It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Hancock.

It is highly appropriate that we are considering the human rights crisis in Burma just one day before we mark the anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights and celebrate international human rights day. Burma is ruled by one of the world’s most brutal regimes, which is guilty of every possible violation of human rights. The military regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council, has cruelly suppressed democracy and is perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity against many of its people.

The Nobel laureate and democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, led her party, the National League for Democracy, to a remarkable and overwhelming victory in elections held in 1990. Despite the party winning 82 per cent. of the parliamentary seats, 19 years on, most of those who were elected are in jail or in exile. The junta rejected the results, imprisoned the victors and has intensified its grip on power. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent over 14 years under house arrest.

In May this year, her term expired and even under Burmese law, she should have been released. However, the regime found an excuse to keep her under house arrest after an American, John Yettaw, swam across the lake to her home. He went there uninvited, she asked him to leave and he refused. Despite that, she was taken to Insein prison and charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest. A sham trial followed and she was sentenced on 11 August to a further 18 months of house arrest.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. He is right that the charges were trumped up. Does he agree that if it had not been for the American journalist swimming across the lake, the regime would have found other charges to ensure that Aung San Suu Kyi remained in prison for much longer?

If it was not for that incident, there would have been something else. The one thing that the junta does not want is to see Aung San Suu Kyi released and for her to be free among her own people who want to see her lead the country.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Burmese regime was in any way serious about political engagement with the United States or its Asian neighbours, it would take the important first step of releasing the political prisoners, Aung San Suu Kyi in particular?

That is one of the things we want to see. That has to happen before people will take the junta seriously. It is not just Aung San Suu Kyi. As my hon. Friend rightly said, a number of other political prisoners are being detained as we speak.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this odious regime is using the mental health system to remove and illegally detain politically active monks who are seeking justice and fairness for the people and for the regime’s political opponents?

Absolutely. I will refer to that later.

Despite being detained, Aung San Suu Kyi has courageously and consistently called for dialogue with her captors. On 20 May this year, from inside Insein prison, she said:

“It is still not too late to achieve national reconciliation.”

In September, she wrote to the head of the regime, Senior General Than Shwe, proposing dialogue. May I ask the Minister what the United Kingdom and the European Union are doing to support Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for dialogue and to urge the regime to come to the table? Two months ago on 9 October, she met the British ambassador for the first time in at least six years. What was the outcome of that meeting and what attempts are being made by the United Kingdom to secure further such meetings?

Aung San Suu Kyi has stated clearly to the regime that she would like to work with it to

“create conditions conducive to lifting of sanctions on Burma”.

Let us be clear that the conditions conducive to lifting sanctions do not yet exist. The United States has made it clear that it will maintain existing sanctions while pursing high-level engagement, until there are clear and tangible signs of meaningful progress. Does the Minister agree with me that the European Union should not lift any sanctions unless and until all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, are released; a nationwide ceasefire against ethic nationalities is declared; and a meaningful and irreversible process of tripartite dialogue between the regime, the National League for Democracy and the ethnic nationalities is begun? Furthermore, does he agree that unless the regime ends its campaign of brutality against the ethnic nationalities, the next European Union common position on Burma should tighten sanctions, including the introduction of new targeted financial sanctions such as a ban on insurance companies, which would affect some of the sectors from which the regime benefits most?

My hon. Friend is talking about engagement, but would it not be best to talk to our friends in the Chinese embassy in this country to try to get the Chinese Government to put pressure on the Burmese regime, with which it has a close relationship?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments. There is no doubt that China is a superpower and has an influential role to play. I believe that it abdicates its responsibility when it fails to do so. I hope that in the coming months, we will see China play a more positive role in trying to ensure that Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners are released in Burma.

Further to that point, here we have the evil regime in China propping up the regime in Burma. In fairness, we could ask the people of Tibet just how good China is. I do not hold out much hope. It is also interesting that the largest democracy in the world, India, also supports this evil regime. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we could do more through the Commonwealth to put pressure on India to stop supporting Burma?

I have made reference to China and will refer to India as well. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, it is the largest democracy in the world and a leading member of our Commonwealth, of which we are just one member. I hope that India uses its immense influence in the region to bring about the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the other 2,000 political prisoners in Burma, which include 200 Buddhist monks.

Some political prisoners have been sentenced to extraordinary terms, some to 65 years or more. Several prominent political prisoners need urgent medical treatment, but have been denied it by the regime. In particular, there is an immediate need for medical treatment for U Gambira, who has contracted malaria in Kale prison in Sagaing division; Min Ko Naing, who is suffering from a severe eye condition and high blood pressure; and Zaw Htet Ko Ko, who is suffering from serious gastric problems. What steps is the Minister taking to urge the authorities in Burma to ensure that all prisoners receive proper medical treatment? What steps is he taking to highlight the plight of political prisoners and to make their release a priority?

I have mentioned the plight of the ethnic nationalities. Let me describe it in more detail. The State Peace and Development Council is pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing. In eastern Burma, more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed and more than a million people internally displaced since 1996. Rape as a weapon of war, forced labour and the use of human minesweepers are widespread and systematic. Burma has the highest number of forcibly conscripted child soldiers in the world. Those are crimes against humanity.

This year, the Burma army has intensified its attacks in Karen state, driving thousands across the border into Thailand. Women and children are among the victims. For example, on 26 August a Karen woman, Ma Khin Kyi, was shot and severely wounded in the neck, jaw and mouth. Relief teams who provided assistance said that she was unlikely to survive because she was unable to eat or drink. On 27 December 2008, the body of a seven-year-old girl was found near her home after she had been raped and shot dead by a soldier from the Burma army.

The Karen are not the only ethnic group that has faced such offensives. In August, more than 10,000 people were driven from their homes in Shan state. At least 100 were arrested and tortured, and at least three people were killed. One woman was shot while trying to retrieve her possessions from a burning house and her body was thrown into a pit latrine. Another woman was gang-raped in front of her husband. On 3 August, soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 514 attacked and beheaded a 29-year-old woman.

In Chin State, the people face severe religious persecution, as documented by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in the report, “Carrying the Cross,” which was published two years ago. The Chin’s suffering is compounded by a chronic food shortage that the regime has done nothing to address. The plight of the Kachin people should not be ignored. The Kachin have a ceasefire with the regime, but still the abuses continue. The Rohingya are primarily Muslim people and are denied citizenship, despite having lived in northern Arakan state for generations.

The hon. Gentleman is at a particularly moving part of his speech. I have actually been in the jungle and have met the Burmese, the Karen, the Kachin and the Chin ethnic groups. I have seen the evidence of these atrocities—many more than he has outlined for us—and I have met the Myanmarian. There are more than 100,000 refugees in the Thai border refugee camps. I can testify to the accuracy of the odious statements that he is making.

I am grateful for that contribution, and for the documentation that Baroness Cox has sent me. She visited Mizoram and the people of Chinland from 15 to 30 November 2009, and she has presented me with a very moving report about the atrocities that are taking place in Burma.

A new report, “Crimes in Burma”, has been published by the Harvard Law School and was commissioned by five of the world’s leading jurists, including the former deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, and Justice Richard Goldstone. That report concludes that

“there is a prima facie case of international criminal law violations occurring that demands UN Security Council action to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these grave breaches further”.

The jurists conclude that these violations

“may amount to war crimes, as well as crimes against humanity”.

The report draws almost exclusively on the UN’s own statements. By the UN’s own admission—in resolutions of the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the International Labour Organisation and in reports by four consecutive special rapporteurs—the human rights violations in Burma are “systematic and widespread”. In 1998, the then special rapporteur stated that the violations by the regime

“have been so numerous and consistent over the past years as to suggest that they are not simply isolated or the acts of individual misbehaviour by middle and lower-ranking officers but are rather the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.”

In 2006, his successor reached a similar conclusion. Last month, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the regime in Burma

“to take urgent measures to put an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including the targeting of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups, the targeting of civilians by military operations, and rape and other forms of sexual violence, and to end impunity.”

The resolution also calls on the regime to end the

“systematic forced displacement of large numbers of persons within their country and other causes of refugee flows into neighbouring countries.”

Will the Minister agree that the violations in Burma amount to violations of international law and may qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity? Will he announce today that the United Kingdom will work to establish a UN commission of inquiry to investigate these crimes?

In 2008, a new constitution was introduced in a sham referendum. The new constitution guarantees the military a quarter of the seats in parliament, disqualifies Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency, and excludes former political prisoners from contesting elected office. The constitution has been described by the General Secretary of the Karen National Union as a

“death sentence for ethnic diversity”.

As the regime plans to hold elections next year, will the Minister agree that, unless the constitution is revised through an inclusive process, the elections will offer no hope of freedom or human rights and will simply enshrine military rule?

The military regime in Burma is widely regarded as among the worst in the world. The regime spends more than 40 per cent. of its budget on the military, and less than $1 per person per year on health and education combined. I welcome the leadership that the United Kingdom—particularly the Prime Minister—has given on the issue of Burma over the past two years, and the support that the Government have expressed for a universal arms embargo. However, will the Minister tell hon. Members what proactive steps the Government are taking to propose a universal arms embargo at the UN Security Council?

Burma is ranked by the Heritage Foundation as one of five most repressive economies in the world, by Transparency International UK as the third most corrupt country in the world, by Reporters Without Borders as one of the worst violators of press freedom, by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the worst country for internet bloggers, by the US Department of State as one of the worst violators of religious freedom, by Minority Rights Group International as one of the top five countries where ethnic minorities are under threat, by Médecins sans Frontières as one of the top 10 humanitarian crises in the world, by the genocide risk indices as one of the top two red alert countries for genocide along with Sudan, and by Freedom House as

“the worst of the worst”.

The UN has placed Burma on a monitoring list for genocide. Considering that catalogue of horrors, it is time for the international community to take urgent action to address the political and humanitarian crisis in Burma.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the urgency of the debate. He is coming to the nub of the matter now in terms of India, China and our own Government. The test of the international community at the UN will be how quickly we can help to resolve the problems in Burma for its people.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the hon. Gentleman is right. I am coming to my conclusion. The important thing for this debate is that we keep the matter in people’s minds. We last had a debate on the subject at the time of the cyclone, when we heard how repressive the regime could be in stopping aid getting through to the very people who needed it most. Now that cyclone has passed we must make absolutely certain that the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi, the political prisoners and, indeed, the ordinary people who live in fear in Burma is not forgotten. That is why this debate is particularly timely. The action we take now and in the first few weeks of 2010 will at least give the people of Burma some hope. Let us think about 2010.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that what we actually need in Burma is free, open, transparent elections to take place without any military interference. What conclusion can he make to ensure that we can achieve that through the international community or through his own involvement with this House and in Europe?

Burma is not alone in this. Violations have taken place only recently—just this weekend—in Iran. We know what happens when free and transparent elections take place: the people really do speak out. I pay tribute to the bravery of people, both in Iran and Burma, who put their lives on the line in speaking out and taking action to try to bring about regime change within their own countries. One of the things that will have a huge impact is people within their own countries being motivated for regime change. However, they also need help and support.

These debates are important to those people, because they let them know that they are not forgotten. For those people who are in prison, for those who live in fear of persecution and, indeed, for their families, it is important that they know there are Members of Parliament and people in the United Kingdom who support them in their fight. They are not alone. We will not forget them, and we will act to give them the freedom that they are fighting for. Minister, can we please make sure that 2010 will deliver for the people of Burma?

rose—

It is my intention to call Members for the winding-up speeches at 10.30. Can I get an indication of how many people would like to speak? I have got Stephen Crabb on the list, so he can provide the first contribution—he informed me that he would like to speak. May I ask who else wants to speak in the debate, so we can try to fit everybody in? [Interruption.] Dr. Pugh has indicated that he wants to speak. Okay, I call Stephen Crabb.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this important and timely debate, and thank him for doing so. He is a staunch defender of human rights and a true friend of the peoples of Burma, and I am please to have the opportunity to speak for a few minutes in this debate.

I will start by thanking the Burma Campaign, an organisation that operates with few resources, yet that punches far above its weight in ensuring that the issue does not move far from our agenda in this place. It does a sterling job in briefing MPs, peers and Ministers and ensuring that we return to the issue time and again, because it is too important to lose sight of. I also pay tribute to the work of people such as Ben Rogers at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which my hon. Friend has already mentioned, and Baroness Cox at the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust. Together, those individuals and their organisations have been doing some extremely important work on Burma, specifically in relation to some of the ethnic groups, such as the Karen, the Karenni and the Shan people of eastern Burma and the Chin people of western Burma, on the border with India, who are currently suffering in appalling conditions. I also pay tribute to the Minister and the Government for their work and the steps they have taken in recent years to respond to the growing crisis in Burma. The Minister and I have shared platforms on the issue before, so I know from talking with him that he has a personal commitment to this, and I look forward to his remarks.

I make no apologies if I repeat some of the points and evidence that my hon. Friend gave in his contribution. It is absolutely right and vital that we keep coming back to the issue, both for the people of Burma, who are currently suffering in appalling conditions, and because it is a test for us and for the international community on how well we deal with the worst of the worst. The situation in Burma is a litmus test to show how serious the international community is in giving real meaning to the terms of the universal declaration of human rights, the anniversary of which we will celebrate tomorrow on international human rights day. Are we serious about seeing basic civil freedoms upheld for all peoples everywhere throughout the world, or do we just pay lip service to those things?

Let us be clear: with the military junta in Burma, as my hon. Friend said, we are dealing with the worst of the worst gangster regimes to be found anywhere in the world. The regime continues to have one of the worst records for imprisoning political opponents and for forcibly recruiting child soldiers. In fact, it has the largest number of child soldiers of any army in the world. It is waging a brutal war on its ethnic minorities. It is a regime that turned the humanitarian crisis that followed Cyclone Nargis into a near-genocidal catastrophe. It is a regime that has, time and again, laughed in the face of the international community and run rings around the whole succession of toothless UN envoys and special representatives.

I will provide more detail by discussing the proposed UN commission of inquiry on the crimes of the Burmese regime. Following the failure to secure a UN Security Council resolution two years ago, it is vital that that issue is a top priority for the UN. I look forward to what the Minister has to say on the proposal for a commission of inquiry, which is being pushed for in this country by the Burma Campaign and across the world by the worldwide Burma democracy movement.

In October, in a statement to the 64th session of the UN General Assembly Third Committee, the UN special rapporteur on Burma described the human rights situation in that country as “alarming”. He noted that

“there is a pattern of widespread and systematic violations”

and that

“the prevailing impunity allows for the continuation of these violations.”

Would the Minister give a view on how best the proposal for a commission of inquiry could be taken forward and, indeed, whether he supports such a proposal? If he does not support such a commission, what alternative course of action are the Government pursuing at the UN to bring pressure to bear on the generals over their appalling record of human rights abuses?

Supporters of democracy are also pushing for a universal arms embargo on Burma, and stressing the need to build a global consensus to ensure that a true, universal arms embargo is imposed, which is now more necessary than ever. On 12 October 2008, the President of Timor-Leste, Dr. Jose Ramos Horta, added his voice to calls for a universal arms embargo on the Burma regime, stating that

“the events of the past two years in Burma have shocked the world…The deterioration in the political and humanitarian situation calls for a clear response by the international community…There can be no justification for selling arms to a regime which…uses those arms simply to suppress its own people”.

A large number of countries have already signed up and support a global arms embargo, including the UK and many European countries. As far as I can see—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—the British Government and the EU have stated that they support a global arms embargo but have taken few practical steps to secure it. Perhaps the Minister can set me straight on that.

I will move on to the detail of the recent reports by Baroness Cox, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley referred. Baroness Cox has just returned from a visit to Chin state and earlier this year visited eastern Burma and produced two excellent reports, which I strongly encourage the Minister and his colleagues at the Department for International Development to read in detail. Chin state is experiencing a deteriorating humanitarian situation and a famine caused by the flowering of bamboo and an infestation of rats, which has lead to serious food shortages and increased rates of morbidity and mortality. Children are not going to school, because they need to search for food or are too weak, and reports are coming through of entirely deserted villages and large migration flows of people into India, Malaysia, China and Thailand. At the same time, severe and grave human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated by Burmese military troops, who are dispersed across Chin state. There are reports of forced labour, torture, rape and the systematic refusal by the regime to provide anything like adequate health care. The result is widespread suffering in Chin state.

In 2008, DFID committed initial funding of £600,000, specifically to address the food crisis in Chin state. That sum was increased to £800,000 in March 2009, which we welcome. However, there is concern that in some areas, international funds for emergency food relief channelled through the UN Development Programme allegedly are being provided not as aid, but as loans that are repayable at rates of up to 200 per cent. If the Minister does not have the information to hand to respond to that point, would he write to me after the debate to assure me that more assistance will be provided to Chin state, and will he investigate the claims that in some areas, the UNDP is providing money in the form of loans charged at 200 per cent?

In eastern Burma, the absurdly named State Peace and Development Council—they are brutal military thugs—continues to inflict gross human rights abuses on the Karen, the Karenni and the Shan peoples. In the so-called brown territories, human mine sweepers and forced labour are used. In many parts of the black areas, where there is a sustained military offensive by the Burmese regime, there is a shoot-to-kill policy and widespread reports of the torture and rape of civilians. There has been a large increase this year in the number of internally displaced people as a result of the military conflict. I understand that there are approximately 30,000 IDPs among the Karen people alone, hiding in the jungle in appalling conditions. Would the Minister update us on what steps he and his colleagues are taking to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those oppressed ethnic groups?

Is the Minister aware of the very difficult debates among the ethnic groups of Burma on how to respond to the forthcoming national elections? Should they participate or boycott them? They are loth to confer legitimacy on those elections by participating, but they are worried that by not voting they might lose the opportunity to provide evidence of vote rigging in future and that doing so will deny them any sliver of representation, however minimal, once those elections have taken place. Does the Minister agree that whatever decision those ethnic groups reach on whether to participate in the elections, the international community must not endorse the regime’s sham elections and must lend no credibility whatever to the process? To do otherwise would be a huge disservice to the democracy movement in Burma and a massive setback for its ethnic peoples.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Karen, 30,000 of whom were displaced in the jungle. I have met some of those groups and seen the children walking three miles to carry water in old petrol cans. I met the elders and saw the conditions in which they lived, with no health service, no family planning for the young girls and no education. That really needs to be tackled by the international community.

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. The convergence of difficult humanitarian conditions with gross human rights abuses is creating a dire set of circumstances for the oppressed ethnic groups.

Moving on to the subject of political engagement, in September, the US Administration announced the outcome of their review of US policy towards Burma, something which many of us were watching closely. A general welcome, which I support, has been given to the noises being made by the new US Administration, but I have some questions which I would like to put to the Minister. I have read in detail the transcript of the report by Kurt Campbell, an official from the US State Department, on why there has been a slight change of tack on the part of the Obama Administration in respect of Burma. What does the Minister think that it has shifted? Has there been any substantive shift at all on the part of the Burmese regime which has led the US Government to announce that they are willing to engage in some form of political dialogue? What gesture or shift has there been by the Burmese Government? As far as I can tell, there has been none.

For example, there has been no release of political prisoners or move in the direction of improving the conditions in which Aung San Suu Kyi is held, let alone any talk of her being released. So what have the Burmese Government done to deserve the announcement that the US Government are now willing to engage in dialogue with them? The risk surely is that their status as a reprehensible pariah is slightly reduced by this shift on the part of the Obama Administration, and unless there is real toughness on the part of the international community, particularly the US Government, in upholding sanctions and being absolutely firm on the conditions under which they will engage with the Burmese Government, the Burmese Government will achieve an important gain.

The problem is that two members of the BRIC countries are the biggest countries that prop Burma up; that is where our difficulty is. Human rights in China are not different from human rights in Burma. What can we do about India and China? That is the big issue.

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. China and India, particularly China, are hugely influential in discussions about the future of Burma. We must also consider the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has not been mentioned so far in this debate. I shall come on to it in a second, but first would like to conclude my comments on US policy.

My fear is that the US has changed tack slightly because of other regional issues across Asia, North Korea and China, and that Burma risks becoming part of a subset of a wider set of geopolitical issues and therefore does not receive the specific and dedicated attention that it deserves. We need to hold on to it as a human rights and humanitarian issue. It is not part of a subset of a wider range of geopolitical questions. I have said before in the House that we need a much more intelligent approach to ASEAN. Two years ago, through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, I was able to visit three ASEAN countries shortly after the ASEAN summit in which discussion of Burma featured heavily. It is clear that politicians and Governments in Asia do not have quite the same view of human and civil rights as we do, and that they do not see Burma in the same way that we do. It is important that while we engage with them and try to understand their position, they understand just how reprehensible the Burmese Government are in our view. If they want the EU to take ASEAN more seriously as a representative organisation for Asian economies, they need to understand that there are certain things that they need to fix within their club, Burma being one of them. I look forward to what the Minister and other speakers have to say.

Thank you very much for a thoughtful contribution, Mr. Crabb.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this important debate. I had not intended to speak at any length this morning. This is more a question of a few observations off the back of my chairing the all-party Burma group last week. The fact that I was doing it and not someone more exalted—for example, people such as the Speaker are very much involved in the all-party group—shows that there was a somewhat thin attendance. That was slightly disappointing.

Baroness Cox, the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and I were there. In addition, there was a contingent of Karen people who had come to inform us about their plight in a touching way. There were people there who, in the course of giving testimony, broke down in tears as they described not general events but events that had happened specifically to their family. It was a difficult time for MPs, but I am glad to say that today there is wider representation, and I am sure that all MPs, whether able to be here or not, fully recognise the awful plight of the Burmese.

I would like to relate to the Minister how the people who came to see us the other day have an almost touching, slightly naive faith in what we can do for them. They treasure democracy, they are exiles in this country, and they are aware of the huge and manifest difference between their plight in Burma and their situation in the UK. We might grumble about our country from time to time, but they certainly do not.

Their purpose, and the purpose of the meeting, was twofold. One was to verify the charges against the Burmese Government through eloquent testimony. I pay tribute to Baroness Cox who, from her own experience and reports that she has prepared, was able to amplify and add to that. The Burmese people listed on an individual and collective basis things that hon. Members have already spoken about such as the use of forced labour, the displacement of people, the use of rape as a policy instrument, the malnutrition and all the other awful effects that follow consequently. That has been done umpteen times in this place, in the media and throughout the world.

The other object of the meeting was to show a way forward, and I have to say that at first I was slightly sceptical about it. The main burden of the meeting was to put across the idea that a United Nations inquiry stimulated by activities at Harvard Law School could do some positive good and be a small step forward. One may think that that is a somewhat doomed strategy because one knows that, in the world of realpolitik, the Chinese and Indian Governments and many other interests in south Asia have little interest in taking the Burmese issue head on. In fact, I voiced some of that scepticism while chairing the meeting, because I thought that people needed to recognise what could and could not be done. However, they impressed on me the idea that the activity by itself, if done on an official basis through the UN, would not be futile, because evidence against previous serial abusers of human rights such as Saddam Hussein and Milosevic has often been collected prior to their apprehension, downfall and conviction. That kind of evidence and inquiry has a horrible habit of coming back to haunt the culprits—the people who currently are, or feel that they are, safe and secure. That is one positive reason for getting on with an inquiry.

A second positive reason is that the people who suffer genuinely want official international recognition of their suffering and the abuse of power and human rights. The victims genuinely want that, and certainly the people who I saw last week wanted that, even if it did nothing other than to declare that recognition and announce it to the world, thereby ensuring that nobody could be in any doubt about it.

The third reason why the strategy might do some good—I would take some persuasion about this, and people may have more than one view about it—is that perpetrators, even people who are in a secure position in their country, backed by their own military and currently in charge, do not welcome international condemnation. They do not like the idea simply because, in the back of their mind, they know that there is insecurity attached to all power and that, at some point, whether in the Third Reich or other regimes, the chickens can come home to roost.

So there are four practical things that we can do for the people of Burma, and there is a range of people for whom we need to do things. The Shan and Karen people have been mentioned, as well as pro-democracy people in the cities, the monks and so on. Those things are fairly obvious and the Government can do all of them. They can continue to support sanctions, although I am not optimistic about that as a strategy to change the nature of events, because of the influence of China and so on. We can do our utmost—we hon. Members are doing so today, I guess—to publicise the issue to try to get a bit of media attention for what is surely an intolerable situation. But as the campaigners themselves mentioned, the press are fickle. The strange thing about suffering is that if it goes on and on and is always there it does not get reported, although it is all the worse for being so perpetual.

Thirdly, we can put pressure on India through the Commonwealth, as the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) mentioned in his intervention. India genuinely has a part to play here and we should not exonerate it from its responsibilities. India has its own human rights issues, as does China, but it surely cannot play its current role and be seen as totally supportive of human rights. India must do more to assist the people of Burma, if only because it gets the outfall of that problem—the refugees coming across its border and into parts of that country that are deprived and cannot stand extra burdens imposed on them.

Fourthly, we must press for the United Nations inquiry, on which we want an answer from the Minister today. I was sceptical about that inquiry and did not think that it would necessarily do any good, and I can see all the problems that it could incur with other members of the UN, but pushing in that direction is a step forward. Even if I did not think that, the people I spoke to a week ago thought so, and that is one good reason for doing it.

I hope that our Government will take all those four steps.

Mr. Hancock, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this debate, which is timely, as he said. It has been an interesting debate, as debates often are in Westminster Hall. In particular, real value has been added by those hon. Members who have brought to bear their personal experience of talking face to face to the individuals who have been living with the consequences of this horrible regime. I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh).

I would like to touch on the elections, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis and the human rights situation, many aspects of which have been explored by hon. Members in some detail. I shall focus on what the response might be and what we and the rest of the international community might be able to do.

The most high-profile symbol of the corruption and anti-democratic and repressive nature of the regime in Burma is the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. We should bear in mind that her detention has now lasted 14 years—it is sometimes difficult to imagine such a huge amount of time—yet still she retains the faith, strength and ability to keep going. During that time there have been little false glimmers of hope. Burma’s Foreign Ministry has told the Associated Press that the junta plans to release Dr. Suu Kyi from house arrest to allow her to organise her party before the elections in March 2010. But before we get too hopeful about that, we should remember that the regime has dashed such hopes in the past. For example, in 2004, the then Burmese Foreign Minister Win Aung promised the UN envoy that she would be released, but in May 2007 her term of house arrest was extended for another year. It would be a fabulous outcome if her release were to be secured, but that is still in doubt. Even if she were released before the elections, there is still a huge challenge to face and a long way to go before Burma is anything approaching a democracy, because, as has been mentioned, the constitution would prevent her from standing for election even if released.

In preparing for such debates, I always find new information: in this case, horrific new information. As the hon. Member for Ribble Valley mentioned, a quarter of the 440 seats in the Burmese Assembly are automatically given to the military. When I read that I could not believe the total brazenness of the regime’s changing the constitution to reserve a quarter of the seats for the military junta. In this circumstance, people are left thinking, what chance is there for democracy unless there is wholesale change of the constitution?

The horror runs much deeper even than the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and the difficulties with the constitution, because the number of political prisoners has more than doubled since the beginning of 2007, according to Human Rights Watch. More than 2,100 people are detained in 43 prisons and over 50 labour camps, where they are forced into hard labour projects. Anybody who speaks out against military rule is routinely locked up. There is no such thing as a free press. That shows us that, even if the junta follows through this time and releases Dr. Suu Kyi, that is little more than a token gesture to try to make the elections seem credible: it is not a commitment to democratisation. Having said that, we must still push for the junta to do that.

I now turn to the aftermath of the cyclone that hit in 2008. We need to remember the destruction that that caused: 140,000 people dead or missing, which is a huge natural disaster on any scale. But, of course, that natural disaster was compounded by the authorities’ refusal properly to allow aid agencies to get in and do their work. I remember the debates in the House at that time and the indignation around the world about what happened. However, we have not heard the story of what has happened since.

Amnesty International has reported that, as recently as October this year, the Burmese authorities arrested at least 10 journalists and political activists for accepting relief donations from abroad for survivors of the cyclone, because more than 18 months after that devastation the authorities have not dealt with it. The aid is still needed, yet the regime continues to make arrests and lock people up for doing no more than trying to help those whose lives have been devastated by the natural disaster.

At the time of the cyclone, when the United States was sending aid, the regime preferred to see its people die while it repackaged some of that aid so that the people receiving it did not know that it came from the US. Does not that say everything that we need to know about the regime? It would rather see its people die than let them see where the aid has come from.

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful intervention, with which I think all hon. Members would agree. It is almost inconceivable that a regime could be so heartless and so unbothered by its people’s suffering. Burma still needs extra funding for new houses, cyclone shelters, livelihood programmes, water and sanitation—the basic tools of life—and education and health services. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Yet the funding has not properly flowed.

Only £75 million has been committed to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations tripartite core group’s post-cyclone recovery project, which is expected to cost £415 million. I congratulate the Government on the Department for International Development funding for the aid programme, which rose from £12.5 million last year to £25 million this year, and on the plans to increase it further to £28 million in 2010-11. In the context of difficult economic circumstances, that shows a commitment from this Government, but it is not enough on its own, which is why I am also pleased that they are encouraging other donors to increase their aid contributions.

Cyclone Nargis did not get the same coverage around the world as other disasters, such as the tsunami. Although the cyclone was prominent in our news media, it was not quite at the same level as the tsunami, because—this is a big aspect—journalists with cameras were not able to report freely in the country, so there was not the same number of pictures to accompany the story. The broadcast and print media are driven by pictures so Burma suffered doubly, because the public donations were not as high as they might have been had the natural disaster happened in a country where media coverage could have been greater. The Government aid programmes are even more important because of that.

The hon. Gentleman’s speech was particularly powerful when he painted a grim picture of the repression of minorities, especially the use of rape as a weapon of war. The internal conflict between the military rulers and the minority ethnic groups in Burma has continued for the past 60 years, and the sad truth is that it is increasingly common in such conflicts that a frequent mode of attack is a systematic policy for soldiers to rape women and children.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women submitted a report on Burma to the UN General Assembly in November 2008 in which it expressed its

“deep concern at the high prevalence of sexual and other forms of violence, including rape, perpetrated by members of the armed forces against rural ethnic women, including Shan, Mon, Karen, Palaung and Chin women.”

It notes that the perpetrators have virtual impunity. Only a few cases have ever been prosecuted, and it reports intimidation of those who are brave enough to come forward even to complain. There is obvious violation of UN Security Council resolution 1820 on sexual violence in armed conflict. I am pleased that this year the UK co-sponsored Security Council resolution 1888, which led the council to appoint a special representative to tackle sexual violence in armed conflict. That is important in Burma and, sadly, in other countries.

The UK has a strong record on tackling violence against women, but I understand from a parliamentary answer that the Government are not putting forward a UK candidate for the new post and I would be interested to hear, today or later in writing, why, and who they will support. It is obviously vital that the special representative can put the matter at the heart of the international community, and ensure that it is, rightly, high on the agenda.

On rape as a matter of policy, I have been told by people from the Karen community that the sinister ideological rationalisation is that the military rulers regard the tribes as troublesome and feel that by diluting the gene pool through rape and the creation of mixed-breed children they are doing their bit to progress ethnic cleansing. That is a particularly revolting rationalisation.

I agree. It is hard even to listen to such a rationalisation, and to hear that the individuals involved think that they are, as my hon. Friend puts it, doing their bit.

Going through the catalogue of horrors—that phrase was rightly used earlier—brings us to what our response should be. Within the international community there seems to have been some movement recently. Obviously, the Government have targeted sanctions against the regime at EU and UN levels, and my party has supported that. I echo the calls for a universal arms embargo, because there can be no justification for selling arms to such a regime.

Barack Obama has decided to try to engage with the military junta in a break from the Bush policy of isolation, but I do not know whether a specific event, other than the change of presidency, prompted that change in strategy. Aung San Suu Kyi has expressed support for sanctions, but more recently has offered to co-operate in getting them lifted. Dr. Suu Kyi’s conditions for agreeing to co-operate are not yet clear, but the commitment will obviously not be open-ended. It would be helpful if the Minister enlightened the debate on the conditions that Dr. Suu Kyi has specified, and whether the Government would agree with her if such progress were made, and review their approach to the regime. Obviously, if she, as an individual in the country, can achieve some progress, that might be an alternative strategy. I echo calls from hon. Members to use every diplomatic lever at our disposal to persuade India and China in particular, who have a strong influence in Burma, to put pressure on the regime.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport made a powerful case for the UN inquiry, and perhaps it is even more powerful as it comes from someone who was previously a sceptic. I hope that the Government will support those calls.

As the hon. Lady is mentioning other countries, will she mention the two roles that Thailand is playing? One is a positive role in allowing refugee camps on the border, which is extremely good of it. It is trying to care for those people as best it can. On the other hand, it is trading with and propping up politically the odious regime in Burma. It is involved in some of the large and illegal infrastructure projects on ethnic people’s land in Burma. There is tension in Thailand, and we must maintain pressure on the Thai Government.

The hon. Gentleman makes his point well, and although China and India are key players, we should not forget that other countries also play a role.

The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) asked whether we are serious about getting to grips with human rights issues, and the question is appropriate. Westminster Hall debates on foreign affairs are often depressing. By their nature, they tend to be about the world’s problems rather than shining examples of good practice and success. Debates during the past few weeks have been on Iran, human rights in China, the death penalty, and Burma, so it is right to ask the question. Human rights abuses are so severe and, sadly, so prevalent throughout the world, that it is important to highlight them, and to ask whether we are doing everything we can. Having said that, we can be proud of some aspects of our record, and I give credit where it is due to the Government, but we should never stop asking the question.

The Government have a good record, and sanctions have been an important part of that. If things change in the country, we would need to review our strategy, particularly if the change in the US’s strategy bears fruit. As many hon. Members have outlined, the human rights situation in Burma is dire, and it is vital that the Government use every tool at their disposal to put pressure on the Burmese regime to bring the awful abuses to an end.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Hancock, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on raising this issue. He and other hon. Members who have spoken from both sides of the Chamber have a track record of raising the matter. Many of us feel the presence of the Speaker hovering over us. In a previous incarnation, when he was a troublesome and noisy Back Bencher, he had a distinguished track record of raising this issue and speaking out both in Parliament and outside.

The last Westminster Hall debate on Burma was in December 2007, but the matter has been raised during other Westminster Hall debates—for example, the debates on China and the west in October, on India in May, and on human rights in December 2008. On 9 June there was an Adjournment debate on the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma is not just a stand-alone issue; it has a thread in other areas. It is important to understand that the context is not just the suffering of the Burmese people, but the wider issue of human rights.

As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, anyone who discusses foreign affairs and UK policy may become depressed that so many countries are carrying out the most horrendous crimes against their own ethnic people or their ethnic minorities. That applies on a much smaller scale in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Tibet of course, and a raft of others. The issue that we must address as parliamentarians and in terms of the Government is what we can realistically do to bring pressure to bear on regimes that do not respond easily to outside pressure to modify or, hopefully, to stop their behaviour.

I am conscious of one other element as far as Burma is concerned. We governed Burma for a period of 80 or 90 years, so it might be that we have a moral debt. Many of us have not forgotten that during the second world war, many Burmese people suffered horrendously under occupation. Many of those ethnic groups who are the most persecuted, aided the Commonwealth armies, hid British and Commonwealth troops who had been left behind, and faced the most horrendous consequences for what they did. There is an additional moral imperative.

Let me touch briefly on a number of issues, some of which have already been raised by colleagues. First is the question of the US policy review. The Americans have carried out a major review on how to engage with Burma, which I suggest is part of a wider Obama strategy of trying to engage with a whole raft of regimes, of which Iran is another example. However, that does not mean that all other elements should not be used as well. The Obama Government have concluded—quite rightly—that the idea that one should not engage directly or indirectly with a regime is a false position in which to be. It does not use an important weapon that a Government have at their disposal—that of diplomacy.

The Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, told a Senate hearing:

“Lifting or easing sanctions at the outset of a dialogue without meaningful progress on our concerns would be a mistake…any easing of sanctions now would send the wrong signal”.

The Americans are not prepared to ease sanctions without seeing some degree of progress, but as a number of colleagues have asked: how do we define that progress? What type of US engagement will be pursued, and how will the US ensure that it is co-ordinated with the rest of the international community? Perhaps the Minister can clarify that, because the international approach is crucial.

That brings me to the role of the United Nations. Last week, the UN announced that the UN special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, will become head of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. He will assume that position on 1 January next year, and his replacement is currently being sought. I do not know whether the Minister can give us information on any name that might be in the frame.

The military junta failed on a number of occasions to give Mr. Gambari a visa. He managed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi during one visit to the country, but interestingly, she refused to meet him on a later occasion. There has been considerable criticism of Mr. Gambari on the grounds that he did not have a sufficiently robust attitude towards the Burmese regime. Over the past 40 years, there have been 40 visits to Burma by UN envoys.

My hon. Friend is being very measured and diplomatic in his description of Mr. Gambari’s effectiveness. I was not aware that Mr. Gambari had been appointed to a role in Darfur. How much optimism does my hon. Friend have for the work that Mr. Gambari will do in Darfur, given that he was such a manifest flop during his work in Burma?

I do not know whether it is an insult or a compliment to hear that I am being measured. Perhaps I am doing my Sir Humphrey act. If I were a Foreign Office mandarin, which I am not—although I probably look like one from the 1950s—I would say that Mr. Gambari is going to be “challenged” in Darfur. There is no doubt about that. I agree with my hon. Friend: it is an amazing appointment given Mr. Gambari’s demonstrable failure to engage with the Burmese regime. That does not mean that another UN envoy would have no trouble in engaging with that regime, but most independent observers regard Mr. Gambari’s work there as a failure. I hope that whoever is appointed as his successor will be more robust in dealing with the regime.

What further discussions have representatives of the UK Government had with Aung San Suu Kyi following her meeting with the British Ambassador, Andrew Heyn, on 9 October 2009? What opportunities are there for engagement between the UK Government and representatives from Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League of Democracy, in advance of the 2010 elections?

A number of colleagues touched on the 2010 elections, and it has already been pointed out that the new constitution guarantees the military one quarter of the seats in both the upper and lower houses of the new national Parliament. The UK Government have strongly criticised the planned elections. Earlier this year in answer to a written question, a Minister stated:

“The military regime in Burma is determined to maintain its hold on power regardless of the cost and suffering of its people. The junta’s ‘Roadmap to disciplined democracy’,”

—that has a wonderful sound of 1984 to it—

“including a new constitution and elections planned for 2010, is designed to entrench military rule behind a facade of civilian government.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 356W.]

It is clear that the 2010 elections planned by the military junta do not represent genuine progress towards democracy. Will the Minister outline the conditions that the UK Government think are necessary for a credible election process? How can we measure those in the forthcoming months?

A number of colleagues have mentioned EU sanctions. Will the Minister assure us that existing EU sanctions will not be relaxed until clear progress is made by the Burmese regime, including an end to human rights abuses and the oppression of minorities? What mechanisms are in place to ensure that existing UK sanctions on the import of timber and gems from Burma are enforced, and not violated as is currently the case? That is only a small part of the sanctions, but it is important and involves members of the regime personally.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been mentioned. There is no doubt that the ability of the ASEAN powers to put pressure on Burma is considerable, at least in theory. Many of us have been disappointed over the past few years that some ASEAN countries have not been more robust towards Burma. Burma’s main outlet to the world is through ASEAN meetings and conferences. I hope that the British Government, both bilaterally and in direct relations with ASEAN, will bring more pressure to bear on ASEAN countries, and stand up for what many of those countries believe about democratic accountability, free elections and so on.

I will conclude with a number of final points. First, we are all overwhelmed by the tales of suffering that we hear, not only via the media but through personal meetings with people who have been in Burma, and from Burmese minorities. The Burmese people are not alone in their suffering as there are many other regimes, but they are a quiet, dignified people, and it is important that we speak up on their behalf through Parliament. It is depressing that over the past four years in which I have participated in such debates, we have seen only a small amount of progress. However, we can at least collectively express our outrage through Parliament. I hope that in a positive, rather than negative way, we can put pressure on the British Government so that the Foreign Office can say to countries, “Pressure is being brought to bear on us by the democratic representatives of the British people”.

We need a dual track of attempts at dialogue with the Burmese Government, but also to put pressure on them and their neighbours, crucially, as colleagues have mentioned, the two big states. The first of those states is India, which is a member of the British Commonwealth. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), who is no longer in the Chamber, about using the good offices of the Commonwealth. The second state is China, which I know is less easy. The Chinese do not wish to discuss their relations with a whole raft of regimes throughout the world, about which it is to their economic benefit to keep quiet regarding demonstrable crimes against humanity and, in some cases, war crimes. Nevertheless, the British Government have a duty to be quite robust with the Chinese Government on the matter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the shadow Foreign Secretary, raises these points whenever we meet senior members of the Chinese Government.

The pressure exerted through the United Nations is also crucial. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) made a very important observation, recognising that he had not originally been persuaded of this. Many of these regimes may brush aside the threat of a war crimes inquiry, but I think it gnaws at their vitals. It makes them incredibly careful about where they travel to and they are always fearful that one day or other, their regime might fall.

Regime change does not usually happen quickly. I just scribbled down some notes on this, à la the old staff college lecturer in me. Regime change can come about internally; ultimately, there can be a revolution or coup d’état. It can come about externally, by two methods. One is what happened to the old white Rhodesian regime when the South African Government literally turned the power off and said, “That’s it, gentlemen. It’s the endgame. We’re not prepared to support you any more.” There is a chance that that could still happen, ironically, in Zimbabwe, but the current South African Government do not want to do it. The Chinese could probably bring about regime change in North Korea by switching the power off, but for understandable reasons, they do not want to do so.

Finally, there is the threat of force. One of the great tragedies of international relations in the past decade relates to the fact that there was a narrow window of opportunity after 9/11 when the world actively supported and sympathised with the United States of America. The American threat of force and, indeed, its intervention against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan caused many regimes suddenly to change their attitude and policies. The North Koreans shifted—they were absolutely terrified—and Colonel Gaddafi, who, crab-like, was already moving in that direction, moved very quickly indeed. Sadly, that has gone, but at least the threat of force should never be removed from the diplomatic table. If the threat of force is removed, there is no requirement on these odious regimes to make any change at all.

I hope that the Minister will accept not my remarks but the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley, who initiated the debate, and of other hon. Members in the way in which they were made, which I hope he will regard as both constructive and supportive.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this important Adjournment debate and on the passionate and authentic way in which he presented our shared concerns on the human rights abuses that continue to scar Burma and the issues of greatest concern to the international community. The debate has displayed a unity of purpose, shared concern and a determination to find ways to adopt practical measures that will influence the regime and move the situation forward.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) for his long-standing work on raising the profile and the issue of Burma in the House and for his work to promote the need to take more decisive action. I join the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) in paying tribute to the work, over a very long time, of Mr. Speaker in championing this issue and ensuring that Britain regards it as a priority.

I am sure that hon. Members would acknowledge on a cross-party basis that this matter concerns my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister very deeply. He has given the issue a considerable amount of his personal attention and leadership. He has rightly described Aung San Suu Kyi as one of the most courageous individuals of our lifetime—of our generation—as a result of the sacrifices and suffering that she has had to tolerate because she has stayed true to her people and her principles. She has suffered a lot of personal pain and tragedy as a consequence.

We share the deep concern of hon. Members on both sides of the House for the Burmese people—the concern about the multiple humanitarian crises, appalling human rights abuses and the fact that there has been precious little progress towards genuine democracy. We are committed to doing all we can, in a number of ways, to help the people of Burma to a better future, as hon. Members suggested. Tough EU sanctions targeted at the regime leadership underline our determination to see real political reform. Robust dialogue makes our concerns clear, but also emphasises our readiness to respond to progress. With regard to humanitarian aid, the UK, as hon. Members said, is the largest donor this year, alongside Japan, which genuinely makes a difference in alleviating the suffering of Burma’s poor.

On the points made by the hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire and for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), there is concern that people are being charged for some of the aid; that is what we are told. The UNDP is investigating those allegations as a matter of urgency, and we will report to the House when we receive clarification of exactly what is happening on the ground. Our key objectives remain the release of all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi—we should remember that there are more than 2,000 political prisoners—and the start of a genuine process of political dialogue involving all opposition and ethnic groups. The elections planned for 2010—hon. Members asked where we stood on this—will have no international legitimacy unless those and other steps are taken as a matter of urgency. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle).

The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk asked, reasonably, what credible steps would allow us to take a more sympathetic view of the elections next year. First, the very constitution on which the elections are based would have to be changed, because it inherently means an unfair process and an unfair outcome. Inevitably, the release not only of Aung San Suu Kyi but all political prisoners would be necessary before any elections, to give sufficient time for those people to participate and to organise appropriately by campaigning and making their pitch to the people of Burma. The regime would have to take many steps in a very short time for us to be willing to consider those elections as having any legitimacy whatever, and I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that there is very little sign of the regime being willing to do that.

Many hon. Members raised the question of our contact with other countries and with international institutions. I assure them that we use every opportunity to make the case as to why those countries with the closest relationships with Burma should be doing more to make it clear to the regime that its behaviour is intolerable. The Prime Minister has discussed Burma in the past few weeks with the Prime Minister of Japan and the UN Secretary-General. In September, he raised Burma with the Chinese President. He has raised it on a number of occasions recently with the Prime Minister of India. There are many such occasions. Whenever we are involved in bilateral discussions at the highest levels, we constantly raise Burma and we acknowledge the point that hon. Members have made—arguably, those countries that have the closest relationships with the Burmese regime are in the best position to exercise influence. They are allies of ours and are countries with which we have a largely positive relationship, and we make it clear that it matters to our bilateral relationship that they take their responsibilities seriously with regard to human rights in Burma.

We are also working closely with the US, Australia and European Union partners. We agree with the US that any relaxation of sanctions must be only in response to tangible progress. The EU has not ruled out further sanctions if the situation deteriorates. The UK was instrumental in securing additional financial measures when Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced in August to a further 18 months under house arrest. We continue to support the efforts of the UN Secretary-General and his good offices mission. The UN has a central role to play.

The hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire, for East Dunbartonshire and for Mid-Norfolk asked about US dialogue. Previously, the Americans’ position was one of isolation and sanctions, but they have adopted one of engagement and sanctions following their review. It must be made clear, however, that there is absolutely no sign that the US, the EU or the international community has any intention of reducing economic sanctions against the regime, because we have seen no significant shift whatever from it so far. This is not an either/or scenario. It is perfectly reasonable, as the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk said, to have a strategy of engagement and sanctions. If we looked at the strategy adopted until the Americans undertook their review, we would see that they were right to decide that it was time to move from isolation and sanctions to engagement and sanctions.

Hon. Members have asked about the ASEAN countries, and I have raised these issues with ASEAN ambassadors on a couple of occasions—indeed, we constantly raise them. The ASEAN countries are an emerging institution, and the UK should engage with its power brokers and economies in a more positive and meaningful way. It is worth noting, however, that ASEAN recently set up a commission on human rights, so it recognises that it has a lot of work to do specifically on human rights. We should support the establishment of that commission, but we should ensure that it undertakes meaningful work and begins to pressure ASEAN members over their human rights performance. We will keep a close eye on progress.

I turn now to the contact that our ambassador and our country have recently had with Aung San Suu Kyi. The meeting that took place between our ambassador and Aung San Suu Kyi on 9 October was a small but welcome development. She requested the meeting to discuss sanctions, and we invited US and Australian representatives to attend. At the meeting, she asked for information on the scope, impact and intent behind EU sanctions, and our ambassador answered her questions and provided additional written material afterwards. Importantly, Aung San Suu Kyi was seeking information, rather than setting out a clear position.

To respond to the question from the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk, we are of course keen for further meetings to take place, and we have made that clear to the Burmese authorities. No further meeting has yet taken place, but we do have regular dialogue with the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. Subsequent to the meeting on 9 October, Aung San Suu Kyi sent a second letter to Than Shwe asking for a meeting with him. It will be interesting to see how the regime responds—it still has to respond—to that formal request.

If I might update hon. Members, we have been told that Aung San Suu Kyi today had a 50-minute meeting with the Burmese Liaison Minister, which is an interesting step forward. However, we should also note that the state media recently described Aung San Suu Kyi’s initiative as dishonest, which remains a cause of concern. However, there is continuing dialogue, and we hope that Than Shwe will see fit not only to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, but seriously to engage with her on the changes that need to be made in Burma.

On the more general question of political prisoners, there are more than 2,000 political prisoners in Burma. Some individuals have been given sentences of up to 104 years in jail and have deliberately been moved to prisons in isolated parts of the country. As hon. Members have said—the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) put this most powerfully—we are talking about individuals and about the human cost of the abuses that the regime perpetrates every day, so let me give an example. Every month, the sister of one political prisoner travels three days each way by plane, road and boat to take food and supplies to her brother in a remote prison.

Through the UN and the EU, and in direct contacts with the regime, we continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners. Furthermore—hon. Members asked about this—we pursue and highlight specific cases. To give a tangible example, the FCO has launched an online campaign that profiles different political prisoners each week. We are doing that in partnership with the Burmese Assistance Association for Political Prisoners and with Human Rights Watch.

I welcome the developments that the Minister has just described, but can he point to any examples of the Burmese regime releasing any political prisoners at all following pressure from the UK, the EU or the United States?

Frankly, no. The regime is still reluctant to do so, but we believe that pressure can work. Despite the trumped-up charges in Aung San Suu Kyi’s bogus trial, the regime clearly took some note of the pressure applied by the international community once the verdict was passed, so we need to maintain that pressure.

I was about to refer to the specific example of a former political prisoner about whom our ambassador wrote in his Guardian blog last week. Incredibly, the judge told this prisoner—a lawyer by profession—that he must be guilty of at least one of the 90 charges against him and, without further ado, sentenced him to 10 years’ hard labour. The judge then invited him to speak, but warned him that every sentence that he uttered would add five years to his jail term. That is a recent example of what takes place from a court in Burma.

The Minister may have good reason for this omission, but he has not referred much to the idea of a United Nations commission of inquiry.

I was coming next to crimes against humanity and the proposed commission of inquiry. As hon. Members have said, there is no doubt that appalling human rights abuses are committed daily in Burma. Political freedom is absent and dissent is brutally crushed. The treatment of Burma’s ethnic groups is of particular concern. We will continue to use the UN human rights bodies to highlight those abuses. In recent weeks, the UK helped to secure a strong UN General Assembly resolution on human rights abuses in Burma.

The work of the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma is crucial in investigating reports of human rights abuses, and we have urged the Burmese authorities to grant him full access. Comments have been made about the UN special envoy to Burma, who now has a new role. All that I will say is that we hope that his replacement proves effective, can make a real difference and has credibility in his engagement with the regime. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire referred to the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict. I hope that we get somebody of high esteem and status to fill that position. Britain is actively seeking to ensure that that happens, because this is an issue of growing concern around the world.

The UK position on the commission of inquiry is clear. We have sought to clarify the support for such an initiative in the Security Council, and it is clear that there is not sufficient support at the moment to achieve the consensus that would deliver the necessary resolution. For us to table a vote that would be defeated would be a propaganda victory par excellence for the Burmese regime. The reason why we are being cautious about the commission of inquiry is not that we do not believe that it is right in principle, but that we believe that tabling a resolution that was voted down would backfire considerably in realpolitik terms. I therefore ask hon. Members to consider the difficult position that we are in and to understand that we continue to engage with partners to see whether there will be any shift in the position.

Since the bogus trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, we have pushed strongly for the adoption of a comprehensive arms embargo against the Burmese regime. Our request for an embargo was made in a letter from the Prime Minister to the UN Secretary-General. We continue to believe that such an embargo would have a significant impact on the regime’s behaviour, and we hope that the UN Security Council will give serious consideration to it in the near future.

This has been an excellent debate. It has sent a strong and clear message to the people of Burma and their representatives in this country that their plight will not be forgotten, that we will use the House to amplify criticism of the human rights abuses in Burma and that will do everything that we can across the parties to make a difference.

Order. I thank Members for their thoughtful and helpful contributions to the debate on Burma. I ask those who are not staying for the next debate to leave quietly. We now move to a debate on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Hancock, to speak under your chairmanship. I feel that I ought to begin with an expression of disappointment. On three separate occasions I have raised the matter of the 400th anniversary of the authorised or King James Bible with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The most recent occasion was in October. It was disappointing that the Department stated that it would not mark the anniversary. That is especially so because I believe that it runs contrary to the Department’s remit.

Under the heading “What we do” the Department’s website states:

“We encourage and help the tourism industry to improve what it has to offer for all our visitors and to promote a positive image abroad.”

We have the opportunity to attract many thousands of visitors from the United States and elsewhere, yet there are no plans to take advantage of that. The website says that the Department “Sets arts policy” and that it seeks to

“Broaden access for all to a rich and varied artistic and cultural life”.

Here we have the single greatest piece of literature in the English language—the highest peak of all English literature—yet the Department says that it will not mark the anniversary.

With reference to the historic environment, the Department’s website states that it is responsible for the promotion of historic national treasures, including the royal palaces. One of those is Hampton Court, where, in 1604, King James called the Hampton Court conference, which commissioned the King James Bible. Surely during such a year as 2011, and in connection with such an anniversary, more could be made of Hampton Court; and surely the Department could help to highlight Hampton Court and its role in producing the King James Bible.

The Department’s refusal to mark the anniversary is a failure fully to discharge its own remit. However, it is much more than that. I believe that it lets down the nation. I am therefore grateful to the powers that be that we are able to debate the matter today. Of course, the phrase “the powers that be” is part of our language and speech only because of the King James version of the Bible. That is one of the many reasons why the 400th anniversary is so important, and why it should be commemorated.

The King James Bible is the greatest and most influential piece of literature in the English language. Poet laureate Andrew Motion said of it:

“To read it is to feel simultaneously at home, a citizen of the world, and a traveller through eternity.”

The great Winston Churchill noted that the scholars who produced it had forged an enduring link, literary and religious, between the English-speaking people of the world. David Crystal said that it

“did something that nobody else had done, or nothing else had done in the history of the language previously. Not even Shakespeare had managed to do as much…no other text in the history of the English language has done as much as the Bible to shape our modern idiom”.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate. He illuminates a number of people who have paid outstanding tributes to the King James version. Does he not agree that Queen Victoria most famously said that it was the secret of England’s greatness?

I agree with my hon. Friend about Her Majesty’s words. This great country of ours has unfortunately moved away from many of those principles, but we certainly remember what she said.

Whenever we speak of putting words in someone’s mouth, of seeing the writing on the wall or of casting the first stone we are quoting the King James Bible. When we speak of the salt of the earth or of the staff of life, we do likewise. When we speak of a thorn in the flesh or of being at our wits’ end, we do the same. When we talk of an eye for an eye or of a lamb to the slaughter, it is because of the King James Bible.

When we talk of fighting the good fight or of going from strength to strength, it is because the King James Bible said it first. Whenever we mention babes and sucklings or the apple of our eye, we are merely repeating what has already been said in the King James Bible. When we say that someone is reaping what they sowed or that a leopard cannot change its spots, or we speak of the blind leading the blind, we are merely saying today what the King James Bible said first.

It is not only our literature and language that has been influenced by the King James Bible. It has had an extraordinary and beneficial influence upon political and constitutional affairs. It was the Bible of Milton and of the Protectorate; later, it was the Bible of the Glorious Revolution, which gave us a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. It was the Bible of Whitefield and the Wesleys that saved this realm from the brutality and blood of the French revolution. It was the Bible carried by the founding fathers of the United States that helped to forge that land and give the world that great democratic powerhouse.

The King James Bible has also had an immense influence for good in social affairs. Hospitals were built, orphanages established and charities created as a result of its influence. The hungry were fed, the sick nursed and the poor given shelter, as people responded to its call to act.

Beyond all that, however, and above every other consideration, we must return to what is the highest and greatest of all of the benefits that the King James Bible has brought to men. Yes, the hungry were fed; but far greater than that, so were hungry souls. Yes, the sick were nursed; but so, too, were the spiritually sick, bruised and wounded. Yes, the poor were given shelter; but so were the poor and broken in soul. Lives that lay in ruins were made whole, and souls that were held in bondage were set at liberty. That was the greatest legacy and gift to the world of the King James Bible.

I commend the work of the 2011 Trust and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). I also congratulate the BBC on its assurance that this important anniversary will be marked right across its output. We now need the Government to signal that they will do all that they can to commemorate the anniversary.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on his eloquent speech in support of the need to commemorate this 400th anniversary. Last Thursday in business questions, the Opposition called on the Government to take some kind of commemorative action, so there is consensus across the board for the Government to do something on this important anniversary.

I agree, and it is imperative that the Government recognise both this great anniversary and the spiritual work of the King James Bible. I trust that we will get a favourable response from the Minister today.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) in saying that it is a pleasure, Mr. Hancock, to serve under your chairmanship today. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate on such an important subject. We talk about a lot of things in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall, but there is nothing more precious that we could speak about than the Scriptures of holy truth. The authorised or King James Bible has been used under God to change the world, and many, many lives throughout the world, and much more importantly, it has changed them for the better. Charles Dickens said:

“The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.”

George Washington said:

“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

I wish that many other Governments would remember that as well.

Abraham Lincoln said:

“It is the best Book which God has given to man.”

Napoleon said:

“The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it.”

That is certainly a warning to everyone who opposes it.

In each case, the Bible that was referred to was the authorised or King James Bible. C. S. Lewis said that whenever we use words such as “beautiful”, “long-suffering”, “peacemaker” or “scapegoat”, it is down to the influence of the King James Bible. However, it is not only in the words or the many phrases in our language, some of which my hon. Friend has already alluded to, that the force and influence of the King James Bible is felt, but in the very rhythm of our language—the very way that we breathe and pause, and rise and fall as we speak. Why do we speak of chariots rather than chargers, of swords rather than pikes, of trumpets rather than bugles? Why have such things become our form of speaking? If we researched the matter, I believe that we would find that it is the influence of the beautiful language of the King James Bible.

We simply cannot account for the history of this nation—its culture, society, literature, language, political institutions and laws—if we ignore the contribution of the King James Bible. This single volume towers above every other document that pertains to the United Kingdom, and dwarfs every other document relating to this House. However, those matters, important as they are and as worthy of commemoration and celebration as they are, are all secondary whenever we come to consider this book.

John Wesley said:

“I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God. I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book.”

Without apology, and as a Member of this House, I concur with every word that John Wesley said, and I say, “Give me that book! At any price give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book.”

Just as we cannot properly consider or fully understand the history of these islands without taking account of the influence of the King James Bible, so we cannot properly consider or fully understand that influence without taking account of the divine mind behind the book, or of the reason why God bequeathed it to us. It was for not just its great literary value, though that value is priceless; its language, though its language is the grandest yet simplest form of speech in our tongue; its cultural richness, though it has inspired and enthused succeeding generations; and it was not just for good government, though its principles are just and pure. Although all those things are reason enough for the Government to commemorate this anniversary, there is one thing greater: this book lives. It has been burned, but there is not the smell of fire about it. It has been buried, but no man has ever kept it in the grave. It beats, throbs and pulsates with the very life of God. This book sets men free.

This may be an unusual debate for the House, and it is not often that I wish we remembered more frequently where we have come from and the very basis and heart of our democracy. However, this book takes the lowest, meanest, vilest and basest of men, and changes their lives completely. It changes them not only outwardly, but inwardly, utterly and everlastingly.

The Government should unashamedly shout from the rooftops that this 400th anniversary is something that the United Kingdom should proudly commemorate. They should not try to put it into the corner or speak of it silently. I urge the Minister to

“set her mind on things above”

and agree with my hon. Friend and many other hon. Members that we should mark this very, very special anniversary. It is my honour and privilege to support what my hon. Friend said.

Thank you, Dr. McCrea, for a very moving and interesting contribution.

I, too, welcome this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on securing the slot, and I also appreciate the passionate and heartfelt way in which both he and the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr. McCrea) spoke about the matter. Although I do not share their belief, I share their view about the importance of the Bible as a vital part of our history. I hope that I can allay some of their concerns during my contribution.

I have just finished reading “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel, which won the Booker prize this year. The story is set in the time of Henry VIII. There is quite a lot in the book about the story of the first printed English translation of the New Testament by William Tyndale. That version was seen as complete heresy by the Church, particularly because Tyndale acted unilaterally and had not sought the permission of the Church authorities. I commend the book to hon. Members. People were burned at the stake for that particular version. Tyndale was burned at the stake and others were beheaded. People were burned and lost their lives simply for possessing the book. There have been a number of versions of the English Bible: the great Bible of 1539, which Henry VIII commissioned; the more controversial Geneva Bible, which was largely based on Tyndale’s version but had many marginal notes that interpreted the text from a strict post-Reformation standpoint; the bishops’ Bible of 1568; and the Douay-Rheims Bible of 1582. Therefore, we have quite a history in the evolution of the Bible that we have today.

It is worth remembering how that Bible was produced. There were 54 translators—a lot of people—who were divided into groups that took consecutive books. They were instructed to consult one another closely, to ensure that there would be the consistency of style that we now appreciate. They were also instructed not to take too much from the Geneva version, which was seen as more controversial. They were told not to be opinionated in the notes that they made. All that they were to do was purely to clarify the meanings of the Greek and Hebrew terms. Hon. Members have quoted many comments on the King James Bible today. The one that I like is the description of it as

“the noblest monument of English prose”.

I think that anyone who reads it feels that it is so. Biblical phrases that might occur to politicians reflecting on the expenses scandal might include

“the fat of the land”,

or

“how are the mighty fallen!”

However, I prefer to think that “all things must pass”. Now, at Christmas, let us

“eat, drink, and be merry.”

There is something we can all take from the Bible.

It is hugely important to make the most of celebrations and commemorations of our history, whether of the Bible or other things, so I am slightly bemused by the impression that the hon. Member for Upper Bann gained of the Government’s attitude. Such occasions are fantastically important in gaining a shared understanding of the past, which helps us to build a stronger common purpose for the present and the future, and therefore helps to sustain community cohesion, which is important in the hon. Gentleman’s community and throughout Great Britain. In my time in my present post I have sought out such dates of commemoration and celebration, because they become important hooks for shared understanding of the past and our history; they are important for building the shared values that we want and that make Britain such an open and tolerant society.

Perhaps I can draw to hon. Members’ attention several occasions on which we have worked hard to use celebrations and commemorations in that way. A couple of years ago, the Government put a lot of effort into events on the abolition of the slave trade. We had to think about some quite difficult issues in our past, but that helped to open up an understanding that tackled some of the discrimination in society today and helped us to build values for the future. Before my year off on compassionate leave, I was involved in working towards the Darwin bicentenary celebrations. I do not know how the hon. Gentlemen feel about that, but it was an important occasion and was fantastically successful. Darwin has been everywhere this year.

While it is very important to talk about the other celebrations, what we want to know is what the Government will do to celebrate the great event of the 400th anniversary of the King James version of the scriptures. That is the nub of the issue.

I am going to come to that, but I wanted to put the Bible celebrations into context among other occasions. I just wanted to mention, also, that a lot has been happening this year in connection with the accession of Henry VIII.

The Government do not themselves run the events for commemorations—and that particularly applies to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which is a tiny Department, most of whose money goes out to various agencies and funded organisations, which work with us but independently of us. That is important in the artistic and cultural world. We do not run events, but facilitate them. The Department tries to make the appropriate links and bring about appropriate working together, to ensure that things are properly commemorated. We are doing that for the Bible anniversary.

The 2011 Trust, which the hon. Member for Upper Bann mentioned, is very important. Just as we did not do the work on the Darwin commemoration, which was mainly done by the Natural History museum—I know that Darwin may be a bit contentious—so the 2011 Trust will take the leading role, supported by the Government, for all the purposes that I have outlined. We are not standing back. The trust is pulling together events, publications and literature to celebrate the impact of the Bible on our history and language, in this country in particular, and throughout the English-speaking world. I am interested in its suggestions on commissioning new music and literature and encouraging study days in cities along James’s route from Scotland to London, and its plans to develop educational projects in schools, publish new texts and support exhibitions in London and around the country where the translations were made.

Equally, the British Library—an institution that we fund and sponsor—is making plans for one of the two copies of the King James Bible that it holds to be a star item in a forthcoming exhibition called “The Making of the English”, which will, we hope, be launched in November 2010 and run to April 2011. It will explore the English language and its national and international diversity. Iconic collection items will be set alongside everyday texts, to show the many social, cultural and historical strands from which our language is woven. The King James Bible will be featured alongside other important treasures, such as “Beowulf”, Shakespeare’s folios, Johnson’s dictionary, Austen manuscripts, Scott’s diaries and recordings of speeches by Pankhurst, Churchill and Gandhi. I have been privileged, as a Minister, to see and listen to some of those exhibits. The exhibition will be very exciting, and will also display hand-written letters, recipes, posters, lists of slang, trading records, adverts, children’s books, dialect recordings, text messages and web pages.

Are those exhibits to be shown all over the United Kingdom, or just in London?

The hon. Gentleman is right to bring that up. The exhibition is to be in the British Library; but the British Library excels at digitising many of its collections and exhibitions, and I shall take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and see what plans there are for digitisation of that exhibition. The British Library also intends to run some public events.

There is also a role for the BBC, which is sponsored by my Department and funded from the licence fee. It will showcase the King James Bible on television, radio and online, to mark the 400th anniversary. A cornerstone of its programming will be a brand new documentary on BBC 2 in 2011.

I thank the Minister for the information that she has given today, which is a breath of fresh air; we appreciate it. I know that BBC Northern Ireland has said it will commemorate the anniversary. Will that happen on the mainland as well?

Yes. I am told that it will be an hour-long documentary, which will be presented by Lord Melvyn Bragg. It will explore the King James Bible as a remarkable work of faith and a historic piece of literature that has shaped our language, history and culture. I hope that that echoes some of the aspirations expressed by hon. Members. The documentary will also consider the Bible’s extraordinary legacy and how, as it spread to the new world and the colonies, it helped to shape the world.

I hope that I have given hon. Members some comfort, but if they have other ideas, they are welcome to let us know. The fact that Government do not front something does not mean that we do not work to support it. I share with the hon. Gentlemen the understanding of the importance of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and I hope that it will help us to build the community cohesion that we all want throughout Britain.

I am very grateful indeed to have the opportunity to debate the issue of the national DNA database in this House of Commons. One of the reasons I am so grateful is that I will be contending that although the project has extraordinary implications—both for criminal justice, privacy and science—it has never been subject to a proper parliamentary debate.

The DNA database is an extraordinary innovation, which has emerged sideways and incrementally, without the full glare of parliamentary scrutiny, yet we have the biggest DNA database per head of population in the world. It is extraordinary that a project with such ramifications has not had the parliamentary scrutiny that it deserves, although an excellent report that touched on the issue was published by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which is under the distinguished chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I hope that we will be hearing from my distinguished colleague later in the debate.

The police do an extraordinarily difficult job. Public fear of crime has never been higher and all of us, as elected representatives, must take seriously public fears of crime and the rise in some sorts of crime, such as violent or sexual crime, particularly in many of our big cities. No one feels more strongly about the matter than I do, because I represent Hackney in the east end of London, where, sadly, we do see such crimes.

Of course, if somebody is proven guilty in a court of law, no one objects to their DNA being kept in principle. The issue is the indiscriminate collection of innocent people’s DNA. I spell that out right at the beginning because, sadly, when Ministers talk about the DNA database, they tend to merge and elide innocent and guilty people. It is almost as if the Government have a third category: rather than someone being wholly innocent, they might be not really innocent. As a Parliament, we must stand firm on one of the oldest British traditions: innocent until proven guilty.

Having spoken about the importance of what the police do and our support for the police, the problem with indiscriminately collecting the DNA of innocent people is the very serious possibility that that will undermine the community’s confidence in the police and harm community and police relations. The Home Affairs Committee pointed to that in its report on this and related matters.

Is the situation not even worse, as some people in the community think that the police are making arrests when they would not do so otherwise, in order to collect DNA from people who will almost certainly be proven innocent?

That is a very important point. It is alarming if innocent people are being harassed and arrested when, at the end of the day, the police do not think that a successful prosecution can be brought and the purpose is merely to increase the size of the DNA database. I will touch on some of the cases I have dealt with in which it was very clear that there was no possibility of arrest, but the police refused to release the DNA.

Of course, when talking about the indiscriminate collection of DNA, one must make the point that 77 per cent. of young black men aged 16 to 35 are on the database. As somebody who has been in politics—political activity—for more years than I care to remember, and who has campaigned against the unfair use of stop and search, I believe that we cannot pass over that subject. Even though it might seem like a useful administrative procedure for stopping young black boys willy-nilly to get their DNA, people have a highly developed sense of fairness, and if they think they are being stopped and searched unfairly, or that their DNA is being taken unfairly and there is no possibility of a successful prosecution, it cannot help confidence in the police generally or police-community relations.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on initiating this important debate. Does she consider that profiling is acceptable under any circumstances?

If profiling means that someone will make assumptions about a person’s criminality or the sort of crime they might be about to commit or that they have committed on the basis of their skin colour, no. There is such a thing as scientific profiling, but the broad-brush profiling whereby a black teenage boy will be stopped in an Oxford street store as they go through the door, which has happened to my friends’ children and to my son, does not help anyone and does not help to solve crime.

Let me just give a brief overview of the introduction of the DNA database to this country, because it is so much a part of criminal justice that many people do not know how relatively recently it was introduced. During the early 1980s, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys was working on a scientific basis for DNA fingerprinting. Ten years later, the DNA database was set up based on DNA fingerprinting technology that was invented by Professor Jeffreys. Since the beginning in 1995—not even 20 years ago—more than 5 million DNA profiles have been collected and are currently being kept. Prior to 2001, DNA that was collected from individuals who were arrested was destroyed on acquittal. However, in May 2001, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was amended to permit DNA to be kept on the database—it did not mandate that DNA be kept on the database. The difference between something being permitted and being mandated is a point to which I will return, because I think that the police have got confused between the two issues.

My hon. Friend mentioned the 5 million figure. Some 800,000 of those live in the midlands. At an indie band concert at The Oak in Burntwood, Staffordshire just 2 weeks ago, the band were wrongfully arrested. Police helicopters, dogs and a whole panoply of things were used, the band were taken into custody for having a gun—so a CCTV officer said—and their DNA was taken. However, under pressure from the media and the general public, Staffordshire police promised to delete that DNA and remove it from the database. There is inconsistency here, because the Government say that they will remove DNA from the database after six years, but local police forces will remove it rather earlier when they are under pressure.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. My argument is not that there should not be a database, or even that, under certain specific circumstances, the DNA of innocent people should not be kept. The problem is the chaos and the lack of a system. The people to whom my hon. Friend referred got their DNA removed almost immediately. I am working with completely innocent people who have waited years and years to get their DNA removed because, as I say, the Metropolitan police seem to labour under the idea that keeping such DNA is mandatory rather than being a matter of their discretion.

In fact, there is more than confusion about the matter. The Government cannot rely on the fact that chief constables may at their discretion remove innocent people’s DNA, because some chief constables have a different policy from others. In Essex, I have not been able to get a single innocent person’s DNA removed from the database. That is unfair, discriminatory and arbitrary. The Government cannot hide behind the discretion of chief constables; they must act to resolve the problem.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. We have an arbitrary, discriminatory system. Yet, Ministers—later in my remarks I shall quote from letters I have received from Ministers—seek to hide behind the discretion of chief constables. The Government have to intervene, and there must be a proper framework.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining the debate. Following on from the point made by the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), Members have pressed Ministers—not necessarily to interfere with the discretion, but at the very least to issue guidance. It is possible for Ministers to issue guidance and for Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Denis O’Connor, to say to chief constables, “When people write in, at the very least write back,” because one of the problems is that they just do not reply. If we get that customer service sorted out, it could actually improve the system.

My right hon. Friend is, as ever, both a philosopher and intensely practical. If the service offered to people to try to remove their DNA from a database was more efficient and less arbitrary, and if there were guidelines, much of the unhappiness would be removed.

Some people get their DNA removed from a database in weeks or months; some people wait years and are still waiting to have their DNA removed at the whim, in a way, of different police forces. That cannot be fair, it is not regarded as fair and it feeds a distrust of the whole system. That is unfortunate, because a database of guilty people and perhaps some innocent people, whose DNA would only be collected under very specific conditions, serves an important purpose in fighting crime.

I referred earlier to legislation in 2001 to amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. That amendment permitted DNA to be kept on the database. However, even when the issue was discussed in the House during debates on that legislation, many Members felt that not enough time had been given to scrutinise it, which, sadly, is not an uncommon occurrence.

In 2004, PACE was amended again, to enable the police to take the fingerprints and DNA of anyone aged 10 or over who is arrested for a recordable offence. Later, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 made all offences arrestable, which had the side effect of vastly increasing the number of people who could go on a DNA database automatically.

Therefore, the database has grown neither through an act of will of Parliament nor through a coherent discussion about the guidelines, the purpose and the underlying principles—how big it should be, the procedures involved and people’s rights in relation to having their DNA kept by the police. Instead, it has grown incrementally as a result of permissive legislation that was slipped into big, portmanteau criminal justice Bills that were never properly debated in the House at any stage. That is not a satisfactory way to set up the largest DNA database in the world, with so many implications for our civil liberties.

It is possible that the Minister, who is in many ways a very able and sensitive man, will say in his response to the debate that he is concerned to hear what my hon. Friend is saying, but that last year alone almost 20,000 crimes were solved using a DNA match, including 83 killings and 184 rapes, and that the retention of the DNA of innocent people on the database is just an unfortunate and unavoidable cost that must be borne by those people. Would my hon. Friend say that that is sufficient reason?

As always, my hon. Friend displays both his perception and his mastery of the figures. Yes, of course, the Minister will throw at us figures for crimes that have been solved by the use of the DNA database. I conceded that point—that DNA is used to solve crimes—at the beginning of my remarks. However, the question is how many of those crimes were solved by the DNA of innocent people having been kept? Furthermore, if we restricted the collection of DNA from innocent people to certain specific categories of violent and sexual crime, could we not achieve the same results without taking DNA willy-nilly from children under 16 or from people for whom there is no chance of prosecution? Also, I was going to return to Sir Alec Jeffreys, the father of DNA—

He is from Leicester.

Indeed, he is from Leicester.

The hon. Lady is being extremely generous in giving way and taking interventions. I think that she has probably hit the nail on the head, because surely the problem is that we do not have an adequate scientific basis on which to make such judgments. The fact that in November the Home Secretary had to effect something of a U-turn on DNA suggests that he does not have that evidence either. We have no way of judging whether the Scottish system, which is a far more liberal system than the one in England, is better or worse than the English system, which we are debating today. So, does she not agree that we need to have the evidence base before we start making policy? Unfortunately, we seem to have got it the wrong way round.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Of course that is the problem. There is very little evidential basis for what the Government are doing. Indeed, I would like to quote Sir Alec Jeffreys, the father of the DNA database, who might be supposed to know more about the science and the statistics of DNA than most people. He entirely dismisses the Home Office argument that keeping the genetic details of everyone, even those acquitted of a crime, helps to solve other crimes. On this issue, he said:

“If you just dumped a few hundred thousand people at random on to the database you’d get the same effect.”

I have had meetings with the Metropolitan police and the people in charge of their database and they admit that they have not done the research to demonstrate a real benefit arising from our system, which is indiscriminate, as opposed to the system that exists in other parts of the British isles.

As has been pointed out already, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are alone in Europe in retaining DNA indefinitely from people of any age for any offence. That is why, as I said earlier, we have the biggest database compared with population size in the world.

As I have said, among the problems with the DNA database is the lack of proper debate and thought about it, the fact that it is arbitrary and the fact that it can be seen as discriminatory. The issue has been raised with me in the past, so this year I have been working with Liberty on a project that tries to help innocent young people who have had their DNA taken and kept by the police to get it taken off the database. That speaks to the arbitrary nature of the decisions that are being made in the police force.

For instance, we are trying to help a young man of 21 with serious learning disability and autism. Prior to his arrest, he had no previous arrests, convictions or cautions. However, he is autistic and has a fascination with trains and women’s shoes. Occasionally, he asks women if he can clean their shoes. On one occasion, the woman he asked consented, but then she thought that he touched the lower part of her leg. He was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault, and was photographed and had his DNA and prints taken. Finally, he was interviewed in the company of his father and it was established that he was non-threatening and autistic. No charges were pressed and yet his DNA has been retained indefinitely.

A teenage boy was in Finsbury park with his friends on bicycles. A robbery took place elsewhere in the park, which is huge. The police obviously swept the park and arrested every young black man in it. The teenage boy was arrested and held in a police station for eight hours. Eventually, he was released without charge and the police confirmed that no further action would be taken against him. Again, he had no previous arrests, convictions or cautions, but the police are holding his DNA indefinitely and resisting any attempts to remove it from the database.

A young girl of 17 was shopping with her mum, who was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting. The girl was told that nothing would happen to her, but she was taken to the police station along with her mum and had her DNA taken, which the Met is sitting on indefinitely.

A teenage boy in Greenwich park was having a water-fight. In another part of Greenwich park—it, too, is a big park—an assault took place. The police swept the park for all young black men. They came to the boy’s house, arrested him, took him to a police station and took his DNA. No further action was taken by the police, but they are still sitting on his DNA indefinitely.

A young girl of 16 was a victim of bullying at school. She and the child bullying her got into a fight and the police were called to the school. The police arrested them both and took DNA from them both. No charges were pressed—it was a schoolgirl fight—but the DNA is being held indefinitely.

A young woman of 25, who had no previous arrests, convictions or cautions, went to Primark to return some goods that she had got the day before. She was wearing—well, there are Members here who obviously shop at Gucci, rather than Primark, especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East who would not be seen in Primark.

Harrods.

Harrods—exactly. [Laughter.] The girl went to Primark to return some goods that she had bought the day before. She was also wearing a Primark sweater that she had bought the day before, but she took the precaution of taking the receipt with her to the shop. None the less, she was arrested on suspicion of stealing the sweater that she was wearing. Nobody was interested in the receipt that she had for it, so she was arrested. She was questioned for nine hours and released. The police are holding her DNA indefinitely.

The final case that I will refer to involves two young girls aged 17 and 14. They were at a party in south London and then, at 9 o’clock, they were in the back of a car on their way home. It was a party at Easter, as they were on their Easter holidays from school. The car was stopped by the police and there was a scuffle between the police and the driver. The driver, another boy who was in the front of the car and the two girls were taken to Lewisham police station. Both the young girls, who, as I say, were 17 and 14, were arrested, handcuffed and kept in a cell for hours while they had their DNA taken. No charges were ever brought against the young men. So, in April 2006 I wrote to Chief Superintendent Archie Torrance, the borough commander of Lewisham police, about this incident. It took him a month to write back to me and say that the arresting officers were actually part of the territorial support group and I would have to write to that group.

A few weeks later, I heard from a representative of the territorial support group, who said that he was looking into the matter, and in a few more weeks I got a response. Although the response did not say so explicitly, it gave the clear impression that the keeping of DNA after an arrest for a recordable offence was mandatory and that territorial support had no discretion in the matter, so I wrote to my right hon. Friend and colleague the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), the then Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety. He wrote back to me saying that it was a matter for the discretion of the police.

The territorial support group representative then wrote to me again. He claimed that he had never told anyone that it was mandatory, but made no offer to remove the 14-year-old’s DNA from the database. I am not talking about the two boys in the front of the car, although they were innocent; I am talking about a 14-year-old girl who was getting a lift home. She had no previous convictions. Her mum is a sculptor and her dad is an architect. The police refused to remove the DNA from their database.

Finally, in June, I got a reply from the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan):

“Chief Constables retain the discretion to decide whether or not fingerprints and samples will be retained in individual cases although it would be the norm to do so. The matter of discretion is an operational one for the police force involved and not one into which the Home Secretary has any input.”

Ministers are hiding behind chief constables, even though they have not issued guidelines to chief constables, there has never been a debate and there is no procedure or process. A 14-year-old girl with no previous convictions was kept in a cell when she should not have been, and the police do not want to let go of her DNA.

I am fascinated to know what the discretion is based on. Do the police feel that the person might have been involved in a crime before and that they need to check up on them, or are they making a value judgment about the likelihood that the person will commit a crime in future? It seems odd that there is no guidance at all. Surely it is a matter for the Home Secretary. If it is his intention to have a database against which suspected future felons can be checked, that is surely a matter for the Home Office and not for individual police forces and chief constables acting on discretion, which does not appear to be based on anything.

It is based on nothing, and it leads to the sort of inequality between police forces that other hon. Members have referred to.

Is there not a risk, or even a suspicion, that innocent people whose DNA is destroyed or withdrawn are likely to be the offspring of local worthies, but that the DNA of someone from the wrong side of the tracks will stay on the database for a long time?

Precisely, unless there are guidelines, transparency and accountability. Chief constables are doing it at their whim and pleasure.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North completed her letter to me by saying that the Home Secretary has no input into such decisions and that:

“Your constituents should therefore contact the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service and ask if he considers there are sufficiently exceptional circumstances in this case to merit the removal of the DNA profile from the database.”

What could be more exceptional than a 14-year-old girl with no previous convictions who was arrested as part of an incident where no charges were pressed? At that point, two years ago, Ministers seemed to be saying that the onus was on innocent people to show why their DNA should be withdrawn and that that would be the exception rather than the rule, however innocent they were.

As a result of what my hon. Friend has done on the issue—she probably does not know this, as it has not been announced—the Select Committee on Home Affairs decided on Tuesday to hold an inquiry into the DNA database. It would be extremely helpful if she could arrange for some of the people whom she has mentioned with such eloquence to give evidence to the inquiry.

I would be glad to do so. I am pleased to hear that the Select Committee is going to take that action.

In July, the mother of the two girls got a letter from Detective Inspector Tracy Sherman of the Met. It simply rehearsed the legal position under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, saying that the police had the power to do what they did:

“In this case the arrest was lawful and therefore the power to take and retain DNA exists.”

In other words, “We can do it legally, we are doing it and there’s nothing you can do about it.” That was the police position. The onus is on an innocent 14-year-old girl to show that the circumstances merit removal.

Since then, the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), who was also involved with the family, has written to the Metropolitan police. Earlier this year, I met Gary Pugh, the director of forensic services at the Met, to raise the case again. He wrote to me to say that, in the end, the two girls’ DNA was removed from the database in 2008. It took two years and two MPs. The police tried to hide behind Ministers, and Ministers tried to hide behind chief constables. It was a thoroughly unedifying incident, and it is one of the things that drew me into the issue.

Most importantly, in December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the indefinite retention on the database of the DNA of people who have not been convicted of a crime. I will quote some of what the Court said, because it is important. The Court said that it was

“struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales”,

that the retention of the DNA in question

“fails to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests”

and that the UK Government had

“overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard”.

The Court further ruled that

“the retention at issue constitutes a disproportionate interference with the applicants’ right to respect for private life and cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.”

Even if some Home Office Ministers are anti-European, one might expect that such a ruling would bring a blush to their cheeks. Not at all. They waited five months before consulting on their proposals. When they went out to consultation, they got 503 responses from lawyers, police organisations, children’s rights groups and so on. It is interesting that their proposals after consultation are almost exactly the same as the proposals that they put out to consultation in the first place. In other words, Members will be shocked to hear, they took no notice of the consultation. That is rare and unusual where Governments are concerned, so I do not want to shock younger Members unduly.

The Home Secretary’s written statement in November setting out the finalised Home Office plans in response to the ECHR ruling took into account none of the opinions in the consultation. I will not go through the Government’s plans, but I will make one point. The original consultation document contained plans to retain the DNA of under-18s who were arrested but not convicted. We have not had any more information, so I would like to hear what will be done about that group of people.

In conclusion, I draw Parliament’s attention to the views of Sir Alec Jeffreys, the father of DNA. One would expect the father of the science to be in favour of a vast database, of collecting as much DNA from as many people as possible and of the fact that we have the biggest DNA database relative to population in the world. However, he says:

“My view is very clear that if you have been convicted of a crime then you owe it to society to be retained on that database for catching in the future should you reoffend. But the retention of entirely innocent people is a whole different issue. There is a sort of presumption here that if they haven’t committed any crime now, then they will in the future.”

That is this Government’s midway point: not quite innocent and not quite guilty.

Not proven.

Which is not a verdict in the British system. Sir Alec went on to say:

“I have never seen any argument in favour of England, Wales and Northern Ireland being the only countries in the world to retain the DNA of entirely innocent people. There are serious issues of discrimination and stigmatisation of branches of society that are over-represented on the database.”

That is the man who invented the science. He also said that there was a possibility of miscarriages of justice:

“Let’s suggest you have two samples that get swapped, and I stress that the likelihood is very low, but given the huge amount of case work one has to be mindful of the fact that there is not a zero probability, then you may get an error. You may have the wrong profile and come up with the wrong suspect.”

If the ECHR judgment did not bring a blush to Ministers’ cheeks, Sir Alec Jeffrey’s reply to the Government’s response ought to. He said:

“It seems to be about as minimal a response to the European court of human rights judgment as one could conceive. There is a presumption not of innocence but of future guilt here…which I find very disturbing indeed.

I do not see this as balanced and proportionate. It still places England, Wales and Northern Ireland as the only jurisdictions in the world, to my knowledge, to retain such large amounts of innocent DNA information.”

He dismissed the prediction that if the proposals were followed, 4,500 fewer crimes would be detected, which we will no doubt hear from the Minister. He said:

“There is an unspoken assumption in here that these thousands of crimes that will not be detected by not having the DNA will remain undetected and that simply isn’t the case. A significant number of these will be detectable through conventional police work”.

We have the biggest DNA database in relation to population in the world. It is an extraordinary innovation in science, which has consequences for personal intrusion and civil liberties. It is condemned by the man who invented the science, even though one might imagine that he would support the hoovering up of DNA willy-nilly. A European Court judgment has struck down the basis of the Government’s collection of DNA. I put it to the Government that a more serious debate on this issue is long overdue.

I repeat that no one is against collecting the DNA of guilty people; no one is even saying that there are not limited circumstances in which we should keep the DNA of people who have not been convicted, but who have been accused of certain crimes. However, there is no scientific research basis for keeping the DNA of innocent people in the way that the Government have done or the way that they propose to do. That has detrimental effects on community relations.

I, too, commend the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I have listened carefully to her powerful argument. For some time, she has alluded to Ministers hiding behind the discretionary power of chief constables and to the lack of guidance issued by Ministers. Is she aware of the representative body of chief police officers having requested such guidance from Ministers? I am not. Does she know whether such guidance would be welcomed?

I am not aware that chief constables have requested guidance. However, people not requesting guidance has not stopped the Government from issuing it in the past, whether to official organisations or members of the public. The Government are free with their guidance when it suits them. Chief constables not asking for guidance is not a reason for the Government not to provide it.

In closing, at the least there should be proper guidelines. The Government should rethink their response to the European Court of Human Rights ruling because everybody, including the man who invented the science, thinks that it is wholly inadequate. The Government need a much more balanced approach to the keeping of innocent people’s DNA. They are building up a huge database with no evidentiary basis to show that doing so will help to solve crimes, yet they are doing it in the name of being tough on crime and to outdo other parties. They are not considering the implications for civil liberties and community relations or issues of fairness in public policy. I urge the Government to reconsider before it is too late and to allow Parliament a full debate on the issue.

The Minister, the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) and I have discussed the DNA database at least five times over the past year, beginning with our consideration of the Policing and Crime Bill at the beginning of the year.

I will summarise the key points, which the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) ably encapsulated. We have the largest DNA database in the world. Approximately a fifth of the people on it—about 1 million people—are innocent, which means that they were never convicted or charged. Many people think that to keep such a large database with so many innocent people on it is simply wrong. The database includes disproportionate numbers of groups such as ethnic minorities, and we have heard examples to illustrate that. It also contains a disproportionate number of children and young people, and people with mental health conditions.

The database criminalises many young people for behaviour that would not have been considered criminal in the past. We have raised cases such as the case of the two children building a den up a cherry tree in debates this year in various Committees. As has been reported in the national press, some police forces, such as Derbyshire, are experimenting with restorative justice, whereby police are urged not to take children through a criminal process—including taking DNA—and give them a criminal record in such circumstances, but to get them to apologise to the person involved, restore the damage if possible or make it up in some other way. Although a few forces are experimenting with that provision, it does not alter the fact that over 12 years, there has been an increasing criminalisation of young people for things that would not have been crimes when we were children.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington, the huge DNA database has been accumulated not following a major parliamentary or national debate, but incrementally, without any formal discussion, recognition or acceptance. Over the years, an increasing number of people have expressed concern about that. Most recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that it contravenes human rights in various ways. The Government’s first response to that ruling came at the Committee stage of the Policing and Crime Bill in February. At the last minute, after six weeks of intensive and productive debate, they took a blank-cheque approach, saying that if we gave them permission to produce regulations, they would do something about the ruling, but that they would not tell us what the solution was until after the Bill had completed its passage through Parliament. Of course, we all said that that was unacceptable. A few weeks ago, on the last day of the last Session, the Government withdrew that proposal and instead a new Bill was proposed in the Queen’s Speech.

As has been said, nobody doubts that DNA evidence is a major scientific step forward. It provides valuable assistance in the convictions of some criminals and in proving some people innocent. As the Secretary of State pointed out in the Queen’s Speech debate in the House, people who have been in prison for years have been cleared as a result of DNA evidence. Despite its value, we should not overestimate the role of DNA. In a parliamentary answer on 21 October, the Minister stated that in 2008-09, a DNA match had been available in only 0.68 per cent. of cases. That is less than 1 per cent.—it is closer to 0.5 per cent. than to 1 per cent. He also stated:

“It is also important to note that the detections are achieved through integrated criminal investigation, not through DNA alone.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 1538W.]

That means that a percentage of cases even smaller than 0.68 per cent. were solved by DNA alone, because other criminal investigations were under way. An even smaller percentage of cases are solved as a result of people being on the database because they were innocent, rather than being convicted of a crime. We do not know quite how much smaller than 0.68 per cent. that small percentage is, because a lot of the Government’s policy seems to be based on flimsy research and assertion, rather than on detailed evidence. One example of the problem comes from the Jill Dando Institute, on whose work the Government based their initial policy of retaining innocent people’s DNA for six or 12 years, depending on the category of crime for which they were originally questioned, but for which they were never charged or convicted. The institute later said that its research should not have been used, because it was unfinished. Gloria Laycock, the director of the institute, said that Government policy

“should be based on proper analysis and evidence and we did our best to try and produce some in a terribly tiny timeframe, using data we were not given direct access to...That was probably a mistake with hindsight, we should have just said ‘you might as well just stick your finger in the air and think of a number.’”

If that is the research on which Government policy is based, we really have to worry.

As regards the people on the database, we also have the evidence of former chief constable Tony Lake, who used to head the national DNA database board. He said that one of the key problems with policy on this issue is the lack of reliable data on the number and types of crimes that have been directly solved by retaining the DNA profiles of innocent people. He said:

“It is not a straightforward issue because a lot of people who commit the most serious crime and become serial offenders don’t start their criminal careers with serious offences…This is an immensely complex issue which is why I do think there needs to be a very thorough study on offending patterns.”

As we heard in the opening speech, however, the Government seem not to have accumulated this huge database on the basis of detailed research and evidence, and they have rushed to make off-the-cuff responses to the European Court ruling, blank-cheque proposals in the Policing and Crime Bill and now their new proposals, which are essentially a rehash of old ones. There is still no serious systematic research to underpin their policy, which, to many people, is extremely illiberal and a contravention of human rights, as well as criminalising people who should not be criminalised and leading to all sorts of other issues. There is therefore a lack of research on exactly how many cases are solved by DNA alone, and there is a lack of evidence to underpin the Government’s proposals on retaining the DNA of innocent people. That must cast very serious doubt on the Government’s approach to this issue.

We have heard of individual cases from the constituency of the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington in London, but we all have similar examples from our own constituencies. One constituent of mine was assaulted by a group of youths in Derby. There were lots of witnesses, but he was also arrested. The other youths made counter-charges, even though five of them attacked him. The case was going to court, but in April, my constituent finally heard that it had been dropped. He immediately contacted the police and then the chief constable. He says:

“I requested return of my DNA within 24 hours of being told by the police (April this year) that the case had been dropped.”

He goes on to say that the PC

“told me that it was retained. I then pointed out the ‘Exceptional Circumstances’ ruling”—

it is not really a ruling, but a procedure recommended by the Association of Chief Police Officers—

“and asked how to make an appeal under this procedure. She replied saying that she had forwarded my request to the Professional Standards Department, from whom I would hear shortly.”

That was in April. On 13 November—months later—my constituent told me:

“I never heard a thing”,

and we have heard exactly the same thing in other examples that we have been given. As we have heard, people write to the chief constable and their local police force, but they do not even receive an acknowledgement or a letter saying no—they just do not hear anything.

Just for clarification, I should say that in the case that I mentioned of the indie band The Thirst, the chief constable of Staffordshire, under significant pressure, promised the same weekend to remove the DNA from the database. What concerns many people, however, is the inconsistency of the approach.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification.

Last April, my constituent said, “Right, you’ve dropped the case. Can you take my DNA off the database?” He had had no answer by November. A few weeks previously, in early autumn, he says that he had again requested removal and that the PC had again said that she had forwarded his request to the professional standards department. Again, however, there was no further response. My constituent added—this was in evidence that he submitted to Liberty—

“It was after this that I got Paul Holmes to write on my behalf”

to the chief constable. However, we are still not much further forward a few weeks later, in December. My constituent went on to say that the professional standards department

“confirmed that my complaint had been ‘recorded’—but have never responded regarding the request for the return of my DNA nor to give details of how to make a request under the ‘Exceptional Circumstances’”

procedure.

The exceptional circumstances procedure recommended in ACPO guidelines includes all sorts of grounds on which a chief constable might agree to remove a DNA sample from the database. Those grounds include the fact that a false allegation was made; the subject was unlawfully or wrongly arrested or unlawfully cautioned; the caution was inappropriate; or the subject was unlawfully processed. However, most of those grounds do not touch on the possibility that the subject was actually innocent—that is not one of the reasons given for why the DNA might be removed from the database. As we have heard, however, there are lots of examples of chief constables making different interpretations. When the Secretary of State debated the issue in the Queen’s Speech debate, however, he said that the practice of chief constables would not really change until the Crime and Security Bill had gone through the parliamentary process. Given that we have 70 parliamentary days before a general election must be held, that process is unlikely to reach a full conclusion.

There are therefore lots of problems with the database, including the way in which it has been accumulated, the huge percentage of innocent people on it, the difficulty that innocent people have in getting their DNA removed from it, the lack of clarification, guidance and procedures, the Government’s stonewalling and the lack of a scientific base to underpin the Government’s policies.

Why does all this matter? One argument that we hear is, “If you’ve nothing to fear, you’ve nothing to hide.” One point that that I have raised several times, but which always gets rebutted, is that if we follow through the logic of the Government’s wish to have the largest DNA database in the world—the database contains 1 million innocent people, as well as up to 5 million people with convictions of various kinds—the safest thing would be to record the DNA of everybody in the country. There are problems with such a scheme, such as its sheer size and cost, but that would be the logic of the Government’s wish to have the biggest DNA database possible because the DNA might be useful in dealing with just over 0.5 per cent. of crimes in a given year.

The hon. Gentleman mentions an argument that we often hear—“If you’re innocent, you’ve nothing to fear.” One thing that people have to fear, however, is the number of mistakes on the DNA database. In 2007, the Home Office released figures showing that there were more than 500,000 faults or wrongly recorded names on the database. Furthermore, as I said earlier, as the database gets bigger, the issue of errors will become more important.

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. She is quite correct. One problem with creating a database of the current size, let alone a database for the whole population, is its cost and manageability. The bigger the database gets, however, the more chance there is that mistakes will occur. There is also more chance that that data will leak out. In that respect, we all know the record of large organisations—the Government’s is well known, but other large organisations have similar issues. Recently, people in mobile phone companies were selling data from one company to another. In any large organisation with large amounts of sensitive data, there will be more chance of that data getting lost, being sold or being illegally passed on.

In November, in a report entitled “Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear?”, the Human Genetics Commission said:

“DNA captures an individual’s very ‘genetic soul’…the most intimate medical data an individual may possess.”

It warned of the dangers of such data being collected in large amounts. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has expressed strong concern that the database shifts the relationship between the citizen and the state to the extent that the state will treat all individuals as potential offenders, rather than as citizens of good will.

On all those grounds, which we have addressed several times this year, but which we will obviously continue to address, I urge the Minister to think again about the rehashed proposals in the Queen’s Speech. I urge him to go back to a proper scientific evaluation of the issue, because former chief constable Tony Lake says that we do not have one, as does the Jill Dando Institute, even though the institute was prayed in aid to support Government policy earlier this year. I urge the Minister to start again.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on securing the debate. I am only sorry that more hon. Members have not participated, because it is an extremely important debate in setting the framework for the retention of DNA, which is highly sensitive material.

We are talking about some fairly fundamental issues in our democracy: getting the right and proportionate balance; considerations such as people being innocent until proven guilty; the fact that, as the hon. Lady mentioned, the Government have yet to respond on the matter of the blanket, indiscriminate approach that has been adopted to date; and the fact that 12 months on from the extremely important judgment in S and Marper, we are no further forward. In that case, the court gave a very clear signal that the Government’s current approach is unlawful, and it remains unlawful to this day.

The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington made some important points about the nature and impact of the Government’s approach, and the fact that disproportionately more black boys are on the DNA database, in comparison with other groups represented in the country’s population. That raises serious issues, including the disproportionate representation of young people generally on the database, and how the database has grown. We have had a sort of mission creep. The hon. Lady described the lack of guidelines for chief constables on removal of DNA from the database, and that point was well made.

I am sorry that I missed the first part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbot).

The hon. Gentleman must be aware, as I am, that the retention of young people’s DNA simply reflects the stop-and-search policies that mean DNA can often be taken, if the person is taken into the police station. Also, a lot of young people are, frankly, almost unaware that they have had their DNA taken, or that it is held in a record. Because of that, they have no idea how to get rid of it, either. It returns to haunt them, often many years later, when they were completely unaware that they had any record against them in the first place.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the consequences of having simply let the database grow without proper debate, a proper statutory framework, or proper consideration of whether we wanted, in the first place, to get to the position we are now in. It has simply happened, rather than our making any conscious decision that we wanted to end up where we are. I shall come on to some comments made in the S and Marper judgment about what the policy framework and intentions were.

On the number of young people, both black and white, whose DNA is on the database, is the hon. Gentleman surprised to know that young people in Hackney have, as young people do, turned the whole thing on its head, and that they now feel that having their DNA taken is a mark of being on the way to becoming a fully-fledged criminal? The problem is that that is just one of a series of signals that society is giving young people in some areas that they are almost doomed to be criminals. That cannot be right. We should be reinforcing the positive, rather than subjecting them to an arbitrary regime that gives them the feeling that they are stigmatised.

The hon. Lady makes a point about unintended consequences, and I do not intend to stray into the wider debate about youth offending and the prevention of crime. However, society must consider some of the messages that are being sent out and how, practically, we can break into generational issues and try to stop what we have described as the conveyor belt to crime.

As to how we have got where we are, the hon. Lady described that quite clearly in recounting her own experience. I was interested to read on her website about the clinic that she set up with Liberty to provide advice to young people whose DNA had been retained by the police. It threw up the issue of inconsistency and the lack of guidance and certainty for those young people—and, as we have heard this afternoon, for the police—about the appropriate course of action. I therefore hope that we shall continue the debate in the weeks ahead, when we reach the detailed consideration of the Crime and Security Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech.

We will need a lot of detailed debate, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be permitted to sit as a member of the Public Bill Committee, to contribute her experience to the scrutiny. The issues that have been raised today are the very ones that we shall need to drill down into, in considering the detail of the Government’s proposals. There has been a shift because of the S and Marper judgment, but I would argue that it has not gone far enough. In attempting to understand the Government’s methodology and approach, we will have an interesting debate. In some ways we are starting that this afternoon, but it will continue. I hope that the continuing debate will be well supported and that hon. Members will participate so that we can get the important scrutiny and valid debate that we need in this place; so that we can get a fair, reasonable and proportionate balance between the interests of the state in preventing crime, and of the individual in terms of privacy and human rights; and so that what Parliament does to reflect the European Court judgment is appropriate.

It was interesting to hear the continuation of the debate that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) and I have been having with the Minister. This is possibly the fourth occasion when we have had the pleasure of debating the issues. It is important, because the issues are fundamental to the balance of the society we want to create. The Government and state approach, and the relationship of that to the individual, are starkly brought into focus by the issue of the retention of DNA. Nothing is much more personal than the retention of people’s genetic make-up by the state.

I start in a position of consensus with the Government because I welcome the fact that they have at least acknowledged that the DNA itself—the base material—will be kept for only a limited period. I think that they have said it will be for six months. Therefore, what will be retained on the DNA database will be a profile comprising, effectively, lots of numbers that relate to the DNA that has been taken. At least the Government have accepted that the human material shall be retained only for a limited period. Then we get into the detail of retention of the profile, what the matching of a profile might mean, and whether the retention of that profile itself for the time suggested is appropriate.

The retention of cellular samples is particularly intrusive given the wealth of genetic and health information that they contain. The use of the technology must involve the right balance between the promotion of the wider public interest and public safety and the protection of important private life interests. That is obviously central to this afternoon’s debate. As Professor Jonathan Montgomery, the chair of the Human Genetics Commission, notes:

“DNA evidence plays a significant role in bringing criminals before the courts and securing convictions. But it is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations. We have to strike a proper balance between identifying offenders and protecting privacy, including that of innocent people—we should not compromise that privacy without good reason.”

That is a good description of the focus that is needed in the debate—on those principles that Professor Montgomery identified.

The UK, as the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington mentioned, has proportionately the largest DNA database in the world. We have approximately 4.3 million profiles. That equates to 10 per cent. of the population of England and Wales, if one breaks it down by the profiles that have been added by police forces in England and Wales. One might have thought that retaining all that data would result in a significant increase in the detection of crime—that, by virtue of the growth in DNA records and the amount of material held, there would be a growth in the number of cases solved, assuming that that is the driving factor. However, the number of DNA detections for 2008-09 is 17,607.

The Minister has argued in the past that the reduction in the number of DNA detections is simply a consequence of a reduction in crime. First, I do not accept that argument. Secondly, even if one did accept it, one would still need to explain why the proportion of crimes detected by DNA has fallen: the figure two years ago was 0.76 per cent., and in the past year it was 0.67 per cent. Similarly, the proportion of crimes detected in which a DNA match was available was 36.5 per cent. two years ago, and 32.4 per cent. last year. Therefore, I do not accept the argument that a reduction in DNA detections is the result of a reduction in crime. So, something is happening here.

I would be interested to know whether the Minister has looked at the situation in Scotland, which operates a different and much narrower system, but where DNA detections are higher than in England and Wales. Questions must be asked about the use of a blanket approach to detect and solve crime and provide safety, because the detection rate—I stand to be challenged on this—seems lower in England and Wales than it is in Scotland. That raises some interesting questions. I do not make that point in a directly partisan way, but if we are trying to use a more evidence-based approach, we need to understand why that system is more effective, as our sole purpose is to detect and solve crime.

I was interested to read the Human Genetics Commission’s recent report, which noted:

“There is insufficient evidence at present to be able to say what use holding DNA profiled from different people is—this evidence is urgently needed to support decisions about the scope of the database”.

I looked at the approach the Government started with, prior to the S and Marper judgment, which obviously still pervades today. It was interesting to note in the judgment that the Government’s policy was described as not depending on innocence or guilt, which is clearly how we understand it.

In a further submission in the course of that case, the Government argued that the fingerprints and samples had been lawfully taken and that their retention is not related to the fact that the people involved were originally suspected of committing a crime,

“the sole reason for their retention being to increase the size and, therefore, the use of the database in identification of offenders in the future.”

If there was a policy of simply growing the database for the sake of it, that is worrying, as we are starting to hear reports—I do not know how grounded they are—of police arresting people, allegedly for the purposes of collecting DNA.

I welcome the fact that the Government, following the S and Marper judgment, appear to have recognised that the Big Brother approach is unacceptable. As a result, we now have the proposals that were originally put forward in the consultation documents published in the summer, as has been mentioned. That was reflected in the Home Secretary’s statement in November, as well as in the Crime and Security Bill, which will have further consideration by the House.

It is odd that we got to that position, because, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield rightly pointed out, we had, during the passage of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 in the previous Session, some heated debates about the fact that the Government originally simply wanted to give a blank cheque and to deal with the matter through statutory instrument and order-making power. That was utterly unacceptable, and I am pleased that they brought forward primary legislation to address the valid and serious concerns of many hon. Members’ about the use of such powers on a matter with such substantive and significant implications for private life.

In his statement on 11 November, the Home Secretary said that, since the publication of the consultation document over the summer, the Home Office had

“sought to further the evidence base through additional research.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2009; Vol. 499, c. 26WS.]

We have heard that the research published alongside the consultation document in the summer was not peer-reviewed, was premature and did not take the correct approach, and I think that the Home Office has accepted that that research did not provide the evidence base it sought to procure.

It would be interesting to hear what further analysis the Government have now undertaken, because I am aware of the document, “DNA retention policy: Re-arrest hazard rate analysis”, which was published alongside the Home Secretary’s statement. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what the preparation of that document involved. Is it an internal Home Office document, was there some external work conducted and, if so, who conducted it and was it peer-reviewed? We must know that so that we are not in the situation we were in before in relation to the previous published analysis. What robustness has been attached to the document before us?

The approach the Government have sought to take to justify the six-year period, I understand, is based on that analysis document. The approach they have taken is to try to match arrest rate to arrest rate and provide a graph for how that applies to the population in general. Some interesting points come out of the document published by the Home Office to support its proposals, because it has attached various caveats to the analysis that state that in measuring the graph, to try to support the justification, the lines are measured with some degree of uncertainty. The banding, therefore, has a high potential for error, which is reflected and represented in the document itself. The document states:

“However, it should be remembered that this is an estimated maximum which is based solely on a consideration of relative risks. Other considerations could result in an actual policy which is longer or shorter than six years—the evidence we present in this paper is not able to say what this final decision should be.”

Therefore, in fairness, that document could not be said to be in any way conclusive. Indeed, it suggests that after three years, the sharp dissipation in the hazard curve starts to level off, which supports setting a limit at the three-year point. Interestingly, even when one burrows down into the detail of the evidence document the Home Office published alongside its proposals for a six-year period, one does not find the robustness of approach that might be presented as supporting the Home Office’s case.

We have several questions on the proposals in the Crime and Security Bill, which will be debated by the House in greater detail at a later date. However, before I finish my speech, I have one question for the Minister on the advice and consideration that the Home Office has taken on the legality of the blanket, indiscriminate, six-year period, which would not take into account any specific crime. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has written a letter to the Council of Europe, stating of even the revised proposals:

“This fails to address the Committee’s decision that 6 years for non-serious offences lacks the required level of proportionality. The Commission believes that treating adults in this category the same regardless of type of offence is too indiscriminate and lacks the required level of proportionality. It does not comply with Committee of Ministers Recommendations Rec(92)1.”

It is important to put on the record what consideration the Government have given, even in introducing these proposals, to whether they are compliant with the terms of the European convention on human rights. Indeed, I believe that the Home Secretary’s statement in November implied that there was some question about their compliance. He stated:

“Although the ECHR”—

the European Court of Human Rights—

“suggested that the seriousness of the alleged offence should be a factor in determining what length of retention was proportionate, the best available evidence indicates that the type of offence a person is first arrested for is not a good indicator of the seriousness of offence he might subsequently be arrested for or convicted of in future.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2009; Vol. 499, c. 26WS.]

That statement was made by the Home Secretary.

We can, I am sure, have a detailed discussion about this in future, but it would be interesting to hear responses from the Minister on those specific points. My party takes a different view from the Government on the retention of DNA. We believe that the DNA profiles of those arrested for a crime of violence or a sexual offence could be retained for three years with a potential extension for a further two years if a court was satisfied that that was appropriate. That proportionate approach is similar to the one used in Scotland and was specifically recognised by the European Court in the S and Marper judgment as being compliant with the convention. We believe that it strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of the state in seeking to solve crime and protect the public, and the privacy interests of the individual citizen.

I look forward to continuing this important debate when the Government reintroduce their Crime and Security Bill in the Commons in the new year, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to some of the questions that have been raised this afternoon.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Hancock. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on securing this important and timely debate, given the wider debate that is taking place around DNA and the database. She will know that the matter formed part of the Policing and Crime Bill but, unfortunately, not the Policing and Crime Act 2009; however, it will be part of the Crime and Security Bill to be reintroduced shortly in Parliament.

Let me begin with common ground. My hon. Friend and I share the ambition of keeping the right people on the database, but we clearly will not agree on who they are or the best way to achieve that. In the time that I have, I would like to address some of the particular points that have come up, and then address general points in the body of my remarks.

I begin with the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes). As the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) said, we have locked horns on this issue many times. As I understand it, the hon. Member for Chesterfield complains about a lack of evidence for the changes that we are proposing, and he hopes that we will come back later with proposals based on better research, yet his party’s policy proposes largely dismantling what today we know as the DNA database. He quotes the police in aid of his argument. I have not heard that argument from many police officers, and I caution him if he believes that that is the case.

I thought that the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the safety and security of the DNA database were particularly ill-judged. The people who keep it safe do a remarkable job. I do not believe that he has any evidence of DNA data somehow being leaked from the database, and the suggestion that dedicated officers who work on the database would be tempted to sell data is as outrageous as it is ill-informed.

Of course, I said no such thing. What I said, in a discussion about the Government following the logic of their arguments and having a DNA database of 60-odd million people, was that the bigger a database gets, the more chance there is, first, of mistakes, and, secondly, of material getting out of the domain where it should be into another domain, as we have seen with many other databases.

The assumption would be that that has already happened and that the problem would get bigger. The other assumption is that we intend to have a universal database, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have assured him on many occasions that that is not the case. The two key words are “balance” and “proportionality”. We need to strike a balance, and when there are various views from different bodies—scientists, the police, victims, Members of Parliament and the general public—the Government have to decide and make a judgment on where the balance actually lies. The difference between the hon. Gentleman and the Government is that we would draw the line in different places.

Let me turn to some of the specific remarks. I promise to come back in the body of my evidence to the general remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington, in which she again repeated the suggestion that being on the database somehow means that one is halfway guilty and halfway innocent. Let me remind her that being on the database is proof of neither guilt nor innocence. In this country, the courts decide whether someone is guilty or innocent. However, I accept that for someone who has been arrested—that is the threshold that we use for taking DNA in this country—having their DNA taken may leave them with the impression that somehow they have done wrong even though the courts have not found that.

My hon. Friend talks about stigma attached to the database. He needs to come to one of the advice surgeries that I run for innocent children whose names are on a database. Their anxious parents are very grateful to me, because that is when they hear for the first time that they can even do anything. I see nervous and frightened children who sometimes are not aware that their DNA has been taken for an indefinite period. There may not be a legal stigma, but I tell him that, in the eyes of the young people, parents and other people in the community who have their DNA taken, there is a definite stigma attached to it.

And in the remarks that followed my original point on this, that is exactly what I was saying. I recognise that people may feel that there is a stigma, but I am making the point for the record that it is not the DNA database that finds people guilty or innocent but the courts.

My experience and knowledge of this is that young people are frequently arrested in groups on the streets of any of our cities, particularly in the part of north London that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington and I represent. They are questioned, DNA is taken, and they are warned that the DNA will probably be kept for all time. On many occasions, they are not subsequently charged but are let go. Sometimes, the police make the arrests as a way of calming a situation down and diffusing a problem. That may be a reasonable police tactic, but it is not reasonable then to take DNA evidence which is difficult to remove from the database. At a later stage, the young person finds that they are on some kind of list of suspects as far as the police are concerned because there is a DNA record of them.

I disagree with the final point in my hon. Friend’s remarks. Earlier, he spoke about this coming back to haunt people. I hope that people do not go away with the impression that DNA is put to a wider use than its actual purpose. I believe that he is referring to the point about removing DNA from the database and the guidance that is given, which I shall deal with in a moment.

On over-representation on the database of a particular ethnic group—in short, the number of young men on the DNA database—I know that that has been a concern for some time, and I shall address the point in detail, but I wish to respond to a point that was at least alluded to in earlier comments, that somehow there is indiscriminate collection of DNA, as recently headlined in the evidence of one retired police officer. Let me put on the record that both the Home Office and the police have entirely refuted the claims that were made. In fact, in reporting them, even the newspaper distanced itself somewhat from them. Let me quote Chief Constable Chris Sims, who is the Association of Chief Police Officers lead on DNA. He stated:

“The suggestion that using powers of arrest to obtain DNA has become routine policy is plainly wrong. The law around powers of arrest is very clear.”

The police going further than they ought to would not simply be about breaking the rules; it would, of course, be tantamount to breaking the law. I will return to proportionality and over-representation, but I wanted to make that point now.

The point about removing people from databases was made forcefully, and as a Member of Parliament I understand people’s ferocity about that. At the moment, removal is at the discretion of chief constables, because they own the data, but in the Crime and Security Bill we are setting out the criteria for removal. Clause 14 will amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and set down not just guidelines, but statutory criteria against which individuals may have their profiles removed. I am happy to go further, and to have a conversation about whether there should be guidelines to be absolutely sure that chief constables know what their responsibilities are in that regard.

Does the Minister anticipate that the new guidelines will include guidelines on whether to take DNA in the first place, particularly of young people who are often brought into custody for a short period? Is it necessary or proportionate to take such DNA samples?

We are verging into territory where we must trust the police’s discretion in many ways. That involves an argument that I want to develop later about what happens when young people come into contact with the criminal justice system, and the police are often at the front line of that. I prefer to deal with that remark then.

I want to return to why we have a DNA database, which we are told is the biggest in the world. Of course, we must be concerned about individual privacy, but the database exists also to provide justice for victims and their families. Without it, thousands of crimes would be unsolved, and many serious and dangerous criminals would be walking our streets. Added to that is the deterrent effect if someone knows that they are on the DNA database and believes that they would be detected if they did something wrong. It can have a deterrent effect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington listed a catalogue of all sorts of cases that may give rise to concern. I do not want simply to compare my list against hers, but I want to put on record the importance of the DNA database which, in the words of Chief Constable Sims, helps to detect 40,000 crimes a year. I shall give some brief examples.

Mark Dixie, who murdered Sally Anne Bowman, was convicted as a result of DNA taken after he was arrested following a pub brawl in 2006, and subsequently released without charge. His DNA was found to match a sample found at the scene of Sally Anne’s murder, and he was subsequently charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 34 years. When we announced our proposals on DNA, Linda Bowman was reported to have said:

“Before this…announcement, it looked like the police would have to destroy the DNA of anyone cleared of a crime.”

When welcoming our proposals, she said:

“Holding DNA is a deterrent to criminals, right from those committing common assault to savage murders.”

Does the Minister agree that Mark Dixie was not convicted because his DNA was on the database from some years ago when he had not been charged? Nine months after the murder, he was arrested during a pub brawl, and his DNA was taken and run against the national database, so it is not an example of old DNA from an innocent person proving them guilty years later.

Okay. Let me try this example for the hon. Gentleman. Steve Wright murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich in 2003. A DNA sample was taken from him when he was arrested on suspicion of theft. His DNA profile subsequently matched DNA from the body of one of the five women murdered in Ipswich in 2006. Wright was eventually charged with and convicted of the five murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the small number of cases in which DNA is appropriate. Let me add significant cases, and let him make his case to the victims’ families, because I assure him that their view is different.

These dramatic cases are all very well and affecting, but the House is waiting to hear from Ministers the statistical basis to prove that keeping innocent people’s DNA solves so many crimes that the balance between privacy and civil liberties needs to be altered in the way the Government are suggesting. The Minister knows that individual cases make hard law.

Let me quote again Chris Sims, chief constable of the west midlands who leads for ACPO on DNA. He said on 10 September that 40,000 crimes are matched every year, that the database is helping to keep us safe, and that reducing the numbers on it will tip the balance towards making people feel less safe. I pray in aid that point, because he is giving the other side of the story.

Where is the research?

I will come to the research in a moment. I pray in aid that point simply to show that it is plain common sense that the further we diminish the database, the higher the number of crimes that might otherwise be solved but will not be solved. We must draw a line appropriately.

Will the Minister give way?

I am running out of time, so I will not give way.

We must strike a balance, and we consider that our proposals in the Crime and Security Bill do just that. There is a debate about so-called innocence, and I am sure that we will return to that.

We have not plucked the period of six years at random. There is not an enormous amount of evidence out there that we can bring to bear, but nor can the hon. Lady. We commissioned evidence, and we are basing our proposals on that evidence. On the best evidence available to us, six years represents the period for which someone who has been arrested once remains more likely than other members of the public to be arrested again.

In case the hon. Member for Hornchurch wants to point out where that line is drawn, six years is a shorter period, and the period of propensity to reoffend is longer than six years. We believe that it is appropriate to retain material from those who have been arrested, but not subsequently convicted, and that is not unique to this country; it applies in a number of countries throughout Europe. When the European Court of Human Rights considered S and Marper, it noted those systems with approval, and agreed that the state can keep fingerprint and DNA information if it pursues the legitimate purpose of detection and, therefore, prevention of crime. The question is: where is proportionality?

Let me turn briefly to over-representation. The DNA database is not self-populating. Before someone’s profile can be added, that person must have been arrested for a recordable offence, and that arrest must have been necessary in law. That is a significant threshold. The problem is that over-representation of any group in the rest of the criminal justice system is likely to be reflected on the DNA database. Our work to look at over-representation of particular groups in the criminal justice system is particularly important. Just focusing on the DNA database, which is somewhat upstream, is interesting, but the reality is that we need to make changes further downstream. We need to know why certain groups coming into contact with the criminal justice system are being arrested and having their DNA taken, which was the point raised by the hon. Member for Hornchurch.

But not charged.

But not charged. However, if the profiles of those who are arrested but not convicted are not kept, a significant group of people who are statistically more likely than the rest of the population to offend within the following six years will be removed from the database. That is the balance that we must strike between people’s privacy and the right of the rest of society to keep itself and others safe.

Turning to the point about children—the European Court made special reference to children—I want to point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington that we have taken account of what the Court said. There are different proposals for children—

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

It is pleasure to be under your tutelage this afternoon, Mr. Hancock. It is also a pleasure to talk about the Davies report and the rugby league challenge cup. Those of us in the rugby league community see the cup as extremely iconic, not only for rugby league, but for sport in general. It is important that we give the Minister and his team in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport some reasons why the rugby league challenge cup final should be on the A- list, and remain free to view for the UK public.

The report was commissioned by the previous Secretary of State for the DCMS, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). Interestingly, he was as surprised as the rest of us when it was concluded that the rugby league challenge cup should be delisted, and he put out a press release to that effect. I hope that the current Secretary of State will take note of that, and that he will talk to his predecessor and take his views on board.

The Secretary of State has indicated that there will be a 12-week consultation on this matter. I hope that the Minister will give us more detail and put on the record the way in which members of the public can have some input in the consultation, as it is not immediately clear—perhaps it would be helpful to have an e-mail address or whatever. One of the surprising things in the Davies report, and in the report by Frontier Economics which went with it, was the paucity of public input in the consultation.

The Davies report asked Frontier Economics to do a background report, which is a detailed read that gives a lot of background information about how people view sport on television, and whether or not they have access to TV sport on satellite and so on for which they pay, or on a free-to-view service. It is an impressive document, which the Davies report, quite properly, draws on.

I have also read the Davies report, which is interesting to say the least. However, one of the things that it did not do well, was interview sports bodies. There were interviews and so on, but when representatives from rugby league came along, only three out of the eight members of the Davies committee were at the interview. We understand that people who do those kinds of things do so on a voluntary basis and have other interests. Nevertheless, when looking at something this important, it is not good to have less than half of the people available. That was not true only for the rugby league presentation. I understand that a presentation was also made by the England and Wales Cricket Board, and that only four members of the committee were present. There are some difficulties regarding the legitimacy of the report and its conclusions when only a small number of people were present.

Paragraph 156 of the Davies report states:

“The Panel accepted that sports governing bodies should be best placed to know what was in the best interests of their sport now and for the future.”

If the members of the committee think that the best thing to do is to talk to the sports bodies, it is incumbent on them to turn up, listen to and question any points that are made.

Another point that is made in the report is about the access that people in this country have to pay TV. There is not a lot of difference by social class—roughly 50 per cent. of people in all social classes have access to pay TV, give or take 5 per cent. either way. However, among people whose income is less than £11,500, there is a big drop, and the figure for pay TV goes down to below 15 per cent. on average. The other important factor is that although there is not much variation between different age groups, if we look at those aged 75 or over, less than 30 per cent. have access to pay TV. Taking the rugby league challenge cup final out of free-to-air viewing would exclude a lot of people who are currently able to watch that iconic sporting event.

The report provides some detail about the differences in the viewing figures for the challenge cup, which is free to air, and those for the grand final, which is on Sky TV. I have no objection to Sky TV. It does a superb job and has improved the way in which television portrays our sport, and other sports. It has raised the profile of the sport, and developed the ability of TV to make sporting events more iconic, available and interesting for the viewers. This is not an attack on Sky TV—far from it; it does an extremely good job. However, the number of people who watched the challenge cup final on free-to-air TV was six times the number who watched the grand final. Anybody who knows rugby league knows that the grand final is the epitome and pinnacle of the rugby league season. It is when the two best teams play each other—knock-out competitions tend to be a little more open, and depend on the way in which the balls come out of the hat. If only a sixth of those who watch the challenge cup can watch the grand final, that tells us something about the issue.

Frontier Economics has tried to analyse the effects on the sport, but it largely looks at the financial impact. It does not look at the real issues that people in rugby league want to know about. That misses the point, not only for rugby league but for all sports—the super league, the Ashes, Wimbledon, and so on. All those events are at the very pinnacle of sport, but below them, there is a huge base of people who play or have played sport, and who are interested in it. That is an important point, which I shall return to later.

As I said, the committee consulted the public. Surprisingly, only 148 people responded. I say “surprisingly”, but I am not all that surprised. I did not know that the public were being asked, as I might have put in a recommendation or said something about the issue. However, there were only 148 responses, which is very poor. That is why it is important that in his response, the Minister gives us some idea of how people can respond to the consultation process that he will undertake.

Let us look at some of the details. Sixty-two people responded to question 12, which asked what the most important issue was for them. Of those respondents, 12 people—the largest group—said that affordability was important. That goes back to my earlier point about those people on low incomes and the over-75s. We risk excluding a lot of those people, and that is what most of the respondents were concerned about.

In question 9b, the majority of those who responded said that they wanted no change whatsoever to the listing process. When asked whether the rugby league challenge cup final should be moved from the A-list to the B-list, no respondents wanted that to happen. When asked whether some events should be moved from the B-list to the A-list, so that they would be shown on free-to-air TV, four people said that the rugby league challenge cup should be shown in full, rather than as highlights. They were saying that they wanted to see games all the way through, not just the highlights of games. Of the 136 people who responded to question 9d, only three—or 2.2 per cent.—said that the challenge cup should be moved. Not only would none of us be elected on 2.2 per cent., but none of us would retain our deposits.

The committee went on to consider what the criteria should say. Paragraph 138 says that there should be some amendments to the criteria. Paragraph 154 also refers to what they should look like. I will not read them all out, but paragraph 138 states that a relevant event should be

“a pre-eminent national or international event in sport”,

should involve

“the national team or national representatives in the sport concerned”

and should

“be likely to command a large television audience.”

Paragraph 154 states that the panel concluded that

“the ‘other factors’ in the current criteria that the Secretary of State may take into account—including the potential impact of listing on the income to a sport—should not strictly form part of the criteria for listing, but were matters for the Secretary of State to the extent that it is appropriate for him to take them into account”.

I am sure that that sounded good in the original double Dutch, but it does give some indication that the Secretary of State has a little leeway.

There is no definition in the Davies report of what the criteria that were set out mean in practice. That is important. I know that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall just give what I think are the major reasons why the rugby league challenge cup should be included and why the Secretary of State should not take account of the Davies report’s recommendations.

The most important reason is the community nature of our sport. I do not think that there is another professional sport anywhere in the UK with the community base that rugby league has. It goes right the way down. All of us here could name teams in our areas whose players play rugby league from the age of five right the way through. Although that is also the case in other sports, there is a difference. I remember that in the 1980s and ’90s, we had Steve Hampton, Joe Lydon, Shaun Edwards and Andy Gregory playing for what was probably the greatest rugby league team around—not just then, but before or since. They played for a Wigan team and were all born and brought up in Wigan. If we look at the current Wigan team, we see Sam Tomkins, Joel Tomkins, Gareth Hock and so on. Right the way through that Wigan team are players who were born and brought up in Wigan, and that would be the same in Leeds, Bradford and Widnes. All those players come right the way through, and it is very important that we have that community that feeds up into the challenge cup final.

rose—

Stephen Twigg.

Derek Twigg, even.

Sorry. The ball went through my hands there, Mr. Twigg.

Can I put this point to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner)? He is making an excellent and very powerful speech. It is a disgrace even to suggest the change that we are discussing. He has made strong arguments about that. At a time when we have seen criticism of footballers, cheating and everything else, here we have a sport whose players are known for their courage, tenacity, skills and, above all, honesty. Is that not exactly the sort of sport that we should be projecting to a much wider audience?

I am very grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend has probably pinched about three seconds of my speech, but that is neither here nor there because I fully agree with him. The point that he makes is very important. In rugby league, most of the players come from quite deprived backgrounds. Many of them do not have the family discipline that perhaps exists in other families, but going into rugby league gives them that discipline. It gives them the personal satisfaction of achieving excellence in speed, skill, ball-handling ability and so on. Also, if someone makes a mistake and a penalty is awarded against them, it is 10 metres, and that is 10 metres that the forwards have to get back and they do not like it. They tell their colleagues, “You stop giving away penalties.” If someone is sent off or sin-binned, the whole team get battered for that. I think that my hon. Friend’s point was about that peer group discipline.

Equally, the respect that the officials receive in rugby league is paramount. That applies to rugby union as well; we should be fair about that. In rugby, nobody questions the decisions of the officials, which is absolutely right. That self-discipline comes from playing the game; people have an understanding of how to talk to officials and so on. I remember going to two games at the Millennium stadium. One was Wigan Athletic against Manchester United in the Carling cup. There was segregation. There were police all over the place. There was no trouble, as it happened; nevertheless, there was that anticipation. I then went to watch Wigan Warriors playing St. Helens. There were no police about. There was no segregation. Alcohol was freely available. It was a great atmosphere and a great day. The difference between the two comes from the community spirit that flows all the way through the game of rugby. It is important that the rugby league challenge cup is on free-to-air television so that we can project that to the nation. We can do that by having the schools, which provide the usual opener to our game, there and we can show what our game can do for the individual, for sport and for rugby league. It is important that when the Secretary of State finishes his consultation—we shall ensure that he gets many more than the 148 people responding in the first instance—he takes that on board and ensures that the rugby league challenge cup final is free to air so that everybody can see it.

rose—

Can I ask you, Mr. Hoyle, to be fair and to respect the referee’s decision to give the Minister time to give you the good news that I am sure he will in this event? If you could keep your comments to a minimum, the Minister will have enough time to respond to any points that you want to make and to those of your colleagues.

Thank you for that advice, Mr. Hancock. Obviously, in rugby league, we have a thing called a yellow card, so if I get two yellow cards, I will know that I have to sit down. Allowing for that, may I first say thank you to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner)? He has put forward the reasons for his argument extremely eloquently. He has explained that the case is so strong that there can be no other decision than keeping rugby league in the A-list. That is what this is about. As he set out, it seems absurd that a committee sits with less than 50 per cent. attendance to make a decision to take rugby league off the A-list—off free-to-air television. I would have thought that common sense would have prevailed on the idea that the greatest sport in the world, with one of the finest cup finals to be played at Wembley, could not be on free-to-view television in the future. That is unacceptable. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister, rocking back on his chair, recognises the sport and how great the game is. It will be a crying shame if suddenly the Davies report is accepted. We need the decision to be reversed, and reversed quickly. We need to lift that uncertainty.

Of course, Sky has done a lot for rugby league. I have to say that I was the only person at the rugby league meeting in Wigan who did not vote for Sky. I hold my hands up and say that at that meeting, when Sky came with the big cheque book, I was the only one who stood up and did not accept the Sky money, because my commitment is to free-to-view television.

My hon. Friend is right when he says that Sky has done a lot for rugby league. Does he not really believe, though, that Sky has done a lot for Sky? That is what this debate is about. It wants to do even more for Sky by taking this cup final away. We should not allow that.

That is a bit of a wet ball, but back to you, Mr. Hoyle.

I totally agree. My differences with Sky in relation to rugby league were many years ago. The one thing that I have always been committed to is the game of rugby league. I will always remain strongly supportive of the game at both amateur and professional level. This is about balance. Sky is doing the championship games; it is doing the premiership and the super league. Every week, it is rolling out good matches and good coverage. However, when it comes to the cup final, the exciting part, bringing teams together, we must ensure that the finest game in the world is available on free-to-view television.

I cannot express that passion enough to the Minister. We must get that message across. Rugby league is one big family, whether we are talking about the members of the family in Australia or the national game of Papua New Guinea. Wherever it is in the world, rugby league is united on one thing: it is a great sport, a family sport, a sport to which we can all be committed. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater by making the wrong decision. We educate people in the south by showing the game live from Wembley, so do not allow that to go. The finest experience that I have had this season has been that of my father walking out at Wembley, leading Warrington out and coming back to Warrington with the challenge cup. There is no finer experience that I could have. Chorley Panthers had the Tomkins brothers there, so we are a good feeder club to Wigan, and long may that continue. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan for ensuring that this debate is taking place, and that we get the right decision. I can see how serious the matter is when I look behind the Minister and see that he has four officials sitting there writing, recognising that rugby league must remain. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Hoyle, for a spirited contribution. I now give the floor to the Minister—follow that.

I will do my best, Mr. Hancock. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I hope that we will not be interrupted by a vote, but I slightly fear that we might.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner) on securing the debate and on his magnificent contribution. He is like a shaggy bearded lion of the rugby league world, and is ably assisted in his exhortations by his hon. Friends from the rest of the north-west.

And Yorkshire and the north-east.

Indeed. I am minded to note that the last time there was a listed events review was in 1998, which was, I think, also the last time that the rugby league challenge cup final was won by Wigan Warriors. No, that was the super league grand final win.

I begin by reaffirming the Government’s view that we recognise the importance of ensuring that as many people as possible have the opportunity to enjoy our most important sporting events on free-to-air TV. We all recognise that sport is a central part of the national fabric, of our national identity, and of what makes up the kind of society we are. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) said, nothing can quite replicate the excitement and the passion that can be generated by our great sporting events. Only last year, we saw the passion that surrounded British participants in the Olympics and the Paralympics, next year we will have the World cup in South Africa, and in 2012 we will have the Olympics in London. We want to ensure—there will be no doubt about it—that those kinds of national and centrally important sporting events—

May I remind the Minister that in 2013 we will have the rugby league world cup as well?

I did not mention that myself only because I wanted to give one of the hon. Gentlemen the opportunity to intervene and put it on the record.

I have said why we have listed events. The decision to review the listed events was based on a range of factors, partly on the recognition that with the development of digital technologies and the changes to the broadcasting environment there are far more channels and far more ways to watch sporting events. In addition, subscription’s place in the broadcasting economy is completely different from what it was. To take account of all those developments, the Government set up an independent advisory panel to review the free-to-air events regime and make recommendations to the Secretary of State.

Does the Minister not agree that less than 50 per cent. of the panel turning up to hear the evidence represents a failure?

Before I could make such a judgment, I would need more evidence than the second-hand anecdotes we have had about two meetings—

But what if what I said was correct?

We will look at the evidence if that ever becomes an issue, but it is not something that we should get hung up on. Let me return to the details that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan asked for, of the review process and how it has gone.

David Davies chaired the panel and was asked to review three areas: the principle of having a list, the criteria against which events are listed, and the content of any list. It was recognised that the widest possible range of views needed to be taken. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, the panel commissioned research. It undertook a public consultation from 8 April to 20 July, and wrote to 187 sporting, media, broadcasting, viewer and other organisations, inviting them to participate, and some of those organisations had meeting with members of the panel. Not every member of the panel attended every meeting, as has been noted, but I do not doubt that there will have been consistency of membership. Others of those organisations made submissions in writing. Perhaps not every member on every occasion, but the panel as an entity visited the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, arranged a joint meeting of the all-party media and sports groups, and generally put itself about and talked to as many people as possible.

The Minister will not know this, but it would be interesting to find out how many of the panel have been to a challenge cup final. I wonder whether the Minister himself has been to one. All of us who go and see the very large crowd at that fantastic occasion simply cannot understand the decision. We also think that there is a blind spot. The Minister probably does not realise that Leeds Rhinos regularly have the biggest average crowds of any rugby club in the country. Rugby is a popular spectator sport, but that is not being reflected.

The hon. Gentleman makes that point very well. I cannot speak for the proclivities of the panel. Having grown up in a Welsh family, I was taught early the other way, in rugby terms, and then went to the only grammar school in Birmingham where they played only football, not rugby. So, no, I have never been to a rugby league challenge cup final, although if the hon. Gentleman is inviting me, I would love to go.

The panel reached clear conclusions as to the criterion that should be used in determining whether an event should be listed—the major event test. I am conscious that I have only three minutes left, so I will not read out the definition of a major event but will move on to the Secretary of State’s provisional conclusions.

The Secretary of State provisionally—I do not just emphasise that word with my voice; it is underlined on the piece of paper—concluded that he was minded to recommend that the recommendations be accepted. Those recommendations were, first, that there should in principle be a list; secondly, that the major event test should be a key criterion in drawing up the list; and thirdly, to accept the view that the events identified passed the major event test. The Secretary of State considers that the panel has come forward with a persuasive set of reasons, and he agrees that as many people as possible should have as much access as possible to events of major importance. We are particularly concerned—my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan raised this concern—about the ability of people on a low income to access subscriber services. They might otherwise be excluded from these nationally important events. We believe that listed events are part of our national identity, but we are also clear that the panel expressed no view and took no account of the impact or consequences on the sport or sporting body of the listing, stating that it considered that such matters were for the Secretary of State to take into account.

Our provisional conclusion is, therefore, that the final decision should take account of the possible impacts—not looked at by the report—that such listing might have on the sport or the event in question. We therefore consider that the major event test needs to be accompanied by an impact assessment. That will involve considering any matters relating to the impacts of listing that are drawn to the Secretary of State’s attention, then assessing whether listing would have a disproportionate impact on the interests of those adversely affected by it—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley is willing me on. Having reached his provisional conclusions, the Secretary of State is required to carry out a statutory consultation with the broadcasting authorities in line with the Broadcasting Act 1996. I am trying to conclude as quickly as possible before the time runs out. There is a consultation that runs until March. As part of that consultation—

Order. I am sorry Minister, but despite playing a blinder you have been beaten by the clock.

We now move on to the next debate. However, I point out to the Minister and the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) that we expect Divisions in the House at any moment. I leave it to you to decide whether you want come back between votes—I understand that there will a series of them. That would make for a disjointed debate, but we could suspend the sitting for an appropriate period.

I raise a subject today that is not much talked about. In recent weeks and months, we have become used to our armed forces making the news. Much focus is given, and rightly so, to what is happening in our theatres of operation. Today, however, I want to concentrate on something that will affect many military families—the proposed changes to some of the postal services. I also wish to talk about postal services to Afghanistan.

I know from personal experience that the British Forces Post Office has for many years provided a vital link between forces personnel and their immediate families, and wider friends and families. The service was cheap, and it was certainly efficient; I assume that nothing has changed. It was always highly valued by those who sometimes felt a long way from home. It is worth noting a little of its history.

In 1808, during the peninsular war, the first Army post office was put into operation. It was followed during the first Chinese war in 1840 with another Army post office. In 1882, Queen Victoria authorised the formation of the Army Post Office Corps to serve during the Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns. A number of reorganisations took place—it is not a modern fad, as we often think—but eventually the Royal Engineers (Postal Section) was formed.

That organisation served during the first world war in France, Belgium, the Dardanelles, Egypt, Palestine, east Africa, Greece, Italy and north Russia. The ingenuity of the personnel was unlimited. As well as being transported by conventional means, mail was transported by mule, sleigh, trawler, minesweeper—in fact, by any form of available transport. That is an example of the resourcefulness of the organisation, which has always given high priority to getting messages to the troops.

In March 1919, the first regular airmail service from Folkestone to Cologne was set up to provide British troops in Germany with a fast mail service. It was the world’s first scheduled airmail service. Due to its success, the model was adopted by civil post offices worldwide. I could spend 15 minutes recounting the development of the forces postal service. The organisation’s history of resourcefulness and its ability to adapt over the years to ensure that our troops had access to the biggest morale booster of all—mail from home—is second to none. However, it was with some consternation that I learned of plans to close 12 of the forces post offices. The offices destined for closure are those providing support—[Interruption.]

Order. There is a Division in the House. I am in your hands. You may prefer to come back after you have voted, so that we can move straight away, so that when the three of us are back here we can recommence. We will adjourn for an appropriate time.

Hopefully, I will have a clear run to the end of the debate.

The offices destined for closure are those providing support to the UK elements of NATO headquarters. Now, I must declare a small interest here.

I want to congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a very important debate. Quite rightly, she spelled out the importance of boosting morale, and the morale-booster is getting the mail there, never more so than getting mail to the front line of theatre. I think that she would agree with me that what we need from the Minister, when he gives his winding-up speech, is confirmation that the theatre will not be affected and that that vital link between families, friends, sweethearts or whatever they may be will continue, that mail will always get there and that we always ought to see if we can get more. Does she agree?

I could not possibly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I know that he has to rush off, but if he stayed to hear the end of my speech he would hear me return to that issue very forcefully. As I probably hinted in my historical comments, this issue was very important and it remains so to this day; it may even be more important now, so I thank him for his intervention.

My small interest in this area centres on the fact that one of the BFPO numbers that will be affected—well, the number will exist, but the post office will close—is BFPO 28, which serves Brunssum in the Netherlands. For a couple of years, that was my number and my address, so that I could keep in touch with my teenage friends back in England. The service was effectively subsidised, so it was cheap to use and, as I said earlier, it was efficient.

Teenagers today probably use a home personal computer, and the art of letter-writing is dying out somewhat. However, when I was a teenager, I had to write to my granny—well, I wanted to write to my granny. As we all know, granny is less likely to have a computer, so we should not lose sight of the range of people with whom a forces family will want to keep in touch. The postal mechanisms are not just available to the forces themselves, but to those responding to the letters.

The forces have always tried to adapt to changing times. There is now a system for something known as the e-bluey. Letters are e-mailed directly to the BFPO, which then dispatches them via the traditional postal system. Obviously, such developments are welcome. My understanding is that the BPFO numbers themselves will be retained, but the forces post offices will be closed and only a limited postal receipt and dispatch facility will be left. There will no longer be a facility to send parcels to the UK, although it will still be possible to receive parcels.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the proposed system is that the over-the-counter post office services will cease and for services outside basic mail provision, forces personnel and their dependants will use the relevant international mail system. That will invariably mean that people will have to pay more to send parcels and they will also have to depend on the vagaries of less efficient postal systems. We sometimes knock the British postal system, but in comparison with other systems it is very good. Currently, for example, someone at BFPO 8 in Naples can send a BFPO letter weighing up to 100 grams for 39p; hopefully, the Minister can confirm that that will continue. However, if they want to send a small letter-type package of just over 100 grams, the picture changes. The current BFPO cost is 90p, but the cost of sending a similarly sized package through the Italian premium mail service—I do not think that anyone with experience of the Italian postal service would risk paying less for the slower service—ranges from just over £1 to more than £1.50. To some, that might not seem like a huge difference, but costs mount up over the course of a year. In Norway, at BFPO 50, the costs are even higher: it costs about £4 to send a letter of just over 100 grams to the UK. Costs are even higher for personnel based in the USA. The situation gets worse when applied to parcels, as the cost of sending some of them will double.

It could be argued that gift vouchers and so on can be used, but people like to receive personal gifts. There is another side to it as well. Despite the best efforts of the NAAFI, there is always something from home that people living in another country yearn for. UK-based families often make up packages of such sought-after items and post them. That, too, will cost more in future, and even if a small adjustment is made to the cost-of-living allowance for those based abroad, it will not be extended to families in the UK who send things to our forces.

There are also broader concerns. It is now widely accepted that there will be less money in future to spend on public services and that all organisations will look for efficiency savings. The UK has other overseas postings, and many personnel are still based in Germany. Will the Minister give me an assurance today that there will be no further slash and burn of BFPO services? Currently, 23,000 personnel are based in Germany, and they could be looking at NATO’s savings with some trepidation.

I also want to use this opportunity to mention those who send cards, gifts and letters to our troops in Afghanistan. Military personnel at the sharp end acknowledge that troops on the ground appreciate support from back home, but mountains of well-intentioned mail can cause difficulties that outweigh the benefits. Mail from friends and family—the packages that have the greatest effect on morale—can be delayed significantly. If someone does not receive something from their family, they might become concerned that something is wrong, which could obviously detract from their day job.

The onward delivery of good-will parcels to forward operating bases necessitates additional supply flights and convoys, which the Ministry of Defence says puts our personnel at greater risk every time an extra convoy is added. I am sure that nobody sending a parcel would want the troops to be put at greater risk. The MOD is keen to ensure that members of the public who wish to support British service personnel can do so, and I understand that a list of recommended service charities has been drawn up.

The standard advice seems to be that if someone wants to help, they should donate to one of the charities. The preferred charity appears to be the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association, which has a long record of work in supporting our troops. I do not wish to deter people from sending money to that worthwhile charity, but it is important for some people to feel that they are making or doing something practical. They might not have huge amounts of money and might think that what little they have is best given in the form of a personalised gift. There are also troops who are not in touch with their families and do not receive anything from loved ones. For them, a parcel must be a morale booster, whoever it is from. Many members of the public who want to do something might not be aware of the warning not to send parcels.

I decided to google the subject. Typing in the keywords “parcels”, “soldiers” and “Afghanistan” produced the following results. The top link was to a charity called Support our Soldiers, which—guess what—sends parcels to troops, except that it now says that it cannot accept more gifts, only money. The second link was to a story about Joanne Goody-Orris and her partner Maurice Benton, two pensioners who have been sending parcels for some time and have received many letters of thanks from grateful service personnel. The third hit mentioned a scheme in Otley, and the fourth a woman named Maria Wood, described as Father Christmas to the troops. The fifth concerned Karen Brittle from Orford, a similarly public-spirited individual. The sixth described a campaign last summer by the Dorset Echo, the seventh was a Yahoo! discussion of what to include in parcels and the eighth was a link to the Birmingham Mail.

I could go on, but I think that the Minister gets the gist. The information available is not terribly relevant to what is happening on the ground. No helpful guidance exists on the best way to help our troops. It is probably too late to make a difference this year, but in all likelihood, our troops will be in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. An interested and engaged public will continue to want to help and show their support in the most practical and personal way possible.

My plea is this. It should not be beyond the wit of the MOD to ensure that the first Google hit gives official advice, tells people the best way to help and directs them to approved charities. I urge the Minister to do so in order to help people make the most of their efforts. My second suggestion might require a little more work. I hope that the MOD will like it; it could work with a charity to see whether the idea can be developed. When people support Oxfam, for example, they can make a donation to buy mosquito nets or a goat. I am not suggesting that we send goats to our troops in Afghanistan, but in preparing for this debate, I became aware that many of them find certain small pieces of gadgetry useful, such as a wind-up torch. A member of the public could go to a website and decide whether to fund a wind-up torch or another gift, and their name could become associated with that gift. They could also name a recipient or group of recipients, because one reason why people want to give tangible things is that they want the soldiers to know that they are in their thoughts. A physical gift makes that knowledge much more real, and such a gift could be seen to benefit a real person instead of being swallowed up by an anonymous charity pot. People are not always sure where the money goes.

It seems to be a relatively simple idea that could work. It would relieve the strain on the system while making people feel that they were giving something tangible, and the soldier would receive a real gift. I hope that the Minister will want to do it. It would usefully channel the efforts of the many people who want to do their bit to help. I shall end my remarks by thanking all those who will be away from their families this Christmas doing their duty for our country, but I feel somehow that that is insufficient, and I want to do more. That is exactly how many people feel who have sent or want to send parcels to our troops.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) on securing this debate. The British Forces Post Office provides official and private mail services for Her Majesty’s forces and their dependants worldwide and within the establishment in the UK. I am aware that mail is a major contributor to morale, as she suggests, and ensuring that mail gets to our servicemen and women is a key priority.

I will start by distinguishing between the operational theatre, which is what the hon. Lady was referring to, and overseas permanent bases. Operational theatres are supported by our Enduring Free mail service. I would like to put it on record that, contrary to what appears on some websites, the changes that we are making to the BFPO will not affect the Enduring Free mail service to our troops on operations. There will be no change to that service at all. It is a top priority for the Ministry of Defence to ensure that our servicemen and women in Afghanistan get the mail and support that they need from their families. We recognise how important it is for them to get messages from home.

We have made great strides, as the hon. Lady suggests. One of the most popular ways to communicate now is the e-bluey, which is used increasingly to send not just letters but photographs and, as I saw a few weeks ago in Afghanistan, items such as a five-year-old’s paintings from school. It is a big morale booster for soldiers to receive personalised mail, and service usage has gone from 30,000 items a month less than three years ago to well over 100,000.

On the changes we are making, I do not recognise the description of the slash and burn of our overseas post offices, although I recognise that the Liberal Democrats are prone to using emotive language. We are changing 10 locations in Europe and one in the US NATO headquarters: at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Brussels, Brunssum, Ramstein, Stavanger, Karup, Rome, Milan, Lisbon and Valencia; and Norfolk, Virginia in the United States. Clearly, those are not operational locations, but are in first-world countries that have sophisticated and modern postal services.

As a result of the proposed changes, a limited postal receipt and dispatch facility will be maintained, but the over-the-counter postal service will end. There will no longer be a facility to send parcels back to the UK, but it will be possible for people to receive them. That will save about £1.3 million a year. As the hon. Lady knows, we are trying to free up as much money as possible for the front line. I think that we can introduce this efficiency without adversely affecting the service. We have consulted the three armed forces federations and I put on record my thanks to them for their input into the review. Although the over-the-counter services will cease, people at the sites will retain their BFPO numbers, which is important in banking, applying for credit, internet shopping and voter registration.

For services outside BFPO provision, the international mail system that is used by business and the public to send letters in Europe and the US will be available. The hon. Lady mentioned the increased cost of sending mail using the international postal service, but the overseas allowance will change to cover that increase. I do not see the changes as draconian, but as maintaining the service in an efficient way.

On operational post, the Enduring Free mail service has been popular and it is important for morale to ensure that servicemen and women receive regular packages of mail from home. I was in Afghanistan two weeks ago and know the importance that our servicemen and women—especially those at forward operating bases—place on receiving mail from home.

Like the hon. Lady, I do not want to discourage the generosity of the British public in supporting our servicemen and women. However, there is a problem of unsolicited mail. I was in the post office in Kandahar two weeks ago. The lady who ran it said that up to 30 per cent. of the packages received were unsolicited mail. Her concern was that at Christmas, when it is important that mail from home gets to people’s loved ones, the unsolicited mail was clogging up the system. Some of the items that people send are a little inappropriate, to say the least. For example, our search dogs do not need dog food and the soldiers do not need cat food for local cats in the villages in which they are stationed. I accept that people send such things out of the best of intentions.

If people wish to support our servicemen and women, we ask them to support SSAFA Forces Help and the operational welfare fund. The operational welfare fund does not work exactly as the hon. Lady described, but it does provide electronic kit for people in theatre. For example, laptop projectors were recently provided at one of the FOBs, so that people could watch films. Therefore, there are examples of the cash that is given being turned into direct help and providing benefits that people welcome.

I was suggesting an extension of that scheme, which is the right method. A link should be created between the giver and the recipient so that one can acknowledge the other. That would help to humanise the process. The fundamental point is that the Ministry of Defence produced this advice, but it is difficult to access. Not everybody would have heard the news on the particular day that it was announced. A lot of people are still not aware of the message that there are more appropriate ways of giving.

I accept the hon. Lady’s good intentions, but if the system is overcomplicated, it will be difficult to get the information out. I think that getting the money in and deciding on a case-by-case basis what people require, through talking to local commanders, is a better way of doing it. If people want to make donations, they can do so by visiting www.bmycharity.com. I urge everyone who wants to support our troops to give money rather than send parcels.

The hon. Lady referred to servicemen and women who might not have family sending parcels to them. We support—and encourage others to support—Support Our Soldiers and Thank The Forces. Last week, I launched this year’s uk4u Thanks! Christmas boxes, which contain some of the practical equipment that she mentioned. That is manageable and should be supported. There are ways to give. I use this debate to get the message out again not to send unsolicited mail to our servicemen and women. If people can give, please will they give generously to the charities that support our servicemen and women?

The changes are practical and will ensure that we have a cost-effective system of providing for and supporting our servicemen and women, whether they are on operations or in non-operational bases across the world. I urge people to look in detail at what we are doing, rather than just reading the headlines that have been written on certain websites in the last few months.

Question put and agreed to.