It has been agreed that should any Questions for Short Debate not run for the allocated one hour this afternoon, the Committee will adjourn during pleasure until the end of the hour. Therefore, each of the Questions for Short Debate will start on the hour.

asked Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to deal with overcrowding and capacity on railway services.

The noble Lord said: I make no apology for bringing the subject of railways back to your Lordships. We are desperately short of capacity now. There is no spare passenger rolling stock on the railway. In many cases, you cannot park a car after 8 am because the car parks are full. There is no energy strategy, despite the looming oil crisis, and, generally speaking, there are no diversionary routes available for much of the network. I submit that there is a lot of suppressed demand in the system, and frustration among passengers will grow and grow.

The reason for this is not the lack of potential investment. The Government do not have the cash anyway, but franchisees and rolling stock companies have plenty of cash, and utilities are a good investment, particularly at a time when stock markets are falling.

I believe that the Government’s lack of vision is causing this crisis. The Government and their officials are very good at producing reports, studies and procrastination. They are poor when it comes to vision, courage and enterprise. Because of that, there is a lack of investment.

The Minister for railways in another place is very strong about not writing detailed timetables or managing the rolling stock cascade. These things are repeated over and over again. But there is no rolling stock; there are bottlenecks which prevent timetabling being more flexible. The Government, in my submission, have the industry by the throat. Their policy is to eke out capacity by means of high fares and short franchises, which means lack of investment. Indeed, the franchises are too short to enable the investment demands to be met. If somebody says that the rolling stock companies can buy more rolling stock, there is the question of getting the Government’s permission or getting residual guarantees. So the Government are holding the industry by the throat.

I have some proposals. The southern franchise is about to be specified and I suggest that this specification should include the opening of the Uckfield to Lewes line. All of us who know about railways know that that is the key to unlocking capacity on the Brighton main line, which is one of the most congested in the country. It would enable us to access the south coast by one way or the other when, as frequently happens, engineering work blocks the main line. But that specification should be much wider and more generous. It should insist on more car parking space—not the odd hundred spaces here or there but thousands. It should insist on longer platforms and more rolling stock. That franchise will come at a price, which may be that you have to give the people longer. I believe that the best thing we can do is to make the franchise as long as necessary with flexibility, rising performance standards, maximum fares related to the retail prices index, investment, commitment and revenue-sharing arrangements, which would give both parties some protection.

I turn to the subject of the west coast main line and the Virgin franchise. I remind the Minister that we have a Question about that on Monday and I hope to get more answers then than he may be able to give today. This line is already full—my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie will elaborate on that—and is growing at 10 per cent per annum, which is much faster than the Government forecast. We must have more capacity well before 2012. I gather that negotiations have broken down between Virgin and the department but I suggest that the Minister for railways goes by himself to meet the managing director of Virgin—without officials from the department, the Treasury, BERR, or lots of the consultants who support them—and that the two of them lock themselves in a room until an agreement is reached. That is how international diplomacy works, and I suggest that Scotland and England may be classed as international in this context. I am sure that Mr Harris is quite above any bribery.

I would not like to be the rail Minister, who in two or three years’ time goes to the country and visits the north-west and Scotland. By then, the railway system will be bursting at the seams; there will be wicked overcrowding and very high fares. What sort of legacy is that for a Minister for railways?

We know that train lengthening and resignalling are much, much cheaper than building new roads or railways. The figures are based on capacity and on the cost of doing the work, and I am perfectly happy to let the Minister see the figures if he has not already done so.

I should like to say another thing about electrification. I have had a piece of work done privately by an individual and he has shown that, by electrifying 167 route miles, which is a very small amount, we could convert a large number of InterCity or near- InterCity trains from diesel to electricity, which would enhance several of the diversionary routes. I know that there are arguments against electrification. They are fostered by people in the department who talk about things such as the advent of a fuel cell. I was around longer ago than I care to remember when fusion and advanced nuclear power were going to make electricity so cheap that we could almost give it away. That did not happen and I am sure that fuel cells are also pretty unlikely to happen.

I want to make one last point. The department is arranging a competition for the InterCity Express. This will be a train powered by diesel and electricity. If, instead of putting diesel on that train, a coupling was put at each end which could easily and automatically be attached to a diesel locomotive, then the extremities of the system—which by the time this comes along will probably be Plymouth, Cardiff, Edinburgh and places such as that—will be able to be serviced by electric trains by simply towing them with a diesel engine over the last bit of the line. One has to remember the huge advantage that would be gained from not having diesel engines and not carrying around the huge quantities of fuel that each of these trains has when it sets off on its day’s work.

The railways are in a crisis, but there are ways out of it which a Minister with the courage of the honourable Member responsible for rail services can find. However, he will have to cut himself loose from the bureaucracy and paraphernalia that surround his office in order to branch out, saying, “This is what I’m going to do. This is how we’re going to do it. You can keep all your consultants’ reports because I know that this is common sense, and that is what I want to do”.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for securing this debate, and the thrust of my comments will be not dissimilar to his. The issue is important as demand for rail services continues to rise, with growth at 6 per cent a year being twice the rate assumed in the 2007 White Paper. In 2006, a total of more than 45 billion passenger kilometres were travelled; that was an increase of 6.5 per cent over the previous 12 months and was indeed the highest growth rate in Europe. Over the past decade, passenger kilometres travelled have risen by well over 40 per cent, again the highest in Europe, and are now at a higher level than at any time since 1946. Freight traffic has also been increasing, with tonne kilometres up by more than 60 per cent since the beginning of the 1990s. With the population rising, the economy growing, road congestion at the very best unlikely to decline and the cost of fuel on an upward trend, the increase in numbers travelling by rail and the expansion in freight traffic will continue.

Some increases in capacity are in the pipeline, as set out in the White Paper. Crossrail will add significantly to London’s total public transport system, but it is to be nearly another decade before services start to operate, and that is assuming that the plans run to time. The July 2007 Government White Paper was widely welcomed for the positive future it outlined for rail, but it was based on an increase in rail capacity to address growth of 22 per cent up to 2014, and beyond that a projected doubling of traffic over the next 30 years. The question is this: has the increase in rail capacity been underestimated in the light of continuing trends, and if so, what needs to be done to deal with the overcrowding and capacity shortfalls that will result? One answer is to put up the fares and freight charges to reduce demand until it matches whatever is the existing capacity. That is certainly a policy, but it is not one with which I would agree, and I hope to hear from my noble friend that it is not a policy that the Government would countenance. That is because it is not much good extolling the environmental advantages of rail and encouraging people to use public transport if the supply side of the equation in the form of capacity is not to be effectively addressed to meet the demand.

It is with this point in mind that I, too, want to raise a question about addressing capacity issues in the short term on the west coast main line. In December 2006, Virgin Trains entered into an amended franchise agreement based on forecasts of an average annual 9 per cent growth in passenger demand to the end of the franchise period in 2012. The actual demand since December 2006 has exceeded forecasts and is already running at levels predicted for 2008-09. Service frequencies are to be increased before long with, for example, three trains per hour to Birmingham and Manchester, but the current capacity of the Pendolino trains will not cope with the future predicted growth, so there will be overcrowding before the end of the franchise term. Virgin Trains says that lengthening the Pendolino trains from nine to 11 cars would address capacity concerns which already exist at peak times and accommodate predicted growth on the franchise up to 2018. But in return for the risks arising from disruption to passengers and the financial expense of such a train-lengthening programme, I understand that Virgin Trains sought a two-year extension on the franchise to enable it to recoup the investment.

This the Government appear to have declined to agree to, presumably on the basis that either they do not think it represents value for money for the taxpayer, or alternatively because they do not accept Virgin Trains’ forecast on traffic growth and the consequences for overcrowding on the west coast main line. I would like to hear from my noble friend what the Government’s position is on addressing the apparently imminent overcrowding issue on the west coast main line. Are discussions still continuing with Virgin Trains or is there a complete impasse? That specific case is important because similar issues could arise from all the other routes if, as seems quite likely, the Government’s projections for passenger growth up to 2014 in the 2007 White Paper prove to be significantly lower than reality. We cannot afford to have lengthy wrangles between the Government and operators and either delay in taking the necessary action or take no action at all, because it will be the passengers, both actual and potential, who will bear the adverse consequences in particular and it will be the Government's transport policy which will bear the adverse consequences in general.

I turn to the wider question of what the Government intend to do in the light of the much greater growth in rail traffic than that projected in the recent White Paper. Is it intended to speed up work on the initial short-term plans up to 2014 and the development of the medium-term plans scheduled for 2014 to 2019, so that they can be implemented earlier if growth continues to be stronger than forecast? Will further planning for electrification be started now, because, as has been said, electrification can raise capacity? Will work start on new line planning? We need action to be taken now if we are to address the imminent serious problems arising from success for the railway industry. The problems will be upon us with no solutions in place or just around the corner if we take the view that we act only when the crisis is already upon us, rather than acting early enough to avoid the problem in the first place.

The Government's approach to the railway industry has been positive and the White Paper was a major step forward. However, what I want to hear from my noble friend is not only answers to my specific questions about the lengthening of the Pendolino trains on the west coast main line, but what action the Government intend to take now to address the real likelihood, in the light of current trends and figures, that their estimates of growth in rail traffic in the 2007 White Paper are significantly understating the actual position of a railway network that already has capacity and overcrowding issues on some key routes and at some key locations.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for securing this short debate. He certainly scored a point with me, because I have been in the House for very many years and this is the first time that I have spoken on a transport issue, although I have spoken on many—perhaps too many—other subjects.

I declare an interest, because I attend the House every day; I have practically always attended the House and I come up every week on long-distance trains from the West Country, so I am fairly used to what actually happens. Indeed, I have done many hundreds of long-distance journeys on First Great Western rail, which will apparently stand me in good stead when I get to heaven.

I want to distinguish between two issues. First, there is the question of the forward planning of the rail network and the trains that run on it in such a way that we adequately foresee and provide for the volume of traffic. I stand four square with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, on the key point of getting a reliable assessment of the forward demand and not underestimating that when we are already up against the fence. In my view, it has been clear for some time that there is substantial growth in passenger traffic and that it will continue to grow. It is after all common sense, when taking account of the small scale of our islands, the time lost in airports and the congestion or risk of congestion on many roads, especially at peak hours. In many cases, rail travel simply makes sense and we have to respond to that in planning. That is the key issue. In addition, it would be in the public interest for rail freight to increase, and that should be factored into the equation.

To return to passenger traffic, I do not say that we have failed totally, but we have partially failed. That is not just down to the railway operating companies. The number of trains to meet demand depends on the upgrading of the track; the availability of finance; sufficient stability in the system of franchising—and here, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that there is sometimes a risk that we do not have that. Therefore good planning is not possible. None the less, it is depressing for someone who speaks on this subject for the first time to find that, confronted with a very large market, which is also a growth market, we do not have a sufficient number of good trains and we have not been able to avoid overcrowding, to the consequent irritation of passengers. The national news this morning tells me that there is to be a revolt of passengers on First Great Western next week. That makes two revolts over the past year: first, the shareholders of Northern Rock and now the passengers of First Great Western. Not many issues make people revolt but I believe they will next week.

My second point relates to the rail companies themselves. Of course, the Government could not and should not micromanage the rail system. However, Parliament should be concerned about these issues as for many citizens the journey to and from work—crowded or not, punctual or not—is one of the most important elements of their lives. In my part of Britain, people often use the phrase “one train earlier”, which means that those with fixed engagements decide to travel on an earlier train because they simply do not trust that the trains will arrive on time. On Monday week I shall take one train earlier with the consequence that I shall get up much earlier and I shall pay much more. Sometimes it is the only way that one can get to an engagement.

Of course, sometimes trains are late because of circumstances totally outside the control of the rail operating companies. People fall on the line, lorries run into bridges and so on, but I cannot understand why matters directly under the control of management so often go wrong. Of the many hundreds of journeys that I have made on First Great Western, in about 50 per cent of cases something has gone wrong. Lack of punctuality is the most annoying. Last week I was an hour late, which is a rather long delay for that sort of journey. Frequently the toilets do not work; or there is no water supply; or there are other obvious problems such as no reservation cards. I often find that I have booked a reservation in coach B and there is no coach B—that is quite common. We also often find that a train is signalled as arriving at the station in five minutes and at the very last minute we are notified that it will arrive 10 minutes late. One would have thought that someone would have some control over what is happening to the trains as they draw close to a station, but that is not always the case. I sometimes wonder whether these minor, but oft-repeated problems ever come to the attention of middle management or senior management.

I loved Great Western and I could grow to love First Great Western, but I make these points because even if some of our forward planning is not always spot on—it clearly is not and that is the main point for the Government—the British public would truly welcome the correction of some of the small failings which are extremely difficult to take when one is paying a considerable fare and travelling, in my case, some distance. If those could be eliminated—I think it is possible—passengers would be even more favourably disposed towards what should be a good system and very much in the public interest.

I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for initiating this debate. I congratulate him and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser—two great experts on the railways—on their contributions. I agree with just about every word. It is also good to listen to someone new like the noble Lord, Lord Williamson. He is a great expert in government generally but he has spoken from the heart. He seems to know an awful lot about First Great Western and I am sure that it will be following up with interest. It is really good to have him among the usual suspects.

I want to concentrate on long-term issues concerning the railways. A number of speakers have talked about the medium term and the short term and one or two have mentioned the long term. If there are to be changes to the infrastructure, they take an awful long time to build. One can probably put 30 years on both the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Crossrail projects from the first definitive statement by Government that they would like them to when they actually happen. I am not saying who is to blame or why. I hope that the planning Bill will help because it does take a long time. Roads take much the same time as well.

I hope that the Government will take notice of what is happening on the Continent. Yesterday in Brussels I had the honour of helping to chair a conference called New Opera, which is rather an odd name for a new freight-dedicated network across Europe. It will come to the UK, although we are not the most critical area for freight. The point, however, is that the Commission is funding a study costing several million euros which is looking 25 years ahead at issues such as increase in demand, maps, commercial arrangements and how it is going to happen. Two hundred people from the industry, Governments, railway companies and customers are all being very positive.

I have nothing to say about the French rail services—I think ours are much better here. I was travelling across France two days ago on the new TGV Est when it stopped in the night in the middle of the countryside. A man announced that we had stopped for an indeterminate cause and for an indeterminate time and he did not know when he could tell us what the problem was. It was quite interesting. So we have nothing to learn from the French in running trains. On the other hand, they have a vision of what the TGV network will look like 20 years ahead. That helps businesses, industry, the public and local authorities to plan ahead.

The TGV is not necessarily there to get you to your destination faster, although it does. It was built originally to increase capacity on the existing lines for passenger and freight services. France is a much bigger country than the UK and we can debate whether we need high-speed lines, but we are challenged with a capacity issue and I have explained what happened in France.

Turning to this country, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. As I have mentioned before, forecasts indicate that, on the present economic and tax scenarios, rail freight traffic will probably double in the next 20 years. Other indicators show that passenger traffic will do the same. According to our calculations, that means that in 20 years’ time, based on its capacity at the end of this year when the existing upgrades are finished—if they are—the west coast main line will be 200 trains short of capacity every day. Similar numbers apply to other major routes. With possible changes to the economic and tax systems, oil prices, road user charging and so on, demand could go up by perhaps 25 per cent. The Government have agreed the forecast for freight and so we are going to need more capacity on these lines in 20 years’ time—or much sooner, as other noble Lords have said.

In connecting ports, centres of consumption and major areas of population, it is obvious where the extra capacity has to be found. How is this going to be done? Other noble Lords have mentioned longer trains, better signalling, much quicker travel, cheaper travel, more loops for freight yards—which is easier—and more tracks beside existing lines, which is not very difficult either if it is within the boundaries. But then we move to more grade separation, more stations and platforms, which are quite difficult to build in towns—look what happened in Birmingham—new lines, be they passenger or freight, and new freight terminals. All these latter examples will need planning permission, debates and everything else that goes with them.

That brings me back to my 30-year example and the need to look at options. The European example I gave and the TGV French Government network do not provide a commitment to building or funding anything; it is a vision which people can buy into and then, assuming that the funding can be found and it is still wanted, the project will get built. But there needs to be a vision to start with. The Government should, very soon, produce a 25-year strategy of where they believe the railways should be and how this will be achieved bearing in mind the examples I have given. The strategy should be led by the department, with major inputs from Network Rail, the industry, the public generally and Parliament. On the basis of the forecast to which we have all referred, something needs to be done. If we do not start now, in 10 years’ time we shall be in serious trouble.

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw was right to call this short debate, as rail passenger capacity is already a live issue on many of the main lines in Great Britain. What is more, rail passenger demand is expanding exponentially. This expansion of demand will only exacerbate the issue, despite being desirable.

Rail’s great contribution is threefold: first, in order of ascendancy, as a substitute for domestic air travel, secondly, as a road congestion buster, and thirdly and most importantly, as an obvious form of high-speed and bulk transport. It is for good reason that the railway is a British invention. My own family constructed wagon ways first with wooden and then with iron rails in the Alloa area from the 1760s. That was during the years of the Act of Attainder, passed on my family. Did they make good use of the attainder? Yes, they developed railways.

Therefore, it seems amazing that the railway on the British mainland should be in a state of such undercapacity and that we should still worry about lengthening platforms, more parking spaces, and a lack of power and electrification. Yesterday, I travelled to London with Virgin West Coast on the 6.10 from Motherwell. Privileged to have a first-class open return, I was one of two passengers in the fourth innermost first-class compartment of the Pendolino. As we descended through England, the train filled up, especially in the standard-class end with its five coaches. By Watford Junction, and one should bear in mind that it was at a decidedly off-peak moment—it was 11.05 am—the vestibules were full of standard-class passengers, yet it was obvious that there was space in the four first-class coaches. Can the Minister insist that Virgin West Coast declassify its fourth first-class coach regularly, at least for the off-peak services?

Certainly, slowly, capacity is being constructed, but we have to talk about the middle distance and well into the future. Crossrail will help. High Speed 1 is already helping and perhaps, by 2010, when some Kent commuters are able to use the High Speed 1 domestic services, it will be even more of a help. However, High Speed 2, to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds from London Heathrow, is still in its infancy or perhaps at an even earlier stage.

Train operation and climate change mitigation measures would imply that there should be more electrification of the fill-in project type. My noble friend mentioned 167 miles, which would be a substantial expansion of the electrified network.

I recently travelled to the House on TransPennine Express from Edinburgh to Preston and then on Virgin West Coast to Euston. My whole journey with TransPennine Express was in a diesel-powered Desiro, but wholly under the wires, because the Preston to Manchester section of the line is not electrified yet. How soon can Preston-Manchester and Leeds-York be electrified, along with Sheffield to Doncaster and Ely to Peterborough?

I am very pleased that the Scottish Parliament approved an electrified railway renewal between Airdrie and Bathgate, giving a second 15-minute-interval service between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I hope that the Scottish Government will next electrify the old Edinburgh and Glasgow line, via Falkirk High. At present, the 15-minute-interval service requires eight diesel Turbostars—Class 170s—to be in operation at any one time. That, if anything, is a ripe example of the need for electrification, especially as many of the Turbostars are doubled up.

I hope that the Minister can give us some hope about new carriages, among other things, for they are certainly needed now. I also support the idea that the IEP, the new Intercity Express Programme passenger train, should be electric; it should have a proper set of auto couplers at each end and it should be expected that diesels will be used in the extremities of the network.

As regards the governance of Network Rail, we might like to insist on the directors being examined by Parliament every six months—I throw that in as a wee idea. Finally, when I was looking in the Irish papers just before I came in here, I saw that the Republic of Ireland is setting a good example, advertising a new service of eight trains a day between Dublin and Sligo with brand new trains. It is interesting that by about 1990, Ireland had decided never to invest again in its railway, then tremendously saw the error of its ways, especially bearing in mind that 55 per cent of the population lives in the Dublin area. It had road traffic congestion and emissions issues and is now really expanding the railway again—so much so that I read yesterday that after Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland's passenger rail network was the second most expanding network.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for introducing this Question for Short Debate. Like most noble Lords, I have an interest as I regularly use the train at peak times, so I also see the problems at first hand. I have not heard much today with which to disagree. The noble Lord explained with his usual skill the problems associated with passenger rolling stock. He made interesting observations about diesel tractions and fuel cells possibly replacing diesel. I have to confess that I was not aware of that surprising possible development.

However, the noble Lord’s particular concern was the west coast main line. It is clear that the rail industry is a victim of its own success. Many noble Lords have talked about the problem of passenger numbers exceeding expectations. Of course, that is a nice problem for an industry to have. However, a lot of problems in the industry have been slowly and steadily resolved. Many noble Lords have discussed the remaining difficulties. Much of the rolling stock is now of good quality, although we need to remember that it does not last for ever. I take it that some thought has been given to such matters as mid-life overhaul, life extension programmes or replacement of the stock because, when we get sufficient modern stock in service, the first tranches of post-BR stock could be reaching the end of their planned service life. Can the Minister say roughly what is the rolling stock’s life expectancy?

It is self-evident that rail travel is much more attractive if passengers can nearly always sit down. If they cannot sit down, that is a measure of lack of capacity. Conversely, if they are packed in like sardines, there will be great dissatisfaction and trains will be used only as a last result. Passengers will use their cars instead. One noble Lord mentioned suppressed demand. To me, one of the great advantages of rail travel is the ability to work and, in particular, to read. Therefore, unreliability and standing-room-only has a hidden cost, which is a loss of productivity. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, talked of taking one train earlier. Although that strategy will work in the majority of cases, it will have an effect on the productivity of the people taking that strategy, especially businesspeople travelling as part of their work duties.

The noble Lords who spoke before me are much more knowledgeable than I am and nearly all of them mentioned the 1,300 carriages and the rolling stock that are to be procured. Clearly, that is a serious problem. There is no doubt that they are needed, but during my research, I was surprised at the extent to which the Government are directly involved in the procurement. Of course, it is necessary to ensure that the new stock is suitable for any subsequent franchisee; in other words, meeting the problem of residual guarantees. If the Government have to be involved, it is incumbent upon them to ensure that the procurement happens.

I hope that the Minister can claim that the structure and the organisation of the industry are now appropriate. Are they? It is worth remembering that the period of this Government’s stewardship of the rail industry, post-privatisation, is far longer than the stewardship of the previous Conservative Government. Indeed, it has been long enough for the Government to create the Strategic Rail Authority and then to disband it. I anticipate that the Minister will say that the necessary finance is available. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, described some of the procurement problems in his opening comments. If the finance is available, if the structure is right, but there is still uncertain progress, that sounds to me rather like poor leadership, which leads right to the very top of Government.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for organising this debate and for putting forward a case for rail in such an enthusiastic and persuasive fashion. I reflect that this is probably not a debate that we would have had in these terms had we been discussing these matters some 10 years ago. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has observed, we have to deal with the problem of a rail network that is a victim of its own success. It would be nice to hear noble Lords from the opposition Benches making it plain that it is a success story more often than they do. Normally it is the role of Conservative politicians to talk down the rail network and our policy successes. They see that as their path to political glory. I also thought, somewhat whimsically, that it was perhaps worth reflecting that more people use the rail network than when the noble Earl's grandfather was the Prime Minister in the 1945-51 Government. That is not something that I thought we would ever be able to boast about.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, talked about many things: vision, or the lack of it, as he saw it; fares; electrification; Virgin west coast rail; short franchises and the need for longer ones; oil prices; and car parking. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, touched on the west coast line, the Pendolino issue and electrification. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, spoke about First Great Western and made much of the need for forward planning and the abilities of the rail companies to manage growth. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, as ever, made a powerful intervention on freight and the value of working internationally and commented on some of the European initiatives. The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, talked about problems on the west coast line as he experienced them and the welcome rejuvenation of the southern Ireland rail network which, as he says, is fast improving. Of course, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, talked about the need to look at issues like structure and organisation—or not. We have had a fairly wide range of contributions.

I dispute the commentary of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that we lack vision. I think last year's rail White Paper was perhaps one of the most positive statements about the growth and development of our railway in 50 years. In terms of third-party endorsements, it received a fairly warm response. After all, it commits £15 billion worth of funds in public support for the railway in the period 2009-14 and, as such, is a vote of confidence in rail travel. With the tremendous revival of rail, both passenger and freight, clearly the priority is, as the matter before us says, capacity and the need to ensure that we have that capacity over the next planning period.

That is why the Government have made firm, funded commitments to the biggest single increase in capacity for a generation. No one can dispute that. Some £10 billion pounds will be spent specifically on enhancing capacity between 2009 and 2014. These investments will enable the railway to accommodate a further seven years of record growth. One can argue about the size of that growth, but we know it is there, along with the opportunity to expand passenger numbers. We need to meet the demands placed on the network. This will enable the Government to make a start at tackling overcrowding on some of the busiest services and routes.

To deliver the extra capacity the Government will fund an additional 1,300 new carriages for our franchising system. The Department for Transport will be publishing further information on our rolling stock plan in the very near future.

We have heard the figure of 1,300 new carriages time and again. When will they start to be ordered?

I think I have answered this question before. The orders will roll out this year. As I said, we are about to publish our plan on the rolling stock rollout in the near future.

Passengers on the busiest routes will continue to see capacity increases; for example, extra coaches for the cross-country and east coast services, and more fast services between London Victoria and Brighton in the high peak. There will be major network and station upgrades at Reading and Birmingham New Street. There will be improvements on 150 medium-sized stations, which is a very big programme. The Government are spending £5.5 million to increase capacity by some 50 per cent on the Thameslink service, which, as we all know, is used by millions of people every year.

Then—and I am particularly proud of this—there is the go-ahead for Crossrail, the culmination of a momentous year for British railways, with £16 billion of funding from Government and business. That project, as I am sure all will acknowledge, is of tremendous importance. Last year also saw the completion of High Speed 1. That line was on budget and on time. Many of us have now had the opportunity to see the spectacular refurbishment of St Pancras. This is a tremendous period for the new age of the train.

The government plans will result in a network capable of carrying a 22.5 per cent increase in passenger demand by 2014. To put that into perspective, that will equate to 6 billion additional passenger kilometres being accommodated, and it will see 34,000 extra high-peak hour passengers into London and 10,000 into other major cities.

We are committed to a growing railway and to tackling issues of capacity. The priority is to increase capacity in order to tackle congestion, and the measures in the rail White Paper and the high-level output specification will do that for the foreseeable future. These record levels of investment are set to continue. Having invested substantially in getting the basics right, the Government’s focus must now be on building on that success.

Noble Lords raised a number of issues in questioning aspects of our strategy. I will try to work through some of those, because I believe, as noble Lords do, that these are important issues. The west coast line and the Virgin Pendolino lengthening issue were mentioned. Last November the Department for Transport received an unsolicited proposal from the Virgin Rail Group to procure the lengthening of the existing fleet of Pendolino trains by the end of the current franchise in 2012, which included additional subsidy and further two-year franchises from 2012 to 2014. It is fair to say that the department has analysed this in considerable detail, and it has concluded that Virgin’s proposal provides significantly less value for money compared with the likely outcome of the normal refranchising exercise that is scheduled for completion in 2012. We have to look at the issue of value for money because we have to ensure that the money gets to the right place. The department advised Virgin of its decision on 21 December and we continue to provide further explanation of the analysis on which it was based.

I give the commitment that the department will continue to take the necessary action to ensure provision for the extra capacity on the west coast main line, as envisaged in the 2007 rail White Paper and HLOS. We will talk to the Virgin Rail Group and other operators about how best to get those 1,300 new coaches on to the network in the required timeframe.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned fares. I do not agree that we are pricing people off the railway. On the contrary, passenger numbers, as we all know, are at record levels and the Government are delivering the investment necessary to accommodate continuing demand in growth. Increases in regulated fares will remain capped until 2014, generally to RPI plus 1 per cent. One has to remember that regulated fares account for 80 per cent of all fares on the network. On unregulated fares, there are excellent bargains to be had, without necessarily having to book months in advance. However, we are committed to making the fare structure simpler, and the Department for Transport is involving Passenger Focus in the design of franchises so that passenger concerns are fully taken into account at the outset. Our task is to get a balance between the fare payer and the taxpayer, and the increased revenue arising from the increasing passenger numbers will play a large part in the current shift. I do not accept that the railways should be paid for entirely by those who use it—the wider community benefits from rail use, not least through reduced congestion on other modes—but we have to strike a prudent balance between fare payer and taxpayer.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred also to renewing use of disused rail lines—he drew attention particularly to the Lewes-Uckfield line. We have no immediate plans to reopen disused rail lines, although one should never rule that out. The noble Lord made a good case for ensuring that that some of those issues were brought together in considering new franchises, and drew attention to the potential for reopening lines with the Southern franchise coming up for renewal. The Lewes-Uckfield line attracts a lot of attention. Tom Harris met representatives of the Wealden Line Campaign last June and made the commitment that we would listen if a business case could be demonstrated. I understand that Mott MacDonald is doing some work for the local authorities. It will be wise to look at what contribution that line could make if reopened, with particular reference to what it might add to capacity on southern routes.

A number of noble Lords referred to demand increasing faster than government predictions. We have had to make a best estimate. If demand increases more rapidly, the effect will be felt mainly towards the end of the HLOS period, which is seven years away. We have the opportunity to review and adjust plans if demand growth in the mean time suggests that that is necessary.

Does that mean that the Government still stand by their passenger growth forecasts in the 2007 White Paper as being accurate and realistic in the light of current passenger growth?

Yes, we do, but, as I said, flexibility exists, and we can take account of more rapid periods of growth that occur towards the end of that HLOS period. That is not to say that there are not difficulties from time to time. It is impressive that on some routes there is even faster growth, which we should welcome and seek to take advantage of.

I have not covered electrification and car-parking.

My noble friend said that the White Paper gave the Government’s plans for the railways for the foreseeable future. Eight years is really not foreseeable in railway terms, as he has agreed. What about a longer-term, 25-year strategy for the railways?

I heard what my noble friend said about that earlier. It makes good sense to look into the longer distance. The Government always have to do that, particularly when looking at infrastructure issues. We are trying to anticipate growth in capacity over the next, shorter period. My noble friend makes a fair and reasonable point. The White Paper, Towards a Sustainable Transport System, considers the longer period. That is why we approach the issue with such optimism.

As I am running close to the time for the next debate, I shall take some of the other issues away and ensure that they are covered in correspondence. I was asked one or two specific questions on rolling stock by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. The usual life expectation for rolling stock is 30 to 40 years, which is why First Great Western, in particular—I am sure this will be welcome—is currently refurbishing its high-speed trains to a new and much higher standard.

Points were also raised about car parking and electrification in Scotland. I will duck the electrification question by simply saying that it is a matter for the Scottish Executive—which it is. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that car parking is important, a point emphasised in the White Paper. I am pleased that Network Rail and Virgin, in particular, are proceeding with expanding car parks on the west coast line. That may well help in adding passenger numbers on that already busy route.

I shall go through all of the speeches again and check that I have covered most of the points. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for the opportunity to set out the Government’s case for dealing with capacity issues. I am sure we are all delighted with the expansion of the railway network and passenger numbers; it is a welcome problem for the Government to deal with. We can be much more optimistic when looking at the future of rail than could possibly have been imagined 10 or 11 years ago. I am grateful to noble Lords for their interest in and continued attention to these important issues.

[The Sitting was suspended from 2.57 to 3 pm.]

asked Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to take in view of the absence of a coroners Bill in the legislative programme.

The noble Baroness said: I was sorry to see no coroners Bill in the gracious Speech, hence I have instigated this debate. A complete overhaul of coroners’ services in terms of both infrastructure and legislation is long overdue.

I start with the subject of death certification. Reform of death certification has been recommended by a succession of reports, including the Brodrick report in 1971, the Luce report in 2003 and, most recently, Dame Janet Smith’s report on Harold Shipman.

The cremation certificate system, which requires families to pay a fee, has proven inadequate in detecting patterns of criminal practice and I believe does not detect poor clinical performance or systematic errors in death certification. A better system of scrutiny of all deaths—not just those involving cremation—with built-in statistical analysis is required and is now easily within the competency of an IT programme. It should analyse deaths and certification by doctor, by location of healthcare delivery and by cause—similar to the data from the Prescription Pricing Authority. For example, hospice doctors will of course certify more deaths than GPs but high numbers from one service, wherever that service is in healthcare, that lie outside the normative curve could at least be spotted.

As for determining the cause of death, it seems that the coroner should be able to pursue a diagnosis beyond an immediate “mode” of death and to obtain a precise diagnosis by further pathological investigation for the benefit of a family and also for the benefit of the healthcare system.

There is a need for authoritative guidance to coroners and pathologists on exactly what a coroner’s post-mortem should achieve. To exclude unnatural causes of death is far too simplistic. Fewer and fewer non-coroners’ post-mortems are being done, so verification of the precise medical cause of death is happening less and less, yet it is essential for an audit of clinical services to improve patient safety. Furthermore, it is unclear what level of investigation is justified—and lawful—once unnatural causes have been excluded. Perhaps I may give an example. A patient with mesothelioma dies at home. Because the illness is related to asbestos, this results in a police interrogation of the bereaved family, even though the diagnosis has been clearly established. That is an unnecessary and hurtful consequence of current regulations. If we had a chief coroner, that could be completely avoided.

Another example is that, currently, if a patient dies with a dementia syndrome, a coroner is not motivated to establish the cause of the dementia—an expensive procedure costing around £600—even though the family may wish it. Therefore, if it happens at all, a research programme might pick it up as a by-product of the family agreeing to donate the brain for further research. However, dementia represents an increasing cost to the public purse, so the underlying causes need to be known if we are even to plan spending in the future.

Sometimes information might prevent a premature death. I was recently told of a case of sudden adult cardiac death where the strong suspicion was of an inherited cardiomyopathy. A coroner’s post-mortem was done but, despite having the consent of the relatives, the coroner refused to pay for appropriate specialist investigation of the heart, with genetic testing, because it was clear that the death was due to natural causes. The coroner had neither remit nor resources to undertake investigations for the benefit of the relatives. The NHS then also refused to pay because the test would be for the benefit of the relatives, not the deceased, and the deceased came from a different primary care trust from the relatives. Yet such investigations would have clarified future management of the close relatives and could have lowered their risk of sudden death.

Why is complex, controversial and expensive legislative change to medical revalidation being pushed with greater vigour than legislation to permit improvements in the investigation of death? A draft Coroners Bill was announced for this Session, published, then dropped. That is unjustifiable.

I shall move on to the provision of medical advice. The draft Bill, as previously published, emphasised legal aspects, but the medical aspects of ascertaining a cause of death are key to accuracy and require expertise. Surely it is the medically qualified specialist pathologist who should have the ability to pursue the appropriate investigations and dictate how to examine the body, rather than the coroner, who often is not medically qualified at all.

Nowhere is that more important than in the vexed issue of sudden and unexpected death in infants. The report by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, into that subject recommended that tissue blocks and slides should be retained in perpetuity after a post-mortem examination in a case of sudden infant death syndrome, in case future developments justified re-examination of those samples. When we debated the Human Tissue Bill, I stressed the need to be able to revisit the specimens but the Government did not accept that. Now retention is illegal without “appropriate consent” once the work of the coroner has been completed. If the parent had been culpable, of course they would want to ensure that all tissue was cremated and all evidence destroyed. If not, then in the horrible and unthinkable event of a second cot death, the tissues could be re-examined.

The situation in Scotland is exactly the opposite to that in England and Wales because, under the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act, the blocks and slides become part of the deceased’s medical record and the pathologist is specifically prohibited from disposing of them or returning them to the parents. That polar difference between Scottish and English law is contrary to the stated intention that the tissue legislation between the two jurisdictions should have broadly the same effect.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, also recommended that certain time-sensitive samples, such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid and nasal swabs for microbiological investigation, should be taken as soon as possible after the death of the child has been confirmed to maximise the chances of ascertaining fully and reliably the cause of death. She clearly anticipated that this testing would take place in accident and emergency departments before transfer to a mortuary. However, the Human Tissue Act 2004 has made such sampling illegal, except where the A&E department has a Human Tissue Authority licence to undertake such sampling—but there is cost and complexity to obtaining such a licence. The Royal College of Pathologists believes that this was an oversight and that this consequence of the Human Tissue Act was not recognised prior to Royal Assent. A coroners Bill could easily correct that anomaly.

Why do we need a chief coroner? We need a national structure to ensure consistency of standards and to ensure that the investigation of deaths is carried out to a gold standard nationally. I have already mentioned the problem of mesothelioma, which could be easily solved if we had a chief coroner. The current law has to be ignored when it comes to setting a gold standard. We have a shortage of highly specialised paediatric pathologists, so the bodies of dead children are being transported great distances for post-mortem examination. This is a serious issue because the law as it stands states that a body can be transported only to the adjoining coronial area of jurisdiction. When a family has to deal with the sudden death of a child, they must know that a satisfactory post-mortem has been carried out—and carried out within the law. The Ministry of Justice is aware of the problem, but everyone turns a blind eye to the benefit of the bereaved.

It is time that the needs of the bereaved, particularly their need for information, were properly addressed. Pathologists undertaking coroners’ post-mortems must know the wishes of the relatives before the post-mortem starts in order to be able to respect them, not simply consult them later. Relatives need information. I should like to see them have a copy of the pathologist’s report interpreted for them as a routine, with a copy to the GP so that they can ask questions later.

After Alder Hey, the University Hospital of Wales established a group, similar to the groups established in hospitals up and down the country, to take inquiries about tissue samples and retained tissues. When the family were not satisfied with the first-line response team, a few of us gave one-hour appointments for relatives to ask questions and tried to allay their concerns. The overriding factor was that they wanted answers. One woman said to me that she had waited 15 years to understand why her daughter had died. In that hour, I finally gave her the answers.

That situation cannot be allowed to continue. The charter for the bereaved lays out important guidance. I hope that it will not be abandoned now that the responsible ministry has changed. The legislative changes must be underpinned by organisational changes and clarification of funding. The “who pays” issues are now working increasingly against good practice. The Department of Health consultation on death certification in pandemic flu mentions reforms, but when are they coming? Until we modernise the coronial system we risk denying justice to our dead and their bereaved families.

I declare an interest as vice-president of the War Widows Association and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for introducing the debate.

We, too, were disappointed that the coroners Bill was not in the Queen’s Speech. We had hoped that it would be because there were a number of issues that we needed to bring forward. We now have a situation where service personnel are being killed in operations—that is not new, but the numbers are new in our times—and members of the dead personnel’s families are having to wait a long time for the inquests to take place and may have to travel long distances to attend when they do. There are also a number of other issues.

We had a meeting with the Minister at the Ministry of Defence. I know that this subject does not strictly come under its remit but, nevertheless, understandably the Armed Forces look to the MoD to assist them with their issues and problems. We hoped we were going to carry on and discuss the coroners Bill. That is no longer there for us to discuss but we cannot leave matters as they are. I know that there has been additional funding and that in the past year the backlog has reduced, but there is still a substantial backlog of inquests to be heard. Can the Minister give an indication of what the Government are going to do in this area?

There are a number of problems. It seems obvious that the inquest should take place in the area where the deceased’s family live—it would be better for them and more convenient—but that may not always be the right way of doing it because of a shortage of expertise. Local coroners may deal with a military death only once in their whole career and there needs to be some expertise. We believe that, for the different reasons that have been mentioned, that expertise could be gathered and made available under a chief coroner.

Multiple-death cases will still be heard in Oxfordshire because the aeroplanes bringing the bodies back go into Lyneham, with Swindon and Wiltshire also involved. There have been cases where a deceased’s home is in Scotland and the family has had to travel from there. That cannot be the best thing. On the other hand, if people with the relevant expertise are not available to go to Scotland to carry out the inquest, it may be the only answer. We would welcome a debate on the delay and where the inquest is to be carried out.

There is also the issue of legal representation at the inquest for the families. These personnel have been killed on Her Majesty’s business and we believe that the state has a responsibility to assist their families.

In my view, looking at the backlog, at what has happened and at reports in the press, one of the most heart-rending aspects is the lack of transparency and lack of information. Families are told that there is a delay or that the inquest will not be heard yet. Also, families do not have the detail to which, in our view, they are entitled. Transparency and information are absolutely key. If we had had a Bill, that would probably have formed the basis of an amendment.

Costs are a problem for families. These families do not have huge incomes and, at a time of huge trauma and stress for them, they then have to find travel costs. I know that they can apply for travel costs, but the system needs to be much more upfront and proactive in the way that the families are looked after. It is possible to do that because the Armed Forces’ welfare services are very good and very well developed, but perhaps we could ensure that their concerns for families in the services extend also to those who are faced with a member of the family who has paid the ultimate price in performing their duty to their country. That would certainly be of great assistance.

A whole range of issues could have been aired in a very healthy and straightforward way had we had a Bill. I confess that I am not absolutely sure where we take these issues now. I am not making a special pleading to the Minister, but I ask the Government for a joined-up approach, with the Ministry of Justice and the MoD coming together. We would certainly welcome meetings about this because we feel that we have made a little progress. The additional legal resource put in has helped to reduce some of the backlog but it is by no means anywhere near enough. I am sure that neither the Government nor we want this issue to continue to make headlines in the press, as it does from time to time. We would welcome an indication from the Minister that the Government are prepared to take this forward, even if we do not have a Bill, to see what can be done to improve the situation for families who have lost their loved ones. They have paid the ultimate price in serving their country.

I remind the Committee of my interest: I am a serving TA officer. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, I too am disappointed that there was no coroners Bill for very similar reasons: military inquests and delay.

I served in headquarters, 1 (UK) Armoured Division, between March and May 2003. We recorded several fatalities arising from operations, and I know the details very well. Of course, there is no need to go into those details or to draw the Committee’s attention to them—particularly the problems of the current system. However, it was not until three years after the events that inquests were held, which had a very serious effect on the families. Clearly, there was no way the widows could restart their social lives prior to the conclusion of the inquests, so they could not achieve closure on the disaster in their lives for years. Of course, that was no doubt to the delight of the solicitors’ profession.

In my opinion, there are other serious problems related to inquests arising from military operations. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, talked about transparency and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in her submission on different issues, talked about the need for the families to have transparency and to understand what went wrong. I think she was talking about a situation in which the family found out what went wrong 15 years later. The MoD is very poor at telling families what happened in a frank manner. It is very difficult to do but it is poor at that.

In the past, repatriation, especially from operations, was rare because it was impractical. We can do it now, but we did not in the past. I think that it was a court case in the 1980s, some time after the Falklands campaign, which determined the need for inquests. During the Cold War, there were very few operational casualties. If World War 3 had occurred, the need for inquests would have been the least of our problems.

I do not know the answer to these problems but I know that they are very sensitive. I urge the Minister to give inquests arising from military operations urgent and careful attention.

I, too, express thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for introducing this important topic and raising these issues of concern. In my early years as a solicitor, the head of my firm, Mr Maurice Evans, was Her Majesty’s Coroner for Denbighshire. In that capacity, he presided in 1938 over the inquest into the Gresford colliery disaster of 1934, when 264 miners lost their lives. The mine was sealed and none of the bodies was recovered. At that inquest, the miners’ union was represented by Sir Stafford Cripps QC and the coal owners by Sir Hartley Shawcross QC. Your Lordships will appreciate that, with lawyers of that standing, very serious consideration was given to the issues. All that happened was that the mine manager was prosecuted for destroying the records of the condition of the mine prior to the explosion. “The Ballad of the Gresford Disaster” recalls:

“The fireman’s reports all are missing

The records of 42 days

The colliery manager had them destroyed to cover his criminal ways.

Down there in the dark they are lying

They died for nine shillings a day

They worked out their shift and now they must lie

In the darkness until judgement day”.

My noble friend Lord Hooson tells me that he went with my late father-in-law down the shaft and was shown where the miners had been bricked in.

In my day, the part-time coroner, my partner, was on his own. His staff consisted of his secretary, and there was no other support. Inquests were held in any convenient court room. I am not sure how his fees were paid—I think that it was probably by the local authority. Funding varied, and still varies, all over the country.

Nothing has changed. The terms of reference and the procedure remain the same. I recall the frustrations of appearing for grieving families but being denied, under the procedure, any right to address the coroner or his jury on the verdict. My role was confined simply to cross-examining the witnesses, and, of course, there was no legal aid. I shall be interested to see whether my colleague, Mr Michael Mansfield, is able to address Lord Justice Baker at the termination of the inquest into the death of the Princess of Wales and what he will say if he is not allowed to do so. So far as I am aware, the system has not changed over these years.

It was Dame Janet Smith, in her inquiry into the Shipman murders to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred, who pointed out how archaic and ramshackle the system of coroners had become in this country. To be fair, I say that the Government took up the cause, admitting that the current inquests system was failing. Harriet Harman told Members of Parliament back in February 2006 that the system was archaic and said:

“Under the current coroner service, families frequently get overlooked during the inquest process. There is nowhere for them to turn when they think that something is going wrong; there is no complaints system. The system is fragmented, with no national leadership”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/2/06; col. 607.]

She said that the changes that she was proposing would give families the right to contribute to coroners’ investigations. Those were very fine words but, although a draft Bill followed, there has not been a great deal of action since.

Since that statement was made, we have seen problems, to which previous speakers have referred, with inordinate delays in inquests into the deaths of servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The coroners for Oxfordshire and Wiltshire were unable to cope with the numbers and others had to be drafted in.

Another area of equal concern is the deaths of vulnerable people in custody. In some of those cases, there have been delays of up to three years. Again, so far as I am aware, the same limitations on legal aid and representation persist.

The proposals that the Government put forward in their draft Bill for a service of full-time coroners were heavily criticised in the report of the Constitutional Affairs Committee published on 1 August 2006. Crucially, the committee found, first, that the limitations of the local structure of the current system gave rise to an uneven distribution of resources, and under the draft Bill that would remain. It also called on the Government to address the problems of under-resourcing in the existing system in order to create solid foundations on which reforms could be built. It asked the Government to reform the structure of the coronial system by creating a national service with centralised and adequate funding so that all coroners would be able to work to the same high standards.

Another recommendation of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred, was a charter for bereaved people. However, the Constitutional Affairs Committee noted that the,

“raised expectations of the bereaved may lead to severe disappointment in circumstances where serious under-resourcing and, therefore, variable standards in service are likely to persist as a result of inadequate funding for reform of the coronial system”.

Its final point was about public health and safety. It recommended that the Government took a,

“bolder approach to reform of the coronial system, embodying in legislation an enhanced role in relation to public health and safety”.

It is a matter of significant concern that there should be proper funds to carry out the recommendations that a coroner makes at the conclusion of an inquest.

The matter was discussed when the coroners Bill was dropped from the Queen’s Speech. Your Lordships will recall that it had been mentioned in the series of measures announced in the mini-Queen’s Speech in July. Then, the coroners Bill was promised but that promise was simply not fulfilled. In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, my noble friend Lord Dholakia expressed his anger that the coroners Bill was not included, and he referred to the problems that I have already mentioned. He stressed:

“We need the introduction of a system for monitoring inquest verdicts and statutory obligations on public bodies to respond to the findings of an inquest”.—[Official Report, 12/11/07; col. 273.]

One problem is that a coroner makes recommendations but, unfortunately, they do not carry sufficient weight to be carried out by the public bodies to which the recommendations are addressed.

The problems in relation to families were very well summarised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who in that same debate said that, by delaying the introduction of the Bill,

“the Government are acting directly against those whose cause they claim to champion; namely, victims, and in this case their own victims—the relatives of those who have died in custody”.—[Official Report, 12/11/07; col. 316.]

As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, have pointed out today, it is a scandal that families are left for such a long time before they learn about the circumstances in which their loved ones died in combat.

I am glad that it is the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is to respond because he assured the House in that debate that the Government remained committed to reform and that the Bill had been deferred rather than abandoned. He said:

“We will look to see what can be done in the mean time to strengthen the coroner process”.—[Official Report, 12/11/07; col. 336.]

I am not aware that any steps have been taken to strengthen the coroner process since we debated the matter last November, but I shall be interested to hear whether there are any plans in hand.

We are anxious that this archaic system, which does not comply with so many modern standards of justice, should be thoroughly and properly reformed, that adequate resources are put into it, and in particular that the recommendations of coroners should be followed through as they were in relation to the inquest held in 1938 into the Gresford colliery disaster.

I, too, want to thank the noble Baroness for introducing this matter for debate. We owe her a considerable debt. My enthusiasm for legislation on coroners is tempered by the contents of the Government’s draft Bill, published in June 2006; and I hope that when at last the Government do introduce this matter into the Queen’s Speech, they will have thought again about aligning the legislation with their March 2004 position paper.

As a number of noble Lords have said, the issue of coroners’ reform has been with us for a long time, ever since the Brodrick report. It is true that the Government have taken a number of initiatives in the last seven or eight years. In 2000, there was a Home Office review of death certification, and the then Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett, set up a fundamental and independent review of coroners’ services under Mr Tom Luce, who found that the system was not fit for purpose. In July 2003, we had the third report of the Shipman inquiry, which also recommended serious reform; the Government position paper with proposals for reform was published in March 2004.

I must say that I am really astonished that the draft Bill of 2006 does not deal with the most important issue of all, which is that of aligning death certification with the coronial system. It will always be hard to forget the appalling evil of Dr Shipman. The consequences of that were very well put by Dame Janet Smith in her foreword to the third report. She said:

“In the First Report of the Shipman Inquiry I disclosed my finding that Shipman had killed at least 215 of his patients over a period of 24 years. It was clear that the current arrangements for death registration, cremation certification and coronial investigation in England and Wales had failed both to deter Shipman from killing his patients and to detect his crimes after they had been committed. The failure of the existing system prompted Parliament to set up the Shipman Inquiry”.

Later she goes on to say:

“If there is a risk that a doctor might kill in the future and if, as is now clear, the present system would neither deter nor detect such conduct, surely the system must be changed”.

A year later, in March 2004, the Government brought forward their position paper with proposals for reform. That paper quite rightly sought to integrate the death certification system with the coronial system. In the future, every time a death occurred, what followed from that death would immediately be within the purview of the coronial system and proper checks would be made on the doctor’s certification of death. It is amazing to think that of the more than 200 people who died under Dr Shipman’s care, not a single one of those was double-checked by a medical practitioner. It is also the case that the 2004 position paper proposed not just a centralised system for reform of the structure of the coronial service, but also a centralised system for financing it.

But the draft Bill contains neither of these things. Given what Dame Janet Smith said, how can the Government possibly justify not integrating the death certification system with the coronial system? It bewilders me because Dame Janet Smith has put us on notice that unless there is that integration, then another Shipman could strike, or even more than just one. I therefore ask the Minister: what is the justification for this? What happened between March 2004 and June 2006 that made the Government change their mind on this issue—in flagrant breach of what Dame Janet Smith said? She looked at this issue in depth over a long period of time, is better informed than anyone else in the country, and thus in a much better position to make a judgment. The Government initially accepted what she said, but then subsequently spurned it.

I share in the views of those who have spoken before me, and I would particularly like to underline the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, and my noble friend Lord Attlee. This is a terrible human problem, but it is one that would be so easy to resolve through legislation.

I hope the Government have taken that on board. Although I want to see legislation on this matter as quickly as possible, I do not want to see just any old legislation. I want to see legislation which confronts the human problems as well as confronting the real dangers to our society. It seems that this draft Bill does not meet either test, and I hope that when the Government do legislation, they will have thought again about these issues.

First, I thank the noble Baroness for allowing us to debate what is clearly a very important matter. I can assure noble Lords that in responding to the points that have been made, our debate will be invaluable in assisting the Government in thinking through the further changes that will be necessary. I can give an assurance that we will pay close attention to the substantive points that have been raised. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, illustrated graphically the importance of the inquest and the coronial process, and I agree strongly with him about that.

On the question of legislation, as I said in our debate on the Queen’s Speech, I deeply regret that we have not been able to find legislative time, but I want to confirm again that the Government remain committed to legislation in this area. Naturally, I cannot go further than that in terms of exactly when, but I want to reassure noble Lords that we see this as a very important measure. Obviously, we are looking at ways of bringing it forward at the earliest possible stage.

Although imperfections have been identified in the current system, Dame Janet’s report, the Tom Luce report, other reports, the Select Committee and, very importantly, families have raised issues of concern, I want to place on record the Government’s thanks to all those in the current system for the work that they do. Of course we can do better.

The legislative reform to which the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, in particular, referred attempts to do a number of things: first, to put families at the heart of the inquest process; secondly, to have a chief coroner to set national standards, to hear appeals, to improve training arrangements and to oversee the operation of a statutory charter for the bereaved. It aims to give flexibility in the system to transfer cases easily from one area to another, if it is in the interest of families to do so; to begin the process towards the formation of a predominantly full-time group of coroners, completely focused on coronial duties, rather than the large part-time group that we have at the moment; to improve medical expertise available to the service with a new national medical adviser to work with the chief coroner and to provide better advice available locally. In a moment, I will describe to the Committee what can be done in the absence of legislation.

On the question of the inter-relationship and links between the coronial system and death certification, that is of course vital. We are working with other government departments, not least the Department of Health as it develops parallel proposals on reform of the death certification system. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that, although there has been a development of ideas since Dame Janet's report, we want to ensure that the respective work in my department and that of the Department of Health closely inter-relates.

On medical certification, I make a number of comments. First, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to the proposal that all deaths should be reported to the coronial service. We are not taking that forward. We believe that to have all deaths reported to the coronial service would not be an effective response in targeting resource where the risk is greatest. I want to respond later to the specific question of delays. We also think that such a system could bring unnecessary delay to families wishing to proceed quickly with funeral arrangements. The focus under the proposals and the changes that the Department of Health has made on control of drugs—it is also consulting on the better regulation of doctors—will, we believe, reduce the likelihood of a Shipman operating undetected in future.

More generally, the single system of effective medical scrutiny applicable to all deaths will be of great assistance there. The work of the Department of Health on certification will bring obvious benefits, including better quality and accuracy in the certifying of deaths and improved local public health monitoring more generally. The proposals will also tackle the lack of independent scrutiny in the system, which was so ruthlessly exploited by Harold Shipman. I assure noble Lords that we are working very closely with the Department of Health in this matter.

Since I was responsible for this area in the Department of Health last year, and gave evidence to the Select Committee, I should say that we are working very hard together to make sure that we match the work of both departments and that there is integration of approach.

What are the non-legislative changes that we can introduce in advance of legislation? First, subject to the agreement of the Lord Chief Justice, there are some changes we can make to the current coroners’ rules, which we are already working on. I refer particularly to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, concerning the coroner’s duty to report to an organisation to take action to prevent future deaths. We want to improve that system. He has identified some of the current weaknesses in it. We want to make the process much more transparent.

Organisations will for the first time have a requirement to respond. In the absence of a chief coroner, my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor will oversee the reports made and responses to them. He will bring them to the attention of ministerial colleagues and, when appropriate, to Parliament. I say to the noble Lord that as a Minister at the Department of Health, I received such reports from time to time and we responded to them. I felt that, while it was not always right to respond immediately to the recommendations made by individual coroners, that could be an extremely useful part of the process in terms of reassuring families that lessons are being learnt and taken account of by public organisations, as well as demonstrating ways in which government departments may need to look at weaknesses in systems that have been identified in individual inquests.

We are also planning to introduce a new rule to ensure that coroners and local safeguarding children boards have the correct framework to work together effectively with their respective responsibilities to investigate child deaths, again making sure that there is close collaboration and that some of the current loopholes and gaps are identified and dealt with. I also assure noble Lords that we will work closely with coroners to consider any other changes to the rules that will enable them to carry out more effective investigations and inquests, or that would lead otherwise to better services for families.

The Department of Health is piloting its plans for medical examiners. As part of those pilots we can see whether the list of deaths we have drawn up to guide doctors in their referrals is effective and helpful. Modifications can be made in the light of experience. We believe that too many cases are referred to coroners that they ought not to receive, while they do not receive some that they should. This is the first time that the definitive list of deaths has been drawn up for national dissemination, and it is intended that it will eventually become statutory guidance on the implementation of the Bill.

We are working with the Press Complaints Commission to review its code of conduct in the reporting of inquests. Clearly, we do not intend to prevent inquests being reported; however, we want all steps to be taken to ensure that they are reported sensitively. Some inquests provide very good copy to editors, but we want to encourage editors to give some more thought to the impact that will have on the lives of surviving family members, not least any children concerned.

A number of noble Lords have mentioned the charter for the bereaved. We will be issuing that for further consultation. It will contain the minimum services that families are likely to receive in the future, and we will be working with coroners and their officers to establish what service improvements they can offer to the bereaved within the existing system—particularly when it comes to the timely provision of information; I take the point that was made about that.

I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made some very important points, particularly on post mortems. As, by necessity, post mortems have to be carried out as soon after death as is practical, it is important that procedures are in place to ensure that the next of kin of the deceased person can be properly informed and consulted. In addition, there will be in legislation appeal rights to the chief coroner if a coroner chooses not to order a post-mortem or a particular type of specialist examination. We think that that will provide a safeguard for families who want to know whether the death of a loved one has been caused by a genetic defect that can be treated in other family members if the problem is diagnosed sufficiently early.

We are also working with the Royal College of Pathologists and the Department of Health to ensure the most effective post-mortem system. I accept the noble Baroness’s point that this presents some considerable challenges. I was the Minister concerned with Alder Hey some years ago. I shall never forget that time and, in particular, meeting the families who suffered so grievously from the way in which the organs were retained. As the noble Baroness knows, some families went through the trauma of at least three burials when new body parts were discovered. That, of course, led to the Redfern report and then legislation in the form of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

The noble Baroness referred to a number of issues that were raised in that Act, particularly in relation to keeping material in perpetuity. At the time, we took the view that the compulsory retention of tissue could not be justified in circumstances where the coroner had fulfilled the coroner’s function. I am sure that it will be a disappointment to the noble Baroness when I say that we have not moved from that position. She mentioned Scotland, but clearly that is a matter for Scotland. We feel that the view that we took with the Human Tissue Act was the right one and it was endorsed by Parliament.

I shall need to come on to the question of military inquests but perhaps I may respond quickly to a very important question raised by the noble Baroness on post-mortems on children, and babies in particular. I well understand the problem of the shortage in particular specialties, and the Department of Health is working very hard with the royal college to see what can be done. It remains a challenge and I would never seek to deny that.

I very much agree with all the comments that noble Lords have made about information given to families. In taking through reform of the system, we will emphasise the critical importance of information being made available to families as early as possible.

I thank my noble friend Lady Dean, who raised, on behalf of the War Widows Association, very important matters in relation to military inquests. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for whom we have enormous respect, also has much knowledge of these matters. I assure noble Lords that my department works, and liaises closely, with the Ministry of Defence to ensure that inquests into the deaths of our courageous service personnel are held as promptly as possible. I am well aware of the trauma that the delays have caused to their families. A total of 144 inquests have been held since the conflicts began in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I shall come on to funding generally in a moment, but we have made additional funding available to both the Oxfordshire and Wiltshire coroners. I believe that good progress has been made, although I accept that there are still a number of issues concerning the transfer of single deaths to coroners closer to the next of kin. Of course, we want to ensure that that happens wherever possible.

I understand the cost implications for families. The Government will pay overnight expenses to enable two family members to attend any pre-inquest hearings which may take place, as well as the inquest itself. On the more general point of support to families, I agree with my noble friend about the teams. We have established a dedicated team within the Ministry of Defence to improve liaison between boards of inquiry investigators and coroners.

On the question of legal aid, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, will understand that because the procedures are inquisitorial, legal aid is not provided as of right, but families may be provided with legal aid for those inquests if they meet the necessary criteria. Several families have been assisted. The Legal Services Commission considers these matters, and if it believes exceptional funding should be made, it comes to me as the Minister concerned at the Ministry of Justice. I assure the noble Lord that I take this matter very seriously and give it careful consideration.

Some of the reasons for the delays in military inquests are because of the military boards of inquiry. Special investigations have to take place in the field; they also have to be listed on dates that suit the families. All that aside, though, I well understand the need for us to do everything we can to help the coronial service keep those delays to a minimum. My officials are in weekly contact with the coroners who are handling these inquests to check progress in this matter and to give what assistance we can. My right honourable friend Harriet Harman, who had the responsibility for this, has taken part in a number of meetings with families in this area, and I hope that that will continue.

On the question of specialist coroners or a centre of excellence for military inquests, which my noble friend raised, we do not support that idea. We think it might even create a backlog of inquests and increase the time—and, indeed, the distress to bereaved families—by requiring more families to travel further to their inquest. We have to ensure that all coroners, wherever they are in the country, are able to handle those inquests. As my noble friend will know, a number of inquests have been held outwith both Oxfordshire and Wiltshire and we believe they have been handled effectively and quickly. However, I will keep a close eye on that matter.

I shall finish with a comment about resources. This is a local service. We think there is sufficient resource within local authorities’ budgets, but the Select Committee thought there should be a mechanism for auditing the expenditure and it is our intention that the chief coroner will indeed look at comparisons of expenditure. We are not moving to a national service, however, so it must be a matter of local discretion. I defend that; it is perfectly possible to maintain a local service but with the benefit of a chief coroner to ensure that there is auditing in order to establish that every coroner is carrying out their responsibility effectively. It is better to have that kind of national leadership but local provision.

I have taken a lot of time because this is an important matter. I hope that at the very least I have assured your Lordships that we are keen to proceed with legislation. I cannot guarantee when that will be, but I give a guarantee that we will look at all the other issues that noble Lords have raised.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for that comprehensive response, but he did not respond to my request for his department and the MoD to meet representatives of the war widows for a discussion.

The answer, of course, is yes.

[The Sitting was suspended from 3.58 to 4.00pm.]

asked Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the development of the Central American Integration System.

The noble Viscount said: I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to raise this subject. I am particularly glad that the proposal to hold short debates in this Chamber has now come to fruition. This is a rather specialised subject, which has been on the Order Paper for a year, but one has to be patient—now things will move forward. I am grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, as he has just come hotfoot from a gruelling five-hour debate on Iraq and we now discuss a more specialised area, central America. It is quite clear that it is a specialised area because there are more diplomatic representatives attending the debate than there are speakers, which says something in itself.

I shall start with the history. In 1951, the Organization of Central American States under the acronym ODECA—Latin Americans like acronyms—came into existence comprising the five countries of central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In 1960, there was the creation of the Central American Common Market generally known at the time as CACOM. That was a time of considerable difficulty. I was living in El Salvador for two years working on a start-up operation for a multinational company. As it was a start-up operation, I had the opportunity to visit all the countries in central America, together with Panama and Mexico. It is interesting that all those countries are now grouped together under one Minister in the House of Commons, Meg Munn.

It was a difficult time. With the exception of Costa Rica, democracy was not well established. There were frequent military interventions, much centralised control and that sort of system of economic management was still in vogue, as against market forces. Gradually things changed and changed for the better, with the advent of democracy and peace in the region, which was very welcome.

In 1991, ODECA was changed into SICA, which started formally in 1993 with Panama as a full member. SICA—in Spanish, Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana—is an institutional framework for regional integration of the countries concerned. It was an extremely good idea. As small countries need to work together to have a voice, this was a good move forward. Now the total membership of SICA comprises some 40 million inhabitants, providing a much stronger voice than the individual countries. Belize, the smallest country in the region, joined in 2000 as a full member and the Dominican Republic joined later as an associate member. The presidency rotates every six months and the executive arm of the SICA organisation is in El Salvador.

One has to remember—this applies to the whole of Latin America—that all those countries are quite different culturally, temperamentally and, in the case of Guatemala and Belize, in particular, are ethnically diverse with large indigenous groups. The problems facing each country are, to a certain extent, different, but they have formed this organisation to work together for a common cause.

The European Union takes the area very seriously. In 2003-04, an EU dialogue started with central America. The EU now has an ambassador in Nicaragua and a chargé d’affaire in all other countries. Formal association negotiations, which are ongoing, concerned trade, technical co-operation, aid, and so on. That is a hugely ambitious project and worthy of our full support.

I have concentrated briefly on the political background, the history of the area and trade and economic issues. The noble Baronesses who will follow will tackle other aspects, such as cultural relations and aid. Today we have had a Written Statement on the subject of what DfID is doing in Latin America. That is very welcome and I know that they will comment on it in detail. As I have no right of reply, I am extremely grateful to them for participating in the debate.

However, earlier this year, the Foreign Secretary wrote an article, which I read, under the headline,

“Stand by for our diplomatic surge”.

I am doing so, with some expectation and a little hope. However, Latin America and central America, in particular, have suffered exactly the reverse. There have been drastic cuts in our diplomatic representation. Three embassies, those of Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, were closed and there have been other cuts in the size and influence of other embassies. As a result, we have lost influence, especially in such subjects as garnering votes in the UN, and other matters. Where do we go? That is the big problem. In my view, direct contact in what the Foreign Secretary said about our global reach should mean what it says.

For instance, as I found when I lived in Latin America, personal contact is what it is all about. We may have trade policies decided by the EU, but trade policies do not produce business and investment deals for Britain. From my perspective, we are looking strictly at the British angle. Our diplomatic representatives here are doing the same on a true bilateral basis. You need to have representation on the ground in order to do business. However much know-how you may have, what matters in Latin America is “know who”—direct personal contact with people on the ground. You can do that only through representation and embassies. I suggest that what has happened in many cases is that where our European continental competitors—in many cases, we are competing in business matters—have embassies, they do the business and we do not. They have a bigger coverage than we do.

In a previous debate, I suggested that we might reinstate mini-embassies, one-man bands reporting to larger embassies. That has been tried in the past extremely successfully. With the development of electronic communication, it should be possible to achieve that, especially as the security risks are much reduced from what they were, if not eliminated altogether.

I hope that that will happen but I have to say that I am not totally encouraged by what the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown is likely to say. As I said at the beginning, I am extremely grateful to him for being here. Although it is not his portfolio, he has been very active. I fear that he will not necessarily agree with what I have said, but I live in hope that he will give us some encouragement that we will return to the area with full vigour in due course.

I start by paying tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for his unstinting interest in the region and the way he keeps these issues before Parliament, and indeed for all the work he does outside the Chamber in the form of networking, encouraging us to meet ambassadors, his membership of all-party groups and so on. Without the efforts of the noble Viscount and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, central America could have been overlooked on many occasions. A primary difficulty is that the region is often squeezed out of discussions between North and South America. However, as I have learnt over the past few years, it is a vital region in its own right, extremely interesting and certainly very dynamic.

I was particularly pleased with the announcement today by DfID, which encompasses all of Latin America, recognising the fact that if a country is described as being a middle-income state, that does not necessarily mean that it does not need aid. I am glad that Nicaragua has been highlighted, because of its particular circumstances, which the Minister may touch on, and the extension of aid, even though it will become a middle-income state this year.

While researching the issues for this debate, I looked at the GDP of each of the countries. As I went through the various websites, the estimates of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office appeared to vary enormously from those given on American websites. The Americans usually seem to regard the GDP of these nations as being around twice as much as we do. One example I can cite is that the FCO estimates the income per capita for Guatemala at $1,790 a year, whereas the Americans estimate it at $5,400. It may be that my research is wrong, but there seems to be a vast discrepancy for all of these countries. It would be interesting to find out whether the Americans and the FCO are calculating the figures differently. It is important to have accurate information. I do not question the figures of the FCO, and perhaps would be more ready to query those given on American websites.

In the time available, I want to reflect on my observations drawn in part during my own visits to two central American countries. In the past two years I have had the pleasure of visiting Costa Rica and Nicaragua for holidays, and I am shortly about to visit Belize and Guatemala for the same purpose. Last year I was also lucky enough to join the IPU delegation to Guatemala and El Salvador. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, is in his place; he, too, was a member of the delegation. During the visit to El Salvador we had the pleasure of being able to look around the SICA secretariat and to be given a snapshot view of its work. It is a vital organisation, as it is able to achieve valuable economies of scale for its members. Indeed, there is a parallel between the way the European Union works for its member countries and how SICA works for central America.

I would be particularly interested in the Minister’s observations on the use of EU structural funds. Coming from the West Country, I am acutely aware of how useful they have been to the area. How does the Minister envisage SICA developing its own structural funding programme, which is something I know very little about?

I shall touch on my own experience as a tourist in those countries, as they are still incredibly undervalued by those of us from Europe as a tourist destination. I am pleased that, in parliamentary terms, the Latin American Travel Association will hold its annual reception, either next week or the week after.

The reception is next Tuesday evening. While I am on the subject, we had a conference in Canning House earlier on central American tourism, which was a great success. I should have mentioned that the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, apologises for not being here; she is in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe.

I thank the noble Lord for getting the date absolutely right. Central America is a wonderful tourist destination. If I list just a few of the things I found interesting, it might be a bit of an indulgence on my part to remember what a great time I had, but it will also highlight what is of particular interest: the mix of culture and environment, wonderful Mayan remains and unparalleled birdwatching opportunities. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, has much greater expertise in that last area than I do, but one of the pleasures was that from our hotel room we could look out and see a huge variety of birds. One of the most memorable trips with my husband was to the estuary of the San José river near Jacó in Costa Rica, where, absolutely effortlessly, we saw more herons than I knew existed. Another highlight was horse riding through the Nicaraguan highlands.

We experienced Estelí, where the nearby national park had got a co-operative going so that you could go into the office and book your accommodation, your meals and, for example, your horse riding or a guided walking tour; you paid in one go and they organised everything for you. It was a model of how to use a national park, which had grown up from the way that the farmers had worked in a co-operative way in the past. It was the most interesting three days that it was possible to have. We saw a bit of the agriculture and some of the history. If my Spanish had been a lot better, I would have got much more out of it. One of the things I am doing at the moment is trying to learn more Spanish.

We particularly enjoyed the historic towns of León and Granada. There is an awful lot for tourists to do, and the development of tourism, especially high-quality ecotourism, is an exciting possibility.

The parliamentary delegation of the IPU was very short because we had just two or three days in each of the two countries, so it was very much a snapshot, with presentations on human rights and justice issues, education, healthcare and infrastructure. In the short time we were able to spend outside the conference rooms seeing what was happening, the devastating effects of weather—hurricanes and mudslides—destroying infrastructure as soon as it is built were quite apparent. But so was the resilience of the people; for example, the drive for education.

There was a great deal to be optimistic about, as well as a great deal that the EU and the UK could help with. I am glad that the Home Office has done some of the training of the police force out there. Some countries there feel that the questions of impunity and justice are a difficult challenge.

The final important issue that I want to touch on is biodiversity. During the climate change debate, we have recognised the matter of deforestation and the value of forests as carbon sinks. There are enormous problems. It was highlighted to us, for example, that the illegal logging in Guatemala and the logs being taken out from Mexico are very difficult to police. A UN biosphere crosses the borders between Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, so it is particularly interesting.

Many of the countries have national parks. There is some mileage in considering whether there should be a greater link between UK and central American national parks. It could be an exciting partnership.

My final question concerns the difficult issue of President Ortega’s recent outlawing of abortion in Nicaragua. It is likely to lead to abortion tourism, with women going over the borders to seek abortion elsewhere, or to drive abortion underground, which we know is dangerous. What representations has the Minister made on that issue?

I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for giving us the opportunity to debate this question and for his persistence and dedication in keeping this area on the agenda, a deed for which we should all be extremely grateful.

It is rare that any time is spent considering this region of the world; it is not often mentioned in the media; and the dismally few Members of your Lordships’ House participating today is a sad indication that this lack of interest extends to Parliament, too. Nevertheless, I hope that this rare opportunity will help to maintain a proper level of interest in the Government, and through them, in international institutions involved with the region.

The low international profile of these countries has had a stultifying effect on many initiatives. It is clear that, unlike other regional trading blocks, such as Mercosur and NAFTA, SICA has not yet got off the ground.

The noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, said that he hoped that the Government would do everything that they can to help the development of the political, economic and social integration necessary for the achievement of the association agreement between Europe and central America. The association agreement, and the free trade area that is part and parcel of it, will, we hope, be a great help to those countries and their future development. The establishment of strong democratic institutions, a sound economy and social cohesion will benefit not only central America but Europe. The lack of them has contributed to the region becoming an important transit route for South American drugs, and has stultified the potential for international trade.

Of course, greater attention to this region does not have to be confined to economic and political help. It is encouraging to see that the Government are involved with the British Council’s Peacekeeping English Project that started in Guatemala in 2007. We hope that they keep up the levels of support necessary for the project to be extended throughout the region.

We were pleased to learn from the DfID statement today that the Government are increasing their financial support to Latin America by 15 per cent, which will be provided through NGOs. Will the Minister tell us which NGOs and in which countries?

However, I draw attention, as I have in previous debates, to the worrying inclination of this Government to reduce our diplomatic presence around the world. I am shocked that figures are no longer available for the diplomatic budget in the annual accounts. Reductions are noticeable particularly in regions such as central America: there is now no resident British diplomatic representation in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. How does the Minister expect initiatives such as the Peacekeeping English Project to succeed in countries without a diplomatic presence? How does he expect to build stronger links or a “hub”, as the Foreign Secretary now calls bridges, with citizens in those countries when neither a British embassy nor a British Council office is present? That is not to mention our loss of important influence on votes in the United Nations. Does the Minister really feel that our country’s interests are equally well promoted through European institutions? Where would he advise a British citizen in trouble in Nicaragua to turn?

The GDP figures mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, are interesting. The one I found most fascinating was the disparity between Costa Rica and all the other countries in the area. It is so much higher mainly because it has concentrated on education and health and has spent nothing on defence, unlike the others.

These debates on international development and foreign affairs so often highlight the brilliant work being done to increase links between far-flung regions with this country and the great benefits that those connections bring to all concerned. I thank the Minister for being here today to answer this debate, after a gruelling time on Iraq earlier.

How will these relationships continue to grow when this Government, representing the fourth largest economy in the world, valuing their warrant of holding global influence, insist on pulling back the very institutions through which they are established in the first place?

I, too, congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on introducing this debate. I thank him for his continued engagement and interest in central America. For those who are historically challenged, I suspect that many may wonder whether Alamein is a hacienda in central America, rather than a battlefield in north Africa.

First, a word about the formal subject of the debate, the Central American Integration System, SICA, which was established in 1993 and has been an important framework for the countries of that region to come together to discuss shared concerns and act as a single voice on important international issues. SICA member countries share many common aims and concerns. They have trading links, in many cases a rich shared culture and history, and common challenges, such as climate change, drugs and crime, inequality and governance problems, including human rights, to which I will return.

SICA institutions are still developing. Although some have their problems, it is an important platform for outsiders, such as ourselves and our European partners, to discuss the serious issues which concern us and the central American Governments. SICA is therefore an important and useful tool in our diplomatic work in the region. For example, Carlos Guerrero, president of the Central American Sustainable Development Commission and Environment Minister of El Salvador, will visit London in February. We will discuss our priorities for a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change with him and those messages will then be shared across the region.

Let me just say a word on the issue of post closures, which I somehow suspected would come up today, because we have two speakers who have very properly kept this issue firmly in front of the House.

Since the White Paper in December 2003, the FCO continues to review its overseas network to ensure we are deploying our limited resources in line with our priorities, so that we can respond to change as those priorities change and make sure that we are providing the best possible value for money. Sadly, that resulted in the closure of posts in San Salvador, Tegucigalpa and Managua from within the central American region. A decision to close a post is never taken lightly. The global character of our diplomatic network is an important asset for this country, and we want to maintain and enhance it. But priorities change, and we have to reflect that.

We do not have to be too long-faced about this. We still maintain five sovereign posts in the SICA countries: Guatemala, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama and the Dominican Republic. The countries that no longer have their own dedicated posts are covered from other countries and our staff make regular visits to them. Ministers and officials in London have regular contact with officials and politicians from central America and we have appointed honorary consuls—which is not quite the same as mini embassies; nevertheless, they help us to provide continued consular cover, enable us to discuss important issues and ensure that we protect British interests. Above all, they represent value for money.

Noble Lords have raised today’s Statement and the news that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development has announced an increase in development funding for Latin America and for central America. I am pleased to confirm that financial assistance to Latin America will increase by 15 per cent from £84 million in 2007-08 to £97 million in 2010-11. However, as part of the overall strategy of ensuring that the resources are used most efficiently, that increase in programme resources is accompanied by the closure of DfID offices in Nicaragua and Bolivia. As Nicaragua becomes a middle income country in 2008, funding will be switched from the Government to other channels such as NGOs.

We have determined that the best way to deliver development support as a whole is on a regional level with an emphasis on trying to do all that we can through partners such as the EU, the World Bank and international NGOs. As the increase has just been announced, I am in no position to say which NGOs will be involved. That will be a bidding process, a programme development and a competitive process going forward. I stress that this is not disengagement, but a way of providing the support most effectively. The World Bank and the EU are big users of the structural funds to which the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, referred in her experience of the West Country and development—we can call them programmatic rather than just project funds, and budget support funds as well. We are trying to give countries the chance to make their own spending decisions and not be micromanaged through the project funding approaches of the past.

On our position on the Nicaraguan Government and therapeutic abortion, the UK is concerned about human rights violations wherever they occur. Officials from the British embassy in Costa Rica work very closely with DfID as well as with human rights organisations in Nicaragua and other EU embassies, to address human rights concerns, including therapeutic abortion. The EU raised the issue with the head of the Nicaraguan Parliament in late 2006. The budget support group, which deals with the structural funds in Nicaragua, of which we are one of nine members, has repeatedly raised the issue as one that contravenes the fundamental principle of human rights.

I thank noble Lords for the interest that they have shown in this part of the world. I acknowledge the presence of our diplomatic colleagues from the countries of the region and assure everyone that the Government remain committed to a global foreign policy, which includes the central American region. It is important to us for investment, trade, human rights, development, climate change and many other issues that we have in common with the countries of that region. We maintain friendly and close links with all the countries on a bilateral basis as well as through the EU and SICA, the central American integration system that we discussed. We simply do not believe that the most efficient way of maintaining this relationship is an embassy in every capital.

I should like to ask the Minister a quick question. We welcome the increased money from DfID, but Foreign and Commonwealth Office representations are being reduced, and that illustrates exactly what we have said repeatedly. Is this another example showing that the Government are increasingly less interested in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

As noble Lords know, the Government have made a commitment to increase development assistance to meet their objective of achieving 0.7 per cent of GDP in aid, and that has been endorsed and supported in a statesmanlike way by the Opposition. Given that, DfID has received a generous settlement in the spending plans for the coming three years. I am relieved to say that the Foreign Office also did better in terms of its programmatic resources than has been the case in recent years, thus securing an increase in support for our key priorities. But both DfID and the Foreign Office, like all other government departments, have been given a ceiling for their so-called administrative expenditures, which is what they spend on personnel. In that sense, there is no difference between the two departments because this is a Whitehall-wide cost control measure that affects us all. I fear that it reflects more clearly the tight purse, or perhaps tight fist, of Whitehall rather than any loss of support for the Foreign Office itself. I hope very much that the Foreign Office under my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is enjoying a renaissance with its new strategy, Refresh, and its new priorities. The noble Baroness should not be too concerned.

Living within an envelope of tight resources means that we shall continue to have to make decisions about how we can most efficiently manage our relationships across small countries in ways that meet both their and our agendas without sustaining unreasonable administrative costs in the form of lots of London-based staff being sent away to take up what may be inefficiently small posts across the region.

Unfortunately, government departments in Whitehall do not always wholly agree with each other. In the past there were plenty of internecine strifes in Whitehall with the Department of Trade and so on. Would the Minister like to consider taking the DfID money and getting the Foreign Office to administer it? That would have a direct effect because we do have diplomatic representation in some of these countries, although not all of them. With that human contact, the diplomats would know exactly which departments the money should go to and for what. Instead of putting it through international organisations, let it be distributed through direct expenditure from Britain via the embassies on the ground in the countries concerned—and if we had five of them, it would be much better. I know that we cannot do that at the moment, but we shall continue to struggle for them. The noble Lord might like to consider that suggestion.

The noble Viscount is correct to say that many of us feel that we need to do a better job of, as it were, branding our development assistance so that people know about the extraordinary and growing generosity of Britain in the area of humanitarian and development assistance. The use of NGO partners will help in that to a certain extent, and when money goes through the World Bank or the EU, we should encourage our colleagues at DfID to ensure that the funds are better identified as British support. That is because a lot of money will be distributed through trust funds and other activities identified to aid particular sectors or regions. There are opportunities to pursue that.

More generally, however, I would say that reports of differences of view within Whitehall are always exaggerated—we agree on everything, of course. While the noble Viscount may not believe that, I suspect that he will certainly believe that attractive though it might be—no doubt he saw a gleam in my eye at the notion of hijacking DfID resources—it would be quite beyond my Whitehall political and banditry skills.

[The Sitting was suspended from 4.39 to 5.00 pm.]

asked Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to contribute to the Vienna Forum on the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (13 to 15 February 2008); and to introduce policies to eliminate the modern-day slave trade in all its forms both at home and abroad.

The noble Baroness said: I am grateful for this opportunity to ask the Government this Question and I thank all noble Lords who will be speaking on the subject, which concerns one of the most cruel and systematic forms of human rights violations in the world today.

In the year following the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, we must not forget that, although the slave trade was criminalised, it has never been abolished. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares:

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.

The European Convention on Human Rights echoes this. It states:

“No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour”.

Yet, more than half a century after these landmark documents, and 200 years after the efforts of William Wilberforce and his friends, the modern-day slave trade, including human trafficking, flourishes.

The US State Department estimates that someone is being deceived or coerced into exploitation by trafficking across borders every single minute, and that 27 million men, women and children are still suffering from trafficking and other forms of slavery. That is why we can welcome the launch last year of the UN’s Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking and the Vienna Forum next month, which aim to provide a multi-stakeholder global framework for action against human trafficking. Through raising awareness and assisting in the fight against all forms of trafficking and enslavement anywhere in the world, every individual and every Government has an obligation to take a stand against these evils.

I ask the Minister: what part will Her Majesty’s Government play in the Vienna Forum, and what concrete action will be taken as a result to protect the victims, prosecute the traffickers and prevent illegal trade in people? Will the Government ensure that civil society organisations such as Stop the Traffik will play a key and integrated part both in this initiative and in their own work, and that the experiences of young people, in particular, will inform how human trafficking is tackled?

The input of young people is crucial because the International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least 5.7 million children in forced and bonded labour; 300,000 forcibly recruited into armed conflict; and 1.8 million in prostitution and pornography. These are just some of the horrible situations into which over 1 million children around the world are trafficked every year. Every 30 seconds while we are debating here this afternoon, another child is forced or tricked into slavery: the 25,000 children trafficked into the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the girls trafficked into prostitution in Thailand, the children trafficked into slave labour in India and the 70,000 boys forced to become child soldiers in Burma are just a fraction of the indescribable toll of man-made suffering.

But individual stories speak more eloquently than statistics. Last Wednesday I was in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan talking to a young man who had just escaped from 20 years of slavery. He still bears the scars—some visible, such as the slash on his skull and the amputated finger; others invisible, such as the taunts and not being allowed to go with other children in the family to the school or the mosque. He is just one of thousands of African men, women and children abducted by Arab northerners in Sudan in their war against the Africans of the south and the marginalised areas.

Thousands are still missing. Will Her Majesty’s Government pressure Khartoum to accept responsibility for the slavery it is known to have promoted and to take all appropriate measures to identify, free and return to their homes all who have suffered enslavement at their hands?

A few months ago I was talking to young people in northern Uganda who had suffered indescribable horrors after capture by the LRA. Tortured and brutalised, they were forced to kill each other and to fight against the Ugandan Army and their own people. I will never forget speaking to a young teenage girl who was forced to kill another child with a panga knife and drink his blood—she still has nightmares—or a young teenage boy forced to cut another boy to pieces and who learnt that, after he escaped, the LRA killed his father in reprisal. The testimonies from young people who have suffered trafficking and enslavement are legion.

One aspect of our everyday lives that is affected is chocolate. Nearly half the chocolate we eat in this country comes from Cote d’Ivoire in west Africa; the ILO estimates that over 200,000 children are trapped in forced labour on cocoa plantations there. Many of these have been trafficked in from neighbouring countries such as Mali, imprisoned, tortured and forced to pick and carry cocoa beans all day, every day. The major chocolate companies do not deny this and cannot guarantee that the products they profit from have not been made by trafficked child slaves. This is completely unacceptable. The cocoa industry must implement Stop the Traffik’s “traffic-free chocolate” pledge. It must pledge transparency in its supply chains, no tolerance towards any child labour, better pricing for producers and rehabilitation of children rescued from such dire situations. Will the Government urge leading organisations in the cocoa industry to fulfil the obligations they made to eliminate the worst forms of child labour from their supply chains and to implement farm-level certification and independent inspections to verify this?

However, these are not just distant problems; they are happening right here, right now, on our own doorsteps. Last year the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre conducted a scoping project on child trafficking in the United Kingdom, identifying 330 children from 44 countries who were probable victims of trafficking. They were brought by air, sea and rail into heinous work such as cannabis cultivation, benefit fraud and forced begging. Yet, despite such reports, the full extent of human trafficking in our own country remains unknown. Will the Government support my efforts to establish a Royal Commission to investigate modern-day slavery and to propose means for its abolition?

I welcome the Government’s announcement last week that they will accelerate the implementation and the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, but will they publish a schedule for implementation and a date for ratification? I also welcome the Government’s announcement that they will review their reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Will the Government act promptly to remove this reservation which denies child victims of trafficking their basic rights?

Why do the Government refuse to appoint an anti-trafficking national rapporteur, who would have the power to collect information, investigate cases, report to the Government and make recommendations? This is a recommendation of the Council of Europe and is already successful, for example, in the Netherlands. Establishing such a post would provide more resources, a higher profile and greater efficiency than the current ad hoc inter-departmental ministerial group, whose members could not even combine their diaries to meet in the last quarter of last year.

I commend the work of campaigns such as Stop the Traffik, which are working with over 900 partners in 50 countries to raise awareness, advocacy and resources for the fight against human trafficking. They are working with grassroots organisations to remove the root causes, including some of the millennium development goals such as poverty, lack of education and gender inequality. Will the Government consistently insert anti-trafficking strategies into poverty reduction programmes such as the multilateral poverty reduction strategy and their bilateral country assistance plans? Will they also raise awareness of the links between the millennium development goals and human trafficking?

The Government can also do more to tackle trafficking in Europe. Thousands of young women are being trafficked from the former Soviet Union to the United Kingdom, where they are repeatedly raped whilst in sexual enslavement in many brothels in our towns and cities. I commend the work of local community action groups such as Croydon Community Against Trafficking, which is working with local newspapers, police officers and councillors to rid its town of modern-day slavery. But action is also needed at regional and national levels. Will the Government support current moves to establish a Europe-wide single number hotline for victims of human trafficking, connected to existing national services in each country?

I have tried to outline some policies that could bring an end to human trafficking and the modern-day slave trade. These could be implemented both by this Government and by others at the Vienna Forum. I hope that all the questions I have raised will be answered and not ignored, as happened to some in last week’s debate on human trafficking in the other place. Only if the Government take the kinds of initiatives identified by organisations such as Stop the Traffik will there be any hope of stopping the trafficking and enslavement of human beings.

I fervently hope that, following the year in which we celebrated the achievements of William Wilberforce and his co-abolitionists, this year will not be a year of condemnation of our failure to do all we can to achieve the goal for which they have strived, so far in vain: the abolition of the slave trade and all forms of human trafficking.

I rise first and foremost to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for instigating this vitally important debate. But, well beyond the debate, I would like to put on record my profoundest gratitude for the years of dedicated work that she personally has placed at the service of those who are being trafficked in the modern slave trade. She is a real heroine. I have not had the opportunity to say this before and I really thank her on behalf of everyone.

Hear, hear.

I and my colleagues in the European Parliament have also been tackling this heinous crime. We have been trying to tackle it at source because the enlargement process of the European Union has brought trafficking not only onto our doorstep but right inside the house. It is a shameful thing to have to confess to noble Lords today that one of the new members of the European Union—Bulgaria—only outlawed human trafficking just before entering the European Union. We did have a greater success with Romania, which outlawed it considerably earlier, but it has made us investigate much more closely legal provisions to block trafficking. I am very happy to say that, after negotiations with the head of the Duma, Russia has now outlawed trafficking. Implementation of the law is the next step—but if you do not have the law in place you have nothing to hang on to at all.

Therefore I believe profoundly, and would like to put on record again, that tackling this problem in the source countries may be the only real solution. Getting the right laws in place and training the police is important. That is why Her Majesty’s Government nominate police to go abroad to those countries where the traffickers are using people as commodities for sale. Ultimately, if we can possibly trap at the beginning the perpetrators of this terrible crime, we will save so much human misery it is hardly true.

This means that we will have to work hard on capacity building, institution building, the rule of law and strengthening democracy. The heart of democracy is human rights and human dignity; slavery is the antithesis of human dignity and human rights. On top of that we must work in the field of family and public health; mother/child healthcare is a very strong tool in this. Very often the young are trafficked because they are the easiest to transport and move around, and they raise the most money. They can be trafficked for involuntary organ transplants, for example. You can make half-a-million dollars if you have quite a small child and you can plunder the entirety of its body.

So it is very important to think about the rule of law, training the police, the magistrates and the judges and getting Parliament behind the whole situation positively and powerfully. We managed to stop many thousands of children and young people being trafficked from Romania by dint of getting the Government, the president and the Parliament not only to pass the right laws but to believe profoundly that they had to protect their people and not have them used as commodities.

When you look at it on the ground you will see that the trafficking springs up locally; then these clusters of traffickers group nationally; then the international traffickers move in, and after that you have almost no defence at all. So you have to pin this down at the very beginning.

I have been working hard with my colleagues in the European Parliament and through a charitable effort we established the Children’s High Level Group with J K Rowling—the voice of the children globally. We beg and hope that Her Majesty’s Government will think beyond our shores. They could assist not only by dealing with the problems of trafficked people here but by investing in some of the key countries on our doorstep and inside the Union where this crime is particularly prevalent.

I congratulate the noble Baroness once more and look forward to her further work.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for calling this very important debate today on the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking which is taking place in Vienna next month. I was pleased to be invited to launch this very important initiative in the House of Lords in March last year with Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director, Julia Ormond, the United Nations goodwill ambassador and our Minister, Vernon Coaker, who is responsible for human trafficking issues at the Home Office and who has helped us enormously over the past months.

The Vienna forum is calling for action to raise awareness and to facilitate co-operation and partnerships among the various stakeholders. The forum will allow for an open environment to enable all parties involved to take concrete steps to fight human trafficking within their spheres of action. It will be a catalyst for solution-seeking ideas and will address the overriding themes of human trafficking. Vulnerability—why does human trafficking happen? Impact—the human and social consequences of human trafficking. Action—innovative approaches to solving complex problems.

Human trafficking is a crime that shames us all. It is a booming international trade making billions of pounds and is the third largest industry next to arms and drugs. The World Bank will confirm my figures on that. In the other place, Mr Steen asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department,

“how much money has been confiscated from criminals convicted of trafficking people in the UK in each of the last three years”.

Earlier this week, the Minister, Mr. Coaker, answered:

“The total value of confiscation orders and cash forfeiture orders made in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland over the last three years against criminals involved in people trafficking is set out in the table”.—[Official Report, Commons; 22/1/08; col. 1866W.]

The figures are quite low but wait until you get to the last one. I have rounded the figures up. In 2004-05, the value was £400,000; in 2005-06, it was £1 million; in 2006-07, it was £2,500,000.

Criminals profit while satisfying consumer demand. That is why we should ratify the Council of Europe’s Convention against Human Trafficking and take a lead. Great Britain is a destination country which, I am ashamed to say, is one of the highest receivers of victims. Many victims are children, who are being robbed of their dignity and freedom. Trafficked victims are vulnerable to poverty and exploited by traffickers, who use force and deception to trap their prey. Victims include young girls sold by their families; children drugged and forced to fight as soldiers; men bonded and chained in labour mines and farms; women enslaved in quarries and households; women and girls trapped in the sex trade; and boys forced to fish in dangerous waters. These human beings are being forced to do what others would never freely do and are paid virtually nothing for their pains. They are used like disposable products for commercial gain. I repeat, they are disposable products—the traffickers have no feelings about human beings. I ask the Government to send to the forum a delegation of the highest level, led by a Cabinet Minister.

Finally, let me quote my friend and colleague Melanne Verveer, co-founder and chair of Vital Voices Global Partnership. She said:

“Governments, businesses, NGOs and citizens everywhere have a responsibility to work together to address this modern-day slavery. The new initiative will be critical to progress in combating this global challenge. We urge everyone to join the 21st century anti-trafficking movement”.

I am looking forward to being with my colleagues from the Government in Vienna. I will be attending as a member of the Women's Leadership Council and in my capacity as a board member of Vital Voices Global Partnership.

I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for sponsoring this debate. Her activities in combating contemporary slavery are well known and well-documented. To her fine words, she has added fine actions, which is never a simple or easy thing to achieve.

It is estimated that as many as three-quarters of a million people are being illegally trafficked across international borders every year. Global awareness of that evil trade is, I am pleased to say, growing, but the level of knowledge remains very low, which increases the vulnerability of potential victims.

All too often it is assumed that human trafficking primarily involves vulnerable women or girls from poor countries being duped into coming to developed countries such as the UK, and then having their passport taken away while they are forced, often by threats or the actual use of physical violence, to work as prostitutes. That assumption is wrong on two counts. First, although the plight of women or girls trafficked for sexual purposes is dreadful, it is not the case that such women constitute a majority of victims. Secondly, it is by no means only in the developed world that vulnerable people are coerced into activities that amount to no less than modern-day slavery. The International Labour Organisation, the UN agency charged with addressing labour standards, employment and social protection issues, estimates that at any time more than 12 million people are in forced labour, bonded labour or sexual servitude—there are many forms of this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, said, the one thing that these people have in common is that they are human beings, coerced into a situation that they would never voluntarily have entered into.

These crimes are widespread, affecting people across many countries, yet here in the UK there is no shortage of nefarious activity involving lives from which people seemingly have no escape. If a reminder was required of what slavery means in Britain in 2008, it has been provided, with perhaps uncanny timing, by the front page of tonight’s London Evening Standard under the banner headline, “Police Free the London Child Slaves”. If we read that, we see that “slave” children who were smuggled into Britain by traffickers and forced to steal and beg on the streets of London have been freed. Police raided a string of houses, each of which held up to 10 children, to seize traffickers whose trade is said to be worth up to £1 billion every year. More than 20 people were arrested as officers freed the children, who had been sold to Romanian people-smuggling gangs and forced into a life of crime. Police estimate that each child is worth as much as £100,000 a year to the gangs, and the Romanian authorities estimate that up to 2,000 Romanian children have been smuggled into Britain to operate as modern-day Oliver Twists.

The Metropolitan Police has its own dedicated team to tackle human trafficking, of course, and the ACPO-led UK Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield further demonstrates the efforts that are being made to tackle these crimes. The operation that is reported in the paper today involved the Met working closely with its Romanian counterparts, which is a welcome development. For too long this country was not able to work as effectively as it might have done with other European countries because the Government had not signed the Council of Europe convention against trafficking. Last year, they did sign up to it, although as yet it has not been ratified. Many EU member states will ratify it and bring it into force next month. I hope that the Minister will clarify the Government’s position and set out their intentions, which I also hope will include a date for ratification.

As I said, awareness of human trafficking is increasing. Last year, the Church of Scotland, in marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, introduced a campaign pack on tackling human trafficking and called on the Government to ratify and act on the convention. The church had been urged to campaign on the issue by its missionary partners around the world. When asked what one issue they thought the Church of Scotland should take up in order to improve the lives of people in their countries, the most common response was combating human trafficking.

This is not, of course, an issue that can be fought in any one country, which is why the UN established the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, or GIFT, in March last year. The Vienna forum next month will be the first opportunity to review GIFT’s aims and to begin to co-ordinate activity to counter the increase in human trafficking. I note from the forum’s programme that over three days there are to be more than 20 sessions on topics as varied as criminal justice responses, the roles of employers’ organisations and trade unions, repatriation and reintegration of victims, supply chain management and the role of the media. I hope that the Government’s representatives in Vienna will return with a list of actions on which to follow up, so that the pernicious activities of human traffickers can be reduced and eventually, I hope, eliminated.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has brought an extremely important subject before us today and I join my voice with those of earlier speakers who expressed their concern and horror at the worldwide extent of the abominable practice of human trafficking, particularly the trafficking of women and children. The ending of this appalling trade in people, which the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, rightly described as modern slavery, should be the goal of every democratic country, although it will be achieved only through collaboration with other like-minded states.

One has only to recall the bare statistics. US authorities estimated in 2005 that 800,000 people worldwide were trafficked every year and that the annual revenue from that trafficking amounted to about $9.5 billion. The market in the UK this year is estimated to be worth about £1 billion, rather more than a quarter of which is accounted for by the market in sexual exploitation. Tonight’s news, brought to us by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, emphasises the importance and size of this trade and the power of the people who run it. No doubt many powerful people will resist the end of this lucrative trade. We will have to fight them as well as fight for the right actions on behalf of our Government.

In 2003, some 4,000 people were trafficked into the UK for the purposes of prostitution. Whereas 10 years ago some 15 per cent of women prostitutes were from abroad, now only 15 per cent are of domestic origin. Women and children constitute a large proportion of those trafficked, many of them coming from some of the poorest countries in the world—in many cases countries benefiting from more or less generous funding from the United Nations and/or other donor nations, including the UK. The Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is directed to actions which the UK Government could take to help eliminate this terrible modern form of slavery.

It is a matter of concern that the Government have only just committed themselves to the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. Clearly, where the better management of border controls is involved, it is of the greatest importance to maximise co-operation, not only between EU member states but also with other states within our continent. Will the Government commit themselves to working effectively with other European states in order to monitor this trade, track the traffickers, intercept their deliveries and bring them to justice? Without that collaboration, we will not get very far at the European level.

Will the Government also improve services for trafficked adults and, particularly, children who have escaped their so-called employers? Adoption of services for these victims is another requirement of the convention. In particular, do the Government now accept the need to appoint guardians of “rescued” trafficked children? After all, the EU reception direction, the EC convention and UNICEF guidelines all propose this as an essential part of the care for trafficked children.

My second area of inquiry is in relation to the interrelationship, if any, between the fact that many trafficked persons come from the poorest countries and that these are the same countries which receive large subventions from the UK or other states. It may be asking too much to require these countries to close their borders to the “export” of human beings by the traffickers. Furthermore, some of the destination countries are themselves among the poorest countries on the globe. Is there any pressure we can bring to bear, at least on those countries not at war, to persuade or assist their governments to begin to institute effective control against traffickers?

Finally, will the Government be able to put forward proposals at Vienna which might increase determined, world-wide collaboration among the richer nations directed towards the ending of this terrible practice? The countries of the developed world form a major market for the men, women and children who are victims of this terrible trade. Is it not the duty of “consumer” countries to do their best, both inside and outside their own boundaries, to end this modern slavery?

I join in the thanks already expressed to my noble friend Lady Cox, not only for introducing this debate but for all the tremendous work she has been doing over the years. I believe that Her Majesty’s Government should be congratulated on what they have done so far about trafficking into Britain. More is needed, of course, and I do have some questions to put. When will the Government ratify the UN protocol on the trafficking of children, which was signed as long ago as 2000? Will they make any necessary legal changes using the current Children and Young Persons Bill? Further, will they ratify the Council of Europe convention protecting children and adults against sexual exploitation and abuse? Will they remove their reservation on nationality and immigration from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Will they study the cases of Paul Gadd and Paul Bower, and close the three-day loophole allowing British registered sex offenders to make short visits overseas without notification? Will they seek to make extradition treaties with foreign countries, especially in south-east Asia, wherever these do not now exist? Will they reconvene the expert working group on information and intelligence concerning paedophiles and sex tourism? Will they ensure that they have high-level representation at the UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, taking place in Vienna next month?

Turning to domestic matters, can they give preliminary details about Operation Pentameter 2? That is designed to free those forced into prostitution and to arrest traffickers and pimps. I hope that may be possible. Are they satisfied that there are now sufficient safe houses to accommodate trafficked persons once they have been freed? Such houses are necessary in most parts of Britain. Can they report progress in identifying trafficked children at ports of entry and in preventing such children disappearing from the care of social services?

Finally, like my noble friend Lady Cox, who mentioned this, will they consider appointing a rapporteur on human trafficking, reporting to Parliament, as well as, or instead of, the existing ministerial working group? People who have been trafficked deserve respect and care, and do not deserve to be treated as illegal migrants. I hope that my questions have illustrated how much more there is to be done. It is of paramount importance that all agencies involved work closely together. Surely that is something that only the Government are capable of organising.

I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, on securing this debate. It seeks to highlight the problem of this vile trade. I feel very strongly about the subject but, in view of the constraints of time, I am not able to talk about this abhorrent practice in great detail.

I am horrified at what is described as modern-day slavery. Human trafficking involves deception, intimidation, coercion and exploitation. Criminality is at the centre of this trade. Estimates suggest that the global trade now exceeds £9.5 billion and around 80 per cent of those involved are women, of whom about half are minors. The Government have estimated that more than 4,000 women are being trafficked into this country for sexual exploitation. The United Nations has estimated that up to 2 million women and children are trafficked across international borders every year. A recent UNICEF report found that, in an 18-month period, 330 children were believed to have been trafficked into the United Kingdom and that, of these, 183 went missing from the care of social services. That is appalling and shameful. Yet, in 2005, only 166 people were sentenced to immediate custody under the variety of offences that constitute people trafficking. We need to ensure that more people are detected and convicted of this disgusting behaviour. Those involved need to be taught that they will not be able to get away with their crimes.

I am pleased to note that the Government have indicated that they will ratify the Council of Europe convention during the coming year. I should be most grateful if the Minister would confirm that this will be included in legislation during the current Session, so that the actual ratification can take place by the end of the year. It would also be helpful if the Minister would confirm that, from the moment the convention is ratified, the Government will abide by all the requirements contained in it.

A simpler approach might include implementing separate interviews for women and children travelling into this country with people who are not family members. That has been suggested by my party but it has not been well received by the Government. I should be grateful if the Minister could explain what action the Government are taking to increase the practical co-operation between national authorities to tackle human trafficking. I support the proposals for the establishment of a border police force, which would be able to focus more consistently, effectively making Operation Pentameter a permanent operation.

Human trafficking should be regarded as a mainstream police priority. At present, there are areas where nothing effective is done by the police. I want to see more people prosecuted and convicted, thereby sending out a signal that we mean business in tackling human trafficking. We need to be able to help victims. I would like to see an increase in the number of safe houses, maximising the number of places available to victims in safe accommodation and ensuring that capacity is used efficiently. Those under 18 years of age are excluded from accessing the POPPY project’s facilities, which should be changed. Perhaps a helpline for victims would help promulgate information for those who have suffered or are suffering. I hope that we will have another chance to hear from the Minister after the Vienna forum, and that real progress will at last be made.

There is abuse also of workers who enter this country legally or illegally. It is imperative that the activities of rogue gangmasters are controlled. Will the Minister comment on that?

I was brought up in Africa, which has been ravaged by the slave trade, and appreciate all the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, about that continent.

Although there was a vote at the end of the debate on this subject in another place, it displayed general agreement between the parties and a lot of common ground, as exemplified by what has been said here today. I suggest that the best way of maintaining and improving the co-operation that already exists is for regular progress reports to be made on the implementation of the Government’s action plan, so that questions such as those that we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, would not need to be asked in a gathering of this kind, but would automatically be available to all your Lordships and the public.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in congratulating the police on the success of the operation reported in the Evening Standard, which stated that it was the first in a series of operations in combating trafficking. As my noble friend Lady Nicholson said, we ought to deal with problems in the countries of origin as well as at home. I congratulate her on her work in bringing the standards of new members of the European Union up to the level of all the rest. We should consider, if we do not do so already, appointing airline liaison officers in Bucharest, for example—even though Romania is part of the European Union—because that has proved effective in other places from which illegal activities have stemmed in the past.

The debate has focused on the Vienna forum on the UN Global Initiative. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and others mentioned the briefing that we received from Stop the Traffik. The Minister in another place, Mr Vernon Coaker, referred to it in complimentary terms, but did not say what he thought of its proposals in detail. We look forward to learning what the Government think of them today.

The interdepartmental ministerial group on human trafficking has been referred to several times. I understand that it has not met for several months and therefore is not contributing anything. Stop the Traffik proposes that it be replaced by a national rapporteur on human trafficking, who it suggests would have more time, resources, profile and power to assist in the implementation of the UK’s action plan. I like the idea of an official with this title co-ordinating and prompting government departments and others whose authority is needed and reporting on progress. The rapporteur should not have executive power, as Stop the Traffik suggests, but would have great persuasive influence across the board, as does the Children’s Commissioner, for instance, in a related field. There are other constitutional precedents for the appointment of tsars with cross-departmental responsibilities.

Mr Dismore mentioned in another place a letter that he had received from the Minister announcing the review of our reservation on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has also been referred to today. We particularly welcome this concession, recalling that we argued during the passage the UK Borders Bill that the convention should apply to the BIA except where removal is being implemented. It might well be argued that sending a child back to, say, Iraq or the DRC was not in that child’s best interests, but the main problem we have always had is the treatment of children in detention, where the Government say they already comply with the CRC. If that is true, I cannot imagine what possible objection there could be to applying the convention to all the activities of the BIA except those immediately concerned with removal.

In the debate in another place, my right honourable friend the Member for Eastleigh particularly highlighted the problem of trafficked children being used as domestic slaves, and the disappearance of children from local authority care has been mentioned today. That is one of the areas in which it is important to identify migrants as victims of crime and as potential witnesses. We ask how the inherent difference of approach between the police, who are anxious to obtain evidence against traffickers, and the BIA, whose remit is to enforce immigration control, can be best resolved.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is a doughty fighter for those who are trafficked, and I am glad that she has been able to generate this debate again today. It gives us an opportunity to acknowledge her experience, authority and conviction on this matter. I also wish to thank Stop the Traffik because it has generated two debates—one in the House of Commons and one today in the House of Lords—which are designed to draw attention to the Vienna conference.

First, much has been said about the Vienna conference—the questions that I would have asked have probably been put—but it is important that the Minister should let us know who is attending on behalf of the Government so that we can see the level at which interest is being taken. How will the Government let us know what comes out of the conference? What does the Minister hope the conference will achieve?

Secondly, the debate today has reminded us that this country is a signatory to the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, but we still have not ratified it. I know that the Home Office decided earlier this month to “accelerate” doing so, but it is hardly the foot down in the fast lane to say that it will not be done until the end of the year. Every other European country appears to have managed to get on with it, apparently without trouble, and we are still pussyfooting around waiting for “necessary legislative and procedural changes” to bring it about. Can the Minister confirm what has already been asked about the legislative programme? Can he confirm that legislation will be passed in this Session?

Thirdly—and this is by far the most important aspect—the debate has underlined once again the sickening nature of this terrible affront to humanity. It would be easier perhaps, but still not let us off the hook, if we were able to say with hand on heart, “This awful thing did not happen here”. But as other noble Lords have pointed out today, we cannot do that. We are a receiving country of countless men, women and children who are abducted from their homes or persuaded to leave on the grounds that there are good jobs on offer. They arrive illegally through our porous borders and then find themselves bound to the traffickers, often being forced into debt bondage or into the sex trade, kept in appalling conditions and, because of their illegal status, unable or too frightened to turn to anyone in authority.

As others have said, we are not alone; this is a world-wide problem. It is a tragedy for the millions of people caught up in the trade which, as the Guardian recently reported, is estimated to be worth—figures have been bandied around today and this is another one—in the region of $44 billion globally. The United Nations estimates that up to 27 million people are currently held in slavery, the majority of whom are Asian women. It is an appalling situation.

Let me concentrate for a minute on the situation in this country. It is not as if nothing is being done to address the problem—it is—but can the Minister tell us whether the Government would consider introducing separate interviews for women and children travelling into this country? They have not done so, but this would identify the children who are being brought in illegally and against their will. Furthermore, why did the conviction rate for trafficking offences under the Sexual Offences Act actually fall by 40 per cent between 2006 and 2007? However, we know about the police operations taking place in the form of Pentameter 1 and 2, and it is good news that the London police have today made further moves in this respect.

In closing, I want briefly to touch on the POPPY project, which is a fantastic but underused resource. It is almost incomprehensible that the most vulnerable victims of trafficking, children, are excluded from access to it. I would like to ask the Minister whether he will look again at the Home Office’s own criteria which stipulate that people under the age of 18 should not have access to this project. Social services can deal with many of the problems associated with children, but they often need expert help. It is ridiculous to deny people under the age of 18 access to this resource, one that is funded by the Government. We might as well make proper use of it.

There is an enormous amount to be done. We have had great contributions from all those who have participated in the debate. For my part, I hope that the convention in Vienna is not only a success, but provides some really purposeful proposals for the future.

I begin by joining in the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for raising this issue, and indeed I have great admiration for all her work in this area. I thank also other noble Lords for their contributions, which have reflected clearly the abhorrence all of us have for this foul practice. I share that deep abhorrence. It is a modern form of slavery, as has been said. As a Government I think that we have a good story to tell, and that is not least because of the engagement and involvement of a number of noble Lords which have helped to make things move forward. However, there is a long way to go in some areas, and having noted the number of questions put to me in the debate—the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, had 18, and the average of each noble Lord who spoke was eight or nine—there is merit in making more regular progress reports in some form. I am not sure how we can do that, but I will talk to officials and see if there is a way. I do not know how easily it can be done, and I should take care because I am always getting into trouble for saying that I will do things without knowing quite how to achieve them.

I should say, as an admiral, that the Royal Navy was a huge force for good in suppressing the slave trade. We lost something like 17,000 men, mainly from sickness, in that task. The period of 35 to 40 years in which the navy was engaged in that effort is something we should be proud of. It is not directly applicable to this debate, but I have to get a plug in for the Navy in some way.

There is no doubt that human trafficking is a very evil practice. It is perpetrated for profit by organised criminals across the world who have absolutely no regard for victims or society as a whole. It is a multi-faceted phenomenon, one that knows no borders and occurs both within nations and across international boundaries. As many speakers have emphasised today, trafficking needs to be fought on many fronts, and the key to a successful response is effective collaboration and partnership working. I believe that the Government have embraced this approach, and an important part of that is an active involvement with our international partners.

That brings me to the UN Vienna forum, which was set up by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to co-ordinate the global fight against human trafficking and build on the platform provided by the Palermo protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, although it focused particularly on women and children. This is the arena in which we can address many of the proposals that have been raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Cox, Lady Nicholson, Lady Thomas, and others. The United Kingdom has supported the UN initiative from the outset, the formal launch having taken place in London on 26 March last year and at which my honourable friend Vernon Coaker spoke on behalf of the Government. Vital Voices, through my noble friend Lady Goudie, arranged the event, and we are indebted to my noble friend for all her hard work in this sphere.

The Vienna forum will bring together representatives from member states, the United Nations and other international organisations, the business community, academia and non-governmental organisations with the objective of raising awareness and facilitating the co-operation between stakeholders that a number of us have talked about and realise is so important. The United Kingdom will be an active participant at the event. My honourable friend Vernon Coaker intends to attend the opening meeting to make a statement about the United Kingdom’s approach to tackling human trafficking.

The United Kingdom delegation will include representatives from the UK Human Trafficking Centre, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Border and Immigration Agency as well as officials from the Foreign Office and the Home Office. The UK Human Trafficking Centre has been asked specifically to chair the “From Protection to Persecution” session at the forum and give a presentation on UK Operations Pentameter and Pentameter 2, which speakers have already mentioned. The UK representatives will also speak on the international projects in which we are currently engaged in the special event called “International Co-operation: Identifying and Overcoming the Problem”.

The UK Government have a comprehensive end-to-end strategy in place to tackle human trafficking, and have made considerable progress in that area with the publication of the UK action plan in March 2007 and, on the same day, our signing of the Council of Europe Convention. The action plan pulls together existing work and sets out future action. It applies to all forms of human trafficking and sets out proposals in the key areas of prevention: enforcement and prosecution, protection and assistance to adult victims and child trafficking. Other recent progress includes the introduction of comprehensive anti-trafficking laws, resulting in a number of successful convictions.

We established the Serious Organised Crime Agency in 2006, which has tackling human trafficking as one of its top priorities and is now also supported by a new police-led multi-agency UK Human Trafficking Centre, which became operational in October 2006.

We are also continuing to work with the POPPY project, which has been mentioned, to provide secure support and accommodation to adult female victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. In 2006 the first of our major national anti-trafficking operations took place. Operation Pentameter 1 was a great success. We established the UK Human Trafficking Centre after that to support, develop and co-ordinate our response. We recovered 88 victims, of whom 12 were children. That shows the sort of success that is possible. Operation Pentameter 2 was launched in October 2007 and is currently ongoing. It is another catalyst designed to encourage proactive policing, which some noble Lords touched on. That needs to be done. It is an illustrative process of teaching people how they need to approach this issue, and showing that it is core police business.

Human trafficking does not always involve immigration issues. However, it always involves serious criminality including rape, false imprisonment and often violence. It is a very serious crime. We have had 70 convictions to date—and I would like there to be more—for trafficking for sex and exploitation under the Sexual Offenders Act 2003, resulting in sentences between two and nine years on specific counts, while convictions for several counts have resulted in sentences of up to 21 years—and quite right and proper too.

Intelligence from Pentameter 2 is already further developing our understanding of the nature and scale of trafficking across the UK. Part of the problem is that we do not really understand that, and we really must. Following the conclusion of the operation, the UK Human Trafficking Centre in conjunction with the Serious Organised Crime Agency will produce an updated strategic assessment of human trafficking in the UK, which will help us improve upon estimates in previous research and will further enable us to respond to the reality rather than the perception—and I fear that the reality is probably worse.

A significant number of victims have been identified already—I cannot talk about that in detail; the situation is ongoing—and are receiving support as appropriate. It is not possible yet to give exact numbers because we are still in the middle of this operation. However, more than 542 premises have been visited. A large percentage of them has been residential, which shows just how hidden the crime is—it could be taking place in the house next door—which is a very worrying aspect of it. In excess of £400,000 has already been seized in cash, with a number of money-laundering investigations taking place and a number of restraint orders instituted. I believe that we will find much more money, because a lot of it is involved.

The G6 initiative is linked to Pentameter 2 and is another example of this Government’s commitment to working in collaboration with international partners. The initiative is led by the United Kingdom and Poland, and is running from July 2007 until July of this year. The UK proposed that G6 countries should undertake a period of joint operational activity along the lines of Operation Pentameter. A number of noble Lords asked whether there is some way of doing this. We are looking specifically at that to see what we can do.

A number of activities and meetings have now taken place, with the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland committed to this project, supported by Europol, Interpol and Eurojust. The project involves a number of strands of activity. It looks at how traffickers can be tackled more effectively and how best practice can be shared among the participating states. It looks also at whether there is any benefit in undertaking joint awareness projects, which there probably is.

Further European engagement took place at the international seminar on the Council of Europe convention against trafficking in December. The seminar was jointly hosted by the Home Office and the Council of Europe. It discussed the development of policy and sought to identify the most effective responses to all elements of anti-trafficking work. There were around 80 participants, with more than 10 member states invited as well as a large number of United Kingdom stakeholders. We greatly value the participation and input of such stakeholders as part of our collaborative approach—a number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of collaboration, which I re-emphasise—and we have sought to involve them also through our ministerial non-government organisation group.

Your Lordships will be aware that the Home Secretary announced on Monday the Government’s intention to accelerate plans to ratify the Council of Europe convention. We have worked hard and consulted widely since signing it. For example, we have piloted a model of victim identification within the Pentameter 2 operation, identified gaps in compliance, and developed models of victim support. There is much still to do, but our progress means that we now believe that we can make the necessary legislative and procedural changes to achieve ratification later this year. However, we can succeed only with the full support of both Houses, because legislation is involved, and colleagues in other parts of the United Kingdom.

The Home Secretary also announced on Monday the Government’s intention to review the UK’s immigration reservation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Hear, hear!

The review will explore all the options open to the Government and will report early in the spring. However, it should be noted that our reservation has no effect on how victims of trafficking are treated while they are in this country: their protection and safety already become the responsibility of local authorities within our child protection legislation.

We have worked with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to develop an advice and information line for social carers and other professionals to help them identify and support trafficked children. The advice line went live in October last year, and multi-agency guidance was published in December to provide comprehensive information to all front-line professionals on the identification of victims and the actions required.

Several noble Lords have mentioned the special rapporteur and the role that such a person might have in identifying the victims of trafficking at an early stage, so that they are separated from the responsibility of the BIA and placed in the care of local authorities. I hope that the Minister will have time to mention that important matter before he sits down.

I shall try to make sure that I get to that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, spoke of urging companies to ensure that they comply with the benefits of not proceeding with slavery. We strongly support that responsible business behaviour. International business has an important contribution to make, but we promote adherence to OECD guidelines on multinational enterprise. NGOs and trade unions can raise, and have, raised complaints against companies. Under OECD mechanisms, we are investigating complaints and producing conclusions as necessary to try to make a move forward in that area.

Will DfID commit to the mainstreaming of anti-trafficking strategies? They are committed to addressing the underlying problems that make poor people vulnerable to trafficking, and that includes helping to build states that work for poor people. We are addressing those issues by supporting nationally developed poverty-reduction programmes.

There was mention of the possibility of a Royal Commission. This is the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. There is already extensive parliamentary and public scrutiny of action in this area, and there are regular debates. The Joint Committee on Human Rights undertook an inquiry into the Government’s efforts, and therefore we do not believe that a Royal Commission is necessary.

On the EU anti-trafficking hotline, we fully recognise the need for transnational work. However, we foresee some real difficulties with the hotline, including issues relating to management and dissemination of information.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, referred to Romanian child trafficking. The Metropolitan Police work very closely with the Romanians and we have two Romanian police officers working with the Metropolitan Police at the moment.

I have a number of questions still to answer, including one about the rapporteur to which there is a rather long, one-page answer. Perhaps I may write to noble Lords on the issues raised. I hope I have given some oversight. There is still much to do but I would not want the Committee to be in any doubt about our resolve to curb this absolutely loathsome traffic. I believe that those involved will be identified; we will track them down and they will suffer the full penalty of the law. That people should treat their fellow human beings in this way in the 21st century is very depressing. We intend that the culprits should have nowhere to hide. We are intent on getting them and rescuing and looking after those involved. I apologise for being over long.

The Committee adjourned at 6.02 pm.