 million of our taxpayers’ money and in some years, up to £260 million of taxpayers’ money to eradicate drugs. That is British money. We led the field in the elimination of drugs. However, the result is that we have had the three biggest harvests of drugs ever in Afghanistan and the money spent has made no difference. There has been no reduction; the only reduction that takes place is when the price of wheat goes up and there is a higher market for that. The market for heroin is flooded throughout the world. There has been one change as a result of the misuse of taxpayers’ money: the price of heroin on the streets of this capital and every capital in the world has gone down and it is much easier for people to become drug addicts.

When David Loyn recently gave evidence to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, he said that 60 per cent. of the police in Afghanistan are heroin addicts and virtually all members of the Afghan army use cannabis. Those are our allies in our war against drugs. Afghanistan drug exports are worth £3.4 billion. For a cut of that, the Afghan officials and the police allow free passage along their roads. They allow public land to be used for growing drugs and they protect the drug dealers. The main source of the Taliban’s funding, which is certainly hundreds of millions of dollars, comes from the drug barons. They come to the Taliban and the money is used to buy weapons to attack our troops. Does anyone seriously believe that such an anti-drugs policy can ever change or be successful? Such a policy has failed for everyone during the past eight years—in fact, the money has had no effect whatsoever. The market out there is untouched by our interventions and activities—it is a hopeless cause.

We could all acknowledge that we cannot win by military means in Afghanistan, and that we have to win by persuading the Afghans that we are there for their own good. We need to win the battle for hearts and minds. I have received a reply today from the new Secretary of State for Defence that points out that we do not collect statistics on the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. However, as far as we can, we should do that because every one of those deaths is a problem to us and every one of those deaths means a family that is hostile to the mission of NATO. Happily for us, the United Nations calculates that just last year, 826 civilian casualties resulted from NATO activity and 1,160 civilian casualties resulted from the activities of the insurgents. We know that all those deaths are a defeat to us. Will we now learn the lesson—perhaps the Americans have—that hearts and minds cannot be won by bombs and bullets?

Another independent source of information on Afghanistan is UNICEF, which points out the sad fact that hundreds of schools have been closed in the south and that most of the country’s polio cases are in the same region. Where there is a lack of security, vaccination dives. Afghanistan has the world’s third highest child mortality rate, with 257 in 1,000 children dying before they are five. Only two other nations in the world are worse. Afghanistan also has the world’s second highest maternity mortality rate with around one in eight women dying because of child birth and, according to UN figures, most cases are preventable. Those are horrific pictures. Considering the amount of money—the great tsunami of dollars and pounds that have been poured into the country—things have not got better; in many areas they have got worse.

We have discussed the terrorist threat before, but we need to call on the Government to provide the proof. Where is the evidence that we are protected against terrorist threats in Britain because we are in Afghanistan? I can think of none and I have not seen any produced, but that canard is repeated again and again as if it were a truth. Today it was used as a justification for the loss of seven lives in seven days. I press the Minister to tell us what he thinks the evidence is for that claim, which I am sure will continue to be repeated.

Our present position is very interesting because, just a year ago, there were signs that we would have to adopt a different policy. Exactly a year ago, I was in the Pentagon and I was told by the religious right and the old neo-cons that we will be in Afghanistan for generations. Others said that no invading alien army has ever won a battle against a local insurgency—a very chilling argument to make. The only possible exception is Malaya, but that insurgency did not have any popular support; it just represented a small tribe.

The way that these things go, we are likely to end up with one of two possible outcomes. One is that a deal is done: something happens and negotiations take place which will give us a chance to consolidate and preserve the gains made in education and reconstruction while making concessions on government concerns and the NATO presence. I believe that that is achievable. The alternative is that we run out in the same way the French did from Dien Bien Phu, the Americans did from Saigon and the Russians did from Kabul. In 2001, a fellow member of the Council of Europe, a Russian, slapped me on the back and said, “Ah, you British, you are very clever. You’ve conquered Afghanistan. We Russians did that. It took us six days. We spent billions of roubles there. We had 120,000 troops there. We killed 1 million Afghans and lost 16,000 of our own soldiers. We ran out, and, within a short period, there were 300,000 Mujahedeen around Kabul. It will happen to you.” That was in 2001, and the Russians are now looking at us and saying that we are making the same mistakes as they did.

A year ago, there was hope of drawing in other European states, as the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) suggested. That is gone; it will not happen now. A year ago, our UK ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, stated:

“American strategy is destined to fail”,

and warned that increasing troop levels would serve only to

“identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and multiply the number of targets”.

He urged the presidential candidates not to get bogged down in Afghanistan. America’s top general at the time, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, said:

“We’re not going to win this war.”

He went on to state:

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.”

There are hopeful signs in the election of President Obama. He was committed to the surge by an election promise. On 9 February, an early-day motion was put down in this House pointing out that a surge in troops in Afghanistan would mean a surge in fatalities. It is no comfort to see that the prophecy was accurate; it was certain to happen. We have had the surge of troops, which was based on the conclusion that if a surge worked in Iraq, for very different reasons, it might work in Afghanistan. Politically, President Obama had no choice but to become involved in the surge, but he has done other things that are far more promising—for example, he got rid of his previous NATO supremo and appointed General Stanley McChrystal, who has used words that have never been used before about Afghanistan. He used the word “defeat”, and we must consider the possibility of defeat. No one in America had ever dared to utter such a word, but General McChrystal uttered it, and he is a practical soldier. He used another word that is important to us: “exit”. We must now concentrate not on a perpetual war—a war without end—but on looking for practical ways of getting out. The main reason our soldiers are dying is not the wickedness of the Taliban; they are dying because of our presence in Afghanistan. We should look at previous insurgency wars that have taken place and learn from their results.

As I said earlier, we are at a turning point today and this week. Public opinion will suddenly become aroused. There are exact precedents for that in other parts of the world. We know of the anger that was expressed about our reasons for going to Iraq. There was virtually universal approval of the reason for our going to Afghanistan in the early stages, but, in my view, if there had been a debate and a vote in this House, there would not have been approval for the incursion into Helmand province. That was the disastrous turning point that turned a manageable situation into what we have now: one in which it is impossible to win.

I conclude by paying tribute to the soldiers. I speak as the proud son of a soldier who faced the enemy on many occasions. This House sent those young men and women to Afghanistan. It was our decision, and we should confront it. I was called on Friday by a reporter from the Wales on Sunday newspaper who asked whether I was proud that there were more Welsh troops in Afghanistan than there have been in any British operation since Malaya. I said that, yes, I was proud of their bravery and professionalism, but that I worried that the outcome would be the loss of more Welsh lives.

I recall the words that are on the side of the beautiful Welsh war memorial in Cardiff:

“Dros ei wlad fe rodd ei lw,

Dros fôr fe aeth i farw.”

For his country, he gave his oath, over the sea he went to die. Let us for a moment recall the names of those who went over the sea to die. They all have families and relatives who are now suffering a wound that will never heal. They are: Ben Babington-Browne, Dane Elson, David Dennis, Robert Laws, Rupert Thorneloe, Joshua Hammond, Sean Birchall, Paul Mervis, Robert McLaren, Cyrus Thatcher, Nigel Moffett, Stephen Bolger, Kieron Hill, Robert Martin Richards, Jordan Rossi, Petero Suesue, Jason Mackie, Mark Lawrence Evison, Ben Ross, Kumar Pun, Adrian Sheldon, Sean Binnie, Tobie Fasfous, Dean Thomas John, Graeme Stiff, Christopher Harkett, Michael Laski, Tom Gaden, Paul Upton, Jamie Gunn, Stephen Kingscott, Darren Smith, Daniel Nield, Richard Robinson, Tom Sawyer, Danny Winter, Travis Mackin, Chris Reed, Liam Elms, Benjamin Whatley, Robert Deering, Stuart Nash, Aaron Lewis, Steven Fellows, Damian Davies, John Manuel, Marc Birch, Tony Evans, Georgie Sparks, Alexander Lucas, Krishnabahadur Dura, Neil David Dunstan, Robert Joseph McKibben, Yubraj Rai, James Munday, Nicky Mason, Jason Lee Rawstron, Gary “Gaz” O’Donnell, Justin James Cupples, Barry Dempsey, Wayne Bland, Peter Joe Cowton, Jonathan Mathews, Kenneth Michael Rowe, Jason Stuart Barnes, James Johnson, Dan Shirley, Michael Norman Williams, Joe John Whittaker, Sarah Bryant, Sean Robert Reeve, Richard Larkin, Paul Stout, James Bateman, Jeff Doherty, Nathan Cuthbertson, Daniel Gamble, Charles David Murray, Dale Gostick, James Thompson, Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau, Robert Pearson, Graham Livingstone, Gary Thompson, John Thornton, David Marsh, Damian Mulvihill, Damian Stephen Lawrence, Darryl Gardiner, Lee Johnson, Jack Sadler, John McDermid, Jake Alderton, Alexis Roberts, Phillip Newman, Brian Tunnicliffe, Ivano Violino, Craig Brelsford, Johan Botha, Damian Wright, Ben Ford, Christopher Bridge, Aaron James McClure, Robert Graham Foster, John Thrumble, David Hicks, Tony Rawson, Michael Jones, Barry Keen, David Atherton, Alex Hawkins, Daryl Hickey, Dave Wilkinson, Sean Dolan, Thomas Wright, Neil Downes, Paul Sandford, Mike Gilyeat, Darren Bonner, Daniel Probyn, George Russell Davey, Simon Davison, Chris Gray, Michael Smith, Benjamin Reddy, Ross Clark, Liam McLaughlin, Scott Summers, Jonathan Holland, Mathew Ford, Thomas Curry, James Dwyer, Richard J. Watson, Jonathan Wigley, Gary Wright, Paul Muirhead, Luke McCulloch, Mark William Wright, Craig O’Donnell, Steven Johnson, Leigh Anthony Mitchelmore, Gareth Rodney Nicholas, Allan James Squires, Steven Swarbrick, Gary Wayne Andrews, Stephen Beattie, Gerard Martin Bell, Adrian Davies, Benjamin James Knight, John Joseph Langton, Gary Paul Quilliam, Oliver Simon Dicketts, Joseph David Windall, Anare Draiva, Jonathan Peter Hetherington, Bryan James Budd, Sean Tansey, Leigh Reeves, Andrew Barrie Cutts, Alex Eida, Ralph Johnson, Ross Nicholls, Damien Jackson, Peter Thorpe, Jabron Hashmi, David Patten, Paul Bartlett, Jim Philippson, Peter Edward Craddock, Mark Cridge, Steven Sherwood, Jonathan Kitulagoda, Robert Busuttil, John Gregory, Darren John George, and a solider who is yet to be named who died yesterday. May they rest in peace.

I begin where the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) finished. He reminded us of the ultimate price paid by so many of our soldiers in Afghanistan. I join him and others in paying tribute to those brave service people who did what they believed in and paid a terrible price for it. I pay tribute to everybody else who has fought in Afghanistan during the eight years that we have been there. I salute their courage, their professionalism and their determined perseverance in difficult circumstances at every twist and turn.

The hon. Gentleman made an interesting, powerful speech. He made some good points and some with which I do not agree. He strung his points together and came to a conclusion that I do not share, but he convinced me that we should have had a more substantial debate at the time at which the deployment into Helmand took place. Looking back, I do not think that there was enough understanding in Parliament, or among the public or the media, of quite how significant the change in our deployment from that point forward was going to be. I do not agree that, if there had been a full-scale debate and a vote, the House would have voted against going into Helmand. Perhaps if we had known then what we know now we might have done so, but we did not and could not know then what we know now.

With the benefit of hindsight, I wish that the Government had shared with the House, or at least with the Defence Committee, some of their background papers and risk assessments and some of the considerations that they weighed in the balance when they decided, as part of a NATO strategy, that we should go into Helmand. I wish that that had been so, because I wish that Parliament had gone into it with its eyes open. The task of bringing public and media opinion with us would have been easier if more of these things had been brought out at the time. All of that being said, and NATO having embarked on that strategy, I would still have voted to go ahead with it, but a debate over the fundamentals, in that sense, is rather overdue. To the extent that this short debate has begun to serve that purpose, it is welcome.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman would pray in aid his decision to go ahead the fact that the education of girls in Afghanistan has increased perhaps tenfold during this period. Would he not also agree that, had the money that we spent on the war been spent instead in other ways to promote understanding and education and restructuring in that country in a peaceful way, without the loss of the 170-odd lives, we may have done even better in securing that objective without the loss of life and without quite as much money being spent?

That is an interesting point. I do not think that anyone should say that no progress is being made or that nothing is being achieved, because that is not so.

There are things to which we can point that are achievements, but whether, in principle, it would have been right to have committed British troops and put their lives in danger to achieve the objective of securing girls’ education in Afghanistan, I am not so sure. To that extent, the hon. Gentleman is making an interesting point; there might, in ideal circumstances, have been other ways of trying to bring about that objective. That brings me to the point that I wanted to make about the assertions made by the hon. Member for Newport, West about the Taliban. He was developing the point that the Taliban represented no threat to the UK and that, if we had left them alone, the UK would have faced no threat and would have been under no threat. I do not think that that assertion is correct, and I do not sign up to the challenge that the hon. Gentleman threw down—I listened to John Humphrys throwing down a similar challenge to the Defence Secretary this morning on the “Today” programme—on proving that terrorism would have been the consequence. On many occasions in armed conflict, people have to make their best guess as to what the enemy’s response would be to any particular situation.

We weigh up all the evidence that we have and arrive on the balance of probabilities at what we think the enemy is likely to do. With respect to the hon. Gentleman and John Humphrys, it is not up to those of us who think that the action in Afghanistan is justified or logical to prove that terrorism would result from having the Taliban back; it is up to those of the hon. Gentleman’s view to prove the opposite, given Taliban-run Afghanistan’s history as a haven for international terrorism. It is a perfectly reasonable working hypothesis to say that if the Taliban reasserted control in Afghanistan, the same things could and would happen again as time went on.

One has to look at Afghanistan’s history. Since 1974, Afghanistan has been unstable and has progressively deteriorated. There have been 35 years of hell for the people of Afghanistan, and it is many decades since we could view the country as anything other than a failed state. In that vacuum—that is what a failed state amounts to—international terrorism was able to secure a haven for itself. Only when we have used whatever means we can to put Afghanistan back together as a viable and stable state that is capable of functioning on its own terms—not necessarily as one built on some idyllic western concept of what constitutes a democracy—can we say that we have reasonably reduced the likelihood of international terrorism once again finding a safe haven and a home in Afghanistan. That is a perfectly logical conclusion to draw from the history and from an assessment of the current situation, and I simply do not believe that it is incumbent on anybody to prove that terrorism would follow the return of the Taliban. One has only to look back a short number of years to see that that was indeed what happened.

That said, it is perfectly clear that we are arriving not quite at the tipping point that the hon. Gentleman suggested, but at some sort of strategic stalemate in Afghanistan. One cannot say in all honesty that NATO’s current strategy and tactics are setting us on course to achieve success, victory or the goal of stabilising Afghanistan, and they are certainly not setting us on course to do that in any reasonable time frame. The longer progress does not seem to be made and the longer we continue in this stalemate, the truer the hon. Gentleman’s observation will become that the key rallying point for the insurgents—if one wants to use that word—is the simple fact of foreigners being in the country. That is why continuing to pursue our current strategy and vowing just to stick at it however long it takes is no longer a viable way forward, and I believe that President Obama has arrived at the same conclusion. His surge is not something that he feels bound to implement as a prisoner of his election promises, but something that he is doing with conviction, in the belief that something must be done to get over this impasse.

There is no guarantee that the surge will succeed in the terms that he has set for it. A surge into the large, rural, thinly populated areas of Helmand province is a very different proposition from a surge in the city of Baghdad, and I do not know whether it will be possible to achieve even what President Obama wants, but he is right to have embarked on that course, because it is perfectly clear that we simply cannot go on as we have been. We have had a remarkably small number of western troops in Afghanistan all along, given the size of the population and of the country that we are trying to stabilise. In comparison with other international engagements in which stabilisation was the objective, we have lacked boots on the ground from the word go.

There are other problems that we have debated many times before. The Government have set about trying to address the problems with armoured vehicles, but there is still a chronic shortage of helicopter lift capacity. Some of the dangers to our troops would be obviated if we could move them about more in the air and less on the ground. Our strategy has also fallen into disarray, because we have not managed to keep the reconstruction effort, the war fighting and the conflict prevention together as one. In his book, “Swords and Ploughshares”, Paddy Ashdown talked about the need for a “seamless garment”, with conflict prevention, war fighting and reconstruction drawn together as interwoven strands.

This is the fourth Army that we have had in Afghanistan in our history. One emerged with just one of our soldiers alive. All our Armies ran out of Afghanistan defeated and our troops were generally slaughtered. The Russians had 120,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the Russians, too, ran away. It is calculated that up to 500,000 troops would be the right number to get some control over the country. How many troops does the hon. Gentleman think should be sent there to guarantee a military victory?

But the Russians’ objective was completely different. They were trying to take over the country and run it. We are not trying to do that in any sense. The objective of the NATO presence in Afghanistan is to help the elected Government stabilise the country to the point where reconstruction can take place and Afghanistan can retake its place in the community of nations. That is a totally different objective from bringing in an invasionary force to take complete control of the country and run it.

The difficulties in what we are doing are all too clear. The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed up the shortcomings in the emerging governance of Afghanistan. There are shortly to be elections, and it is dearly to be hoped that something more viable will come out on the other side of them, but there are not necessarily grounds for optimism. None the less, we were right to go in at the beginning. The change of strategy in 2006 was agreed in NATO, and we have done what we undertook to do in Helmand to the best of our ability. Equally, however, the hon. Gentleman is right to have sought a debate about the overall strategy, because we will not achieve the undefined goals that we have set ourselves by carrying on as we are at present. I very much hope that the change of tempo that President Obama has signalled is the beginning of a complete change.

The hon. Gentleman is right that a deal would be struck in the end and that a political solution would have to be found. Everywhere we have been involved over a very long time, we have denounced people as terrorists and said that we would have nothing to do with them, only to end up having to sit down and talk to them. There is no doubt that that will ultimately happen in Afghanistan, but we must ensure that what emerges enables Afghanistan to rebuild itself over a long period, so that it can become a stable country and not a haven for terrorism. I very much hope that we will get to that point sooner rather than later. Previously, I might have believed that we could carry on as we are doing for 20 years and achieve the outcome that we seek, but I can no longer accept that as valid.

I thank the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) for providing the House with a timely opportunity to consider again the developments in Afghanistan. I am disappointed that more hon. Members are not here for the debate, as there is no doubt that the nation is following closely the progress of military operations in Afghanistan, saluting the extraordinary courage and commitment of Her Majesty’s armed forces, and grieving at the loss of so many fine men and women, whose names the hon. Gentleman read out.

I have a particular reason to grieve, because the Welsh Guards are based in my constituency and they have already taken a pretty heavy hit, not least in the loss of their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, whom I had the privilege of meeting when he gave a cocktail party on the regiment’s arrival in Aldershot and prior to its deployment. Therefore it touches us greatly. Today, the funeral of Major Sean Birchall took place at the Guards chapel a few hundred yards from where we are having this debate. Lieutenant Paul Mervis was also the son of friends of ours. The issue touches the entire nation, and it is appropriate that Parliament should debate it with all seriousness.

Although it was not by any means a sure-footed performance, the Secretary of State tried on this morning’s “Today” programme to set out the reasons for NATO forces being in Afghanistan. They are, first, to prevent the country lapsing back into a failed state that provides a safe haven for those who have plotted the bombing of western cities—a point made admirably by the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey); and secondly to enable the Afghan Government to deliver a reasonably stable country, providing economic and social benefits to its people according to their customs. The Secretary of State did not allude to drugs, and it is extremely disappointing that we have made so little progress in dealing with the drugs problem, because there is no doubt that those drugs are reaching the streets of our towns and cities, killing our young people and destroying lives. I know that the hon. Member for Newport, West has some interesting ideas on how that might be approached, and perhaps the Minister will want to say something on it.

With the number of British fatalities approaching the level experienced in Iraq, we have a duty to check how well our national strategy is working. The British Army spokesman on the radio this morning, Lieutenant-Colonel Richardson, set out some of the successes, such as the increase in educational and medical provision in Helmand province, to which he might have added the repair of the Kajaki power station, which has done a great deal to improve the lot of ordinary people in the Helmand valley. The focus is now clearly on the military operation, Operation Panther’s Claw. Helmand is the key battleground, suffering twice the number of insurgent-initiated attacks as neighbouring Kandahar province since January. It is important to record that it is not just in fighting the Taliban that British forces are working hard; their commitment to the winning of hearts and minds is central to their understanding of their role in theatre. We should pay tribute to the ability of those men and women, many of whom are very young indeed, to switch from close-quarter combat to metaphorically putting their arms round local people, and trying to help them to improve facilities and their lives, in the face of attack by the Taliban.

I hope that I did not give the impression that I thought our British soldiers were primarily responsible for the deaths of civilians. It would certainly be untrue. They have been on course to win hearts and minds from the time they were first there. The great majority of the collateral damage—the killing of civilians, including women and children—results from American bombing.

I was not attributing an indifference to the hearts and minds policy to the hon. Gentleman—far from it. However, he is slightly wrong in singling out the Americans with respect to attacks on civilians. The overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan arise from the actions of the Taliban. They are the people responsible for killing so many Afghan civilians. However, those unfortunate, tragic incidents of collateral damage—that rather euphemistic expression that we all use—show why we must invest so much money in high-technology precision equipment that reduces collateral damage. That enables us to look our constituents in the face and say, “We have done everything possible to ensure that our armed forces seek to carry out their mission clinically, and take great care not to inflict casualties on civilians.”

Some of our key concerns were set out by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) during the “Defence in the World” debate on 4 June, which was local and European election day. The Secretary of State promised to write to hon. Members whose questions had not been answered, but a month later, I regret to inform the House we have not yet received anything. I remind the Minister of some of the questions. First, what strategy do the Government have for the mission? My hon. Friend quoted the Prime Minister, who said on 29 April that

“as the US moves in, we will over time shift the balance of our operations away from front-line combat and towards an enhanced contribution to training both the army in Afghanistan and its police.”—[Official Report, 29 April 2009; Vol. 491, c. 870.]

We wanted to know the timetable for that shift. Clearly, the emphasis today is concentrated on intensive front-line operations, with no sign of the shift signalled by the Prime Minister. It would be helpful to know whether there is any timetable for that.

Secondly, we need to know what the change in operational emphasis means for British troop numbers and how the UK’s mission will or may change following the ramping up of US forces, which are being bolstered, with an extra 10,000 men being committed to Helmand. There is an issue of command and control. At the moment, the United Kingdom is essentially in charge of operations in Helmand, but the dynamics are bound to change if the overwhelming majority of forces in that part of the theatre are American.

My hon. Friend expressed fears that Britain could end up with a “Charge of the Knights” syndrome whereby the UK’s contribution would be deemed too small to accomplish the military task, inflicting damage on the Anglo-American relationship and tarnishing the reputation of our armed forces. That concern has been exacerbated by reports that requests by British military commanders for an increase in troop numbers have been rejected. As Con Coughlin wrote in The Daily Telegraph—I apologise to some hon. Members for mentioning that newspaper, but there we go; I do not think that he was involved in other matters—on Friday:

“If British commanders had got their way, an extra 2,500 of our troops would have been sent to Afghanistan this summer to do precisely what the Americans are now doing—taking the fight into the heartland of the insurgency. But Gordon Brown…refused the request on grounds of cost. As a consequence, British forces find themselves in the humiliating position of having to watch as the Americans do their job for them.”

Not true.

The Minister says it is not true. Let me just say that it is of course true that the Prime Minister has never shown any interest in providing the support necessary to fund the core military budget. That is evidenced by the fact that there has never been proper funding for the strategic defence review of 1998, let alone a proper budget on which to fight two wars. However, our force of 9,000 is actively participating rather than watching. I would not want to give the impression to anyone that British forces were somehow not participating, but there is no doubt that the Americans are probably the spearhead in Operation Panther’s Claw.

Would the hon. Gentleman care to say whether it is Conservative party policy to increase the number of troops sent to Afghanistan, and what the numbers might be? Has the Conservative party set out what it would see as an exit strategy, with timings?

If I may, I shall come on to the matter of an exit strategy. I have a passage in my speech on that; the hon. Gentleman and others have mentioned it and it is a critical issue that I want to return to.

My third point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring during the debate last month when he asked the Secretary of State to update the House on how many of the 5,000 NATO troops promised at Strasbourg had arrived in Afghanistan. We still have not had an answer to that question, and I hope that the Minister will respond to it.

I want to raise two further issues, including the exit strategy, which the Minister should deal with today so that the British public are clear about the Government’s intentions. First, there is a real imperative to meet the here and now. I understand that the budgetary difficulties that the Ministry of Defence is suffering are leading to battles between each of the services for resources. Some people, particularly those who are Army-orientated, are saying that we must scrap this, that and the other to concentrate on the main endeavour, which is to win in Afghanistan. I understand that argument, but there are other issues that we as politicians must address. There are other potential threats to our nation that we must address. We cannot simply devote everything to the here and now.

Having said that, the here and now is important, and it is our duty to ensure that our armed forces have what they need in theatre to do the job that we have asked them to do. There is no doubt that the introduction of new vehicles, such as the Mastiff and the Jackal, have helped, but there are insufficient numbers of them. The US has ordered 10,000 Mastiffs, but the UK has ordered just 235 with delivery already delayed. Furthermore, heavily armoured vehicles are not the universal solution because the enemy increases the power of its mines and roadside bombs to defeat whatever new armour we provide. It is important that people understand that. One cannot simply bolt on more and more armour. That will undoubtedly protect troops, but it will inhibit their wider operations. Some people believe that our only duty is to ensure that troops can travel with impunity in armoured vehicles, and that has been the case so far, but a soldier told me at the Aldershot Army show last Saturday that one reason why troops like the Jackal, which has no top, it that it gives them situational awareness and they can see what is going on. Troops in the back of a Mastiff, and even the driver, have a very limited view outside. I have always said that we should concentrate on the range of kit that commanders in the field need.

The Government’s decision five years ago to cut £1.4 billion from the helicopter budget was an unmitigated disaster. I understand that we have no spare capacity to increase the supply of helicopters, and those that are deployed are being hammered by the tempo of operations, and the inhospitable environment. Although the number of UK forces deployed to Afghanistan has increased to 9,000, the number of helicopters has not changed since late 2006, when the UK had just 4,500 troops in theatre.

The Leader of the House, standing in for the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions today, claimed that the number of helicopters in theatre had increased by 60 per cent. She must know that it is not the number of helicopters that has increased so dramatically, but the number of flying hours, which subjects the machines to vastly increased wear and tear. As long ago as October 2006, an RAF Chinook pilot, Flight Lieutenant Stuart Hague, was reported to have said:

“We feel exposed and we have so few machines; we need more helicopters and newer ones”.

Such reports make the public believe that their Government have not delivered what the troops in theatre require, and such reports betray the meaninglessness of the assurance given by Tony Blair that commanders in the field could have whatever they need. The Minister, who is a good man, will undoubtedly refer to the six Merlin helicopters acquired from the Danes and to the re-roling of the eight mark 3 Chinooks, which have been gathering dust in a hangar for the past 12 years.

That is the Tories’ fault.

It is not the Tories’ fault. The Government have had 12 years to put it right, and they have been very slow about it. None of those Chinooks is available now, so what are the Government going to do to increase the immediate availability of helicopter lift, and what has happened to the NATO commitment at Bucharest to create a pool of helicopters available for deployment?

My second point, which the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) wanted me to address, is the exit strategy. I do not detect any discernible exit strategy from Afghanistan. As the hon. Member for Newport, West said, we all know the history of British military involvement in that country in the 19th century, and we need to be reassured that history is not about to repeat itself.

That is not an attack on the Government; it is, I hope, a sober challenge to all of us to understand the magnitude of the issue. To know where we are going, it helps to know where we have come from, and there is no doubt that our experience in Afghanistan in the past does not augur well, although the hon. Member for North Devon was entirely right in pointing out that our mission is very different from that undertaken by the Soviets. I hope that the Minister will tell us what state of transformation in governance and self-sustaining Afghan military capability will constitute success, and at which point it will be safe for Britain and NATO to withdraw.

For sure, there is no way in which we can sustain this tempo of operations for an extended period, let alone the 30 years mooted two years ago by the then British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, with whom I breakfasted, as did the Minister, at the British embassy at Kabul prior to his going on the “Today” programme to explain his view. Nor is there any way in which we can create a benign sort of Hampton-in-the-Helmand in the society described by a friend of mine who is a former brigade commander in Afghanistan. When we were discussing the general situation, he said: “If you want to understand this place, Gerald, just go back to the 15th-century Scottish borders”—that is where I am half from—“and you will then have some idea of what this country is like.” We must be realistic about what we can achieve.

There is widespread acceptance that the battle in Afghanistan must be won, not least because NATO’s credibility is on the line, but also so that those who have given their lives in this cause will not have done so in vain. However, we must recognise that it is part of a much larger picture involving al-Qaeda and Pakistan. I suggested to General Richards some time ago that there was a risk that Helmand province would act as a magnet to Islamic fundamentalists—foreign insurgents—who are keen to exploit the chance to hit the West. I believe that I was not wide of the mark, although few agreed with me at the time. That is another issue. We must consider the extent to which it is becoming, as the Leader of the House said, a “crucible” that is acting as a magnet for those forces who perhaps failed to deal with us in Iraq and are now looking to deal with us in Afghanistan before they reject everything that we stand for.

Yesterday, the Government announced their intention of beginning work on a new defence review—an announcement that, given its serious implications for the nation’s entire defence strategy, should have been made on the Floor of the House so that all hon. Members could have the opportunity to question the Secretary of State. That review must be foreign policy-led, not Treasury-led and, above all, it must factor in lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the likely impact that continuing operations will have on our foreign policy and military strategy. That is the very least that we must do, and I hope that the Minister will respond to the key issues that have been raised during this debate.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) for securing this debate. Like the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), I am disappointed that more hon. Members are not present to be involved in the debate.

I pay tribute to the people who have lost their lives. It was sobering to hear my hon. Friend read out the list of names one by one. A difficult job for any Defence Minister is to take the phone call, usually late at night or early in the morning, informing one that yet another person has been lost in Afghanistan, and the first thing I always think about is their families. Last weekend was particularly poignant because of Rupert Thorneloe’s loss in Afghanistan. Rupert worked on the fifth floor of the Ministry of Defence and many of the staff knew him well. I had met him and I agree with the hon. Member for Aldershot that he was a tremendous individual.

I am pleased that Her Majesty the Queen last week announced the creation of the Elizabeth cross. As a Back Bencher, I campaigned for such an award, to recognise the sacrifice that families have made in the defence of this country. It is also important to put it on the record that our thoughts are with those who have been injured in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. My area of responsibility covers the Defence Medical Services, and I regularly meet very brave individuals who now have very challenging lives because of the sacrifice that they made.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on another matter. I have visited Afghanistan on five occasions—first in 2002 and most recently about three months ago—and the one thing that always heartens me is that morale is very high. Like him, I pay tribute to the servicemen and women. British youth get a bad name, but the best of British youth can be seen taking a huge amount of responsibility in Afghanistan.

As I said, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West on securing the debate. However, I fundamentally disagree with his approach, although I respect his right to hold that view. He asks why we are in Afghanistan—what the reasons are for our involvement. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined those this morning in his speech. First, it is to prevent the return of the Taliban, which would allow terrorism to flourish. We cannot forget that. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) reiterated that point. Secondly, this year, it is to ensure that there is the right environment for the elections to take place. The hope is that they will be free from intimidation and the insurgents will not deny the free will of the Afghan people to decide who governs them. Another reason is, in the long-term, to make space for civic society to develop and to ensure that the security of Afghanistan can be taken over by the Afghan people themselves.

My hon. Friend and others ask what the strategy is. As I said, I have been visiting Afghanistan since 2002 and I have always been very clear on the strategy. We cannot, as some people naively try to do, separate reconstruction from security. The strategy is clear. It is about ensuring that we achieve security and then bring in reconstruction and governance building, which is taking place. Certainly on my visits to Kabul, I have seen tremendous progress being made. People ask, “Has progress been made?” Yes, progress has been made not only on education, which was mentioned, but on governance and the reach of the Afghan Government across the country. People ask, “Why are we there?” One of the interesting things is that Kabul today is very different from the city I first visited in 2002. It is important that we continue that strategy.

People are rightly anxious about what is happening in Helmand. We have to recognise why, before 2006, there was not a great deal of violence or action in the south of the country. It is because NATO troops, the Americans and we did not go into that area—it was a safe haven for the Taliban. I totally disagree with my hon. Friend when he suggests that somehow our moving into the province has created the problem. I do not think that it has. Our action was about ensuring that we took the fight to the Taliban to secure those areas for the Afghan people, but also to ensure that the Taliban did not have a free haven from which to attack our troops and the Afghan people in Afghanistan and to go over into Pakistan.

I cannot accept the argument that no progress has been made in Helmand. When I first went there in 2006, I flew into Lashkar Gah. Our control in Lashkar Gah extended to the provincial reconstruction team compound and that was it. I went there a few months ago and I also went there last year with the Select Committee on Defence when we went into Lashkar Gah to have lunch with Governor Mangal. The writ of the Afghan Government and our security is growing. On my most recent visit, I went to Garmsir, which was a no-go area only 12 months ago. In many of the villages and towns, commerce is coming back. People genuinely want the peace and security that we all need. There is clearly advancement in relation to school attendance and, for example, the Kajaki dam project, which was mentioned. Has progress been slow? Yes, progress has been slow. Has this been a tragic week, in which we have lost seven people? Yes, it has, but we then have to consider what is actually going on.

I do not accept either what has been said about President Obama’s position. He is very clear on what that position is. The person leading the Americans is General McChrystal. The strategy is to ensure that we secure ground and bring in the development and governance behind that, and that is what is happening at the moment. Is it an intense time? Yes, it is. Is the momentum being maintained? Yes, it is. To say at this stage that we should change strategy is not right; I do not agree with that. Clearly, the Americans, with their uplift of 17,000 people, have made a big difference to the footprint.

I also want to dispel the nonsense that somehow Britain is in Afghanistan on its own. We are not; we are working in a coalition with some very brave individuals and other nations, who have lost quite significant numbers. I refer to the Dutch and the Canadians, among others. A few months back, I met the Estonians, who are doing a fantastic job. We must not forget that it is a coalition effort. Sometimes we think that it is just a UK operation; it is not. The hon. Member for Aldershot asked about the command. The Dutch are the lead at the moment. In terms of the overall footprint, it is definitely a coalition operation. I would hate anyone to go away with the impression that the Americans have arrived and the UK troops are not involved in current operations. They are very much involved in operations, along with the troops from those other nations, ensuring that we can get peace and reconstruction.

Can my hon. Friend confirm the reports that the Americans wanted us to contribute more than 2,000 troops to the present surge and we contributed about one third of that? If that is true, is it not a matter of congratulations for the Prime Minister?

Again, a lot of nonsense has been talked about that. I have read in the newspapers that the military wanted increased numbers and the Prime Minister denied them that. That is just not the case. Decisions on numbers are an operational matter. We have increased the numbers for the election, and that includes improvised explosive device specialists, who are needed. The fact is that we are doing a good job in Afghanistan, working very closely with our American allies and others. The idea that there has been a great disagreement between the military and the politicians on that is not correct; there has not. The previous Secretary of State and the present one work very closely, as I do, with our senior military, and it is operational reasons that dictate such decisions.

The issue of equipment was raised. We heard not unusual sniping from the hon. Member for Aldershot at the Prime Minister, but my right hon. Friend, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, ensured that the urgent operational requirements for equipment were put in place.

I certainly acknowledge that other NATO countries, particularly in the EU, increased their burden in April this year and I welcome that, but can the Minister confirm whether the British Government’s position is now that the burden sharing is well balanced and at an appropriate level, or do they still feel that other NATO countries should take a greater share of the burden?

We have always made clear our position that other nations should do more, and they have done more. If we consider the numbers of Canadian troops as a proportion of the total, it is quite high. The most senior Dutch general lost his son in Afghanistan. Estonia is a very small nation, but the Estonians are doing a fantastic job in Afghanistan. We should not underestimate that. It does not help the debate or what we are trying to do in Afghanistan to try to apportion blame.

May I turn to the subject of drugs?

Before the Minister turns to the matter of drugs, may I ask him to respond to my question on helicopters? It goes to the heart of the problem. For the reasons that I gave, we cannot always rely on up-armouring our vehicles. If he could deal with that point, I would be grateful.

I shall come to that point in a moment. I want to deal first with drugs.

The impression is being given that no progress has been made on drugs, but Governor Mangal has run an effective narcotics programme in Helmand, working with the coalition force in providing grain for local farmers. Overall, more than half of Afghanistan’s provinces are now are poppy-free. We started with six in 2006; there are now 18. The question is whether it will be a long, slow process. It may be, because we must ensure that we bring in alternative lifestyles behind the poppy eradication.

I shall now pander to the hon. Member for Aldershot and his question on helicopters. I have to say that I agree with him about protected vehicles. Even if all our vehicles were highly protected, we still would not get rid of the potential for injury. We are dealing with a dangerous situation and clever opponents are always changing their tactics. That is why our counter-IED teams and others are working hard to look at the different techniques that are used.

Our approach is clear. The Government not only put in the money, but we make a wide range of vehicles available. However, it is for commanders on the ground to decide when they are used, not politicians. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that using a Mastiff vehicle in parts of Helmand province is not on. First, it would not move; it would sink into the sand in certain areas. Secondly, he is right to say that winning hearts and minds cannot be done from inside a vehicle. Our people will be exposed, and it is important to ensure that we get the training tactics and techniques right. The way to win hearts and minds and influence the local people is not to fly everywhere: there is a case for getting out on the ground.

We have increased the operating hours of helicopters by 84 per cent. We have also brought in some capacity, with our coalition partners, for commercial helicopters to do some of the heavy lifting. Again, we should get away from the notion that Britain is out there on its own, using its own helicopters for its own use. It is a coalition approach, and helicopters are being shared—as we learned this week, when a British soldier was tragically killed in a Canadian helicopter. It is all about pooling our resources and using them in the most appropriate way.

As for the next move, the hon. Member for Aldershot will know that when the Merlins come out of Iraq, they will be moved to Afghanistan. When I was there, I had to share helicopters. People were asking whether we have the helicopters that we need. Yes, we have. The next question is whether they could do with more. Someone said, “We will always ask for more.” However, for the operations going on at the time we have the helicopters that are needed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West asked what is the alternative. I see one weakness in that approach. It is the question, “What would you do differently? What other conclusion could be drawn?” It is clear that if we leave Afghanistan, it will become a safe haven, as the hon. Member for North Devon suggested. I pay tribute to the Pakistan army, which is taking the fight to the Taliban in the north of that country and is having great success in bearing down on safe havens for terrorists. The Pakistan army should be congratulated on that and we recognise the sacrifice that they are making. I do not agree that we are at a stalemate position in Helmand. We are at a turning point, given the surge of Americans and our strategy. It is all about keeping the momentum going. Is it going to be tough? Yes it is; no one would say that it is not a difficult situation.

I was asked what the end game is. The end game—we are moving in that direction—is to ensure that the Afghan national army, and the police and the Government, can take over security. I pay tribute to them; they are taking an increasing role, including in the successful operation at Musa Kala. The Kajaki dam convoy was supported by the Afghan national army, and it is taking a clear role in providing security for the Afghan presidential elections later this year. We need to train the Afghan national army to ensure that it can continue in that role.

The hon. Member for Aldershot asked about our exit strategy. It has been clear from the start that it is about ensuring that we put in security, bring in development, and train the Afghan national army and the Afghan police to take over security. We also need to put government structures in place that will lead to the sustainable development that is needed. I do not accept the analogy with the Russians drawn by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West. They took a very different approach to occupation. We should not think that the lessons of history can necessarily be used in modern-day Afghanistan or in other situations.

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. He has inadvertently overlooked one point in his reply, but he will be finished in a few moments. Will he give us the evidence behind what he and the Secretary of State for Defence have said today, that there is some link between our presence in Afghanistan and a reduction in the threat of terrorism on British streets?

I must agree again with the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Member for North Devon asked what the challenge is. The challenge is clear in terms of 9/11 and 7 July. We cannot allow Afghanistan to become a failed state again, and to be a springboard for terrorism. I should not use this word, but it is a little naive to think that somehow the Taliban are not in any way connected to al-Qaeda, to which they gave safe haven, or to that repressive regime and theology which, if it were allowed to gain a foothold in Afghanistan, would sit there and ignore the rest of the world.

Where is Osama bin Laden?

My hon. Friend asks about Osama bin Laden. The fact of the matter is that we cannot leave a failed state and its entire infrastructure. The Taliban are not only persecuting the people of Afghanistan but exporting terrorism and ideology around the world. It would be nice if they were peace-loving people, but I do not believe that that they are.

My hon. Friend spoke about reconciliation. That is already happening in Afghanistan. When I was there last year and met Governor Mangal, some members of the provincial council were Taliban but had come over. However, that is a matter for the Afghan Government. The clear position laid down by President Karzai is right: if people want to renounce violence and contribute to the peaceful prosperity and growth of Afghanistan, they will be welcomed—but not if they continue to support the Taliban in their horrendous persecution of the Afghan people or their terrorism. The process has to be Afghan-led and some progress is being made.

Is it a hard task that we ask of our people in Afghanistan? Yes, it is; we are asking them to do a difficult job, but we can be proud of them. The influx of the Americans, the work that is happening in Pakistan and the continued commitment of our British forces will make a difference, and we can be proud of that. I have met our forces, both in Helmand and in Pakistan, and they know that they are making a difference. They are proud of what they are doing. If that means not only bringing prosperity to Afghanistan but ensuring that there is no threat against the UK mainland, it is a cause that is well worth fighting for.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this issue today as chair of the all-party group on vaccine damaged children. I preface my remarks, as I always do, by saying that the all-party group supports a public vaccination programme and the protection of workers in the workplace. We recognise the role that vaccination plays, and has played, in the reduction and eradication of disease, and like everyone, I want protection against disease for my nearest and dearest, and for everybody else’s too.

With protection, however, comes responsibility. Society must accept its duty to give financial support to the small number of workers who have a serious, adverse reaction to a vaccination. The vaccine damage payment scheme, which we are discussing today, is administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, but the Department of Health has an input too. The DWP was first in the drawer for this debate, so I went for it first, but I hope to tackle the DOH at the earliest opportunity. The all-party group has established a good working relationship with the DWP, but sadly the same cannot be said of the DOH. Some of my remarks are intended for the latter, but basically I want to consider what financial support is, or could be, offered to workers damaged by vaccines, whether through the payment scheme, industrial injury benefits or, if appropriate, a new 21st century system of assistance.

Today’s debate focuses on adults such as those in the medical professions. 1993 DOH guidance required, as a condition of service, that all new employers in “exposure prone procedures” should receive hepatitis vaccines. However, people in other jobs are affected too, and I have listed them in my recent early-day motion 1646, which has attracted 138 signatories from all parties represented in the House. I repeat that the numbers affected are small, but, as with all vaccine victims, the casualties are completely innocent; their lives, and those of their families, have been sadly diminished through no fault of their own. This is a family issue.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on his many years of excellent work, in this House, in trying to secure justice for individuals such as Mr. Robinson, a constituent of mine, who, six years ago—when he was a fit, young man of 43 years—had to be vaccinated for hepatitis B as part of his work as a forensic scientist. Two days later he was taken ill, and unfortunately several weeks later had to finish work. He is now 60 per cent. disabled. Does my hon. Friend agree that this vaccination has had a very detrimental effect on some people’s lives and health, and that they should be compensated?

I have met with Mr. Robinson and my hon. Friend, and I wholly accept his remarks. Unfortunately, however, this is not just about one worker. Having said that, we must keep the figures in realistic terms; the number of people affected is relatively small, so, in my view and that of the all-party group, the issues should be easier for the DWP and the DOH to tackle.

One victim wrote:

“The injuries we suffered as a result of the Hepatitis B vaccination are devastating. We have permanent serious health problems, lost our jobs, our careers, independence, ambitions, family life and the joy of life.”

That statement was made by a medical doctor suffering from vaccine damage. On 19 May, the all-party group held a meeting with workers who reasonably claimed to have been damaged by hepatitis vaccines. Some were receiving industrial injuries benefits, one was receiving a reduced NHS pension, and another was receiving a medical pension. All have had to fight, over a number of years, for those benefits. A number of MPs, from all parties, who could not attend the meeting, wrote to me about adult constituents who might have been damaged by hepatitis vaccines, and to offer their support to the all-party group.

The vaccine damage payment scheme has been described by Ministers as a scheme to provide assistance—not compensation—for people damaged by routine childhood vaccinations. DWP Ministers have stated that the scheme is designed—I emphasis “designed”—to cover routinely recommended vaccines in the childhood immunisation programme. Nothing in the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 appears to state that the scheme relates only to children. It is my contention, therefore, that it could apply to adults also damaged by vaccines and who meet the criteria laid down in the scheme.

I apologise for arriving two minutes into my hon. Friend’s speech. We all welcome the fantastic job that he has done in this field, but will he comment on the problem of vaccine-damaged children who become adults, but whose families continue to fight on their behalf?

My right hon. Friend has a long and esteemed history working in this area and has done far more than me on it and the area of care and health in general. He is of course correct: some of these “children” are now in their 50s and so of similar ages to some in this Chamber. Problems might begin in childhood, but will continue into adulthood, if the individual lives long enough—unfortunately some do not live long lives.

Today, however, we are concentrating wholly on adult workers damaged by hepatitis vaccines. In the majority of cases, people may apply for a payment only before, and up to, the age of 21. Adults can receive a vaccine damage payment for an adverse reaction to polio, rubella, meningitis C or human papilloma virus vaccines, though not for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and others, and some vaccines, such as those for hepatitis and influenza, are excluded completely. Applications under the payment scheme often go to appeal, which is adversarial, and for which no legal funding is available to help applicants.

DWP Ministers have always told me that the budget for VDPs is not capped, and I accept that assurance unreservedly. However, I have come to believe that DWP officials do not believe that there is such a thing as vaccine damage. In my view, they think that children and adults might have soreness and some local swelling after vaccination, but no significant or long-term damage as a result. I have no medical background, but I accept the word of the Government’s immunisation policy adviser, who said:

“There are side-effects with all vaccines.”

The recognised side-effects are published in the Department’s patient information leaflet. Workers tell me that they not only had no pre-vaccination discussion about the contents of the patient information leaflet, but did not even see it. I hope that the Department of Health will address that matter. Consent can be meaningful only if people have all the necessary information.

In the UK, the Department of Health acknowledges that chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis have been reported under the yellow card system as adverse reactions to hepatitis B vaccines, but points out that the reporting of the adverse reaction does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the drug or vaccine. I should like to put it on the record that I had correspondence and a meeting with NHS Direct, now re-established as NHS Choices, about the deletion of vaccination as a possible contributor to myalgic encephalomyelitis in its online directory after 2006. Up to that time, vaccination was listed as a possible contributory cause. I have been told that although there is no paper trail to say how the deletion came about, it is nevertheless correct as, in its view, there is no link between the hepatitis B vaccination and ME. It is small wonder that workers who are damaged by vaccine are suspicious, and I have to say here that I am suspicious, too. Furthermore, the information leaflet on HBvaxPRO, which was published in 2005, stated that

“serious side effects occur less frequently, and include allergic reactions certain severe types of rash, joint pain, muscle disorders such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and central nervous systems disorders such as multiple sclerosis.”

So what happens elsewhere? The US has had a vaccine court since 1989. The system is simple, transparent and relatively quick. The judges are vaccine specialists. It is not a lawyers’ paradise, with just one legal representative and one expert allowed on each side. In 2007 and 2008, more than half of the cases that were compensated in the US were those of adults. Some 146 hepatitis vaccine cases out of a total of 578 have been fully compensated since the court was established. Therefore, the US accepts that hepatitis vaccines can cause significant and sustained damage to a small number of people.

The difficult truth is that what we have in place in the UK is not fit for purpose. It is not usual for me to use such new Labour jargon, but, in this case, it is appropriate. The system was designed in 1979 for a specific purpose. It now needs to be redesigned, upgraded or perhaps replaced with something better. The Labour Government improved the vaccine damage payment scheme in 2000 for which I give them full credit. To be frank, I am very proud that our Labour Government did that. Now, we urgently need further improvements. Since 1997, we have introduced significant and wide-ranging social security reforms. We need a fundamental review of how best to help vaccine victims.

As I said earlier, the vaccine damage payment scheme does not include hepatitis vaccines. Yet the all-party group was informed that at least one person whose hepatitis B claim failed was then told that they could appeal. As the vaccine is not part of the scheme, that has to be a waste of everybody’s time. So, what other help can the Department for Work and Pensions offer? There is industrial injuries assistance. I asked a number of parliamentary questions regarding industrial injuries claims for people who have had an occupational vaccine and can no longer work. Unfortunately, I was told that the information was not available. I also asked about the position of student doctors and nurses who are not covered by employee benefit schemes as they are classed as being in training. Again, the information was not available.

I have been informed by a voluntary group, which has had contact with about 200 people who believe that they have been damaged by a hepatitis vaccine at work, that only one of its number received industrial injuries benefit without going to a tribunal. Five of its members have received industrial injuries benefit following an appeal. Some appeals are still pending. One trainee doctor and one trainee nurse went through the whole tribunal hearing only to be informed that they were not eligible as they were trainees and not employees. So, the cases are there, but the DWP statistics are not.

The DWP knows that workers have been damaged by vaccines because it is, in some cases, paying them industrial injuries benefits. However, if we do not record what is happening, we do not identify the problems. It would appear that we have a postcode lottery of support, with some areas more likely to grant industrial injury payments than others.

I would have thought that the Health and Safety Executive would be interested in such information, particularly when people are assessed as having a 50 or 60 per cent. disability. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck told the all-party group that

“the benefit system is a complete mess when it comes to those with a vaccine related illness. There is no consistency in its decisions or its knowledge of people’s problems, leaving many to lose confidence in the system that should help them in their need. Where is the duty of care?”

In highlighting the shortcomings of the present system, I hope that we can all work together to meet our duty of care to workers who are vaccine victims. As I said in my early-day motion 1646, I am flexible about what the best solution is. I hope that the Minister will work with his ministerial colleagues, MPs, peers and stakeholders to ensure that reforms are made and that a wrong is put right.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) on raising this important issue. He has presented his case in his usual way. He is focused, sceptical on behalf of the people for whom he is fighting, relentless and principled. He is exactly the type of union steward that one would want on one’s side. Importantly, he is also modest as well. He takes collective pride in the fact that the Government have increased their awards from £40,000 in 1988 to £100,000 now. However, we know that much of that increase was down to his hard work. We pay tribute to him for that. It has changed lives. That is what all who come into this place hope to achieve on behalf of our constituents and others in our country. He has done it, and we are very proud of him.

I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s constructive chairmanship of the all-party group on vaccine damaged people and I am pleased to hear that there is a good working relationship with the Department for Work and Pensions. I am committed to maintaining and improving that relationship, and I can assure him that the Department will work closely with health officials on the vaccine damage payments scheme and to deal with issues that have arisen in this debate, including those raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Murphy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), who also has a distinguished record of working with disabled people.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) on securing this debate. Far be it from me to steal his thunder, but the Minister said that he would endeavour to work closely with Ministers in the Department of Health. On a previous occasion, my hon. Friend met two Secretaries of State to push the case for advances on payments for vaccine damaged children. If there were a request for a meeting with the Minister and someone from the Department of Health, would he accede to it?

Of course, I would gladly accede to such a request. Our hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron) now has policy responsibility as Minister of State, Department of Health, and colleagues who know her will know that one of her qualities is that she engages with colleagues from across the House, which is her responsibility. She and I will gladly see a delegation to discuss this important matter.

I realise that my right hon. and hon. Friends are familiar with the vaccine damage payments scheme and its operations, but for the record and to inform the debate, it would be helpful briefly to outline its background and explain how it works in practice. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles categorically stated that he and the all-party group support a public vaccine programme. Immunisation with vaccines is a vital way of protecting individuals and the community from serious diseases. It is an important part of our public health policy and it continues to have a tremendous positive impact on the health of our population.

Vaccinations are safer now than they have ever been, but I recognise that on rare occasions, vaccines can cause severe disability, which can put individuals and their families under considerable strain—my hon. Friends the Members for Eccles and for Wansbeck were right to describe those human tragedies in the House. That is one of the main reasons why the Government established the vaccine damage payments scheme at a time, which is thankfully in the past, when there were valid concerns about child vaccines. We believed that the measure of financial help provided by the scheme would help to ease the present and future burdens of those who are severely disabled as a result of vaccine damage.

The scheme, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles rightly said was introduced by a Labour Government in 1979, provides a tax-free, lump-sum payment of £120,000 for those who are severely disabled as a result of a vaccination against the diseases listed in the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979. It also acknowledges that people who are severely disabled early in life have less opportunity to save and earn.

However, it is important to note that the vaccine damage payments scheme is not intended to address all the financial implications of disablement for those affected by vaccines; it is only one part of a wide range of support and help available to severely disabled people in the UK. For example, the disability living allowance provides an important non-contributory, non-means tested and tax-free cash contribution towards the extra disability-related costs incurred by severely disabled people.

On the side effects of vaccination and hepatitis B, my hon. Friend perceives that the Department of Health does not recognise that vaccines can cause damage. That is not the case. I hope that Ministers from the DWP and the Department of Health can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown) of that at the meeting he requested.

Although we expected to get some answers today—hopefully we will get some—the Minister cannot possibly answer everything we have put to him. Therefore, this short debate is the stepping stone towards other debates and meetings in pursuit of our constituents’ interests.

I am aware, as my hon. Friend said, that the debate is part of a process. As I said in my opening remarks, he is focused, principled and relentless, so this will not be the last time that we discuss this matter. I welcome debate and discussion on this important issue.

I reiterate that the Department of Health takes great pains to ensure that its vaccination information material stresses that no vaccine is 100 per cent. safe. Because the Department of Health recognises the risks, it continues to work closely with the DWP on the vaccine damage payments scheme.

Hepatitis B vaccine is widely considered to be safe. There are known side effects, but the majority are mild, transient and uncommon. With common medical conditions, it is inevitable that some people develop symptoms after they receive a vaccine. It is completely understandable how conditions occurring shortly after vaccination can be attributed to vaccination, but the onset of symptoms after vaccination does not necessarily mean that the vaccine was responsible. Those claims have been extensively evaluated, and there is currently no good scientific evidence that hepatitis B vaccines cause long-term illnesses such as MS, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome. That position is supported by the World Health Organisation and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.

It is also important to reiterate that the report of a suspected adverse reaction to the hepatitis B vaccine through the yellow card scheme and its consequent inclusion in the list does not necessarily mean that a reaction was caused by the vaccine. MS was included as a possible side effect in product information, with the proviso that no causal link had been established, long before the studies found that there was no link. The only potentially serious adverse reaction attributable to the hepatitis B vaccine is anaphylaxis. Such severe allergic reactions, which can result in death, are believed to occur about once in 1.1 million doses. It may also be helpful to point out that the US vaccine injury system listed that serious adverse reaction as an adverse event to hepatitis B in its vaccine injury table.

I shall now consider the suitability of including the hepatitis B vaccine in the current vaccine damage payments scheme. It is important at the beginning to understand the background and rationale of the scheme. The scheme has always covered the diseases that are vaccinated against as part of the Department of Health’s routine childhood immunisation programme. Such an approach underlines the intention of successive Governments for the scheme to help those children who are—extremely rarely but regretfully—severely disabled as a result of vaccinations aimed at preserving the health and safety of the wider community.

Changes to the childhood immunisation programme are made on the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. As my hon. Friend indicated, in some cases, as with vaccinations against polio, rubella, meningitis C and HPV, the scheme also covers those vaccinated up to and sometimes over 18 years of age.

I am sorry to take up the Minister’s time, but he is clearly going to be unable to answer all the points that have been raised in the debate. Will he write to me to cover all the points that he has been unable to cover in this short time?

I am not going to be able to say everything that I wanted to say, and I will certainly write to my hon. Friend with those details.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Chope. I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate the effectiveness of management systems at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

My interest in the matter was provoked by the unfortunate case of my constituent, Mr. John Pitman of Trowbridge. I will use his appalling experience to illustrate what I believe to be a wider malaise within the FCO, an organisation that has a formidable reputation for diplomacy but clearly regards management, particularly of its human resources, as being somewhat below the salt.

Mr. Pitman, a former employee of the Foreign Office, has had a long battle to rectify a number of management failings that affected him during his service. The Minister will be aware that I have had an extensive correspondence on behalf of my constituent since 2001, but residual issues and concerns remain that warrant attention and suggest that HR management within the Foreign Office is not done well.

Mr. Pitman, who has spent his life in Her Majesty’s service in the Royal Marines and the FCO, was made redundant from his work as a Foreign Office security officer in 1996. He was re-engaged on a temporary contract between 1998 and 2000 to fill the position in Moscow from which he had been made redundant. At a function in 2000, Mr. Pitman met a senior figure, a non-UK national, in a security company that provided services to the FCO. Potential employment opportunities for my constituent were discussed in the course of the encounter, and a subsequent meeting was held. My constituent became uneasy at the gentleman’s line of questioning and the information that he apparently held and duly reported the encounter officially, as he was bound to do.

In July 2000, after he had left his posting, Mr. Pitman was told by his line manager that he had contravened the terms of his employment, citing the testimony of an unnamed witness who my constituent believes was the gentleman he had met from the security firm. My constituent tells me that his line manager and the security firm official both questioned his integrity, and cites a written report from the latter to the former stating that Mr. Pitman was a security risk and that they should not trust him. My constituent’s line manager reported that opinion to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The upshot of those unsubstantiated allegations from a foreign, unvetted civilian contractor and a junior FCO manager apparently in close contact with the former was the summary removal of my constituent’s security clearance, with no form of investigation and no audit trail worth the name. Mr. Pitman was neither given the opportunity to comment nor informed of the removal of what was effectively his licence to practise, both directly for the FCO and for a range of private operators in the security field. In blissful ignorance, he continued applying for employment within the FCO. Unsurprisingly, given his unwitting lack of security clearance, no work was forthcoming. However, Mr. Pitman was aware that there were plenty of appropriate security opportunities in the FCO, as officers were being brought out of retirement to fill vacancies. Still, nobody told him that his security clearance had been revoked.

Eventually, Mr. Pitman, his lawyer and I fetched up in the office of Mrs. Tessa Redmayne, a senior person in the FCO’s human resources department. We asked why my constituent was being passed over for work that he knew was plentiful. In the course of that extraordinary meeting, it became apparent that the problem was that Mr. Pitman’s security clearance had not been renewed, and that there was no intention to renew it. I expressed surprise, knowing full well from my own service career what a big deal failure to renew security clearance represents and the proper steps that must be taken in connection with it. It is not something to be done on the say-so of a junior official, on the back of hearsay from a foreign national, without any form of investigation.

It seems that, as his contract came to an end, Mr. Pitman was simply not made aware of the security clearance issue. Instead, his clearance was withdrawn without his knowledge. He was told subsequently that the clearance had expired along with his contract, which was simply not true. Only after becoming aware, via a freedom of information request, that his security clearance had been removed was he able to discover, among the heavily weeded and redacted documents made available, the underpinning allegations made against him.

The consequences for my constituent have been profound. He has suffered a substantial loss of earnings in the nearly three years between the loss of his security clearance and its reinstatement. He was unable to secure employment without clearance and now finds that he cannot get clearance without an offer of employment. His strong suspicion is that Foreign Office management are using that to deny him work. Furthermore, his reputation has been traduced and his chances of employment in the tightly knit public and private security world are greatly diminished. It has all taken a heavy toll, as the Minister can imagine.

My constituent received a vague apology for management shortcomings from one of the Minister’s predecessors, and the head of personnel security at the Foreign Office gave an unreserved apology after my intervention in 2004. Mr. Pitman’s security clearance was reinstated to allow him two short-term contracts, which rather vindicates him. However, he believes, and I find it entirely credible, that he has been blacklisted as a troublemaker, which has meant that further work has dried up. He is now told that he cannot have work because his security clearance needs updating. When he asks for his security clearance to be updated, he is refused because he has no offer of work and getting security clearance costs money. It is a complete runaround that encourages my constituent in the belief that he is being deliberately excluded from available work for which he is eminently qualified.

A sum was paid to Mr. Pitman to cover some of the earnings lost to the wrongful withdrawal of his security clearance, but it has not compensated him for the loss of his residual career, his earnings, his pension and, crucially, his sense of well-being and worth. A loyal and hard-working public servant has been badly let down by shoddy, shameful and frankly chaotic middle management in the FCO.

My constituent’s case touches on issues of wider public interest, on a number of which I have kept up a correspondence with Ministers. Mr. Pitman remains concerned that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is completely incapable of controlling its costs, citing by way of example its failure to undertake full comparative costings for the employment of security firm contractors.

When Mr. Pitman completed his contract as an overseas security manager in Kabul in July 2005, he was replaced by an individual from one such security company. In July 2006, my constituent applied to work for the individual who had replaced him in Kabul, who was now working on his own account as a contractor to the FCO. Mr. Pitman was told that the post offered £400 a day, tax-free. That equates to £146,000 a year, a significant multiple of the cost of my constituent’s direct employment even before the contractor takes his slice. One does not have to be a cost-management accountant to appreciate that that is unlikely to offer good value for money for hard-pressed taxpayers.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a public service agreement to improve its value for money. The comprehensive spending review commits the Department to achieving 2.5 per cent. efficiency savings year on year over the review period. Yet we find the FCO in the dock for squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, with lurid headlines last month that highlighted diplomatic excess.

We in this place must show a little humility when discussing excess, given our recent history. However, I hope that the Minister is able to comment on reports that officials are able to book business or first-class transport but to travel economy and use the balance for their private travel and that of their families. An insider said:

“This is a multi-million pound rip-off and the loophole should be closed immediately… Management at the Foreign Office are very weak and terrified of upsetting the diplomats so they give them whatever they want, which is huge amounts of public money.”

All hon. Members are now unhappy experts in loopholes, highly permissive rule books and management who are not sufficiently empowered. I hope that the Minister is taking a look at all those matters in his Department in the light of the Commons’ fall from grace and the dawning of the new age of austerity.

Another insider said:

“There is complete apathy about this reckless spending, while a silent minority within the FCO rage and fume about this gross extravagance.”

I strongly suspect that that is just the tip of the iceberg. That is certainly the belief of my constituent, who can be counted among the instinctively silent minority, but who has been provoked by the extraordinarily poor way in which he has been handled.

We are indebted to people, such as the insider quoted in the press recently and my constituent, who from time to time raise examples of apparent excess in organisations of which they have experience. It is often such grass-roots experiences being brought to MPs as Mr. Pitman’s case has been brought to me that shine light on areas where previously there had been darkness. We in this place have suffered because of such issues in recent weeks and it behoves those in the rest of the public sector to look at their practices to see how things could be improved. It would be naive to suppose that problems of wastefulness are confined to the Palace of Westminster. From recent press reports, it appears that the FCO is a prime candidate for a little light to be shone on darkness.

The Government’s propensity for hiring expensive consultants to tell them what they should be capable of determining for themselves led them to commission Collinson Grant Ltd to produce a report in two phases in 2004 and 2005. The second is by far the most interesting. Its somewhat provocative title, “Efficiency, effectiveness and the control of costs in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”, holds much promise. However, that report rowed back considerably on the savings identified by the initial findings, which is disappointing. It concluded that, managerially, the FCO is too deep and too narrow. According to Collinson Grant, that fosters organisational torpor; insufficient delegation; poor accountability; middle managers obsessed with the monitoring, review and repetition of the work of juniors to justify their existence; senior officials conducting themselves as desk officers; and an overall lack of understanding of how to manage a team.

Of direct relevance to my constituent’s case, Collinson Grant found that the finance and human resources departments saw themselves as providing advice, rather than mandating adherence to good practice. Furthermore, the short tenure in key positions, such as those within the finance and human resources departments, combined with a lack of professional experience in those specialist disciplines, was found to limit effectiveness.

Collinson Grant concluded that although the entire organisation needed to be challenged and reformed, its leadership lacked the skills and the will to challenge the status quo. The report makes for deeply depressing reading. Four years on, I and my constituent are left with no sense that matters have improved significantly.

I am sure that the Minister will pray in aid the formation of FCO Services, an Executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that was created following the Lyons and Gershon reviews. It holds some prospect of an improvement in infrastructure, facilities management, security and training—the unglamorous nuts and bolts of the FCO that are apparently spurned by the organisation’s mainstream to the detriment of people such as Mr. Pitman.

I seek three things from the Minister. The first is a comprehensive re-examination of the way in which my constituent has been handled and the Minister’s guarantee that he will be considered fairly for the overseas security work that we know exists, without being given the runaround as he has been or any more spurious pretexts being deployed to keep him out. Secondly, what is the Minister’s plan to resolve the ongoing management inadequacies within his Department highlighted by the Collinson Grant report, which has apparently been left to gather dust, as the case of Mr. Pitman so graphically illustrates? Finally, I would like an account of what will be done to get a grip on the Foreign Office wastefulness that was identified recently by the media and to which my constituent bears witness.

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Chope, because I have never done so before. I have sat on many Committees with you, in which we have taken a different view on almost every issue. Perhaps your Whips and mine took a particular delight in putting us on the same Committees. However, I know that you have to be impartial this afternoon, so it is a great joy to serve under your chairmanship and I might tease you a little later.

The hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) raises some serious matters. His first concerns relate to his constituent. I spoke to the hon. Gentleman earlier on the telephone and know that he has a large amount of correspondence on this case. He will understand that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a similarly large amount of correspondence.

I want to make it clear from the outset that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office apologises fully and unreservedly. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that there have been any reservations in the way in which the apology has been proffered so far, I hope that he will accept that there is no reservation in the apology I offer now for the way in which his constituent was dealt with. We accept fully that there were failings in the way we went about this matter, which is why we provided compensation. I hope that Mr. Pitman understands that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office takes its management responsibilities seriously and takes responsibility for any failings there have been.

If I may, I will correct a few things that the hon. Gentleman said. First, he referred to the summary removal of Mr. Pitman’s security clearance. The truth is that nobody removed his security clearance, because that does not happen, except in exceptional cases. Mr. Pitman’s security clearance lapsed when he finished his tour. That might seem to be a nit-picking distinction, but it is an important one. The allegation is really of incompetence, because we allowed the security clearance to lapse, rather than there being a process of removal.

The hon. Gentleman outlined his firm view that Mr. Pitman is not currently able to apply for jobs and secure employment without security clearance. That is the standard procedure that applies to absolutely everybody. If everyone who applied for a job were to have security clearance before they were appointed, that would involve the FCO and many other agencies in vast expenditure to an unnecessary degree.

Is the Minister aware that people with lapsed security clearance are being brought out of retirement, and that security clearance is then given to them following the necessary checks? It is not the case that jobs are not offered to individuals in the absence of security clearance. That rather confounds what he has just said.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I was going to make that point. Once someone has applied for and secured a job, we take them through the security clearance process, and that is when Mr. Pitman would go through the process. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no bar to someone securing a job because they do not yet have security clearance. Clearly, some of the people who apply for jobs already have security clearance, which continues for six months after a tour. That was the problem in Mr. Pitman’s case—his was allowed to lapse.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman absolutely, and I can assure Mr. Pitman that he is free to apply for jobs, and that whether or not he has security clearance at the moment is not a material matter that would affect whether he can or cannot be employed—or whether an application by him would be successful. That was outlined to the hon. Gentleman in a letter of late last year from one of my predecessors, in which the FCO made it clear that it would be perfectly possible for Mr. Pitman to apply. Indeed, it also gave details of how he could do so.

The hon. Gentleman has said that the whole process, at the beginning of this century, took a heavy toll on Mr. Pitman. We fully understand that, which is why I have made a full and unconditional apology. The hon. Gentleman said that Mr. Pitman’s reputation has been traduced, but I assure him that in the eyes of the FCO, Mr. Pitman’s reputation has not been tarnished in any sense at all. The hon. Gentleman suggested, rather dismissively, that there had been some sort of apology from my predecessor, but I am sure that she thought she had given a full and unreserved apology. In whatever sense that did not seem sufficient, I hope that I have met what the hon. Gentleman requested this afternoon. The original letter offering a full and unreserved apology was sent on 19 May 2004.

It might be helpful if I discuss compensation, because that is an important matter, which was debated considerably from 2004 onwards. On 8 September 2006, a letter from Andrew Noble to Mr. Pitman offered compensation of £50,593.15. That was followed up with a reminder to Mr. Pitman of the offer, giving a deadline by which it had to be accepted—22 February 2007. An FCO Minister wrote to the hon. Gentleman on 28 February 2007 to say that the deadline was being extended to 15 March, and on 18 April, the hon. Gentleman wrote to the FCO on behalf of Mr. Pitman to say that the compensation offer had been accepted. I must offer another apology, because there was then a mistake in the way in which the money was paid into Mr. Pitman’s account in July, for which my predecessor but two apologised fully. The hon. Gentleman then wrote in October to say that he did not believe that the compensation was a full and final settlement, despite the fact that his letter of 18 April confirmed that the compensation was a full and final settlement. I am afraid that, in terms of compensation, we believe this matter to be closed.

The Minister is incorrect to suggest that either Mr. Pitman or I wrote to the FCO to say that the settlement that was offered by the FCO was considered by us to be full and final. I hope that my second letter clarified that point beyond any fear of peradventure.

I am sorry, but the letter of 18 April accepted the compensation offer on behalf of Mr. Pitman, and the payment was made on that basis. As far as the FCO is concerned, that draws a line under the issue of compensation. I am afraid that I am unable to offer the hon. Gentleman any further help on that.

The hon. Gentleman then discussed a series of issues relating to what he called lurid headlines in the press, but I think he meant lurid headlines in the Daily Mail; often, when people talk about lurid headlines in the press, those headlines are in the Daily Mail. I think he was referring to the matter that he raised, of whether foreign diplomats are able to claim the cost of business flights and keep the extra money if they do not travel business class. I assure him that that is completely and utterly not the case. There is a travel package, which is provided to all foreign diplomats. We have to understand that many of the people who work on behalf of the FCO do so in far-flung places, and that family arrangements are much more difficult now than they were 40 years ago when female diplomats had to resign from the Foreign Office when they married. The expectation then was that there would be a man and his wife. Today, our staff are just as likely to be women as men, and a couple may work in two different places. We believe that in the modern working environment it is important to offer staff a sensible, but not disproportionate, package.

The travel package that we provide is an allowance for staff to use for travel on substantive postings overseas—in other words, not just temporary ones. The funds cover the cost of transfer to and from a posting and, on top of that, an annual leave journey to the UK in postings of two years or more. The package gives staff flexibility in how and when they travel during a posting within the ceiling that is fixed by the cost of their official travel entitlements on approved routes and carriers. The maximum that they may spend on travel is therefore the precise amount that the Department would have had to pay to get them to post and back and to bring them home once a year, as happened when flights were booked centrally before the scheme was introduced. There is no amount of money that suddenly goes into a diplomat’s pocket simply because they have not travelled in a particular class. There are fixed routes, but people are allowed to change the route as long as they stay within the amount of money that we have already ascertained would be the best value for them. It is important that we have flexibility, and that system is not disproportionate to what other people would do in other areas of work for which they are required to work away from their home for a substantial period.

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Gentleman said, again dismissively, that management in the FCO was an idea that was rather below the salt. That was a rather de haut en bas comment, suggesting that the FCO has a rather de haut en bas attitude. It may be that in the 1960s and 1970s, despite the considerable effectiveness that the Foreign Office has always had, for which it is renowned around the world, some of our management practices were lax. We have been keen to ensure that we constantly learn how we can improve our management practices. He is right that there are times when individual cases shine light on particular problems that may be endemic across an organisation, but in the brief time in which I have worked at the FCO, it has been my experience that management takes very seriously issues such as how best to manage people to develop change so that we can be the most effective organisation possible, and the most cost-effective organisation possible, and that Ministers are keen to drive those issues forward.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his debate. Some of his comments have been well placed, and I hope that I have been able to reassure him on the issue of whether Mr. Pitman is able to apply for jobs and on the issue of security clearance. I hope, too, that I have reassured him regarding the full and unreserved apology that we have already expressed.