Commons Chamber

  House of Commons

Wednesday 6 June 2007

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Wales

The Secretary of State was asked—

Severn Estuary (Electricity)

Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
1. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on Government support for a reappraisal of the options for generating electricity from the tidal flow in the Severn estuary.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Hain)
I have had discussions with Cabinet colleagues, and I am keen to see the Severn barrage go ahead, as tidal power represents a massive untapped, clean, green energy source.

Nia Griffith
Will my right hon. Friend seek commitments from UK Cabinet and Assembly colleagues to ensure that Welsh universities have the support to enable them to develop sustainable technologies—such as those harnessing wave, tidal or river current energy—in order to generate electricity and to help bring research and development jobs and manufacturing jobs to Wales?

Mr. Hain
We certainly want every opportunity to be explored. I welcome my hon. Friend’s interest and support. The Severn barrage could create up to 35,000 jobs over the nine-year construction period, half of them in areas surrounding the Severn estuary. It is anticipated that in the longer term about 40,000 permanent jobs would result from the barrage, which would lead to economic regeneration in terms of recreation, transport, housing, industrial and commercial property, tourism and infrastructure development. My hon. Friend is right that renewable energy has enormous potential not only to fight climate change but to strengthen the economy and to create more jobs.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC)
Further to the question of the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), will the right hon. Gentleman also make sure that in-depth research is undertaken into the possible use of tidal lagoons in Wales, bearing in mind the New Zealand experience where that is a huge component in the energy mix?

Mr. Hain
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in that issue, and the Sustainable Development Commission is looking into it. However, previous assessments suggest that a lagoon alternative in the Severn would produce less than a third of the generating capacity of the barrage, and in addition the barrage would save about two and a half times more carbon dioxide emissions than a lagoon. Prior to any further investigations at least, the barrage therefore appears to me to be a much better bet, and it would also offer the opportunity of a transport link between Taunton and south Wales, which could be of enormous benefit on both sides of the Severn.

Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The Severn estuary is an internationally important site for wild birds. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is important that we protect the habitats that would be affected by the proposal, and that that must be taken into consideration before any development goes ahead?

Mr. Hain
Yes; my hon. Friend raises an important point. The European Union birds and habitats directives must be considered in relation to the project. However, I should draw it to the House’s attention that the experience at La Rance river in France is that biodiversity can increase as a result of the construction of a barrage. Also, if we are not prepared to take bold steps to fight climate change, biodiversity will be, in a sense, a secondary matter. That will be the case if we get the terrible consequences to life on this planet that would come from climate change, which can be avoided by the adoption of projects such as the Severn barrage, which could create up to 5 per cent. of the UK’s electricity-generating needs.

Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)
While I welcome tidal energy in the Severn estuary, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is enough tidal power off the north Wales coast to offset the need for a replacement nuclear power station in Anglesey? However, given that all bar one of the Labour deputy leadership candidates said on “Newsnight” that they support more nuclear power stations, including the right hon. Gentleman, how can anyone seriously believe that the second nuclear consultation is not destined to be as big a sham as the first?

Mr. Hain
It is not a sham. I have always made it clear that if a nuclear new-build is necessary in order to keep the lights on, it would be irresponsible to rule that out. As the hon. Gentleman knows, no one is more enthusiastic about clean, green renewable energy than me. Indeed, I often have scraps with Liberal Democrats about wind farms and other sources of clean, green energy, because they are in favour of green energy in principle, but in practice differences can arise. However, I think that we can work together to make sure that Wales benefits from all forms of energy. Sometimes there is a demand for a replacement nuclear power station. That is the case in Anglesey. The local council and my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) support a replacement of the existing nuclear power station, and they deserve to be supported.

Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I very much thank the Secretary of State for those remarks. I support a rich and diverse energy mix, including tidal power. However, will the Secretary of State assure me that funds and support will not be diverted from established and emerging options into one big project, such as the Severn barrage? If we are serious about security of energy supply and lowering carbon emissions, we need a rich energy mix.

Mr. Hain
We do, and we need our energy to be developed and sustained as much as possible in home-grown forms, so that we are not dependent on fossil fuels imported from abroad, including from many unstable areas of the world. So this is not just a climate change but a security of supply issue. However, I see no conflict here between strong renewable energy and considering the nuclear option in Anglesey, for example, if that is appropriate. The Severn barrage is a privately funded project; the construction companies—McAlpine, Balfour Beatty and others—that formed a consortium intend to fund it privately. Indeed, that is the point: there would not be a big draw on public funds.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State assure me that despite the obvious, early and absolute backing for the Severn barrage scheme given in answer to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), the Secretary of State is not going to rule out investigating tidal lagoons? Has he had the opportunity to read the research produced by Friends of the Earth showing that the generation cost from tidal lagoons is more economically beneficial than that from the barrage; and will he give this House and the people of Wales an absolute assurance that he will carry out full investigations into the environmental impact of the barrage and of the lagoons, and not rule out the lagoon option at this stage?

Mr. Hain
I can assure the hon. Lady that I am not ruling it out; indeed, the Sustainable Development Commission is looking at this option. However, the facts are reasonably clear—unless they are contradicted by any further study—that the barrage would generate masses more power and is lower in emissions, and there are other benefits. The risk in the Severn area of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, is enormous, and the barrage would clearly help by providing a much securer environment for local houses and businesses. It also offers the exciting prospect of a transport link, with Cardiff airport being just round the corner. So there are benefits, which is why there is a lot of support in the south-west of England for this proposal, especially along the coast. The local regional development agency, for example, supports the idea of a barrage. So that is where my preference lies, but obviously we will look at the evidence.

Mrs. Siân C. James (Swansea, East) (Lab)
However bold the Severn barrage project is, we must not ignore the opportunities along other parts of our coastline. In Swansea, particularly Swansea bay, the lagoon has captured people’s imagination and there is a great deal of support for it. There should be more localisation of power generation. Does the Secretary of State agree?

Mr. Hain
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, Wales is supremely well placed to harness the benefits of tidal and wave power because we have such an extensive coastline, including in the Swansea bay area, which provides a great tidal power opportunity. We should look at all options there, including the one that she mentions.

MTAS

Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC)
2. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health on Welsh priorities in respect of the medical training application service.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Nick Ainger)
My right hon. Friend has regular discussions with the Secretary of State for Health on a range of health issues. I understand that Wales has opted out of using MTAS for recruitment, and that the Department of Health had no difficulty with its doing that.

Hywel Williams
When I tackled the Secretary of State for Health on this matter some two weeks ago, I asked her where in the application form there was a reference to the qualification of being able to speak Welsh. Her answer was, I am afraid, woefully inadequate. Will the Minister take this matter up with the Department of Health, given that there are shortages of Welsh-speaking doctors not only in general practice but in paediatrics, psychiatry and geriatrics? There is a pool of Welsh-speaking doctors—not only in Wales—who could be recruited.

Nick Ainger
I saw the exchange between the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State for Health, and I can tell him that the current recruitment system in Wales does allow for applicants to complete their form and then be interviewed in the Welsh language, provided that they inform the recruitment panel in advance. As we are interviewing every applicant, there is that clear opportunity for them to make the case that they have this additional benefit—it clearly is a benefit in many parts of Wales—of being able to communicate with their patients in Welsh. When I have discussions with Edwina Hart, the new Welsh Assembly Health Minister, I will raise this matter.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I welcome the fact that we are not going to be using in Wales a scheme that has been described by the British Medical Association as a disaster. Can the Minister assure us that any alternative that we do use will rely on doctors’ experience and their proven ability to make people better, and not on their ability to write 150-word vignettes full of jargon, or even—dare I say it?—the ability to speak Welsh?

Nick Ainger
Well, the hon. Gentleman gives us his usual rant, but the system that is now being used in Wales—in which every applicant will receive an interview—has been warmly welcomed by the Welsh deanery and the BMA Welsh junior doctors committee. The process is working well in Wales and we now have more than 2,200 doctors in training in Wales. The number of training places in Wales will rise from 261 last year to 320 next year. The investment in doctors’ training and medical students is proving to be a great success, and that is why we are seeing substantial improvements in the quality of care being provided in Wales and in England.

Hospital Waiting Times

Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
3. If he will make a statement on hospital waiting times for Welsh patients in hospitals in England.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Nick Ainger)
The Assembly Government are investing record amounts in the NHS in Wales and are delivering real improvements in the standard of service to patients. Waiting times for Welsh patients in English hospitals are falling.

Mr. Dunne
I am grateful to the Minister for that optimistic response. The Royal Shrewsbury hospital supplies tremendous service to Welsh patients, especially those from mid-Wales, but why do Welsh patients have to wait 29 per cent. longer than English patients for routine elective operations and 39 per cent. longer for a first out-patient appointment?

Nick Ainger
The facts are that there are no Welsh patients waiting more than eight months for treatment in hospitals, including the Royal Shrewsbury, compared with 900 a year ago, and in the past three years the number of Welsh patients waiting for more than six months for a first appointment at an English hospital has fallen by 61 per cent. Those are significant improvements. Yes, further improvements can be made, but the Welsh Assembly Government will spend £5.5 billion on the health service in Wales next year, amounting to £1,800 per person, something that could not be achieved by the hon. Gentleman’s policy of sharing tax cuts with public service investment. That would mean a £21 billion cut.

Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Much progress has been made in reducing waiting times for patients from Wales attending hospitals in England. In Wrexham, visits to the Countess of Chester and Gobowen hospitals have much shorter waiting times. I suggest, however, that there be close discussions with the new Welsh Health Minister on that issue and on cross-border funding issues. I suggest that my hon. Friend also discuss the matter with the new Assembly Member for Wrexham, Lesley Griffiths. I may have omitted to mention the fact that Wrexham was a Labour gain—

Hon. Members
Hooray!

Nick Ainger
Indeed. I congratulate Lesley Griffiths on her recent success. My hon. Friend is right that the investment in the health service in Wales is delivering real improvements and waiting times are falling. Local health boards in Wales need to talk to hospitals in England about local packages of care, but given the money that is now going into the health service in Wales, finance should not be a problem.

Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con)
The Minister mentions that the target waiting time for elective surgery is eight months. In fact, as I am sure he will agree, that is the target waiting time for in-patient treatment. The combined target waiting time for Welsh patients is a total of 68 weeks, whereas for English patients it is 31 weeks. Can the Minister explain why Welsh patients—who after all pay their taxes at the same rates as English patients—should be expected to wait in pain for an additional 37 weeks? Is that a policy decision by the Welsh Assembly Government, or is it incompetence?

Nick Ainger
As I said earlier, no Welsh patient is waiting for care in an English hospital for more than 12 months, compared with 900 last year. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman look back at the figures for 1996-97, which were substantially higher than those for last year. No patient in Wales waits longer than eight months for in-patient care, which means that many of them actually receive care long before the eight-month target time.

Cross-border Issues

Mr. David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
4. What discussions he has had with the First Minister on the National Assembly for Wales’s legislative programme as it relates to cross-border issues.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Hain)
The First Minister will announce later today the Welsh Assembly Government’s strategic and legislative programme for the coming months. He has already announced in plenary on 25 May that he will bring forward proposals in relation to child poverty, affordable housing, climate change and better access to health care.

Mr. Evennett
I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. How closely do the Labour Government in Westminster intend to involve Westminster MPs in scrutinising Welsh legislative issues? Is not the Secretary of State concerned—as Opposition Members are—that such scrutiny opportunities for Westminster MPs are limited to statutory instruments, secondary legislative bodies and Welsh Committees? What can he do to give more scrutiny by the House?

Mr. Hain
I very much support the principle of scrutiny, particularly pre-legislative scrutiny, which I took forward in my previous post as Leader of the House. The Welsh Affairs Committee has the opportunity to pre-scrutinise matters and only yesterday produced a valuable report, which noted that the whole House could be involved. Although it is a Welsh Members’ Select Committee, other Members have the opportunity to give evidence to it and to contribute to the scrutiny process. There are other ways of achieving that, too.

Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s positive comments about our report. Would he be prepared to appear before the Select Committee to discuss the matter more fully? Like him and the whole House, we are keen to ensure that there is thorough scrutiny of all framework powers going through the Welsh Assembly Government.

Mr. Hain
Undoubtedly, the introduction of Orders in Council, as provided for in the Government of Wales Act 2006, to give the Assembly the opportunity to take extra measure-making powers is an important advance, and my hon. Friend’s Committee will have a valuable pre-scrutiny role. He referred to framework powers, as did the report, and my right hon. Friends the Members for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) and for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) have also raised the issue on the Floor of the House. It is an important issue, and an explanatory memorandum will of course accompany each proposed framework power in an England and Wales Bill and will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses. We need to make sure that a full explanation is provided by the Welsh Assembly Government so that Members have the chance to look at what they are being invited to endorse in a Bill.

Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con)
In discussing with the First Minister his proposals for climate change legislation, will the Secretary of State ensure that the First Minister is fully aware of the controversial cross-border issues that will arise over proposals for the Severn barrage? Will the Secretary of State and the First Minister ensure that before they proceed they visit the barrage de La Rance at St. Malo, where they will see how over 40 years, and to generate only 3 per cent. of the electricity of Brittany, the environment has been devastated and biodiversity has been sterilised? The impact of the barrage on that part of France has been devastatingly bad and there will be great opposition to the Severn barrage on those grounds alone.

Mr. Hain
That is not my understanding, but obviously if the hon. Gentleman wants to put evidence before me I shall be happy to look at it. As I understand it, the evidence shows that La Rance river, which is the only equivalent project that I know about, has seen an increase in biodiversity. Given the support for the proposal in the south-west, from Bristol down to Taunton, including the regional development agency and local authorities, I think the Severn barrage could be of enormous benefit environmentally and in every other way.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I am not sure that the Secretary of State will have time to visit the Rance project; after all, he did not have time, or was unable, to attend the opening of the Welsh Assembly yesterday. However, will he find time to ask the First Minister how he can claim to be leading a listening Government in Wales when he has not discussed his legislative programme with the other parties and did not even attend the televised debate between party leaders on the legislation last night? Is not the truth that Labour continues to take Wales for granted even when it has lost its majority and lost its authority?

Mr. Hain
This is from a Welsh Conservative party that did extremely badly at the 3 May elections and that has consistently lost ground in Wales over the past 20 years because of its anti-Welsh policies and the way in which unemployment went up and bankruptcies and public spending cuts increased in Wales under the Tories. All that would lie in Wales’s future if Tory Ministers took power away from a Welsh Assembly Labour Government. Tory Ministers back in power and in charge of Wales is not something that the people of Wales want.

Social Housing

Mr. Martin Caton (Gower) (Lab)
5. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on measures which could be taken by the UK Government to increase funding available for social housing in Wales.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Hain)
I have regular discussions on a range of issues, including housing. I welcome the extra £1 billion for Wales that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor provided in his Budget, which covers, of course, every public service.

Mr. Caton
I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that council housing must be part of the social housing mix? Will he assure me that he and the Government will respond positively to the message coming from council house tenants such as those in Swansea who say that they wish to stick with the local authority as their landlord and want proper investment in council housing?

Mr. Hain
I am strongly sympathetic to the point of view that my hon. Friend argues. Indeed, the Welsh Labour manifesto pledged to invest £450 million in new social and affordable housing, thus bringing about 6,500 additional homes. It is important that we make housing a real priority, including that of councils and housing associations, because there is a real need for more affordable homes to rent in Wales and right throughout Britain.

Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
If there is a fourth option for social housing, does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to make it realistic, rather than the vague possibility that it is at present?

Mr. Hain
Yes. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has recently signalled exciting new initiatives to take forward extra house building because that is one of the priorities for our next term in government.

Ambulance Services

Mr. Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
6. What recent discussions he has had with Welsh Assembly Ministers on the interaction between the ambulance service in Wales and neighbouring services in England.

Mr. David Amess (Southend, West) (Con)
9. What recent discussions he has had with Welsh Assembly Ministers on cross-border issues affecting the ambulance service in Wales.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Nick Ainger)
I have regular meetings with the Assembly Minister for Health and Social Services on a range of issues, including the provision of ambulance services.

Mr. Harper
I thank the Minister for that answer. Ambulance services are a particular challenge in Gloucestershire, especially in Forest of Dean, given the nature of its geography. In some cases, it would make sense for the Welsh ambulance service to deal with patients in the southern part of my constituency. Will the Minister use whatever good offices he has to encourage Welsh Assembly Ministers to urge the Welsh ambulance service to work seamlessly with its colleagues in Gloucestershire, because we do not want the Welsh border to become a barrier to effective health care? [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker
Order. The House should come to order; it is unfair to those who are here for Welsh business.

Nick Ainger
The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) makes a very good point. I understand that the Great Western ambulance service, which covers his constituency, has joint working arrangements with the Welsh ambulance service to deal with specific sites such as bridges and tunnels. Those working arrangements are regularly reviewed. I understand that there are closer working arrangements and co-operation elsewhere on the border. I will shortly be meeting Edwina Hart, the Assembly Minister with responsibility for health, and I will take up the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

Mr. Amess
Whatever the Minister says, the present arrangements do not seem to be working terribly well, with response times deteriorating from the present eight minutes. Is that the fault of the Minister, or the Welsh Assembly?

Nick Ainger
In fact, response times have improved dramatically in the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust. It was formed in 1998, and for the past two months, it has exceeded its target of responding to 60 per cent. of life-threatening emergencies inside eight minutes. That is a result of substantial investment in staff and, especially, equipment. The service is meeting its targets and continues to improve. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would appreciate some assistance from the Welsh ambulance trust.

Barnett Formula

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
7. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the operation of the Barnett formula as it affects Wales.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Peter Hain)
The Barnett formula has worked well in delivering funding for Wales, and I have been taking every opportunity to discuss the forthcoming spending review with the Chancellor and with the Chief Secretary to ensure that it continues to do so.

Mr. Bone
Public expenditure per head of population in Wales is £1,000 more than in England, yet patients in Wales have to wait significantly longer for NHS treatment. Five thousand patients in Wales are waiting more than six months for an NHS operation—what has gone wrong?

Mr. Hain
Waiting times in Wales are coming down progressively, and they are well down compared with the appalling scandal of long waiting times under the Tories.

Prime Minister

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab)
Q1.  If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 6 June.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair)
Before listing my engagements, as the House will know there has been fierce fighting in the south of Afghanistan in which UK troops are being deployed with considerable courage and commitment on their part. I know that the whole House will want to join me in sending our profound condolences to the family and friends of those who have fallen: Guardsman Daniel Probyn of 1st Battalion the Grenadier Guards, Corporal Darren Bonner of 1st Battalion the Royal Anglican Regiment and Corporal Mike Gilyeat of the Royal Military Police. This country should be very proud of the sacrifice they have made.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I will have further such meetings later today.

Ms Keeble
I associate myself and my constituents with the expressions of condolence for the families of the service personnel lost in action.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Northampton climate change forum, which has its first meeting tomorrow evening under the excellent chairmanship of Terry Smithson of our local wildlife trust? As my right hon. Friend heads off to the G8, what message does he have for climate change campaigners in Northampton and elsewhere on what he hopes will be achieved in Germany?

The Prime Minister
I congratulate the Northampton climate change forum on the work that it does, which shows the interest that is taken in this issue in constituencies and communities up and down the country. What will be important at the G8 is first, that for the first time we manage to get agreement on the science of climate change and the fact that it is human activity that is causing it; secondly, that we manage to get agreement that there should be a new global deal that involves all the main players, including America and China, when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012; and thirdly, that at the heart of that has to be a global target for a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. That should be followed through via the United Nations process. Those are the key things that we need out of the G8 agenda. I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind my saying, however, that we should not forget the necessity of also keeping to our commitments on Africa.

Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con)
I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Corporal Mike Gilyeat, Corporal Darren Bonner and Guardsman Daniel Probyn, who were all killed in Afghanistan. They died serving their country.

Tonight, the House of Lords will vote on proposals to help the 125,000 people who are suffering because their pension schemes went bust. The Government fund set up to support those people has so far helped only just over 1,000, and yet it has cost £10 million to administer. Will the Prime Minister confirm those figures?

The Prime Minister
The total amount of the fund over the years to come will be some £8 billion. There used to be no help available to people in this situation; there is help available now. The difficulty with the House of Lords amendment—we have had this exchange several times—is that unless we can be sure that we can keep to those commitments within the £8 billion that has been set aside by the Government, it is irresponsible to hold out the promise that we can go up to 100 per cent. if we are not able to do so.

Mr. Cameron
The Prime Minister will not confirm the figures, but I have to say that they are unacceptable. Yes, we have had this exchange before. When I raised this with the Prime Minister two months ago, he promised a review of the unclaimed assets and said that he would try to get the maximum compensation level. What are the results of that review? Does he recognise that tonight’s vote is probably the last chance that he has as Prime Minister, without any long-term spending commitment, to right the wrong that has been done to those people?

The Prime Minister
First, let me make one thing clear to the right hon. Gentleman—more than 100,000 people will benefit from the scheme. There used to be absolutely nothing for those people. Secondly, let me point out to him that the reason why we have not gone beyond 80 per cent. is that it is wrong to promise that we can go further than that unless we can say how it will be paid for. We simply cannot, on the basis of the Treasury loan scheme or the idea of unclaimed assets, make future spending commitments outside the £8 billion. That is not sensible and it is not responsible. As for suggesting that we are not helping people, it is true that more than 1,000 people have already been helped, but in the years to come there will be tens of thousands more.

Mr. Cameron
The reason the Government scheme was set up was because so many pension schemes went bust under the Prime Minister’s Government. That is the problem. What the pensioners involved need is help now as thousands of them have reached retirement age. I have to say to him that when the Maxwell crisis was sorted out—[Interruption.] Yes, when the Maxwell crisis was sorted out, the Government of the day used a Treasury loan to advance money to those affected without putting long-term costs on the Exchequer. Why does the Prime Minister not do the same thing now?

The Prime Minister
It is not possible to do what we propose unless we set aside the money now, because what we cannot do is promise people that we will pay them more for their pensions, over and above the £8 billion commitment, which has been given to people for the first time and which will allow us to compensate them for 80 per cent. To end up promising more without saying where the money will come from is an idea that I might describe as completely “delusional”.

Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming any decision by Edinburgh university to strip Robert Mugabe of his honorary degree, and will he ensure that neither Mugabe nor any of his henchmen are permitted to come to Britain with visas until democracy is fully restored to Zimbabwe?

The Prime Minister
I confirm that that is indeed our position on visas. It is, of course, a decision for Edinburgh university, but I entirely endorse the sentiments that my hon. Friend has expressed.

Sir Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife) (LD)
I join the Prime Minister in his expressions of condolence and support for the relatives of those who have lost their lives in the service of our country.

With 200,000 people killed and 2 million displaced from their homes, what can the people of Darfur expect from the G8?

The Prime Minister
I hope that they can expect a recommitment to sanctions if the Sudanese Government do not abide by the peace accord that has been set out and do not stop bombing their citizens. The Sudanese Government should also welcome the hybrid African Union-United Nations force as that is the only way that we will keep the combatants apart. In addition to that, it is important that rebel groups abide by the peace accord. I am sure that Darfur will be raised in the course of the G8.

Sir Menzies Campbell
Is it not time not only for tougher sanctions against the Sudanese Government, but for a much more effective arms embargo and for much better logistical support for the African Union mission in Sudan? Will the Prime Minister tell the other members of the G8 that we cannot afford another Rwanda?

The Prime Minister
It is precisely for that reason that, in part as a result of pressure from this Government, we have an African Union force in Sudan. We are giving it logistic support, but it is true that we need to do more, as I have already said. I am afraid that the arms embargo will not, in this instance, meet the issue. What will do so is building up the African Union’s peacekeeping capability. One of the things that we will discuss at the G8 is the progress that we have made since Gleneagles—for example, the UK has been involved in training some 11,000 peacekeepers in Africa. However, the only solution is a strong African Union peacekeeping force that can be deployed in such situations. Darfur has not slipped into being a Rwanda yet, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right—it is a parlous situation and it is essential that we take action, and we will be pressing for that action.

Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon) (Lab)
Q2.  This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli war. What does my right hon. Friend think can be done now to try to resurrect the peace process, and does he agree that the University and College Union’s boycott of Israeli universities is misguided, undermines academic freedom and contributes absolutely nothing to the attempt to bring peace to the middle east?

The Prime Minister
I agree with what my hon. Friend said about the boycott and I very much hope that that decision is overturned because it does absolutely no good for the peace process or, indeed, for relations in that part of the world. He is right to emphasise that the only solution ultimately is to relaunch the framework for a negotiated peace with a two-state solution at its heart, and we will work on that.

Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con)
The G8 agreed at Gleneagles that by 2010 everyone suffering from HIV/AIDS would have access to the medicines that they need. Will the Prime Minister confirm that, sadly, almost three quarters of sufferers still do not have access to that treatment?

The Prime Minister
There are 1 million more people who receive treatment, but the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to go further. The commitment is to do that by 2010, and I hope that we will recommit to that at the G8 summit at Heiligendamm. In addition, the announcement by the Americans to double their HIV/AIDS spending from $15 billion to $30 billion is extremely important. The Germans have now committed an extra €3 billion of aid to Africa over the next four years, which is also important, and this country is making a huge contribution to fighting HIV/AIDS. Yes, we need to go further, but it is important to realise that, as a result of what was done at Gleneagles, 1 million more people are now receiving treatment.

Mr. Cameron
Charities such as ActionAid believe that the specific proposals set out in the draft communiqué do not go nearly far enough, and they believe that the goal agreed at Gleneagles is on the verge of collapse, which would result in millions of preventable deaths. We have long argued for interim targets, as the Prime Minister knows. Does he agree that it would be a disaster if the current wording of the communiqué is allowed to stand?

The Prime Minister
We are trying to strengthen that language and put in some specifics, particularly in relation to HIV/AIDS treatment. For obvious and natural reasons, pressure groups always say that not enough is being done or that the situation is in danger of collapse. Since Gleneagles, however, there has been almost $40 billion of debt relief; there have been substantial increases in aid, including to Africa; millions more children are in primary education; and, as I said, 1 million extra people are receiving HIV/AIDS treatment. As I saw for myself last week in South Africa, the possibility, if we expand the use of drugs for those people, is that we can save millions of lives, so we have to do so. It is precisely to achieve those types of commitments that we will go to the G8 and negotiate.

Mr. Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on engaging in dialogue with some of the most distinguished Muslim leaders and scholars around the world at a recent conference at Lancaster House. He rightly wants the authentic and true voice of Islam to be heard in Britain. How does he believe that he can achieve that?

The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in that area. What is interesting, and what came out very strongly from the two-day conference, is the fact that the moderate, reasonable voice of Islam is the majority voice of Islam. It is not heard enough, but it was interesting that people around the world, including some of the most distinguished Islamic scholars, made it quite clear that they wanted no truck with extremism.

 Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Q3.  Fifteen per cent. of school-age children are obese, and under-age drinking has doubled. Yesterday, the Children’s Society said that 43 per cent. of parents are scared to let their children go out with their friends. Schools have become exam factories, contributing to the one in 10 children suffering mental health problems, to which the Prime Minister’s solution is to force four-year-olds to take exams in mental health. Is he proud of his legacy on the state of our children, or is he just not “bovvered”?

The Prime Minister
I think that the hon. Gentleman is exaggerating the situation a trifle. Of course, there are pressures on children today: pressures through exams and through the type of things to which they have access a lot earlier than generations past. The majority of young people whom I meet are working hard and are extremely responsible, decent members of society who behave very well. There is a minority who either misbehave or are socially excluded and we need specific measures to help them. However, I do not think that the debate is helped by that type of hyperbole, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind my saying so.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab)
Q4.  Does my right hon. Friend accept that among the important reforms and changes that have occurred on his watch over the past 10 years is freedom of information? Why should Parliament alone, of all the public bodies in this country, be able to contract out of a law? Can my right hon. Friend explain why the two Front Benches are supporting the private Member’s Bill, when it should be thrown in the dustbin?

The Prime Minister
Because I have enormous respect for my hon. Friend and because this may be the last time that he asks me a question at Prime Minister’s questions, I do not want to disagree with him—but if I were pushed, I might. It is important—and this has been made clear—that on matters such as expenses, MPs continue to be very open. There is a consensus on that. A huge amount of scrutiny is given by the House about Members of Parliament and I do not think we should apologise for what we do in the House.

Mr. Mark Lancaster (North-East Milton Keynes) (Con)
Q5.  Does the Prime Minister agree that if communities such as Milton Keynes are to be truly sustainable, final decisions on their expansion should be made by democratically elected local authorities, not by unelected, unaccountable quangos?

The Prime Minister
Of course, local decision making is important, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that if we are to deal with housing issues, we have to expand the availability of housing because of the expansion in the number of households. I agree that a balance needs to be struck, but that must include proposals that allow us to make sure that our people, particularly our younger people, have houses to buy.

Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab)
The 25p per week age addition to state pensions for the over-80s has remained at the same level since 1971. Does the Prime Minister agree that the time is right to review that derisory amount? Should the Government give consideration to, say, adding a £25 lump sum to the winter fuel allowance as an alternative?

The Prime Minister
Those are obviously decisions that have to be taken at the time of the Budget. Although I entirely understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, we are now spending, on an annual basis, about £11 billion a year extra for our pensioners. They have the winter fuel allowance, the free TV licences for the over-75s, and a substantial uplift in many of the payments that are made through the pension credit. There is one other thing that is worth pointing out: over the next few years we will move to a situation where the basic state pension is relinked to earning. That will benefit many of our pensioners to a far greater degree than even an extra £25.

Paul Rowen (Rochdale) (LD)
Q6.  Can the Prime Minister tell the House what evidence there is for his assertion that closing or downgrading accident and emergency departments such as Rochdale’s saves lives?

The Prime Minister
Each of those decisions must be taken on the basis of local conditions, but they are driven by clinicians, not cost. In emergencies involving some of the most serious illnesses such as stroke or heart disease, it is better for people to be treated by paramedics in an ambulance and then taken to a specialised unit. The idea of changing accident and emergency, like maternity services or paediatrics, is therefore driven by the fact that there is increasing specialised provision that does the best for patients. I ask the hon. Gentleman to take account of that.

Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Prime Minister will be talking with Mr. Putin at the G8 and discussing the Litvinenko case. We have other problems with Russia—the threat to target missiles at European cities, the fact that Shell and BP have effectively been renationalised there, and the boycott of trade with Poland. All those are grave and troubling signs of a different approach from Russia. Will the Prime Minister talk frankly to Mr. Putin about those problems? We want partnership with Russia on Iran, Kosovo and other issues. Will he also talk frankly with his European partners, because it is European unity and sticking together that will achieve that?

The Prime Minister
There will be an opportunity to talk to President Putin at the summit. I have always had good relations with President Putin. We want good relations with Russia, but that can be achieved only on the basis that there are certain shared principles and shared values. If there are not, there is no point in making hollow threats against Russia. The consequence is that people in Europe will want to minimise the business that they do with Russia if that happens. A closer relationship between Europe and Russia is important, but it will be a sustainable relationship only if it is based on those shared values.

 Dr. William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Q7.  The Prime Minister will know that Sinn Fein members have taken their places on the Northern Ireland Policing Board. Does he agree that it is totally unacceptable that a party that has members on the Policing Board also has leading members on the Provisional IRA terrorist army council? Will he therefore agree to take urgent steps to have that matter dealt with effectively?

The Prime Minister
The most important thing is that whoever is on the Policing Board and whoever is taking part in the politics of Northern Ireland does so on the basis of complete commitment to democracy and exclusively peaceful means. That applies to everybody. That is the central test, and it is a test monitored, as the hon. Gentleman knows, by the Independent Monitoring Commission.

 Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes) (Lab)
Q8.  Although I am sorely tempted to ask my right hon. Friend about grammar schools, I have decided to ask him whether he has read the Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on coastal towns and the problems that many of them face—for example, isolation, the outward migration of talented young people and high numbers of incapacity benefit claimants. Will he continue to liaise with his Ministers about coming forward with a coherent national strategy to tackle those problems in coastal towns?

The Prime Minister
The point that my hon. Friend has raised about coastal towns is very important. Because the focus is sometimes on inner-city regeneration, people forget that some coastal towns have large numbers of people who are either socially excluded or unemployed and that such local economies can be difficult. It is precisely for that reason that we are looking at what more we can do to support our coastal towns and to make sure that a fair proportion of the £20 billion that we are spending on regeneration gets to them to allow them to develop local economies that are sustainable in the future.

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Why did carbon dioxide emissions in both the UK and the EU rise last year while falling in the United States of America, and what are the Government going to do about it?

The Prime Minister
It is correct that there was a small rise here and, indeed, elsewhere in Europe. It is precisely for that reason that we have agreed a new framework for the European emissions trading system. I know that the right hon. Gentleman may find it hard to support anything with the word “European” in it, but it is none the less important to recognise that it is only through that trading scheme that we will make a difference. The fact that the European Council has now set very ambitious targets for CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions is extremely important. Incidentally, this country will meet our targets under the Kyoto treaty.

 Mr. Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich, West) (Lab/Co-op)
Q9.  In my local authority, Sandwell, there has been enormous demand for places at the new Sandwell academy, and that interest has been reflected in demand for places at other proposed academies. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a developing consensus that excellence in education can be delivered without academic selection? Will he seek to build on that consensus, which I believe is both public and political?

The Prime Minister
I thought that there was a developing consensus, although it has faltered a little in the past few days. The academy programme is proving to be a real success story with parents, and it is providing excellent education for some of the poorest communities in the country. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is part of a change throughout schools in our country, where there has been massive capital investment and better results. As a result of investment and reform, we now have a situation totally different from that a few years back. The vast majority of our children are getting educated well. We need to go further—we know that we do—but the fact is that education in this country has been transformed in the past decade.

Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Q10.  It is Government policy that in the next 15 years a substantial part of the green space in the borough of Kettering will be concreted over with the number of dwellings to increase by a massive one third. Given the Government’s alleged new-found commitment to localism, does the Prime Minister think it fair that local residents effectively have no say on whether that development proceeds?

The Prime Minister
As I said to the hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) earlier, the green belt is being protected—we now have far more development on brownfield sites—and that is absolutely right, but we need to build more homes. If the Conservative party says that, in general, we need to give help to first-time buyers and those who need to get into the housing market, and help to ensure that we have proper housing, it cannot then, in particular, oppose every housing development in different parts of the country. That simply shows me that the Conservative party, in that area of policy as in many others, has still not worked it out.

Kerry McCarthy (Bristol, East) (Lab)
Q11.  I do not suppose that my right hon. Friend will have time between now and 27 June to visit Bristol, but if he did, he could see for himself the stunning new schools that are being built under the building schools for the future programme, especially the first BSF school in the country, which is due to open this summer at Speedwell. Will he join me in urging the 27 per cent. of parents who currently take their children out of the state sector at the age of 11 to visit the fantastic new school buildings, see what they have to offer and give Bristol schools a second chance?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the opportunities now exist because many hundreds of schools throughout the country have GCSE results that are well over 70 per cent. In addition, there have been thousands of refurbishments, some 2,500 extra sports facilities and we have the biggest school building programme under way that the country has ever seen. Consequently, standards are also improving. The great thing about many of the new schools—I have recently visited several—is that they are designed differently, their whole look is different, and the children feel that, for the first time, they are in an environment that will encourage them to do better and learn. That is all about our programme and our commitment to providing excellence not just for a few, but for all.

 Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Q12.  The whole House will want to join me in warmly congratulating the Prime Minister on his appointment last week as the supreme chief for peace by the people of Sierra Leone. Does he expect to pick up a similar plaudit from the people of Iraq?

The Prime Minister
Sometimes, the best people to speak about Iraq are the elected politicians there. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the press conference—which, unsurprisingly, was not covered—that the President of Iraq gave here a few weeks ago. He said that however difficult the situation because of the terrorists, we should never forget what it was like under Saddam and that, if terrorists try to stop the country getting democracy, we should stand up and fight them, not give in to them.

Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab)
Q13.  Ask older residents in Stafford their top concern, and most would say the fear of losing their post offices. Will the Government and Post Office Ltd hurry up and announce which post offices are being considered for closure so that, conversely, reassurance can be given about the majority that are staying open? For those at risk, will the Government accept responsibility to do all they can to preserve postal services for older people through co-location of services, outreach and innovative ways of providing services, such as social enterprise and community shops?

The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend’s point is absolutely right and reasonable. We are putting a huge investment—some £2 billion—into supporting our post office network. However, as he rightly implies, changes are happening that mean that the way in which post offices operate must change if they are to be viable in future. We will try to identify as quickly as possible the post offices that are at risk and those that are not. However, my hon. Friend is right that there is no point in kidding ourselves—we must find new ways of making the network viable and ensuring that people can use it to carry out a further range of transactions, but not close our eyes to the inevitable fact that many more people now take their money through their bank account and not the post office. There is a viable future, but it has to be on the basis of the suggested changes.

Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con)
Q15.  The Prime Minister has brought great style and flair to the high office that he has held for 10 years. Will he leave office with honour by giving an assurance in the House today that he will hand over no further powers or competences to the European Union without the referendum that I believe that he promised the people of the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his opening remarks. As he knows, my belief is that we do not need a constitutional treaty and that we should have a simplified and amending treaty. I can assure him that all the red lines that we have set out will be protected for this country, but it is also in the interests of this country that we find a way for Europe to operate more effectively with 27 members than it can under rules designed for 15 or fewer members.

 Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
Q14.  Two days ago, General Motors brought its most advanced hydrogen-powered car into the Palace of Westminster for colleagues to see. Over the past few months, the Government have done a tremendous amount of work, led by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, to ensure that General Motors succeeds in delivering investment into Ellesmere Port. Can we have an assurance that the Government will continue that work to help promote those new modern technologies? Does the Prime Minister agree that there is no incompatibility between the development of vehicle building and climate change issues when it is delivered by those sorts of hydrogen technologies?

The Prime Minister
I congratulate my hon. Friend’s constituents on their work in the car industry and also on finding environmentally beneficial ways of ensuring that the car fleet is modernised to take account of the pressures of climate change. We are investing several million pounds in research into hydrogen fuel cell technology. I have no doubt that, partly as a result of agreeing that we will have a global target this week at the G8, there will be a big impetus behind those types of technologies for the future. I certainly hope that we can do so.

Point of Order

12:31:00

Mr. Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I know you take very seriously the convention that Members should notify other Members when they go to their constituencies, so I wanted to ask for your advice about this matter. When the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) was conducting her deputy leadership tour on Friday 25 May, she not only appeared in my constituency, but featured in the local newspaper. My office has been in touch with hers to ask for an explanation of that oversight and still awaits a reply. Could you, Mr. Speaker, perhaps give me some advice about what I can do about it?

Mr. Speaker
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could contact the right hon. and learned Lady and find out why she was—[Interruption.] Let me finish. If it was on a Labour party matter, it is nothing to do with me or the House. It is only when an hon. Member makes an official visit—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is showing me some papers, but if it is a Labour party matter, it is not a matter for the Chair. These matters should be sorted out between—[Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Gentleman is listening, because he might learn something. These matters should be sorted out between hon. Members and not drawn to the attention of the Chair.

 Armed Forces (Federation)

12:32:00

Mr. Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the establishment of a Federation for the Armed Forces; and for connected purposes.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to introduce this Bill today. Last year, I had the pleasure of serving on the Committee that considered the Armed Forces Bill. During consideration in Committee, I moved new clause 23, which would have established the formation of an armed forces federation open to serving and retired members of Her Majesty’s armed forces, both regular and reserve. I have to say that I was neither surprised nor disappointed that the new clause was not accepted, but our consideration of it allowed the Committee to discuss the issues surrounding it.

I now believe that there is a groundswell of opinion among the public as well as among members of the armed forces that it is time that those members should have an independent voice to represent their interests. Recent controversies surrounding accommodation, the treatment given in medical facilities to injured personnel returning from Iraq—and, of course, the scandal at Deepcut—have highlighted the increasing need for members of the armed forces to have an independent voice and to ensure that it is heard.

There is also increasing evidence that members of Her Majesty’s armed forces need to have access to independent legal advice. In the previous Parliament, I also served on the Committee that considered the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Act 2004. It was clear from those deliberations that members of Her Majesty’s armed services needed independent employment advice and advice about their pensions.

I propose not a trade union but a federation along the lines of the Police Federation. I want to build on the excellent work already done by the British Armed Forces Federation, which was set up in 2006, has recently been incorporated as a company limited by guarantee, and is now recruiting members. The work of Douglas Young and his team at the BAFF has been important in raising awareness of such issues among members of the armed forces. The Bill would put the federation on a formal recognised footing with the Ministry of Defence.

The aim of the Bill is to encompass the 10-point plan put forward by the BAFF, which states:

“The federation’s mission shall be to represent, foster and promote the professional welfare, and other legitimate interests of all members of the federation in their capacity as serving or retired personnel of the fighting services of the United Kingdom”.

That will help to maximise the operational efficiency of our armed forces and improve retention and training.

The activities of the federation would cover five main areas: first, professional and career development through the provision of education and information; secondly, liaison, monitoring and response to proposals or developments within the armed forces and in Parliament, and the provision of services in the public or commercial sector for armed forces personnel; thirdly, advocacy and consultation to protect and improve the conditions of service life, including pay, accommodation, medical and welfare services, resettlement packages and all other areas of support for armed forces personnel and their families; fourthly, support to personnel facing court martial or other legal proceedings in connection with their service; and finally, negotiation of commercial benefits for armed forces personnel and their families.

It is important that the federation is seen to be independent, and is not beholden to any political party, pressure group or defence interest. While the federation needs robust and adequate funding, it is important that it is not seen as just another pressure group for defence interests. The federation will not take a view on defence strategy or operational decisions, although it may raise individual, legitimate concerns affecting its members.

To clarify, I reiterate that the federation will not be a trade union for the armed forces. It will not conduct or condone any form of industrial action or insubordination within the armed forces. The federation will seek to work with the Ministry of Defence to put in place a form of understanding that could deal with such issues. It will also recognise the importance of the chain of command. If we look at the BAFF’s website, we see that it clearly reinforces the point that the chain of command is to be recognised, not overridden.

The proposal might be seen as radical and dangerous by certain members of the armed forces, and possibly by some Opposition Members. But may I point out that many other nations, including the United States and Australia, already have such federations, which have the support of the military command in those countries? The proposal, however, is not to copy those, but to bring forward a British solution for the British armed forces. It will reflect the ethos and robust traditions of the three fighting services, but it will also meet the requirements of men and women who are serving in our armed forces.

The best example that I can give is that of the Armed Forces Federation of Australia. It is an independent voice on pay and allowances and represents members of the armed forces on employment issues. It also gives legal advice, financial assistance and advice, and allows for discounts and savings schemes nationally for all members of the Australian armed forces. The federation is controlled and structured by its members and is independent of the Australian military, although it has the backing of senior military figures. In the introduction to its latest handbook, Air Chief Marshall Houston says:

“As an independent representative body for military personnel, I welcome the Federation’s continued contribution to the development of personnel policies for the ADF”.

He acknowledged the federation’s “ongoing commitment and contribution” to the Australian armed forces.

The Bill would not set up an armed forces federation; it already exists. Instead, it would allow the BAFF to be recognised by the Ministry of Defence and be valued for providing a voice for ordinary members of our armed forces. The BAFF has already stated that if legislation, such as this Bill, were introduced, it would look to work with the Government and stakeholders to develop the appropriate structures for the representation of members of our armed forces. The Bill provides just that opportunity, and I urge the House to support it.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Kevan Jones, Mr. David Anderson, Mr. Iain Wright, David Wright, Helen Jones and Jim Sheridan.

Armed Forces (Federation)

Mr. Kevan Jones accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for the establishment of a Federation for the Armed Forces; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 19 October, and to be printed [Bill 117].

 Opposition Day

[13th Allotted Day]

NHS IT Programme

Mr. Speaker
I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

12:43:00

Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con)
I beg to move,

That this House acknowledges the aims of the NHS National Programme for Information Technology (IT) and supports them in principle, recognising the potential benefits IT can bring to patients and NHS staff if implemented correctly; deplores the hasty conception of the National Programme under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the failure to consult adequately with service users; regrets the parallel failure by the Department of Health to implement successfully the Medical Training Application process; expresses concern about the impact of the Care Records Service on patient confidentiality; notes in particular the concerns of the Committee of Public Accounts, in the context of its criticisms of the Government’s mismanagement of IT projects at large about the cost, delays in the Care Records System, the lack of a firm timetable for delivery, the struggles faced by suppliers to the programme, and the lack of engagement with frontline NHS professionals; regrets the opportunity cost to patient care and the disillusionment caused by the Programme amongst NHS staff; seeks assurances on the supply chain, particularly regarding iSOFT and an explanation for the delays in Choose and Book; and therefore calls for a full and independent review of the NHS IT programme.

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests.

Let me be clear from the outset: Conservative Members believe in ensuring that all patients in our NHS will get better care in future, from the expertise, dedication and wonderful work of NHS doctors, nurses, therapists and, yes, NHS managers, by harnessing information technology to improve the processes for patients’ treatments and their clinical outcomes. So, yes, we endorse the aims of the NHS national programme for IT, known as NPfIT and succeeded by Connecting for Health, which we support in principle, but—it is a big “but”—the reason for the debate, in Opposition time and in the absence of the Government bringing such an important and costly programme for debate on the Floor of the House, is to highlight, sadly, the woeful shortcomings of the way in which the Government have first designed and then sought to implement this vital programme.

The fact that the shortcomings were identified and predicted by us and many others over the past five years puts the onus on the Government not only to account for their delays, design U-turns and serial incompetence, but to accept that it is the official Opposition who now offer a constructive way forward in the interests of NHS patients—a constructive approach that is consistent with all that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) so expertly epitomises at all times in wanting to make our NHS better for all.

Members should not expect a speech from me focusing on which ministerial heads should roll. Nor should those so disillusioned by the Government’s amateurish cackhandedness in implementing their own policy through this IT programme that they would stop it in its tracks expect me to call for even an audit. That would imply, as audits do, that we want to look back at something that has stopped—finished. We do not. Rather, it is because we believe in the positive potential benefits of IT in the NHS, implemented correctly, for the good of patients and the morale and professionalism of all staff, that we now call for a full and independent zero-based review. We want to see a contrast with the Government’s performance to date: we want to see the programme put right, because that is the right thing to do.

The review—and this is the difference between a review and an audit—can and must be carried out while work on the programme is in progress, to prevent even more lost time and, potentially, lost lives. If the Government do not agree to a full and independent review today as a result of our call, we will, as a matter of urgency, set one up ourselves.

Why is the need for a review so urgent? It is because this is some remote, geeky, abstract topic, with IT experts arguing about the best platforms, protocols and data-sharing mechanisms and employing all the gobbledegook jargon that passes for language in the ethereal IT world, but because the Department of Health itself claims that the care records service—only one part of the programme—will prevent “thousands of unnecessary deaths”. As the programme is already at least two years late, by the Government’s own admission the consequences of its incompetent implementation must be those very thousands of unnecessary deaths. That is the real cost of the delays, the incompetence and the lost opportunity—let alone the estimated financial opportunity cost of £1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money. According to the National Audit Office, that was the cost last year, and it is rising.

Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, for allowing me to intervene. Given that he does not want the system to be scrapped—and given that there are now 19,778 instances of IT deployment, the 250 millionth picture archiving and communication system record is now in existence, and the 22 millionth prescription since the last Conservative-initiated debate has been issued; the number has risen from 237 million to nearly 250 million—he must recognise that real progress is being made. Is not the motion merely a diversion? Is this not just political opportunism on the hon. Gentleman’s part?

Mr. O'Brien
On the contrary. The hon. Gentleman has made something of a speciality of trying to understand this issue. He has read out some of the statistics in the Government amendment, but if he looks at the measures that the Government have set themselves, he will realise that the statistics in the amendment are irrelevant even to those. Furthermore, the electronic prescriptions account for only 5 per cent. of all prescriptions, which is way below the Government’s own target. Those statistics are, in fact, a mark of the Government’s lack of progress. Although they may indicate the progress that the hon. Gentleman would like to see, they are woefully short of what was promised or what could be achieved.

Mr. Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s answer to the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), but I caution him against the hon. Gentleman’s “Soviet tractor production statistics” approach. After all, what matters is not the total number of deployments, but the total number of deployment of facilities of major importance such as patient administration systems for acute hospitals. Will my hon. Friend confirm that in four years British Telecom has not managed to install a single one of those systems in its local service provider area, London?

Mr. O'Brien
Evidence does not support the progress that the Government and many others would claim. The evidence from my hon. Friend, who has conducted a dedicated study of the issue, is much more reliable.

Labour Members are wrong to regard our motion as smacking of anything other than a genuine wish to make the programme work. We are calling for a review, not an audit. The Government have never presented their case on the Floor of the House: they have never put themselves up for scrutiny.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman asks for a review. Does he think that the outcomes of various reviews conducted by the Office of Government Commerce at various stages of this mega-programme would help bring to public attention any flaws that it might contain? If an article in this week’s Computer Weekly is correct, the reports are being shredded rather than being brought into the public domain. That cannot be right, can it?

Mr. O'Brien
I also saw those reports, and I was distressed to read them. If that is what is happening, it must be wrong. I hope that those who are doing that are brought to account and to book.

There is another cost. Today we hear doctors formally declaring that they have lost confidence in the Government. Despite the fact that NHS professionals showed themselves to be open to the use of IT as soon as it became applicable to the health care setting decades ago, the Government have, according to the Labour-dominated Public Accounts Committee,

“failed to carry an important body of clinical opinion with it”.

According to a Medix survey, in 2002, 67 per cent. of general practitioners said that the IT programme was an important priority for the NHS. By November 2006, only 35 per cent. did.

I grant the Minister's boss, the Secretary of State for Health, one accurate prediction about the NHS IT programme. In September 2003, as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, she said of ID cards:

“The principle, the civil liberties and the practicalities of great big IT projects and databases have a horrible habit of going wrong”.

Why she did not heed her own advice and act on her own predictions once she got to the Department of Health two years later, to preside over the Government's biggest IT project, I do not know.

Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
I return to the intervention by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). We understand that reviews have been conducted internally and by the Office of Government Commerce. Should not they be published now?

Mr. O'Brien
I agree. All reviews should be published. It must be nice to see them, but we are calling for a zero-based, full and independent review because that is the only thing that is likely to carry the authority and respect that will win the day and help the professionals to get the thing right. I hope that we will see the hon. Gentleman join us in the Lobby to make such an endorsement.

As one newspaper leader yesterday put it, commenting on the most recent and excellent authoritative work of the Public Accounts Committee on the Government's ability to deliver IT projects generally,

“the Government's chronic inability to manage costly IT schemes effectively…has become one of new Labour's trademarks…At the heart of the problem is the slapdash approach to the management of high value projects that would not be tolerated in the private sector”.

Whether we are looking at the multi-billion pound fiasco of the Chancellor’s tax credit system, the potential ID card system or NHS IT, this is crass and amateur procurement on an industrial scale.

Mr. Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Does he agree that confidence in NHS IT projects in my constituency has been fundamentally shaken by two failures in the past six months? First, because of an IT failure, ambulances were diverted from taking patients to Royal Surrey county hospital and took them to Frimley Park hospital. Secondly, a failure in the choose and book system made it difficult for GPs to book people into appointments at Royal Surrey county hospital, as opposed to neighbouring hospitals. What did they both have in common? They took patients away from Royal Surrey county hospital, which is currently threatened with closure.

Mr. O'Brien
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making sure that the House is aware of those incidents, which caused concern, most importantly, for the patients themselves at the time. There is a lack of accountability and the lack of an explanation of why those incidents took place.

It is important to ensure that there is no misunderstanding among various Labour Members. To be constructive and to move forward, we must understand how we came to be here. Therefore, let us briefly track back. In 1998 the Government published their own information for health strategy. February 2002 saw the Prime Minister hold

“a seminar in information technology”,

another great headline-grabbing initiative, but how many clinicians were present at the meeting? Perhaps we shall soon learn, as the outgoing Prime Minister rushes his memoirs to the printers, but do not hold your breath, Mr. Speaker.

April 2002 brought the Wanless report, which recommended that IT funding should be doubled and ring-fenced. By June, the national programme for IT was launched by Ministers with the title “Delivering 21st century IT support for the NHS”. The published version of that omitted both the high-risk scoring and the costs estimate included in the draft—then £5 billion, a figure brilliantly unearthed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), whose forensic and relentless work in that area has been, and remains, parliamentary scrutiny of the highest order. I pay tribute to him. Can the Minister tell us why that £5 billion cost estimate was left out of the document? I look forward to the answer.

In December 2005, the problems really began.

Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. O'Brien
I will in one second.

The 100 per cent. choose and book target, and the original deadline on patient records were missed. By March 2006, as the recent National Audit Office review reported

“actual expenditure at £654 million (estimated outturn) spent against expected expenditure of £1,448 million, reflecting the slower than planned delivery”.

In April 2006 problems began at supplier iSOFT. In September, Accenture pulled out of the NHS IT programme, booking a £240 million provision for expected losses from the work. In March 2007, even the downgraded 90 per cent. choose and book target was missed, just as the electronic patient record pilots began. Pilots for care records were due to be in place by 2005.

Mr. Todd
I thank the hon. Gentleman for belatedly giving way. He has moved on from the point that I wanted to ask him about. If you allow me, Mr. Speaker, to catch your eye later, I will expand on some of the issues relating to proper management of information technology in both the public and private sectors, but I was concerned at the hon. Gentleman's rather naive view that the private sector is innocent in the matter. Has not he represented any constituents who use British Gas services and who are currently plagued by some of the difficulties arising from its change programme?

Mr. O'Brien
No doubt we look forward to the speech that the hon. Gentleman will make, if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, but this debate focuses on proper procurement and delivery, with the use of taxpayers’ funds, in the public sector of something that is really important: the health of our constituents and health care services. We must understand how the problem came about.

The only consultation to take place after the publication of “Delivering 21st century IT support for the NHS” in June 2002 looked at the care records element of the programme, and that was a consultation not on the substance of the programme, but on the technicalities of care records. There was no consultation on the other elements of the programme, namely choose and book, the electronic prescriptions service, the N3 broadband network, smartcard access, telecare, and the picture archiving and communications system, known as PACS. The latter and the N3 broadband network are the only bits so far that have been successful, so let us give credit where it is due. [Interruption.] As I have just said, PACS has been successful, if the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) will listen for once. As Professor Peter Hutton said to the Public Accounts Committee during its review:

“key decisions were taken in the early period without proper clinical input”.

The seeds of the Department's failure to engage clinicians, condemned by the PAC, were sown at that time.

Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I think that we would all accept that PACS is successful, but that project went on for some time before NHS Connecting for Health got going. Therefore, it is a pre-existent project.

Mr. O'Brien
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. It has often been confirmed by our local expert, the surgeon commander on my right, my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), that that system was working perfectly satisfactorily and did not need to be hugely improved under the current system. However, there are still other systems that must be brought up to standard.

One of the major concerns with the NHS IT programme, and one which an independent review must address, is the seeming lack of an evidence base for it. In a recent British Medical Journal article on the subject, one trust director was quoted as saying

“One of the things they haven't done very well is to clarify some of the benefits...I haven't seen a good list of benefits”.

Cost-benefit analysis is basic to any capital project, let alone one of this scale, costing billions, and especially when it is taxpayers' money. The paucity of the evidence base testifies to the hurried planning and procurement of the programmes. With at least £12.4 billion of taxpayers’ money being committed, some cost-benefit analysis should have been done, and a robust business case established.

The growing cost of the programme has been the inevitable and wholly avoidable consequence. The programme was launched with the putative cost, as we know, of £5 billion, which was excised from the document. Once the contracts were signed, the ministerial line was that it would cost £6.2 billion over 10 years, although Lord Warner admitted on “Newsnight” that

“the full cost of the programme was likely to be nearer £20 billion”.

The NAO put the figure of £12.4 billion on the programme, and the PAC has suggested that even that massive sum may be surpassed. To October 2006, only £918.2 million-worth of that sum had been delivered.

Despite the highest paid civil servant being in charge of Connecting for Health, the programme has suffered from a lack of leadership. In two years, there were no fewer than six “senior responsible owners” of the NHS IT programme at Richmond House. Lack of leadership was one of the key themes of this week’s PAC report into Government IT. It highlighted the failure of Ministers across Government to meet the senior responsible owners of mission-critical and high-risk IT programmes, or to take a grip by meeting them sufficiently regularly. It also highlighted the low profile and high turnover of chief information officers and the lack of clarity about their roles.

To all of that we must add that one of the design flaws of the NHS IT programme has been its massive centralisation. The programme structure has, in effect, established several regional monopolies through local service providers. From the original four, there are now three providers serving five regions: the CSC Alliance in the north-west and west midlands, the north-east and the eastern clusters; Fujitsu Alliance in the southern cluster; and the Capital Care Alliance—CCA—in the London cluster. CSC took on two clusters from Accenture when it pulled out of the programme in September 2006.

Hospitals have been forced to accept the IT imposed on them by those local service providers, or in some cases have had to invest in costly interim solutions due to delays in the programme. A recent BMJ study into the implementation of the programme suggested that the Connecting for Health software is more expensive than software on the open market. One medical director said:

“A lot of things are being sold to us at a much higher price than we would have been able to get if we’d been in a real market situation, so the total costs to the NHS have been very high indeed”.

Those regional monopolies have caused serious supply-chain concerns. The exit of Accenture—at an estimated loss to it of £250 million—was a big blow to the credibility of the programme. The supplier that has been most in the public eye is iSOFT. Its share price has plummeted twice—that is public information—and on 6 April the shares fell a further 40 per cent. It appears that iSOFT’s previous accounting policy, which it has now had to abandon, was based on its receipt of letters of credit, centred around advance payments from NHS Connecting for Health. In evidence to the PAC on 26 June, Richard Granger of Connecting for Health stated that it would make an advance payment only when covered by a letter of credit from a bank. That is nice work if you can get it. [Interruption.] That completely undermines the Department’s claim that suppliers get paid only when they deliver. [Interruption.] But as the Minister cannot be bothered to listen, she will not understand that.

iSOFT is now looking for a buyer. Its main customer, CSC or Computer Sciences Corporation, has opposed a bid by an Australian firm. [Interruption.] The Minister says from a sedentary position that she finds what I am saying boring. The trouble is that she is so bored by IT that she has not bothered to have regular meetings, or to supervise or take a grip of the process. She needs to listen to a proper critique of where the Government are wasting taxpayers’ money, and to take control for once of a programme for which the Government are deeply responsible.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a strong case. Is not the real issue that on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis Ministers do not know what they are doing? In May 2006, the Minister advised us that the programme was

“already the focus of regular and routine audit, scrutiny and review.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 1877W.]

In the same month, her colleague, Lord Warner, said that the likely costs of the project would be not £2.3 billion as originally envisaged, but £20 billion. Does that not sum up the Government’s mismanagement of the programme?

Mr. O'Brien
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a valid point, although the Minister would no doubt immediately say that the £20 billion was meant to encompass the total expenditure on IT across the NHS and not only the Connecting for Health programme. Either way, it is monumental incompetence to double one’s costs in a short period.

As I have said, iSOFT is now looking for a buyer. Its main customer, CSC, has opposed a bid by an Australian firm, IBA Health. It was announced yesterday that iSOFT is beginning legal proceedings against CSC; and CSC today said it was continuing to review its options

“and does not exclude the possibility of making an offer for iSOFT”.

I have tabled written questions to the Secretary of State asking what responsibility she has for the matter; typically, she has said that she has none.

The programme has been a masterclass in how not to do procurement. I expect that the Minister will stand up and crow about the speed of the procurement, which was begun in February 2003 and completed by February 2004, but what has it led to? Suppliers are leaving or collapsing, and the system is both dysfunctional and late, with costs burgeoning against minuscule delivery—despite the statistics in the Government amendment, which are, in any event, not measured against their own targets, showing that they dare not do that.

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned iSOFT and the role of the private sector. Following on from the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), may I caution the hon. Gentleman about IT projects in the private sector? IT projects across the piece—in both the private and public sectors—are notoriously difficult. This project comprises several programmes and we are all aware that it has not gone smoothly. However, it is wrong to have a rose-tinted view that things go smoothly in the private sector. The difference is that the private sector hides things. Moreover, when iSOFT was booking revenues and declaring them against future revenues, which is very dodgy accountancy practice—it has been caught doing that—the chair of its audit committee was that private sector champion, Sir Digby Jones.

Mr. O'Brien
Whether or not things were hidden or inefficient in the private sector, at least scrutiny was exercised by both competition and shareholders. It appears in the public sector that the Government have also been seeking to hide things. Why else have they not had a debate on this subject on the Floor of the House? The Opposition have had to secure this debate. Furthermore, taxpayers’ money has been used and the Government have created a series of monopolies for delivery, and they are not exposing that to the true test, which is competition. Competition is one of the best ways of making sure that things are not inefficient and not hidden.

The two most controversial elements of the programme are the care records service and choose and book. Under the care records service, the patient record was supposed to have been fully rolled out by December 2005. The first pilots went live only in March this year, and we are still awaiting a timetable for full roll-out. Above all, widespread and deep-seated anxiety about patient confidentiality has troubled many as they come to appreciate the Government’s design for their private and personal information.

The Government made a notable U-turn when they decided in December last year to allow individuals to opt out of the summary care record: we welcome that option. However, serious concerns remain. The Government insist on saying that

“only basic data will be held on the summary care record”.

However, that includes information about prescriptions, from which, as any doctor will confirm, any illness or range of illnesses being treated can be fairly easily extrapolated. Will the Minister remove prescription data from the summary care record, or at least stop using the word “basic”, which is deceptive in this context?

Moreover, when the Government announced the opt-out, they failed to make it clear that it is still not a full opt-out. Patients can opt out of having their medical details uploaded to the spine, but they still cannot opt out of having their demographic information updated, such as name, address, date of birth and NHS number. Will the Secretary of State come to the House to state that that will be made clear in the literature going out to patients at the pilot sites? Furthermore, the Government have not yet come clean on whether they intend to join up their identity cards programme with the NHS IT programme; this debate gives the Minister the opportunity to clear that up, and I hope that she will do so.

Finally, we have not yet received the assurances we need about the security of the system. The Minister might stand up and rehearse arguments about “legitimate relationships”, “role-based access”, smart cards and audit trails, but we know that smartcards are shared in hospitals, and an audit trail—if it works—merely tries to shut the door after the horse has bolted.

Andrew Miller
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. O'Brien
I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman; he has already had a go, and it did not work last time.

We must also not lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of people who go to hospital are at least lightly conscious even if they are very ill or seriously injured, and even if they are unconscious, doctors will still follow proper professional diagnostic procedures, rather than tap away at a laptop next to the patient to find out what has been wrong with them in the past. There seems to have been no consideration of that reality. If a proper business case had been submitted and consultation with front-line staff had taken place, the fundamental need for this type of IT base might have been reconsidered.

The choose and book service was supposed to be 100 per cent. delivered by the end of December 2005. When the Government missed that, they set a target of 90 per cent. delivery by March this year—a target they have missed by miles. A mere 38 per cent. of bookings are being made through choose and book, with some primary care trusts achieving rates as low as 8 per cent.

In an interview on “Newsnight” about the national programme for IT, broadcast a year ago, Lord Warner, the former Minister responsible for NHS IT, said that he would resign if choose and book was not delivered by this March. He got out well in advance—last December. So no Minister has taken responsibility for the delay, and—surprise, surprise—to replace Lord Warner the Government have re-appointed Lord Hunt, who designed the thing in the first place.

In addition, it transpires that half these bookings are done by patients themselves on the phone. Their doctor gives them a list of hospitals and their telephone numbers, and it is up to them to go home, choose their preferred hospital and try to make the booking, instead of its being done at the doctor’s surgery, as it should be. Choose and book, where it is working, is rarely working properly.

Mr. Hunt
Does my hon. Friend agree that choose and book might have been a lot more successful had there been proper consultation with key stakeholders—namely, the GPs who use the system? They complain frequently that one of the main problems with choose and book is that they can book appointments only at particular hospitals and not with individual consultants. However, many GPs want to book an appointment with a consultant whom they know is particularly good at a given task.

Mr. O'Brien
My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on—such consultation is precisely the issue. Moreover, patients want choice as part of their freedoms and opportunities. At the same time, they want to continue to engage the expertise of those upon whom they rely.

So we have to ask, is choose and book, which is not yet working fully—far from it—as currently designed really the improvement in services that patients are crying out for? When will the Government give a proper timetable for choose and book, if it can be delivered? If it cannot, when will they abandon it?

Margaret Moran (Luton, South) (Lab)
To hear the hon. Gentleman speak, one would think that choose and book is a complete disaster. However, are not nearly 98 per cent. of GPs using live choose and book? Moreover, and as the hon. Gentleman has just indicated, surely the issue is whether the service to patients is effective. For example, are not hospital records, which were previously turned around in two to three weeks, now turned around in two to three days? Does the hon. Gentleman not count that as a success?

Mr. O'Brien
I am surprised to discover that the hon. Lady has not been listening, because that is certainly not what I said. Anybody relying on that 98 per cent. figure will discover on examination that even a doctor who has used choose and book once and found it to be totally useless has been included in that figure. The true figure—as shown in a parliamentary answer given by one of the Minister’s own colleagues—is about 38 per cent., although it might have gone up by one or two points since that answer was given. So the hon. Lady should rely on facts, rather than on the Whips’ handout.

I turn briefly to electronic prescriptions. In 2004, the Department of Health set an overall aim of “implementing a national service” of e-prescribing

“by 2005 for 50 per cent. of all transactions, with full implementation by 2007.”

However, just 0.1 per cent. of all prescriptions issued in the NHS in December 2005 were issued by that method. Although the latest available figures show that in the week to 28 May 2007, 5 per cent. of all prescriptions were issued using the electronic prescriptions service—that is a better measure than the one paraded in an earlier intervention and in the Government’s amendment—figures uncovered by us show that less than 2 per cent. of those prescriptions were downloaded by pharmacists for dispensing. So much for the boast in the Government’s amendment! Despite even this very low take-up rate, NHS Connecting for Health still insists that,

“By 2007, every GP surgery (for use by the GPs, nurses and other prescribers working from the surgery) and community pharmacy and other dispensers will have access to the service.”

We witnessed the sight in Woolwich as recently as 25 May of the incoming Prime Minister saying in his campaign—against nobody—to head the Labour party that

“we need prescriptions to be translated to people, directly to the chemist, in a way that you don’t have to queue up at the doctor’s for a repeat prescription”.

However, this is the very Chancellor who presided over a Treasury that explicitly provided the money, which he announced in his Budgets, to be spent to achieve all this by 2005. What monumental incompetence caused him not to know where that money had gone and that it had failed to achieve its stated goal—so much so that he had to announce that goal as the very first of his new ideas? The system was meant to have been in place for more than 18 months now.

Speaking of monumental incompetence, I shall leave the subject of the parallel scandalous failure of the Department to implement successfully the medical training application scheme for junior doctors to my expert colleague who will wind up for us today—the surgeon commander, my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury. [Interruption.] Yes, surgeon commander, and to be respected.

Today we are calling for a full zero-based independent review of the programme. To date, rather chippily, that has been ruled out by Ministers and by the chief executive of the NHS, yet the latter has acknowledged the “clash” between a national programme and the need for it to be delivered locally. He described the programme as

“too much, on far too big a waterfront”,

and referred to the “bunker mentality” that Connecting for Health has built around it. I cannot argue with his critique of the programme as far as it goes, but when are the Government going to make the necessary U-turn and devolve complete power to local hospitals? One of the original architects, Lord Hunt, who is now back in post, said just last month—[Interruption.] Ministers might like to listen to this. Their own colleague who is now back in post and in charge, said that now is the right time

“to make the shift towards local ownership”.

That is what we have called for all along—local contracting, with nationally set interoperability standards.

Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
We said that five years ago.

Mr. O'Brien
Indeed, and look what has happened in the interim. The Government have failed on the job. Above all, that is what the users—doctors, be they consultants or GPs, nurses, therapists and managers—really want. Then, they will buy into this and use IT to improve health care for patients. Only a full, zero-based independent review can bring us to that point, and the Minister should now have the grace to accede to having one.

It is in the interests of patients and our constituents, and of the morale and professionalism of the wonderful and dedicated staff in our NHS, that I urge the House to vote for the motion.

13:16:00

The Minister of State, Department of Health (Caroline Flint)
I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

‘recognises that a modern IT system is vital for delivering good healthcare; welcomes the NHS IT Programme which provides safer, faster and better healthcare for NHS patients, giving them more choice and control over their care; supports the objectives of modernising medical careers; further supports the aim of connecting over 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals and giving patients access to their personal health and care information; congratulates the NHS on having already delivered 93 Picture Archiving and Communications Systems across the country including a 100 per cent. achievement in London, delivering faster results for patients; further congratulates the NHS for sending over 21 million electronic prescriptions so far, reducing inefficiencies and errors; welcomes the fact that over 85 per cent. of all GP practices have used Choose and Book to refer their patients to hospital and that almost 3.8 million Choose and Book bookings have been made so far, allowing patients to choose appointments that are at convenient times to fit in with their lives; and welcomes the news that approximately 1.2 million NHS employees now have access to the new broadband network N3.’.

It is laudable that the Opposition support, as the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) acknowledged today, the aims of the national programme for IT. However, it is deplorable that they continue to condemn the delivery of this programme and the necessary investment to achieve the aims that they so loftily support. It is noteworthy that when the Conservatives were last in government, the NHS was one of the last bastions of garage-built computer and paper systems. Despite the Labour Government’s inheriting from the Conservatives in 1997 an NHS that was spending approximately 2 per cent. of its overall budget on computer systems, the one thing that unified almost all the systems bought for the NHS by that Conservative Government was their incompatibility and their inability to pass information from one site to another.

It should be noted that, despite our having led the world in the computerisation of GP practices, the one thing that we could guarantee patients was that their electronic records within a GP practice could not be transferred electronically to another practice—even between systems bought from the same vendor. That lamentable state of affairs is now viewed with a quaint 1950s nostalgia by Opposition Members as being more desirable than the successes delivered by this Government through the national programme for IT.

Far from being a “hasty conception”, the NHS’s national programme for IT learned from the mistakes that a Tory Government made. In 1998, we launched a well thought through four-year programme to develop pilots of electronic records. The electronic record development and implementation programme, known as ERDIP, led to a number of small-scale yet successful local installations. The key issues that contributed to this programme’s not being sustainable in itself were the need for it to be taken up on a national basis and to deal with the unaffordability created by this local development. Such affordability issues were driven by significant cost inefficiencies as a consequence of small-scale local procurements and a high degree of variability in the software from one NHS location to another. During 2001 and 2002, it was with these lessons in mind from the preceding three years that we established a strategy group under the auspices of Professor Sir John Pattison, then director of research analysis and information at the Department of Health, in order to pull together a strategy that we published in 2000, entitled “21st Century IT for the NHS”. It is therefore an act of gross revisionism to suggest that the Government hastily conceived the national programme under my noble Friend and Minister, Lord Hunt.

Mr. Todd
Bearing in mind what the Minister has said, I doubt she will be surprised that the mental health trust in Derbyshire has, certainly until recently, operated with 19 separate information systems and that it is virtually impossible to obtain appropriate management information in such a fragmented systems environment.

Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend is right. We are trying to catch up with the fragmented communications in the NHS, large as it is, and the essential requirement behind change is patient safety and better services. That might mean some inconvenience for staff, but that has to be faced if we are to put patients at the heart of our health service.

Dr. Pugh
Will the Minister give a guarantee that software provided by the various local service providers—quite a few of which are still left—is all interoperable?

Caroline Flint
We are obviously trying to ensure that. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman to clarify that point, but we need to achieve step-by-step change. I shall come to how we have had to take stock of development and its timetable to ensure that we get it right.

The Opposition’s failure to recall the extreme difficulties that they experienced in government in specifying systems, many of which never went live and were a gross misuse of public money, contrasts sharply with this programme, which has been tightly managed—as endorsed by the National Audit Office. I will concede that there are unavoidably a number of users who have not been consulted, but during the four-year pilot process the NHS Information Authority, and predecessor organisations such as the information management group, undertook extensive consultation with end-users about the content of the national strategy. We now have a system in place through a rolling programme of service implementation, led by a veteran NHS manager, Richard Jeavons, to ensure that before the implementation of systems all users, especially those on the front line, are satisfied with what they are receiving and how it will be implemented.

Unfortunately, I have to tell the hon. Member for Eddisbury and his supporters that the Opposition’s activities in fuelling negative media coverage often prejudice the opinions of end-users prior to their receipt of systems. Connecting for Health and the Government have had to answer misinformation provided by the Conservatives and others. Day by day, however, more and more staff are recognising the value of the new system and putting it into practice.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
Opticians must be doing well because the Minister is wearing rose-tinted spectacles. What unique insight into the programme has been missed by the Health Service Journal, the BMA, GPs, 23 eminent IT specialists and parties in this House? It is not only the Opposition who question the implementation and efficacy of the programme; it is all those experts, who have all been disregarded by the Minister and her colleagues.

Caroline Flint
Nobody is being disregarded. We recognise that there have been delays because we need to be sure that what we are trying to achieve and the practical implementation of the programme are understood. I make no apology for that. I would rather spend a little time getting it right than do it wrongly. There is a difference between constructive engagement and that based on no real evidence but on speculation and misinformation put into the public arena. I will give specific examples on particular groups later.

The national programme for IT in the NHS has established a number of well respected national clinical leads, and recently appointed a full-time clinical director. It has also established user forums for live systems and continues to improve these systems in line with feedback from users. Perhaps the greatest example of the way in which the national programme for IT does listen to its end-users relates to the picture archiving and communication systems, or PACS. Today in London, every NHS hospital is now equipped with that type of system. That means that patients wait significantly less time for reports and follow-up consultations, that films are no longer lost and that care is delivered more safely and efficiently. Picture archiving was not part of the programme when the contracts were let in 2003. Those systems were added to the contracts in 2004 in direct response to feedback from front-line clinicians and groups representing patients, so the system has been updated and remains as flexible as possible to take account of new IT developments.

Meg Hillier (Hackney, South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I have seen PACS in operation in the Homerton hospital. It had its teething problems, but it is now very welcome in London hospitals. I have a more personal point to make, which is that patients in Hackney who have an appointment with a hospital or a community service now receive a text message to remind them of their appointment. If we are to bring health care into the modern world, that is an improvement that should be welcomed on both sides of the House.

Caroline Flint
I agree. Would it not be wonderful if the media and other commentators talked more about where the system is working well for people? Then people in other parts of the country could ask their health chiefs and officials for the same service. That would be community engagement and patient engagement, which is what we want for people all over the country.

Andrew Miller
My hon. Friend correctly referred to the way in which PACS was added on the basis of consultation with end-users and clinicians. Will she also confirm—to correct misinformation from the Opposition—that the technology involved in PACS is such that it could not have been rolled out on a mass scale under the previous Administration or indeed before we did it?

Caroline Flint
Absolutely. We had to have national oversight and direction, as well as the resources to make that wonderful development happen. Money is really important. It is interesting to hear from the Opposition about how they want to stall the national programme—

Mr. Stephen O'Brien
On the contrary.

Caroline Flint
Well, another inquiry would bring progress into question. The Opposition have never told us what they would have been prepared to spend to provide the service that is benefiting patients and assisting NHS staff. There is a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk and making the services that we should expect as a matter of course in the 21st century something that everyone can experience.

I acknowledge that in some cases we have had to take stock, delay implementation or adjust our thinking based on what we have been told by those on the front line. I am also willing to acknowledge that some of the systems that have been implemented under the programme have not proved popular with end-users as they introduce benefits to patients that may not be to the convenience of NHS staff on all occasions. One such example is the choose and book system. It benefits a patient nearly every second of any day. However, the additional work required by GPs to deliver this improved service to patients has been controversial and I recognise that the early versions of the software have been improved as a consequence of direct feedback from doctors.

Several hon. Members were present at an event hosted by Computer Sciences Corporation—CSC—last night in Portcullis House. They would have heard from Dr. Angela Rowland that far from the systems being unresponsive to the needs of end-users, her work environment as a doctor has now been radically improved as a consequence of the delivery of these new systems.

Andrew Miller
I stayed at the CSC event throughout because I am interested in the work that it has done on picture archiving at the Countess of Chester hospital and I was concerned to note that, despite invitation, not a single Conservative Member turned up.

Caroline Flint
That is an interesting piece of information. The Conservatives obviously like to listen to people only if they are saying what they want to hear.

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con)
What advice can the Minister offer my constituent, Mr. Pegler, whose GP decided that he needs an urgent appointment as he has a family history of cancer? He was advised to use the choose and book system and given the telephone numbers of four hospitals, yet it has proved impossible to get an appointment from any of them. He subsequently contacted the patient advice and liaison service, but is still waiting for a response. Mr. Pegler has been trying to get an appointment for nine weeks. I do not know whether Hackney hospital was one of the four to which he was directed, but I should be grateful for any advice the Minister can give him.

Caroline Flint
I am very concerned to hear about that situation. If it had happened to one of my constituents, I should have been knocking at the GP’s door to ask what was going on. I shall be happy to take the information away and look into the matter because we know, and I hope the hon. Lady acknowledges, that the access times for diagnosis and treatment of cancer have improved enormously over the past 10 years. However, I am happy to talk to her about how best to represent her constituents.

It is the case that in some aspects of the programme extended consultation with end-users has led to some delays from the original timetable, which was established in 2002. One such example is the summary care record, where an extended consultation exercise with members of the public and professions working in the NHS was led by Harry Cayton, the national director for patient involvement at the Department of Health. It resulted in modifications both to the requirements and the consent model from what was proposed in 2002. Far from regretting that aspect of delay in the programme, I think it was a prudent course of action. In our opinion, to have proceeded hastily with the delivery of the system, in the absence of consensus for the consent model and the content of the summary care record, would have been ill advised.

With regard to front-line clinician support for the summary care record, I refer the House to coverage on BBC Radio Manchester on 31 March, when Dr. Natha of Kearsley medical centre in Bolton stated that patients would benefit greatly from the summary care record. For example, any doctor outside a GP practice who makes an emergency visit to a patient in the middle of the night would have an up-to-date and accurate summary of the patient record in front of them without having to put questions to an elderly patient who may or may not know the answers, or even be in a position to give them.

A point was made about the medical training application system. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has already answered questions about MTAS and we have expressed our regret for the difficulties with the system. However, it should be noted that the security and end-user assurance arrangements within the systems deployed by the national programme for IT—at this point, about 19,500 systems used by more than 350,000 front-line NHS staff—have to date prevented such difficulties from occurring. We have avoided hostages to fortune through the provision of cast-iron guarantees in that respect.

We take patients’ concerns about the confidentiality of their records extremely seriously. We have established a consent model in the NHS in England that respects the wishes of patients to control the flow of their information, while establishing an arrangement that is administratively efficient and pragmatic. Although much may be heard within the confines of Westminster about the public’s concerns about confidentiality, it is the case that less than 0.2 per cent. of patients in the early adopter communities for the summary care record have so far expressed a wish to opt out of the summary care record as it is launched.

It would be wrong for Opposition Members to suggest that arrangements they oversaw in the NHS, which relied on post, faxes and phone calls, were something that a 21st-century Government would want to perpetuate. It is a necessity on the grounds of efficiency and safety that the NHS move from those islands of electronic information and a dependency on paper into the 21st century, with information moving on a secure basis to support patients as they are cared for in numerous locations.

Meg Hillier
My hon. Friend will acknowledge the excellence of the City and Hackney primary care trust, one of the top seven of the 32 in London. However, although that excellent PCT welcomes the community support system—the RiO system—which will, for example, track childhood immunisation and is vital in tackling public health, it says that it is “a massive task” and that we shall have to find lots of extra resources to support it. Can my hon. Friend expand—if not now, perhaps in writing—on how NHS IT services can help PCTs that are already as good as mine to ensure that we have decent public health IT systems as well as the acute systems that she has been describing?

Caroline Flint
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. As the Minister responsible for vaccination programmes and public health, I am concerned to ensure that we have joined-up systems in terms of vaccination. There are clearly real issues in London in respect of the movement of families from one side of the city to another. I have taken them up by holding meetings with Connecting for Health and Department of Health officials responsible for immunisation so that we can tackle some of the problems and make sure that the systems are fit for purpose. The issue is complex and it is a challenge tracking the movements of families with children, especially those who may be vulnerable and not in a steady residential situation. If my hon. Friend wants to talk to me further about the circumstances in her neighbourhood, I shall be happy to meet her.

We have put in place security standards known as e-GIF—electronic Government information framework—level 3, which provide the highest level of civilian security around users accessing systems. Furthermore, all staff in the NHS are bound by professional codes of conduct, and the wide area networks being used between NHS sites are, by civilian standards, secure. Clearly, it would be misleading of me to offer the House an absolute, cast-iron guarantee that there will never be leaks of information, but we have taken all reasonable precautions to ensure the security of information being stored and transmitted within the system. We take it very seriously if any member of NHS staff makes inappropriate use of their access to information.

Mr. Todd
Given the existing Lloyd George record system, which despite the incredible professionalism of NHS staff can only be described as extraordinarily vulnerable in security terms, it is worth bearing in mind the different context. In that system, the exposure to risk is within a relatively limited environment, whereas once information is placed on a network the exposure to risk is much wider. Can my hon. Friend expand on how that problem will be tackled?

Caroline Flint
We are of course looking at exposure risks in the networks—at issues relating to access, PINs and smartcards—as well as the offences that are appropriate if individual members of staff misuse their security access and clearance. Any organisation, whether in the public or private sector, faces such challenges when dealing with information about customers, patients or users, but I am pleased to say that we are operating at the highest standard of civilian security in terms of data—probably the highest anywhere in the public sector. In many respects, the national IT programme has learned from previous Government IT programmes; that is acknowledged and the system is being driven forward in a way from which other public and private sector systems could learn.

I am sure that Opposition Members will join me in congratulating NHS Connecting for Health, which was commended even in the recent Public Accounts Committee report on IT projects. The outgoing chief executive of the Office of Government Commerce, John Oughton, said:

“I think the procurement process for Connecting for Health was an exemplary example of procurement. It was run to a very tight and rapid time scale; it started when it was intended and completed when it was intended; and it produced a very good result. I do not think any of the suppliers were disadvantaged in that process.”

Furthermore, I am sure that Opposition Members will also join me in commending NHS Connecting for Health for what was described by the NAO at the conclusion of its 18-month investigation into the national programme as

“a very positive report, which confirms that the programme to modernise the NHS computer systems is…much needed…well managed…based on excellent contracts…delivering major savings…on budget…has made substantial progress”.

Far from being badly run and over budget, the national programme for IT has been independently reviewed already by the NAO, which found that the

“previous model of IT procurement was haphazard”

and that this

“programme has the potential to deliver substantial financial, safety and service benefits for patients and the NHS”.

I am sure that Members of the Conservative Opposition are familiar with the content of the report because it was laid before Parliament on 16 June 2006. I am sure that they do not rely only on the opinions of such people as Tony Collins of Computer Weekly, who has, I understand, provided briefings solely to members of the Conservative party and produced material for publication by Conservative party think-tanks.

Mr. Bacon
It is interesting that the hon. Lady says that Mr. Tony Collins of Computer Weekly has provided briefings solely to the Conservative party. I happen to know that David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, invited Tony Collins to a seminar, which he agreed to attend. How can that be consistent with what the Minister just said?

Caroline Flint
Does that not demonstrate that we are open to listening to all voices in the debate? We do not approach this from a narrow, partisan point of view. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it is useful if people are transparent about who they are providing advice to and the parties for which they are writing IT policy.

In our opinion, it is lamentable that a programme that is focused on the delivery of safer and more efficient health care in the NHS in England has been politicised and attacked for short-term partisan gain when, in fact, it is to the benefit of everyone using the NHS in England that the programme is provided with the necessary resources and support to achieve the aims that Conservative Members have acknowledged that they agree with.

Owing to delays in some areas of the programme, far from it being overspent, there is an underspend, which is perhaps unique for a large IT programme. The contracts that were ably put in place in 2003 mean that committed payments are not made to suppliers until delivery has been accepted 45 days after “go live” by end-users. We have made advance payments to a number of suppliers to provide efficient financing mechanisms for their work in progress. However, it should be noted that the financing risk has remained with the suppliers and that guarantees for any advance payments have been made by the suppliers to the Government. That contrasts sharply with the policy of the Conservatives when they launched the now abandoned policy of financing IT projects through the private finance initiative. The national programme for IT in the NHS has successfully transferred the financing and completion risk to its suppliers.

It is untrue that there is not a firm timetable for delivery. It is sadly the case that extended consultation and a knock-on effect regarding delays in specification led to two years’ delay in the delivery of the summary care record functionality. However, each software delivery from BT, the contractor concerned, has been on time for more than 12 months. Similarly, the quality management analysis system for GP payments was delivered on time. The picture archiving system is on time. The core software for choose and book and the electronic prescription service has been delivered on time, and the network underpinning all those applications was delivered—[Hon. Members: “On time?”]—early.

I find it perplexing that Conservative Members have suddenly developed a deep relationship with some struggling IT suppliers. Are they suggesting that the Government should indulge in a little bit of dodgy state aid, or perhaps bung a few tens of millions of pounds to failing suppliers as a consequence of a supplier’s failure to fulfil its obligations? It would be interesting to hear what the Public Accounts Committee would think about such a policy.

Rob Marris
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and underscores the fact that the official Opposition do not really understand the computer industry. I do not claim to be an expert on it, but I spent some of the previous Parliament as a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, which produced a report on computers. The Conservative motion calls for a “full and independent review”, but the NAO has already carried out a review. Given that the nature of the industry is such that there are few suppliers, where on earth would the Conservatives get an independent body to conduct such a review? It does not exist. If there were a big enough body with sufficient expertise to carry out a review, it would certainly be in the system of government already.

Caroline Flint
I agree with my hon. Friend. The review is a red herring and part of the attempt constantly to undermine the good progress that is being made under the national programme. The Conservatives are trying to build in more stalling mechanisms, instead of constructively engaging on delivery.

When the Department of Health published the principles of the procurement arrangements for the national programme in January 2003, it stated clearly that it intended to transfer financing and completion risk to the supplier community. All suppliers bid voluntarily for the delivery of services to the NHS under those contracts, and in a small number of cases there have been significant supplier failures. While that is unfortunate in itself, it is fortunate that the costs of those failures have not been borne by the taxpayer. Simply pouring further funds into inefficient and often paper-based administrative processes might be what is recommended by the experts advising Conservative Members, but the Labour Government believe that a properly supported and financed national programme for systems in the NHS is absolutely essential to how we deliver health services in the 21st century.

There is strong evidence pointing to the fact that the chaotic and ad hoc procurement of local systems delivers poorer care as a consequence of tests being unnecessarily repeated, patients’ treatments being delayed and appointments having to be rebooked when information is not available. Properly networked systems operating across multiple locations with a high degree of standardisation are the common-sense solution.

Far from there being a significant opportunity cost to patient care, efficiencies are delivering significantly better patient care as a consequence of the NHS having a universal wide-area network, an online demographic service that is accessible from more than 7,000 locations and used by more than 50,000 front-line staff each day, and a picture archiving system, the deployment of which throughout the whole country is nearing completion. It would be naive to imagine that the implementation of such long overdue and complex systems would not be without disruption. Many end-users are far from disillusioned; they are delighted to have modern tools available. That is especially the case in community settings, where staff, especially nurses, were frequently dependent on paper and often needed to visit offices to obtain notes and details of further visits.

The NHS IT programme has already been subjected to a number of reviews, including an 18-month full and independent review by the NAO. I note with some sadness that 23 individuals, some of whom are well respected academics, have called for a review of the programme. As was mentioned earlier, I understand that representatives of the group met David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS. Unfortunately, Professors Ross Anderson and Martyn Thomas were unable to articulate any firm grounds to substantiate an independent review, other than the existence of a large volume of negative media coverage—I have seen it—some of which they generated. Is that really a basis for a review when so many of our patients are already benefiting from a better NHS? We, the Government, think not.

Thousands of NHS staff and many thousands more patients are already benefiting from the national programme for IT. In the trusts covering the constituency of the hon. Member for Eddisbury, Connecting for Health systems are already used by 645 GPs and 335 pharmacists. To date, more than 20,000 direct bookings have been made through choose and book in his area, which is already benefiting from the picture archiving and communications system. Our ambition is that all NHS staff and the public throughout England will gain from the enormous benefits that the national programme for IT is enabling. With pride and confidence, I commend the Government amendment to the House.

13:47:00

Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
It is extraordinary to listen to Ministers talking about this subject because there seems to be a complete disconnection between the world that they inhabit and that inhabited by most people working in the NHS whom I meet. If one talks to a room full of doctors, whether they are GPs or consultants, one hears a universal groan when one mentions Connecting for Health and the national programme.

Rob Marris
indicated dissent.

Norman Lamb
The hon. Gentleman’s experience must be completely different from mine because I have noted a remarkable loss of confidence in the system among NHS professionals. The same mindset that we have seen regarding MTAS seems to exist for this system. The hon. Gentleman at least acknowledged that there had been problems with the programme. Indeed, he went a little further than the Minister’s tentative acknowledgement of some sort of discontent. He has been forthright in his concerns about MTAS. I suggest that he listens more to the many health professionals with genuine concerns about aspects of the programme that we are considering. I fully understand and acknowledge that many of the constituent parts of the programme have real merit. However, several of its aspects cause genuine concern.

Andrew Miller
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the underlying problem is that any large-scale change management programme brings out the conservative—with a small “c”—nature in people, and that it is very difficult to carry 100 per cent. of the staff with it?

Norman Lamb
Of course, I accept that change brings about resistance, and that that is sometimes because of a conservative refusal to move on—[Hon. Members: “With a small “c”.] I readily acknowledge that I meant a small “c”. However, everything that I have read and that I have heard from the clinicians to whom I have spoken shows that people’s concerns go beyond that. My plea to Ministers and to Labour Back Benchers is that they should acknowledge that there are genuine anxieties and problems. What winds up health professionals most is Ministers simply refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem. The Minister did tentatively acknowledge that there were concerns among some health professionals, but with very carefully chosen words. That is exactly what happened with MTAS. There should be a greater willingness to recognise people’s concerns.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
Is not the more fundamental problem the lack of information that is available to Ministers in the Department of Health in making decisions? I refer the hon. Gentleman to the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), who, when he challenged the Minister on 24 April, elicited from her the answer that the Department did not collect data on the local efficacy or otherwise of choose and book. If that sort of information is not collected, how can we possibly know whether it is working?

Norman Lamb
That is a fair point. This is far too centrally imposed and grandiose a scheme. If one goes for a centrally imposed, grandiose scheme, of course one has to collect data from everywhere, which makes the whole thing rather unworkable. A better approach would have been to go for something much simpler and more locally based, as has happened in other European countries and the United States.

Margaret Moran
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that Ministers and Labour Back Benchers have acknowledged that things have not necessarily gone according to plan in a major IT operation of this scale? Does he also accept, however, that there are examples of progress to be applauded in areas such as mine? Luton and Dunstable hospital was having to hire taxis to take X-rays and scans down to Harefield hospital, but those imaging facilities are now available within Luton and Dunstable hospital, infinitely improving in-patients’ quality of service and life.

Norman Lamb
I am pleased that we have yet another acknowledgement from a Government Member that there have been problems—we are making progress. I accept that there is a powerful case for investment in appropriate IT. I also accept the Minister’s assertion that there had been a failure adequately to invest prior to this. However, that does not make the whole package right.

Let me deal quickly with the motion itself. Liberal Democrat Members agree with most of its content, particularly its call for an independent review. In fact, we called for an independent review in March. I will return to the case that we made then and the aspects that we think should be included in it. However, I have concerns, which I think may be shared by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), about the opening assertion of the motion. It says that the aims of the programme are supported in principle. That prompts the question of what the aims are, because they have not been clearly articulated and have changed as time has gone on. The National Audit Office itself was pretty vague about defining them in the section of its report that dealt with the objectives. It made one wonderful assertion:

“The Programme is intended to enable the NHS to become more effective in treating patients.”

I suspect that we can all agree with that. If that is the aim of the project that the Conservatives support in principle, I am fully with them on that. However, one begins to have a problem when one gets into greater detail. The Public Accounts Committee said:

“The central vision of the Programme is…to introduce an integrated system called NHS Care Records Service”—

or the national spine. That is where we have a problem. We do not believe that the case has been made to demonstrate that the benefits of a national spine outweigh either the costs to the NHS, given all the other priorities in the service, or the civil liberties and privacy concerns that have been expressed by many people, including the Information Commissioner. I will come back to the concerns that he raised within the past few months in his written evidence to the Select Committee on Health.

The Government reject the call for a review out of hand, but I fail to understand why. They are keen to quote independent reviews when they are positive about the Government. Reviews that say that 90 per cent. of patients are satisfied are great, but when a review is suggested that they find uncomfortable, they resist the proposition. However, given the scale of the concerns that have been expressed by a wide range of people, it would be in their long-term interests to agree to an independent review in order to work out properly where the whole project is going and how best to adjust it given the problems that have occurred.

Mr. Todd
Perhaps I should have challenged the Conservative spokesman, who is the hon. Gentleman’s friend in this matter. What exactly is this independent review? Who is supposed to do it and with what brief, what is its scope, and how is it empowered?

Norman Lamb
I am grateful for that intervention; I intend to deal specifically with what the review should cover.

Let me first explain why I reached the conclusion that a review was necessary. One of the leading people centrally involved on the private sector side of the project made two assertions to me, which were equally horrifying given that this is the biggest ever IT health care project anywhere in the world. First, he asserted that when the project was launched, there were insufficient numbers of adequately skilled people to implement it, and that that is still the case. Secondly, he asserted—

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Who was it?

Norman Lamb
I cannot say who it was, because the discussion was on Chatham House rules and it would be wrong for me to do so, but he is a very senior person who is heavily involved in the project.

His second assertion was equally shocking—that there has never been a thorough systems review. The Minister said that end users are now being consulted all over the place, but that is supposed to happen at the start, not much later on.

Mr. Todd
indicated assent.

Norman Lamb
I am pleased to see the hon. Gentleman nodding; I assume that he is agreeing with me.

The person told me that it is necessary to bring together at the start the builders of the system, the purchasers of the system—the people who will be spending the money—and the users of the system to ensure that there is a common understanding of what it is supposed to achieve. It was remarkable to hear that there had never been an adequate process of that sort. It is absolutely scandalous to embark on the biggest IT health care project in the world without it. I suspect that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), who is remaining remarkably still and not demonstrating any body language at all, is quietly agreeing with me.

In April 2006, some 23 computer academics—experts in IT—sent an open letter to the Health Committee. The Minister referred to that submission, and she accepted that some of those people—she said some, not all—were highly respected. They called for an independent technical assessment of the project, and they said:

“the programme appears to be building systems that may not work adequately and—even if they worked—may not meet the needs of many health trusts.”

That is precisely why we need a thorough systems review at the start. We are building systems that may not work, or that may not be what is wanted, and that is of concern.

We are struggling with an unacceptable degree of secrecy, too. We have heard that reviews have been undertaken, both internally by the Department, and by the Office of Government Commerce. Why can we not see them? Why not publish them?

Mr. Todd
They never do.

Norman Lamb
That is not a reason not to do so. There is a powerful case for those internal reviews to be published, so that we can all see what they have to say.

Mr. Todd
rose—

Norman Lamb
I will not give way at this moment.

Mr. Todd
The hon. Gentleman is possibly too well informed to give way.

Norman Lamb
I am happy to give way, just to demonstrate that that is not the case.

Mr. Todd
I have raised the issue of the availability of OGC gateway reviews in the House on many occasions. The standard answer, which I do not entirely accept, is that if they were published, it would ruin the confidentiality of the process and make it difficult for suppliers and other participants in a project to communicate frankly about it. I do not entirely accept that argument, but it does at least deserve recognition.

Norman Lamb
That was a fair intervention, and I was right to allow it.

Dr. Pugh
Noble, even.

Norman Lamb
Indeed, it was noble. I note that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) does not entirely accept the argument for secrecy. Earlier, he asked what the proposed review should cover. In March, we put it that first there should be an assessment of whether it is still possible to achieve the original stated objectives, and if so, within what time scale. I shall return to this point later, but given that many IT experts state clearly that it is not possible to achieve those objectives, there is a powerful case for including that consideration in the review. Secondly, the review should consider the impact on health trusts and on general practitioners’ surgeries of the delays in completing delivery of the project. The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) made the point that hospital trusts are having to acquire interim solutions because they cannot wait any longer. That is pretty crazy, and it is an extraordinary waste of resources.

Margaret Moran
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Norman Lamb
Let me complete the points about what should be included in the review. Thirdly, there should, for the first time, be a proper cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the scale of the project can be justified. To my knowledge, that has not properly been undertaken; if it has, it certainly has not been made public. Fourthly, there should be a full assessment of the civil liberties implications of the national spine. I hope that Labour Members share our concern about ensuring that people’s rights are not undermined or compromised because of the risk, even with summary records, of very sensitive information getting into the wrong hands.

Andrew Miller
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s observation—it is important that records are properly protected, but conversely, does he accept that in years to come, when the system is fully flowing, if the No. 73 bus hit him, it would be rather a good idea for the first responder instantly to blood-match him, identify his allergies and so on? There are costs and benefits to be traded off, and we need to work carefully on that.

Norman Lamb
The hon. Gentleman proves my point: a cost-benefit analysis has to be done, so that we can balance the potential benefits. On the example that he gives, when I talk to clinicians, they are somewhat resistant to the idea that it would be valuable for them, if I got knocked over by a bus in Cornwall, readily to access my records on-screen in Cornwall. They say that there are protocols that they would follow in those circumstances, and that if there was any error in the national records, mistakes could be made. I repeat that the hon. Gentleman makes the case for me that a cost-benefit analysis needs to be conducted.

Finally on the review, there should be a proper and thorough consideration of where we go from here. If there are genuine concerns about whether the programme can achieve its original objectives, surely we should determine together how best to move the project forward so that we can achieve the objectives that are achievable. An enlightened Government would announce a review in response to this debate. Alongside that review, the Secretary of State, or the Minister, should acknowledge the scale of the problems, rather than seek to deny them.

Margaret Moran
On the hon. Gentleman’s complaint about delays with the project, is not one of the problems with his proposal the fact that it will cause injury to patients, as his review would further lengthen the time needed for the implementation of valuable projects? Reviews have taken place, not only at the gateway stage but throughout the project, and that has indeed caused delay. On the gateway reviews, is it not important that there be a degree of confidentiality, so that consumers, end-users and suppliers can be honest in any dialogue about what works and what does not? Surely that is more important than the hon. Gentleman being able to read gateway reviews, if he so chooses.

Norman Lamb
I pray in aid the Minister’s comments: she said in her speech that it was better to get it right than to rush ahead. That is precisely what she said in justifying the delays that had occurred. The experts whose opinion I have read who have argued the case for review say that it would be possible to conduct a review quite quickly; it would be a matter of weeks, and not months. Surely it is in the Government’s long-term interests to conduct such a review, and to make sure that wherever we go from here, we have the backing of clinicians and, hopefully, everyone in the House. That would be better than the Government simply pressing on, with their head in the sand, without acknowledging the scale of the problems.

Rob Marris
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Norman Lamb
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I would like to make a little progress. I am sure that he planned to make a helpful intervention, so I shall be happy to return to him later.

In arguing the case for a review, I want to deal with three key areas: technical concerns, costs and delays, and the civil liberties implications. On the technical side, I refer again to the 23 IT academics who raised concerns. I refer, too, to the written evidence of Tom Brooks, who submitted a paper to the Health Committee. He has substantial experience in the NHS and with the national programme, so we should take his evidence seriously, as I am sure that Labour Members will agree. He focuses on the central infrastructure for the national patient data, and he highlights the fact that Connecting for Health has not published any details of the calculations that it made to demonstrate that implementation on the scale envisaged is technically achievable. He says that Connecting for Health has not presented that evidence to us. He asks what records clinicians should rely on if there is a difference between the records on the national register and those held locally. It is quite possible that there may be a difference between the two because of inputting errors. Who is accountable for clinical or care errors resulting from reliance on the national summary record? He has direct experience of the national programme, and his conclusion is that the Government should acknowledge that the original goal is unattainable. He says that work on the national records system should be suspended, because that is his particular area of concern. I am not an expert, but I take the concerns of someone with that experience extremely seriously, and I hope that the Government do so, too.

Turning to the history of the problems that have occurred, Queen Mary’s hospital in Sidcup was one of the first to introduce a patient records system, but it found that it was frequently unavailable. In November last year, E-Health Insider reported hospital plans to replace the patient administration system just 18 months after it had been introduced. The Nuffield orthopaedic centre reported problems with the installation of Cerner software, with patient records disappearing. We cannot be happy about such experiences. An insider described the system as a “white knuckle ride”. Is that something that should give us confidence? In September last year, Computer Weekly, which has already received a fair airing in our debate, referred to the fact that there had been 110 major incidents—incidentally, Tony Collins has spoken to me, too, so it is not just the Conservatives to whom he is talking—that impacted on patient care. In July last year, the Computer Sciences Corporation data centre broke down, leaving 80 trusts without admin systems for several days.

Caroline Flint
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that under previous systems, particularly before 1997, there were numerous examples of systems breaking down, not for days but for weeks? The paper system, as well as a system in which computers could not even communicate from one GP practice to another or from one hospital to another, left much to be desired in terms of patient safety. I acknowledge the fact that there have been some breakdowns, but it is wrong to distort the problem by failing to compare it with the systems that the NHS operated in the past, both electronic and paper.

Norman Lamb
I fully accept there were many problems, but that is no reason for failing to be concerned about the situation or failing to acknowledge the concerns of people working in the system about the problems that are occurring here and now. In April this year, 79 doctors and admin staff in Milton Keynes hospital wrote that the patient administration system was “not fit for purpose”. It was reported in May this year that the Royal United hospital in Bath had still not had its Cerner software installed. The system was supposed to go live in November 2005, but the hospital was still waiting in May. In the same month Manchester reported hundreds of inaccurate patient records in the online booking system. The Minister ought to be concerned that those problems are still occurring.

All those technical problems have led to extra costs and delays. Reference has been made to the fact that many of the costs arising from the problems have been incurred by the private sector—I acknowledge that that has been a feature of the contractual arrangements—but it would be naive to believe that that does not have an impact on the delivery of the system. The private sector appears to be in a mess financially: Accenture is in all sorts of financial difficulty, and it has withdrawn from the system. Those problems have an impact on the delivery of the system, and I am pleased that the Government acknowledge that.

The plan was hatched in February 2003. Despite Government claims, there was no proper analysis of need or of the purpose of the whole scheme. The original budget was £2.3 billion, but it was adjusted to £6 billion, and the National Audit Office referred to £12.4 billion. We have heard estimates from insiders of a total budget of £20 billion to £40 billion—the figure keeps going up. Targets have been missed. The Minister referred to all the targets that had been hit, but what about the fact that 155 of the 176 acute trusts, according to Connecting for Health, should have been operating systems by the end of 2006-07? Only 16 of the 155 got there. We heard about the problems with iSOFT and the fact that it is under investigation by the Financial Services Authority. That is fine—we can say that it is iSOFT’s problem, but iSOFT was a key player in this whole thing, and it has an impact on the delivery of systems, so we ought to be concerned.

The Foundation for Information Policy Research says that the reason for the delay in the care records service is that it is the wrong system to build in the first place. It says that it is not how the rest of the world works. It says:

“Connecting for health is watched with appalled fascination by colleagues overseas”.

Finally, may I deal with civil liberties and privacy issues?

Rob Marris
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Norman Lamb
Yes, I shall do so now, as the hon. Gentleman has been patient.

Rob Marris
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his usual generosity. I should like to take him back to the review, because the tenor of his remarks suggests that he has overlooked the fact that this is not one IT programme, which would complicate any review that were carried out. There is the spine, the picture archiving and communications system, the care records service, choose and book, the electronic prescriptions service, NHS mail, a quality management and analysis system, and GP to GP transfer. There are eight or nine different systems, so given what the hon. Gentleman said about iSOFT and so on, as well as the fact that there are a limited number of experts, who would carry out the review, or reviews? From where he is coming from, we would need a review of eight or nine systems, and perhaps a review of the reviews, even though he is talking about delay.

Norman Lamb
I am sure that the 23 IT academics could come up with some names to carry out the review. To suggest that it may be difficult to find appropriate people to conduct such a review is no argument at all against the need for proper analysis of where the system is and where we should go from here. 

May I deal with civil liberties issues, starting with the opt-out point? The plan is that individuals receive a letter from their local PCT telling them that they have a period of time in which to opt out. If they do not do so within that time their consent is implied. I am seriously concerned about that—I do not know whether other hon. Members share my concern—because we are dealing with elderly and vulnerable people, as well as people with learning difficulties. Should we assume their consent, as sensitive information could be shared on a national basis? The more widely such information is shared, the greater the risks involved. The House may be interested to know that, this week, Pulse reported that in Bolton, which is the site of the trial, GPs are falling out over the project. A group of GPs has sent a letter expressing concern, particularly about the issue of implied consent. They say:

“Much can be gleaned from knowing what drugs a patient is taking, so why does the first stage not require ‘explicit’ consent? Nationally 67 per cent. of GPs oppose implied consent.”

The Minister’s notion that a tiny number of people have objected is no reason to be complacent or to believe that there are not legitimate concerns about the confidentiality of patient information.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Ivan Lewis)
May I ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question? Considering the benefits of making the system work, would he opt out from it, or would he want his own family to do so?

Norman Lamb
That is an interesting point. My sister is a GP. I talked to her last night, and she said, “I wouldn’t, for one moment, agree to my personal medical information going on to the spine.” That was a very simple assertion, and she has a genuine ethical dilemma. If, as a doctor, she would not agree to that, how can she recommend that her patients go on to the spine?

It is interesting that in a survey conducted by Pulse only a third of GPs—[Interruption.] This is an example of the disconnection between the Minister and what people in the NHS think. According to the latest survey by Pulse, only a third of GPs would advise their patients to have their information go on to the national spine. That is not one person. That is a representative sample of GPs. If one talks to GPs, one finds that that view is representative of the concerns across the country. The Government would do well to take them seriously.

Mr. Barron
The hon. Gentleman can speak about his sister as a GP, or about the views of over 63 per cent. of GPs. Can he tell us why I, as a patient, cannot opt out of my personal record being on my GP’s computer? I must be on his computer, or I cannot be a patient there. That goes for millions of people throughout the country.

Norman Lamb
I am not entirely sure of the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making.

Some 80 per cent. of GPs believe that patient confidentiality is threatened by the national spine. The Government and the Chair of the Select Committee ought to take those concerns seriously. Dr. Fiona Underhill, a London doctor—not my sister, but another independent doctor—was quoted as saying that she could not recommend her patients going on to the system

“because we have no guarantees as to who can have access to it.”

I spoke to two GPs in Norfolk a few weeks ago who pointed out to me that across the practice all staff had their cards, personal identification numbers were shared around, and there was no proper security to control access to information.

Caroline Flint
Is the hon. Gentleman against the concept of electronic transfer, or is he in favour of finding a system that can meet the concerns that he, I and every Member of the House share about confidentiality and tackling abuses of the system? If he supports that, he should work with us to make sure that the system works. His arguments go in the direction of defending the existing system which does not offer the safeguards that some GPs suggest and does not engage the public in the information that is carried on their behalf on systems, whether paper or electronic, in various parts of the NHS.

Norman Lamb
The answer to that is that I have strong objections to the national spine. I do not object to local sharing of information, provided that the principles are in place to ensure security of information.

A doctor told me this week that doctors have no advice on the storing of PINs. No advice has been received from the Department of Health about how to store PINs. The doctor told me that the PCT has a store of all the PINs. No guidance has been issued about the security of those. No principles have been issued about the care of smartcards. There are concerns about viewing online and the potential for exploitation of vulnerable elderly people by relatives who might want sensitive information about their health. In her speech the Minister acknowledged that she was considering the penalties that would apply. I am pleased to hear that, but it is rather late in the day. The principles should have been in place much earlier.

Andrew Miller
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Norman Lamb
No. I shall make progress.

Labour Members dismiss concerns about patient confidentiality, but have they read the Information Commissioner’s written evidence to the Health Committee? He writes that he is

“conscious that these plans inevitably pose significant data protection risks”,

including confidentiality and accuracy. He refers to challenges posed by policing, consistency and security of access. He is concerned about potential abuses. In a letter to me referring to MTAS the Information Commissioner writes:

“I have no doubt that the experience serves as a stark illustration”—

the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West will sympathise with this—

“of the issues which arise where security of sensitive data is not treated with the utmost seriousness”.

That is why the Government should take greater note of the concerns expressed in the House and outside.

The Information Commissioner reserves judgment on whether controls over access will work. He says that it is too early to tell. He has listened to the assurances, but that is not to say that they will work. He refers to a particular case where smartcards had been shared among a group of consultants in accident and emergency. He says that that increased the risk of breaches of security and confidentiality. He also expresses concern about the potential for enforced access to HealthSpace, potentially as a condition for securing employment. These issues have not yet been dealt with.

It is remarkable that we have a system that poses such potential risks to individual confidentiality without these matters having been properly resolved. The Information Commissioner speaks of the whole system being vulnerable to the unlawful obtaining, procurement and disclosure of personal data—blagging, as I am told it is called. He raises a host of concerns. The Minister should be taking the concerns of the Information Commissioner, if not of the Opposition parties, extremely seriously.

The written evidence to the Select Committee makes fascinating reading. The NHS Confederation has a number of serious reservations, as do Patient Concern, the Renal Association, and Londonwide LMCs representing 5,000 GPs in London. Many individuals who made submissions to the Health Committee raise serious concerns about the way in which the project is developing.

My message to the Government is that they should learn the lesson from MTAS. They should learn what happened when they did not listen to all the concerns that were being expressed, and stop digging when they know they are already in a hole. They should acknowledge the problems and agree to an independent review.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)
Order. Several Members are hoping to catch my eye. The time left for Back-Bench contributions is somewhat limited, so I hope contributions will be brief.

14:27:00

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
I apologise for my late arrival for the debate. With other members of the Health Committee, I went to see the IT system at Homerton hospital in Hackney this morning, as part of our evidence gathering for our inquiry into electronic patient records. I apologise for being late and missing some of the speech of the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien).

The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) read out a litany of concerns. I wonder how many of the doctors whom he quoted are involved in the national programme.

Norman Lamb
All of them.

Mr. Barron
Part of the criticism is that the programme has been a long time coming. There are difficulties with the programme, some of which are dealt with in the report, such as the engagement of staff, clinicians and others involved in various aspects of the national health service. That is one of the reasons for the delay, so let us not say that the delay shows that there is a weakness in the programme. The delay has been caused in part by what the motion calls for—engagement with clinical staff in the development of IT programmes.

The Opposition Front-Bench team say that they support the national IT programme. The press releases and the debates that we have had in the House over the past six months seem to contradict that—unless, as has been said, we are to interpret the word “support” in the same sense as the rope supports the hanged man. For months we have heard criticism from the Opposition Front Bench about aspects of the programme. As Chair of the Health Committee, I can say that we will report our findings in relation to electronic patient records in due course. The Opposition have gone far wider, and have been extremely negative in their interpretation of what has taken place.

The Opposition motion mentions

“the hasty conception of the National Programme”.

I shall provide an example from out in the field relevant to that, which happened quite a long time ago. When Labour was in opposition I was shadow health spokesman for a while, and I went to my local hospital to look at the patient administration scheme. That hospital, Rotherham district general hospital, is now famous for its work with Gerry Robinson, which was on BBC television earlier this year.

When I visited the hospital, it had just introduced a pass scheme. I watched the nurse fill in a discharge sheet for a patient. The discharge sheet was typed up wonderfully well. I said, “What happens to that?” The nurse said, “On the night shift, it’s printed out and sent in the post to the GP.” I said, “What happens if the patient needs some attention, such as an injection from a district nurse or some aftercare, having just got out of the acute sector?” The nurse replied, “We would phone the district nurse or the GP surgery to make sure about that aftercare.”

What upsets me more than anything else is that, like everybody else in this Chamber, I am a taxpayer. We have been paying for electronic patient systems in the primary and acute sectors for decades. Those sectors have had the choice to buy what they believed to be right for their little part of the national health service. We have allowed patients, some of whom have ongoing medical needs, to be discharged from the acute sector without anybody asking the question, “Why can’t we contact the primary care sector electronically, so that the ongoing care that this patient needs is provided?” I am not saying that that is happening today, but that is one of the major issues behind the national programme. As someone who is concerned about health care and the use of taxpayers’ money, I say that something should have been done decades ago. There should have been some choice about what was put into surgeries or hospitals, but such bodies should at least have had the ability to talk to their immediate health family neighbours about the needs of the patient. That did not happen, and that is what the national programme is about.

The national programme has been criticised by some health professionals, because they believe that their choice will be eroded if they are told that they must introduce one of seven systems in their GP surgery. As Members of this House, we should talk about not only clinicians’ choice in how they spend our money, but patients. Where does the patient come in all this? In Homerton hospital today I saw a great system, and other members of the Health Committee saw it, too. It allows appointments to be booked electronically in clinics before discharge. It does not allow the hospital to talk to the local GP practice, but the system is a bit better than that used at Rotherham district general hospital a few years ago; for example, the discharge report is printed out and handed to the patient on discharge.

The hon. Member for Eddisbury said that there was no evidence about how good the system is now. I say that hon. Members should visit their local GP surgeries. My local GP surgery has had choose and book since the middle of last year, and the system works. Hon. Members should go to the Homerton hospital and see the system, which is being improved by clinicians. The introduction of that system has taken a long time and there have been delays, but it is likely to be in all London hospitals in a few years’ time.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk has mentioned the medical training application service—MTAS—which, as I have said before, is a separate issue. What happened to medical training had nothing to do with the national programme. Opposition Front Benchers are agitated, but I think it wholly wrong to bring those issues together. There are clearly issues about MTAS, but it should not have been included in the Opposition motion, because it has nothing to do with this system. I have said that that is scaremongering by backwoodsmen and luddites, and I do not resile from that description of Opposition Front Benchers in that area.

Norman Lamb
rose—

Mr. Barron
We have been asked to be brief, and I am going to be. The hon. Gentleman has had a bit more time than Back Benchers have, so I will not give way. I normally give way, which gets me into trouble with timing.

On care records and patient confidentiality, hon. Members will have seen the Public Accounts Committee report on the national IT programme. I shall refer to evidence taken in response to a question asked by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) on confidentiality. The man from Fujitsu was the only person to give evidence to the PAC, and according to my information, things have moved on dramatically in the national programme since June last year, when the evidence was taken. He said that we should not return to the old myriad of systems. Computer Weekly magazine described him as a critic, and, following its article, he had been suspended by the time he gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee. On data confidentiality, he said:

“Personally, I see no concern around data confidentiality because a lot of effort is going into making sure that is dealt with adequately.”

The Health Committee report is ongoing, and we have been looking at other systems. The biggest single database of health records in the world is American veterinary records. We have spoken to the people who run that database and visited Canada to look at databases. The issues will be covered in our report. I do not want to second-guess the report, but people in America and Canada looked quizzical when we discussed confidentiality and security of systems.

Although I was an engineer, I am not technically capable of giving a view on the security system, but if the Health Committee’s information is correct, the security used for national patient records is similar to that used by banks. Although there are often security breaches involving people’s credit cards, those breaches are not due to the system itself, but occur because credit cards have been copied.

We took evidence on the independent review. I questioned one of the 23 academics in some detail about the independent review. The academics initially said that they wanted a technical review. In my view, any type of review that slows down the implementation of the national programme would not be in the interests of the NHS. Hon. Members should go to Homerton hospital, where health professionals do not have to wait for X-rays. X-rays appear on a screen, which allows different parts of the hospital to discuss them. Clinicians do not even need to be brought together when they conduct a diagnosis.

When I asked Professor Martyn Thomas about the review, he went on and on. Eventually, I told him—I do not think that this was an unkind comment, and hon. Members can read the transcript—that he wanted an inquest rather than a review. There is no doubt that a number of the 23 academics are against the programme, and some of them are against all public sector national IT programmes.

I hope that when the Health Committee considers the electronic patient record, we will make recommendations and contribute serious points to the debate so that we can look after patients’ interests and ensure that we use IT in the 21st century to improve their quality of life and care.

14:39:00

Mr. Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I have followed the national programme for IT in the health service for several years, principally because of my membership of the Public Accounts Committee and that Committee’s interest in value for money, delivery, effectiveness, efficiency and economy. Of course, IT projects are notorious, across Governments of different political persuasions, for failure to deliver. The national programme for IT in the health service is the largest civilian IT project in the world. For that reason alone, I have been following its progress with great interest.

I am not a specialist in health matters or in IT, but I am greatly interested in value for money. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who is a former member of the PAC, will confirm that serving on that Committee makes one put on spectacles that are primarily non-party-political, because one is considering value for money. That is what we do. I say in parenthesis that I agreed with the hon. Gentleman’s point about private sector IT contractors. Of course, things go wrong with such contractors and they are better at hiding it. I hold no brief for any national or local IT contractors or any specific supplier.

It is extraordinary and regrettable that the important national programme for IT has become party political. I can think of nothing less party political than a computer system. There are legitimate matters for political debate—perhaps fewer than existed 30 years ago, but many remain, including housing and—dare I mention it?—schooling. However, computer systems are not among them. There are computer systems that work and computer systems that do not work. We should all want the former—and that should be it.

Serious technical problems remain with the system, which needs to be put back on track. However, the Department of Health’s current proposal for the local ownership programme is not the right way to do it. The right answer involves more choice for trusts and more competition between suppliers to get the confidence and business of the trusts. One gets ownership through choice and successful delivery through ownership.

Where needed, the Government should review the operational performance of the local service providers against their original contractual obligations and examine how they have accounted financially for their actions. I believe that forensic accountants would reveal some interesting facts about millions of pounds of losses being hidden. I also want to comment briefly on the Computer Sciences Corporation and iSOFT; we learned this morning that CSC is considering a bid for iSOFT.

It is indisputable that the programme is not working properly technically. I was surprised to note in the presentation made to the Prime Minister on 19 February the sentence:

“The key challenges and risks to delivery are now not about technology to support the NPfIT but about attitudes and behaviours which need to be the focus of senior management and ministerial attention as we move forward”.

Of course, getting the right attitudes and behaviours to support the programme—and, indeed, any IT programme—are central. That is why experts say that many problems are not about IT but getting human beings, especially well-paid, intelligent and independent-minded human beings, to operate in the right way. Of course, change management must happen, but the idea that no serious technical problem remains is nonsense. The fact that the Prime Minister is being told that there is no serious technical problem is worrying, because it suggests that Ministers have not always been told all the facts that they need to know.

One need look no further than the visit that took place on 14 May by David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, and Richard Granger, director general of IT, to Milton Keynes to examine the problems there. One IT contact of mine charitably described the visit as a catastrophe. It followed a letter, to which the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) referred, from 79 doctors, nurses and secretaries at Milton Keynes general hospital, which said:

“We are doctors, nurses and secretaries at Milton Keynes General Hospital. From our early experience of the new Care Records Service computer system it is not fit for purpose.

In spite of heroic efforts from our IT staff and from the installing company, start-up glitches have been unacceptable and particularly bad in outpatient clinics. More seriously the software is so clunky, awkward and unaccommodating that we cannot foresee the system working adequately in a clinical context.

In our opinion it should not be installed in any further hospitals.

If it is not already too late there is a strong argument for withdrawing the Care Records Service system from this hospital.”

Milton Keynes is in the southern cluster, where Fujitsu is installing the product from Cerner Millennium. The staff say that it does not work, is not fit for purpose and should be withdrawn.

Let us consider the position of the other clusters—the north-east, eastern, north-west and west midlands—where CSC, following the withdrawal of Accenture, has control of three clusters and is installing iSOFT Lorenzo. The only problem is that iSOFT’s Lorenzo product has not yet been written. It is therefore nonsensical to claim that there are no technical problems. It is worrying that the Prime Minister has been told otherwise.

When David Nicholson and Richard Granger visited Milton Keynes, they acknowledged the scale of the problems. Yesterday they were cited in E-Health Insider, which stated that a spokesman had said:

“Mr. Granger and Mr. Nicholson gave the Trust their full support resolving issues related to CRS. The Trust is committed to working with CfH to improve CRS”.

However, big problems remain.

I now turn to iSOFT—and I note that the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), who has done much work in this area, is now in his place. The funny thing is that page 6 of the iSOFT Group plc’s 2005 annual report and accounts says:

“Available from early 2004 LORENZO was the first solution on the market targeted to meet the demanding requirements of healthcare providers around the world.”

I stress, “available from early 2004”. Yet when CSC and Accenture, which was still involved at that point, wrote a review of Lorenzo in February 2006—some considerable time after the statement about its availability—they concluded:

“There is no mapping of features to release, nor detailed plans. In other words, there is no well-defined scope and therefore no believable plan for releases beyond Lorenzo GP.”

Lorenzo GP is a basic version for GPs. The review continues:

“There is a significant risk that an evaluation of the ‘gap’ between the needs of CfH and the capability of the generic solution will require significant re-work of product and platform layers. This will likely lead to schedule slippage. Additionally, there is a risk that the generic solution will contain features that are not required by CfH, lengthening the time taken to deliver the CfH solution.”

When iSOFT’s financial results were published—rather late—it said:

“We intend to begin delivering LORENZO functionality to users within the NPfIT before the end of 2007, and for individual solution modules to become available on a phased basis through 2008.”

How can a firm begin to deliver functionality to users in the NPfIT before the end of 2007, and individual solution modules on a phased basis through 2008, for something that its 2005 annual report claimed was already available in 2004? Perhaps that is why it has been under investigation by the Financial Services Authority. It appears that in the past it has been making statements to the stock market that are not justified by the facts. Those statements probably caused the share price to be higher than it otherwise would have been. Many directors subsequently sold their shares. However, that is a matter for the Department of Trade and Industry, and probably outside the scope of the debate.

Mr. Stephen O'Brien
My hon. Friend’s expertise is invaluable. In evaluating the risks to the programme’s progress, we want to be constructive about the Government’s difficulties. What is valuable in iSOFT at the moment if there is no developed product? Is it simply that it happens to have the Government contract?

Mr. Bacon
That is a good question. The company has a range of other products. Many experts would say that some of them, especially some GP systems, work well. However, what people would be paying for if they bought iSOFT is a moot point. It is especially worrying that CSC announced this morning that it might consider a bid for iSOFT. The idea of having a vertically integrated model under which the local service provider actually owns its main software subcontractor is very worrying at a time when the Government, the Department of Health and the NHS are only just beginning to acknowledge the need for more choice locally.

In that environment, if CSC actually owns iSOFT and the area is controlled by CSC, it is hard to see how, if that bid went through, other suppliers of competitive products for mental health and other aspects, such as primary care, would get a look-in. It was an odd reflection on customer relations when iSOFT sought last week to improve its relationship with CSC, which must be one of its biggest customers, by saying that it was probably going to take legal action against it. That is not what one normally thinks of as a way of improving relations with one’s biggest customer. The company seems to have come to its senses yesterday, saying that it was probably going to suspend the legal action for the time being.

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman rightly saw me rummaging through my notes on iSOFT, whose affairs I have followed since July 2004, with my old investigative journalist’s hat on. I note that the hon. Gentleman is not criticising the Government for putting investment into IT, but is making some good points about the way in which they are doing it, which I believe the Government should listen to. Clearly, it is not the Government’s fault that iSOFT is a thoroughly dodgy company, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would instil more confidence in the programme and the regulatory environment if the City authorities speeded up their investigation into iSOFT—and, indeed, if the DTI also took up the case?

Mr. Bacon
I very much agree with that, as these investigations take far too long. The hon. Gentleman referred to his previous role as an investigative journalist, and I commend him for the work that he has done. I also commend the excellent work of Simon Bowers on the financial pages of The Guardian. Yes, the DTI should get involved and the current investigation by the Financial Services Authority should be speeded up. No, it is not the Government’s fault if iSOFT is a dodgy company, but it may be their fault if, not having exercised sufficient and due diligence, they continue to make advance payments through the local service provider and in effect prop up a dodgy company that has failed to deliver, has made false statements about the availability of its products to the stock market, and has misled investors, the public and the NHS.

The way forward—clearly, there must be one—proposed by David Nicholson, the chief executive, is to put greater emphasis on the local side through the local ownership programme. It sounds good in theory, but I fear that what it means is something different. I quote a piece from E-Health Insider of 25 May, which pointed out that the chief executive said that the aim of the local ownership programme was

“‘to reinvigorate the programme.’ This includes ‘giving the SHAs, with their trusts and PCTs, greater participation in the choice of NPfIT products and in the planning and timing of deployments.’”

That sounds fine, but does it mean that if people do not want to, they will not have to install Cerner Millennium? No. Does it mean that if they do not want to, they will not have to install iSOFT’s Lorenzo—apart from the fact that it has not been written yet? No, it does not, so they do not really have choice. I fear this is all about not real localisation, but the decentralisation of blame. It is about handing over to others the responsibility for implementing the unimplementable, and then being in a position later to blame them when they cannot do it. I thus have my doubts about the national local ownership programme.

Mr. Stewart Jackson
Does my hon. Friend agree that if iSOFT is unsuccessful in refinancing its business in November, it will be the fourth IT company to bail out of this particular IT programme?

Mr. Bacon
It probably will, which is one of the reasons why I suspect that CSC has been sniffing around with iSOFT’s banks. By the way, iSOFT was not aware of this until after it had happened, but CSC—the local service provider for three fifths of the programme—has been talking to its main software subcontractor’s banks about buying iSOFT’s debt, presumably because that would put it in pole position for a bid, should it wish to make one. I believe that it is incumbent on the Government to state their view of local service providers owning a main software subcontractor and the potential impact on competition and choice, which are essential if we are to get out of this mess. Greater choice, I believe, is essential.

If the notes to the Prime Minister may not have been completely accurate in saying that technology was not a problem, it remains true—as I mentioned earlier, and I saw the hon. Member for South Derbyshire nodding in agreement—that a lot of the problem is about human behaviour, changing attitudes and so forth. In order to do that, we have to have ownership. The question is how we get ownership, and the answer is through choice, and by making local trusts accountable for choosing what they want, and then accountable for delivering it. That, rather than having systems foisted on them that they do not want and will not use, is what is needed. We must have more choice.

Some hon. Members have referred to the Public Accounts Committee report, which I had some hand in. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to two particular paragraphs: one a recommendation, the other a rather worrying conclusion, which the Government should reflect on far more than they have so far. The first is recommendation 4 on page 5 of the report, which says:

“In view of the slippage in the deployment of local systems, the Department should also commission an urgent independent review of the performance of Local Service Providers against their contractual obligations.”

My belief is that such a review of the performance of LSPs against their contractual obligations would strengthen the Government’s arm in the negotiations that would be necessary if the value of the contracts were reduced. Let us look at what has been going on with British Telecom in London, for example. BT employed the software firm IDX for a considerable period, and my best estimate is that about £200 million was spent before it sacked the firm and moved over to the Cerner product. The effect is akin to owning a Ford transit van, getting rid of it, then buying a Mercedes van, but still trying to do the maintenance with the old Ford transit manual; it does not work.

The money is completely wasted, yet neither BT in London nor CSC in its areas—not to mention Fujitsu in the south—has done anything to try to account for the losses that must have been made. At least Accenture had the honesty to come up front and say that it was making provision for $450 million. I am certain that the other local service providers are hiding millions of pounds—probably hundreds of millions—of losses. The Government ought to be aware of that now, because it has consequences for the behaviour of the LSPs in trying to claw back money because they did not make any on the contracts.

Finally, I want to say a quick word about CSC and iSOFT. I have already mentioned them in passing and in response to interventions. We cannot overstate the importance of the fact that three fifths of the national programme for IT in the health service depends on this relationship between CSC and iSOFT, so it is of considerable interest that the president of European business development, the president of the northern region of the UK and the Netherlands, the senior vice-president of global infrastructure services for Europe, the middle east and Africa, the vice-president of service delivery for Europe, the middle east and Africa, the service delivery director of the NHS for the original contract in the north-west region, the vice-president for new NHS accounts, the chief operating officer for Europe, the middle east and Africa, the vice-president for service delivery to BAE Systems, the president for CSC southern region, and the director of services for global accounts have all resigned quite recently. I therefore wonder in what fit state this company is, in terms of its senior management, to continue to be a local service provider, let alone to bid for one of the main software subcontractors.

It is interesting to note that CSC in Europe, the middle east and Africa has recently announced a continuation of the two-year freeze on all training. What does that mean for the NHS? Contrary to what the Minister said earlier, I do not think that Opposition Members have any interest in protecting local service providers or IT suppliers. We want to see competition and choice and things working. It is not obvious to me from the available evidence that CSC is in a particularly healthy position.

Dr. Pugh
Might not the company become heavily dependent on the expertise provided by local hospitals rather than use its own—with costs to local hospitals?

Mr. Bacon
In so far as I have understood the hon. Gentleman’s question—it is important to have expertise locally in hospitals. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk mentioned, one of the great problems has been a whole incubus of a central layer trying to impose what happens locally from a great distance. Plainly, one size does not fit all.

I shall now conclude, as other Members wish to speak. I hope that the Government will acknowledge that the criticisms of the programme are not made in a party political spirit, at least not by me. I would like to see the programme work. If it is to work, however, serious problems need to be overcome.

14:59:00

Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
To give my background briefly, I was an IT director before coming to this place. At one time in the distant past, about 15 years ago—which shows how easy it was to conceive of such things—I did an acquisition study of a small company that sold systems to general practitioners, in which I dismissed the original purpose of the acquisition and instead set out an argument for a network in information provision in the NHS. At that time, my company did not choose to buy into that—it was correct in thinking of the huge risks that lay ahead. Nevertheless, it was possible some years ago to conceive of many of the things discussed today in relation to the NHS IT programme.

To be honest, any IT programme is misunderstood in this place; we are talking about business change programmes facilitated by technology. Some key preconditions exist for success in that area. First, the project must be rooted clearly in a business strategy. Challenging targets must be set by the business that wishes to run the project. A clear understanding is needed of the environment in which the project will operate. There also needs to be an understanding of the politics of the organisation, any professional constraints that might be in the way, protectionism—which is almost inevitable, and on which other Members have touched briefly—where the accountabilities lie for delivery of the project, and the balance between local and central decision making in delivering outcomes.

As the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) said, any project is largely about people, not technologies. More than 10 years ago—given that I have been in the House for 10 years—I used to advise my company that its task was to conceive of the business that it wished to run, and that by and large we would find the technologies to deliver what it conceived of. In relation to people, the critical issues to be resolved are normally their motivation, their engagement with the goals of the project, and how to retain them through a process of disruption and change, which many might find unwelcome. The project needs clear organisational leadership, both professionally and at board level—and, in the context, at political and ministerial level—to ensure a clear direction for the project. That leadership needs to be focused on delivering the benefits identified in the first place, and on resisting creep and diversion, which are all too readily put forward as the directions that any project should take. I shall return to that issue.

A robust risk analysis and approach to managing the risks identified is needed. There are some obvious risks in the collection of projects under discussion, and there are problems inherent in working within the NHS. One is a lack of what most people in the private sector would regard as corporate accountability. General practitioners are effectively small businesses, with their own IT choices and a history of making such choices. Consultants are not actually employees, but carry out duties within a defined contract. There is also a huge problem of scale.

There are also problems inherent in working in a political environment, such as the likelihood of high-profile opposition to what is being attempted, and changes in political leadership—not changes of Government, but the reshuffling of Ministers, once they get some grasp of a subject, into another job in double quick time. A learning process is involved, and the management of projects of such a scale and complexity takes time.

Other problems have been introduced from outside. One of those is the restructuring of primary care trusts and other trusts through the project, so that partners established at local level to deliver certain parts of the programme have changed, and have had to reapply for their jobs and reconsider their futures, which is certainly a risk that would have to be taken into account. I was surprised by the view expressed by some Opposition Members that there is no local process, and that everything is centrally driven. In fact, each trust must produce its own business case for implementing substantial parts of the programme. Bearing in mind that skills and enthusiasm are differential, passing that task on to those trusts has also introduced significant risks to the project. Most suppliers would have started by thinking that the project was likely to be a bed of nails.

Many of the people involved in working in the NHS would have had dissenting opinions. However long we consulted, we would not have consulted all those who wished to have an opinion on the matter. I genuinely accept the view, which I have heard expressed by Richard Granger, that the consultation was at great length. It would not have covered everyone who had an opinion, however, because opinions are numerous in that organisation. The consultation could be going on now and still leave many unsatisfied. I am not therefore surprised at the dissenting voices.

Bearing in mind the very tough purchasing model used, which has transferred risk to suppliers, there have also been supplier problems. Too many suppliers were tempted by the scale of the opportunity and the potential for sell-ons of technologies developed under the contract into other environments. I attended a briefing with CSC yesterday, and it was reasonably clear that that was its view, and it was certainly its interpretation of Fujitsu’s view of how it participated in the programme in the first place. In spite of my repeated question as to whether CSC were making money, it was extremely careful about what it said in response.

I say robustly to Opposition Members that it is surely better that suppliers bear some of the damage of failure to analyse risk appropriately, rather than the taxpayer, as is normally the case in major IT programmes. I congratulate Richard Granger and his team—a view shared by the National Audit Office—on the robust purchasing process now. I accept the point of the hon. Member for South Norfolk that taking too hard a line with one’s suppliers will eventually lead to a position in which one might face failure to deliver and failure to maintain. As the project continues, we will face the challenge of how to strike that balance correctly.

Any major project or collection of projects of this kind should be under constant review, but within a robust environment—I mentioned project creep—in which changes introduced at late stages to meet whims of individual partisan forces within the customer base are resisted. I have been involved in cancelling a major IT project, and there are points at which one must simply say, “We are not achieving what we set out to do, and we should be brave enough to own that.” I assume that there is a proper review process within the project; certainly, there is a process through the Office of Government Commerce gateway mechanism to examine how the project works. The NAO has also produced its report.

I am not averse to a properly qualified, objective, external input to that process. I cannot believe, however, that a full-blown external review—as I have understood it from the extraordinarily limited information given by the Opposition as to what in heaven’s name they mean by the process—would be of great assistance. Inevitably, it would distract resources and encourage delay.

Mr. Bacon
The review in which I am interested is outlined in the recommendation in paragraph 4 of the PAC report—a review of the contractual obligations into which local service providers originally entered. My contention is that that would strengthen hugely the arm of the Government and release resources, as it would show that LSPs have in many ways failed to meet those obligations.

Mr. Todd
If the hon. Gentleman is interpreting the motion, and if that is what it means, I would accept that that is a helpful step. That has not been explained, however, in the vague and sometimes naive remarks made on the subject by those on either Opposition Front Bench.

There certainly needs to be further robust engagement on the care record, its design and security. I say that partly because I have a concern myself, but also because we have an opportunity to reassure the profession and re-engage them in the project. The argument for sharing the care record was extraordinarily well made by the appalling incident of the woman who repeatedly contacted an out-of-hours service but there was no inherited memory of her previous contacts with it and what had been said. As a result, she received no proper treatment for her condition. Obviously, having a decent care record even within one organisation would have been a huge benefit in that example, and the case for it to be shared on a wider scale is clear.

We need to keep the project under continuous review, and an external input into that process should be welcomed but qualified. Incidentally, I have corresponded with a group of academics on the subject and found it difficult to define their goals. As I looked through their compendium of information, I saw that it was essentially a collection of press cuttings. I was looking for a much more technical and robust approach to what they were saying than simply a reiteration of various press remarks.

Dr. Pugh
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Todd
I am conscious of the time and that other people wish to speak, so I shall not.

I would welcome the group of academics being clearer on their agenda. However we should welcome some external input. We need to re-engage with stakeholders, and looking at the care record and some of the choices that are delivered at a local level would help us to do that. With those qualifications, we should hold our nerve.

15:12:00

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I pay tribute to the knowledge and experience of the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who is at the very least smooth, and almost plausible, in his defence of the Government’s position.

At times like these it is clear that we have a poverty of ambition as a Parliament in holding the Executive to account. Frankly, that would not be the case were we in the House of Representatives in the United States. The Government have criticised the Opposition for bringing to the attention of the House the fact that an IT programme initially mooted to cost £2.6 billion is now likely to cost £35 billion or perhaps £50 billion. As you will have seen yesterday, Mr. Deputy Speaker, The Daily Telegraph reported the bizarre and appalling situation, especially given the warm words of our new Prime Minister un-elect that he is open and listening, of civil servants, under the auspices of the Office of Government Commerce, being encouraged to shred documents, in particular reports that are critical of the mismanagement of the NHS IT programme. How we can be lectured by the Government that it is inappropriate that we should draw that to the attention of the House and the electorate is perverse.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) said, we are dealing with a huge programme involving 30,000 general practitioners and 300 hospitals, and which has risen exponentially. The last official figure was in June 2006, when the National Audit Office put the cost at £12.4 billion, but in May last year, Lord Warner no less said that it may be £20 billion or more.

The Public Accounts Committee has on several occasions drawn attention to the shortcomings of the IT projects undertaken by the Government. It said in July 2005 that Government IT projects are characterised by

“delay, overspends, poor performance and…abandonment.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1594.]

I notice that the Minister did not quote that in her remarks. The Government have generally sought to disregard the PAC’s report, published in April 2007, but its remarks need repeating. Being critical of the Government and the way in which the programme has been handled is not to say that we inherently disagree with the programme. Of course we believe that it is right to proceed in that way, but individual Members of Parliament with an interest—I have the honour and privilege to serve on the Select Committee on Health under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron)—have a right, duty and responsibility to draw failings to the attention of the House, and there have been many failings.

The report says specifically that the pilot schemes are two years late, especially in relation to the care record service, and that no fall-back date is in place, although Ministers disagree with that. Cost estimates are opaque and have not been fully quantified. There has hitherto been no proper cost-benefit analysis on what will have been delivered to the NHS when the contract ends in 2014. We have heard that Accenture has pulled out of the project at a loss of anything between £240 million to £385 million, along with other IT providers, IDX and ComMedica. Other companies with the skills and experience have not come on board for the programme. We learned earlier that iSOFT faces an uncertain financial future, and we will see whether it manages to stay afloat after its refinancing later this year.

The key point is that despite protestations from the Government, health care professionals up and down the country have not voted to support the programme with their opinions and have voted with their feet. I said that it is all very well for Ministers to say that choose and book is working, but if they do not collate the figures properly, there is no way they can fully understand the efficacy of that particular record system.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), the number of GPs that support the programme has plummeted from about 55 per cent. a year or so ago to the most recent figure of only 26 per cent. We have a North Korean-style thumbs down from readers of the Health Service Journal. In a poll of its readers, 97 per cent. said that they did not believe that the choose and book target could be met by March 2008. Incidentally, that is the third target; the other two were missed. We now have approximately 38 per cent. take-up of choose and book, although we do not have the raw data to confirm that.

The Government often quote the NHS Confederation and pray in aid its opinions to support their viewpoint. It has said:

“The IT changes being proposed are individually technically feasible but they have not been integrated, so as to provide comprehensive solutions anywhere else in the world.”

It is reasonable for people who make their living as professionals and experts in information technology in the academic world to express a value judgment on the success or otherwise of the programme. It is right to draw attention to the fact that core software has not yet been delivered, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said. There are issues about technical architecture, project planning and detailed design, and about the estimate of the amount of data and the traffic in the programme when it is fully operational. That is a fair point to make.

There is a degree of complacency. I draw the House’s attention to the Minister’s comments last year, when she said:

“The National programme is already the focus of regular and routine audit, scrutiny and review.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 1877W.]

That patently is not the case. The Chairman of the PAC said:

“This is the biggest IT project in the world and it is turning into the biggest disaster.”

That is hardly a ringing endorsement of progress. As at February 2007, only 18 hospitals had the patient administration system. Incidentally, the Department of Health promised a year before that 35 acute trusts would have it in place.

I have some key questions for Ministers. Before I ask them, however, I want to deal with the questions asked by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) about privacy.

I was present when the Health Committee heard evidence from the Patients Association and others recently, and I must respectfully tell the hon. Gentleman that I think he over-egged the pudding slightly in describing the dangers involved in privacy issues. It is incumbent on him, and on others, to prove that the changeover would have a significant negative impact on most or all patients. However, he made an important point about accountability. At present patients benefit from a degree of accountability through their local primary care practices and local trust, but that accountability will be removed if all data are transferred to a national system. We are talking not about articulate, intelligent, well-read middle-class people but about the most vulnerable, those who are least able to say: “I do not want my medical records to be online.”

These are my questions to Ministers. When will they engage properly with health care professionals to win their support for the implementation of a system that has demonstrably failed so far? Will they ring-fence primary care trust funds for expenditure on opt-out information? Will they concede that there has been a systemic failure as a result of the dichotomy between national contracts for procurement and the local delivery of those contracts?

We need action now. I strongly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury that we need a full, zero-based review as well as an audit. We need an annual statement of where we are now and where we will be in 2014. As one or two Members have said, we need to disaggregate local delivery to local trusts where appropriate, with a wider range of suppliers in the IT market. We need to review current performance, and we need to communicate the importance of the programme to all health care professionals more effectively. I agree with the hon. Member for South Derbyshire in that respect.

The consequence of failure is massive. The expenditure of £50 billion of public money should give us all pause for thought. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury said, this is not just a “techie” issue; it is about the importance of reforming the NHS through choose and book, about electronic prescriptions, and about the care records service. If mistakes are made, people may die.

As the right hon. Member for Rother Valley observed, patients should be at the very heart of our considerations. The Government must get a grip on the situation. They owe it to patients, they owe it to my constituents, and they owe it to the whole country. It is right and proper for us to call the Government to account today, and for the Government to explain why this has happened and how we can adopt a bipartisan approach to ensure that we deliver the results that patients expect.

15:23:00

Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Opposition argued that nothing had been published about the purpose of the project and the safety case for it. That is manifestly untrue. The introduction to a document entitled “Supporting the Patient Safety Agenda” clearly explains the purpose of the scheme. It tells us:

“Every day more than a million people are treated safely and successfully in the NHS. However, despite the dedication and professionalism of staff, evidence tells us that in complex healthcare systems things will and do go wrong.

Improving the quality… of patient care therefore lies at the very core of the National Programme for IT… which has its origins in the vision articulated by the Department of Health in ‘Delivering 21st Century IT Support for the NHS National Strategic Programme’.”

That, then, is the core reason for the programme’s existence. I shall say more in a moment about the work undertaken thus far—enormous strides have been made—but I am glad to see that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), has arrived, as I am about to refer to him. He wrote the foreword to a document called “Computerising the Chinese Army—Information Systems in the NHS”, which has been mentioned tangentially by a number of Opposition Members. That is not surprising, because it originated from a Conservative think-tank. Contributors include Tony Collins of Computer Weekly, the shadow Secretary of State and Dr. Simon Moores of the Conservative Technology Forum.

Having read the document closely—particularly chapter 10 on the proposed action plan—I can see the genesis of the Opposition motion. It is the result of people thinking very carefully about how to exploit what is, after all, a complex change management programme, described in some detail by my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd). In a sense, it is pushing at an open door.

I have experience of dealing with change management programmes, having been both poacher and gamekeeper. As was acknowledged by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), people have been put on the spot. They do not like having change imposed on them. The net consequence is a potential for what could be described as insubordination in the ranks. In one company with which I dealt, a senior director fed shop stewards information to undermine what he saw as the damaging impact on his bailiwick of the change management programme.

If I have any criticism of Ministers, it relates not to the superb work being done by Richard Granger and his team, but to the management of people in the process. In preparing for the debate, I noted how successful the roll-out has been—contrary to what one would believe from some assertions, and contrary to what I must tell my colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee was a very out-of-date PAC report. As I said earlier, there have now been more than 250 PACS records: as of this week, 25.981 million digital images have been stored. That is a fantastic success. The roll-out has made enormous progress, complex though it may be.

Mr. Bacon
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Miller
No. The hon. Gentleman spoke for 20 minutes, although I thought that there was an agreement between the parties.

We are dealing with some interesting relationships. Many people who are getting puffed up about the programme have vested interests. Let us look first at the Big Opt Out organisation, or bigoptout.org. Professor Ross Anderson from Cambridge university is in that organisation. He is now one of the advisers to the Select Committee on Health, and I will refer in a moment to an exchange involving him. Also in that organisation is Councillor Helen Wilkinson, who is involved with the Conservative party. There are interesting links with NHS IT 23, which is where Ross Anderson appears again.

Also in NHS IT 23 is Professor Geoffrey Sampson. I do not want to do a disservice to the Conservative party—I am not sure whether it threw him out of the party because of his extreme views on racism. I have a feeling it threw him out, but I might be being totally unfair—[Interruption.] I have the cuttings here if hon. Members want to have a look. I am referring to Professor Geoffrey Sampson, who is a Conservative member of NHS IT 23 and was a Conservative councillor.

Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Miller
No. The hon. Lady has only just turned up.

Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Miller
No. The simple fact is that those links are fascinating. The Foundation for Information Policy Research, which was referred to earlier, recently received an e-mail from Ross Anderson saying:

“I’ve been asked, much to my surprise, to be one of the Health Select Committee’s special advisors for their enquiry into the Electronic Patient Record. I pointed out to them that I have ‘form’”.

Well, he has. He continues:

“I’m a member of the Gang of 23”,

along with Professor Sampson who Conservative Members seem never to have heard of. Professor Anderson continued:

“I support TheBigOptOut.”

In response to a subsequent exchange, he says:

“I hope that Archrights will write to the committee”—

the Health Committee—

“expressing its view on the ethics, legality and operational desirability of having all English children's medical records sitting on half a dozen big server farms, linked in to all sorts of interesting database apps for everything from cancer research (sob sob) to the prediction of antisocial behaviour (identify Tory voters at birth and ASBO them)”,

and a smiley is tagged on at the end. It is no wonder the Tories do not like this: these are the kind of people they are taking advice from and who have fundamentalist views about the opt-out. [Interruption.] I do not criticise my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) for, as Chairman of the Select Committee, taking a balanced view and having special advisers from both sides, but it is important that we understand that there is a link between the Big Opt Out organisation, the No2ID people, the NHS IT 23 team and the other people to whom I have referred.

Conservative Members seem to think that that issue is not relevant. On 24 April, those same hon. Members who think it is a big joke and who appear never to have heard of the people I mentioned, would have read Professor Sampson's letter in The Daily Telegraph, in which he fundamentally criticises the NHS IT programme. Those hon. Members say that they have never heard of him—perhaps they do not read The Daily Telegraph. Professor Sampson is at the university of Sussex. He has been fundamentally critical of the work of the project, and here we have a complex interaction between people who may not be members of the Conservative party—I am not sure where they fit in—but who are heavily engaged in some outside bodies that are seeking to influence Conservative party thinking.

Against that background, we look at the reality of what is happening in the NHS IT programme. That is where it becomes mission-critical. We should dismiss the motion out of hand as it is ridiculous. There are, of course, ongoing reviews within the management of the process. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire said, reviews took place in both the industry and the Department, and there is an argument for such reviews being more transparent. However, the facts cannot be refuted: there are now some 354,559 users of the NHS IT system within the NHS and among prescribing pharmacists and others.

I agree that there are issues to do with security of data. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) expressed concerns about that, and it is inevitable that there will be security issues. However, it is not unreasonable to state that the vast majority of those who manage our NHS on a day-to-day basis—the doctors, clinicians, pharmacists and administrators—are fantastic and fundamentally honest people who work their socks off for the benefit of the NHS. Having said that, there will of course be the odd rogue among them who will sell data, as there is among police forces and in any other organisation that holds data, and we should rigorously apply data protection rules. I would make further recommendations if I had more time.

The system is growing. This week alone, almost 7 million picture-archiving and communication records were added to it. This year, a further 307,000 new studies were added, taking the overall figure to more than 11 million. As the system is growing effectively and consistently at a great pace, it does not require an immediate review. The Tory party wishes to force that on it because it wants to make cheap, opportunist attacks on the Government. What the system needs is firm management to take it through some of the difficulties that it has faced, so that we can make sure that we have a world-class and world-beating IT system that leads to the improvement of the health of all citizens.

15:37:00

Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
Considering the time, I shall keep my comments brief. Over the past 20 or 30 years, the world of technology has changed rapidly. There has been the move from mainframe computers to desktop personal computers, and there have been distributed systems, centralised systems and the internet. In any major IT project—the one we are discussing is the largest in the world—account must be taken of the technologies that are developed and those that are under-developed.

I spent about 20 years in the IT industry; other Members, including the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), have also spent a long time in industry and have had dealings with the IT sector. Anyone who has worked in and around the IT industry comes to learn bitter and painful lessons about the implementation of IT systems. One thing that we learn fairly early on is that if we choose a brand new, bespoke system—one that has never been used before and is created specifically for one purpose—we are bound to come a cropper. We in the IT industry use the term “bleeding edge”—rather than leading edge—technology. That is where the purchaser and the person responsible for a project endure a lot of pain in the attempt to deliver something that ends up not being delivered.

There is also a point to be made about automating inefficiency. If the system currently in service in the NHS does not work efficiently, by automating it we simply make the inefficiency even more part of the system, which is not good. In letting large IT service contracts from the public sector, we must also consider motivation. If a civil servant or a Secretary of State is not accountable for the failure of an IT project, their motivation is to play safe—to get in consultants to make the points that they wish to hear from them, so that ultimately they can say it was the supplier’s fault or the consultant’s fault. I fear that in this case, that is what has been going on.

We must bear in mind the fact that if one is paying a consultant by the hour, their motivation is no doubt to prolong matters for as long as possible—unlike my speech, which I shall end now by saying that it would be far better if patients were able to choose whether to be part of the national patient record system. It would also be far better if GPs could choose from various systems, and if the Government now chose to accept a review, which would highlight some of the deficiencies in their approach.

15:40:00

Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and his expert remarks. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) scoffs, but if some of his hon. Friends had been a little briefer, we might have heard more from my hon. Friend.

I begin with the comments of the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—or rather, the lack of them. She accused the previous Conservative Government of spending less than 2 per cent. on IT, but she did not know how much she has spent. She touted our figure of 2 per cent., but she should have known that in 2005-06, she spent 1.92 per cent.—revenue and capital—which is rather less than the 4 per cent. that Wanless recommended. So let us kill that one at the outset.

If the Government cannot guarantee the security of records on 30,000 doctors, what hope is there for 50 million patients?

The right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), whose remarks I usually value, did not want to draw parallels between MTAS and the national programme for IT. I say to him in all respect—dream on. The MTAS debacle has lost the confidence of a generation of junior doctors. The very people whom the Government need to operate NPfIT have seen how the Department of Health mishandles its own confidential material.

In gentler times, last month’s High Court judgment, which described MTAS as “flawed” and “unreliable”, and said that it had “disastrous consequences”, “did not work”, and that its victims

“have an entirely justifiable sense of grievance”,

would have secured the resignation of a Minister. Apparently, however, these Ministers do not think this matter serious enough. It is hardly surprising that the Medix polling organisation found that 79 per cent. of GPs feel that the national electronic care record service will damage confidentiality, and that 51 per cent. would not upload records on to it without explicit consent. The remarks of the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) about GPs’ reluctance in the Bolton pilot in that respect were very relevant.

A cohort of doctors will grow up bruised by the experience of having their addresses, phone numbers, sexuality, faith and criminal records displayed for all to see, with nobody apparently responsible. We know that nobody was prepared to take charge, because when “Channel 4 News” asked a Minister to respond to the MTAS security breach in April, nobody was available. However, the Health Secretary did eventually pop up to reassure the House that only a couple of dozen or so unauthorised users had found the relevant MTAS URL. Unfortunately, one of them just happened to be “Channel 4 News”.

The Health Secretary hinted darkly at that time that criminals might be involved. Was this a smokescreen to prevent further discussion? If not, six weeks on, how many charges have been brought, what involvement has the Criminal Records Bureau had, and what disciplinary action has she taken? Given the monumental scale of this disaster and the inevitable contempt in which doctors will now hold Department of Health IT systems, it is vital that appropriate action be taken if there is to be any NPfIT buy-in by the health care professionals whom the Health Secretary expects to operate this system.

It is not as if the Department of Health was not warned. Emily Rigby of the British Medical Association medical students committee said in April:

“We raised concerns about online security for medical students’ applications last year after the system was hacked into. We were given explicit assurances it wouldn’t happen again.”

The British Orthopaedic Trainees Association, representatives of which we have met on a number of occasions, raised similar concerns with the Department months before the data ended up in the public domain. The Public Accounts Committee report that has been cited today, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) and the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) contributed, concluded:

“The Department has much still to do to win hearts and minds in the NHS, especially among clinicians.”

It went on to say:

“The Department has failed to carry an important body of clinical opinion with it.”

That was before the MTAS debacle. Ministers must now start from scratch in engaging health care professionals.

How typical of this Government that their interpretation of the IT needs of the NHS should be centralist. They have produced a lumbering expensive creature that will allow a bewildering and expanding array of public and private sector inquisitors to tap into our most intimate affairs. Our Government are going it alone. Why do Ministers suppose that other health care economies have rejected grand designs of the sort on which they are intent? The hon. Member for North Norfolk referred to the appalled fascination with which other countries regard NPfIT, and rightly so.

How will patients benefit from having their medical records so freely available?

Paul Farrelly
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Murrison
No, I will not.

Ministers say that it will be handy in an emergency to have medical records freely available in the way that they wish. I have to say that that is pure supposition without a shred of evidence to support it. If Ministers were genuinely exercised about the need for transportable medical records, why have they not been promoting more vigorously the simple devices that already exist for people at risk? If Ministers imagine that doctors will spend time bashing away on computers trying to download the details of—they hope—the patient in front of them, Ministers need to get out more. I am struggling to recall times when I was a casualty officer and the absence of the sort of data that Ministers assure us is so critical genuinely affected the outcome for my patients.

As a patient, I may well opt out of the unquantified benefits of being on the national spine, because based on the Department’s form I have no confidence that my records will not end up on Channel 4 news. What elements of NPfIT will patients be able to refuse? Can the Minister assure me and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) that the option to opt out will be fully explained to patients? Can he say—[Interruption.] I hope that the Minister is paying attention, because my last question is very important and I would like a specific answer to it. What back-pedalling will be necessary, given the divergence that emerged last month between Europe’s data protection commissioners and the Government in respect of the electronic patient record?

Ministers believe that NPfIT will help patients get treatment right across the country, but the great majority of us will only really be interested in accessing care within our local health community. Why then, in a system with finite resources, are ministers obsessed with the need to exchange data with geographically remote providers with all that that implies in terms of capacity for mishandling records?

There are signs that Ministers have at least begun to look around them and seen that their grand scheme is unique in the western world. Belatedly, they have developed an enthusiasm for what they are pleased to call “local ownership” and in March they issued a tender for bids to become “additional systems suppliers” from which individual trusts will be able to buy. Given NPfIT’s sheer scale and its extraordinary cost, why has the Minister not come here of his own volition to explain an apparently significant change of tack? Is it because he would have to admit that his troglodyte stateist solution has caused good local systems that were working effectively to be dumped? Is it because he would have to admit to having alienated the very people that he now invites to make the national programme work—our long-suffering health care professionals? Or is the Minister’s apparent enthusiasm for localism a ruse to decentralise blame from the Department of Health to health authorities and trusts?

We know that the Department has been reviewing NPfIT, as well it might. But the Government are appealing an order to publish information on gateway reviews. In the meantime, it transpires that Treasury officials have ordered the destruction—the shredding—of relevant documents. That is a serious matter. Will the Minister explain how the public interest—not his political interest—is served by withholding the gateway reviews that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) suggested should be published? If that was his suggestion, I would certainly agree with him. Better still, given the Department’s appalling track record, let us have a full and independent review of the whole of its IT circus.

15:49:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Ivan Lewis)
The Opposition are against electronic patient records—against sharing data that can save lives: they are stuck in the past and not fit to govern. The Labour Government made a bold decision in 2002: to undertake a 10-year programme to computerise the national health service. That was right then and it is right now.

Although thousands of localised systems were implemented in the 1990s, few of them were joined up, as people acknowledged. To have delivered so many systems in so many locations over the past three years is a testament to the success and direction of the Government’s strategy. Of course we continue to review and examine what we are doing, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that we have made a fundamental or structural error in adopting a strategy of ring-fencing central funding for a number of standardised systems delivered by major contractors.

Opposition Members should be frank about the conclusions of the National Audit Office in its report on the project published in June 2006. The conclusions were

“much needed…well managed…based on excellent contracts…delivering major savings…on budget…has made substantial progress”.

That was an independent objective review.

It is essential that we hold our nerve in the implementation of the systems. Although we do not deny that there are difficulties, the majority of the programme has gone well. Considering the programme on a 10-year basis, there are no significant time-scale issues; the difficulties experienced by suppliers were predicted and the costs were not borne by the taxpayer. As a Government we will continue to support the delivery of the national programme for IT in the NHS.

Paul Farrelly
Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Lewis
I cannot give way.

We shall of course continue to apply best project management practice, including ongoing evaluation and review.

The hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) referred to the relative proportion of spending on IT by his Government and by our Government. In 2005-06, the Government invested more than 3 per cent., rising to 4 per cent. in 2008—the level predicted by Wanless and twice the amount spent by the previous Government. The hon. Gentleman accuses us of an over-centralised system, but in fact the systems are implemented locally and efficiently procured centrally; in short, wherever patients are treated, they will receive much safer care. He implied that such systems were frowned on internationally, yet other countries such as Canada and Australia are adopting our practice. We are leading the definition of international standards in the field.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) wants more than anything an independent review, but the programme has been reviewed repeatedly—by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and other bodies, including the august Select Committee on Health. At this stage, another review would add nothing to the interests of patient care. The hon. Gentleman raised legitimate issues about patient confidentiality, but the question that must be asked of a responsible Government is: have they done absolutely everything in the design of the scheme to protect patient confidentiality and private information? The answer is that the Government have done everything possible to protect confidentiality and the individual rights of patients. The hon. Gentleman referred to PINs. All primary care trusts have been sent advice about best practice for the storage of PINs.

In an extremely practical way, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) talked about the reality for a patient in his local hospital. He described the outdated, luddite handling of a discharge, which would have led to the patient not receiving the care that we would expect a modern health and social care system to provide. Use of the technology is about making a reality of our aspiration to a patient-centred national health service, as well as empowering front-line professionals to do the job as they want to do it.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) is not exactly an objective observer on these matters. He refuses to acknowledge the system’s benefits of archiving, networking and core infrastructure. He selectively marshals evidence that does not represent a true or balanced picture of the benefits of the system. He referred to Milton Keynes, but the local organisation in Milton Keynes refused help from both the strategic health authority and Connecting for Health. Since our intervention, many of the problems have been resolved and significant progress is now being made. The hon. Gentleman also referred to questions about the iSoft group. The press statement on that issue that was released today is readily available.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) is an expert specialist in this area. He defined the characteristics and components that represent a good approach on the project management of the system. His main message was that he believed that best practice was being applied on the whole. He made it clear that he thought that the key was for the Government to hold their nerve. At this stage, it would be wrong to go into reverse on the project because that would have a damaging impact on the NHS and patient care.

The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) raised the question of the disposal of documents by the Office of Government Commerce. Of course, that has nothing to do with the Department of Health. Connecting for Health was fully submitted to the OGC’s process of gateway rating and was given a green rating virtually every time. The hon. Gentleman also talked about escalating costs, but every time that the programme has been examined independently and objectively, it has been acknowledged that, on the whole, the programme is on budget and not in overspend. I would have thought that he would welcome that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) talked about the vested interests that sometimes apply when opposition is articulated against the project. He also referred to the motivation of some individuals with a common view about the use of technology to improve public services. That view is out of date. If we truly want to provide responsive, modernised and person-centred public services in a modern world, advanced technology and the sharing of information and data are absolutely crucial.

Paul Farrelly
I welcome the investment in the NHS, not least because I hope that the Department will sign off on a new £400 million hospital for north Staffordshire in the next few days. However, I have by no means been uncritical of the IT system, and I have followed iSoft along with Ian Griffiths, a former colleague who has investigated its affairs. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a shame that the contributions from official Opposition Front Benchers were not as thoughtful as that of a Conservative Back Bencher, although he was critical, namely the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon)?

Mr. Lewis
I do not agree with my hon. Friend.

The Government have saved and repaired the national health service. However, our challenge is now its transformation. To achieve that, we need to use the full potential of modern scientific and technological advances so that we can make people better and save lives; provide health care closer to patients’ homes in a way that is tailored to individual needs; give patients maximum information, choice and control; empower doctors, nurses and other professionals so that they can offer world-class patient care; and tackle the health inequalities that are an affront to a civilised society. We need advance and progress that are rooted in the Government’s principle that the NHS should be free at the point of use, irrespective of ability to pay, and funded through general taxation. That principle is not negotiable with the Conservative party or any faction in the British Medical Association.

In contrast, the Conservative party uses every opportunity to run down the NHS, its staff, its ethos and its progress. I quote:

“It is time to get rid of this Stalinist system and provide everybody in this country with access to the same level of high-quality health care, when they need it at no huge additional cost.

The way forward is compulsory insurance. It is up to the Conservative Party to think innovatively and radically about a health shake-up that will benefit all.”

That is not the view of one, two, three or four Tory MPs, but of at least 28 Tory MPs known as the Cornerstone group. Perhaps it is not a case of a grammar school in every town but of a private insurance policy for every family. We look forward once again to the smack of firm leadership from the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) in dealing with his colleagues.

I urge the House to reject the motion and support the amendment standing in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

Division 133
06/06/2007 16:00:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 226
Noes: 282
Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Madam Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House recognises that a modern IT system is vital for delivering good healthcare; welcomes the NHS IT Programme which provides safer, faster and better healthcare for NHS patients, giving them more choice and control over their care; supports the objectives of modernising medical careers; further supports the aim of connecting over 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals and giving patients access to their personal health and care information; congratulates the NHS on having already delivered 93 Picture Archiving and Communications Systems across the country including a 100 per cent. achievement in London, delivering faster results for patients; further congratulates the NHS for sending over 21 million electronic prescriptions so far, reducing inefficiencies and errors; welcomes the fact that over 85 per cent. of all GP practices have used Choose and Book to refer their patients to hospital and that almost 3.8 million Choose and Book bookings have been made so far, allowing patients to choose appointments that are at convenient times to fit in with their lives; and welcomes the news that approximately 1.2 million NHS employees now have access to the new broadband network N3.

Department of Trade and Industry

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)
We now come to the second debate on the Opposition motions. I must inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

16:16:00

Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern that since 1997 the competitiveness of the UK has fallen, that growth in productivity has slowed, that companies’ business investment and research and development spending as a proportion of GDP have declined, that the UK balance of trade is in record deficit, and that businesses are suffering under an increasing burden of regulation which especially harms smaller firms; is concerned at Government plans to close thousands of post offices, its recent clawback of the science budget to pay for the Rover enquiry, its failure to meet its energy policy goals, its inconsistent system of business support, the questionable focus and performance of Regional Development Agencies, and the failure of UK Trade and Investment effectively to promote British business abroad; and therefore calls for an improvement in the Department of Trade and Industry’s leadership and enterprise culture to make it a stronger and more effective voice for business and for the United Kingdom.

We have initiated this debate for a number of reasons. One of them is that too infrequently does the House ever look at the overall picture of an entire Department. Over the past few months we have debated energy, the Post Office, and Select Committee reports, but we have never stopped to take an overall look at the functions and effectiveness of the entire Department. It is the purpose of today’s debate to try to do that.

The attempt to take an overall look comes at a timely moment. With the inevitable series of changes that will follow the change of Prime Minister, there is likely to be upheaval in a number of Departments, reform, change and reallocation of responsibilities—and the newspapers are full of rumours that the Department of Trade and Industry is under the spotlight. Many think that the Department is even fighting for its very existence, and that it may not be long for this world. It is important to take a step back and assess and evaluate the purpose and effectiveness of the Department.

The DTI does not enjoy a high reputation among many people who have to deal with it. It is easy to deride. Some describe it as the Department of tinkering and interference, or the Department of timidity and inaction. Behind that lies a difficult paradox, with which we all have to wrestle. In a world of globalisation where free markets are left to be free as much as possible, the interference from a Department should be minimal.

Over the years there have been extreme contrasts of approach, even among Conservatives. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) has taken the very words out of my mouth: Lord Heseltine, when he was President of the Board of Trade, said that he would intervene before breakfast, before lunch and before dinner. In contrast, the late Lord Ridley, as Nicholas Ridley, when he was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said—I have to amend the quotation slightly in order to conform to the forms of the House—“What’s the DTI for? I’ve got damn all to do and thousands of staff to help me do it.” He did not use the word damn.

I confess that I do not totally share the late Lord Ridley’s utterly uncompromising laissez-faire approach. I am an unapologetic free market liberal, but that does not mean that there is not an important role for a Department of State that is a genuine champion of Britain’s interests and a champion of an enterprise culture in the country. There are real questions in the minds of many about whether the DTI is doing much good, or enough good; hence the rumours that the current Chancellor, the future Prime Minister, is likely to restructure it.

We should examine the Department’s record, and one of the best ways of doing that is to turn to the Department’s annual report. I was disappointed when I opened the report, which is a pretty shoddy document full of misprints. Indeed, I am surprised that the Secretary of State ever put his name to it. I am a complete apostrophe fascist, and my copy of the report is covered in red ink. I hope that the next report will be of a much higher standard. In addition to many thousands of misprints, in some cases paragraphs just come to an end. [Interruption.] The Minister for Science and Innovation has said that that is why they are paragraphs, but they should not end in the middle of the paragraph. Section 1.11 of the report reads:

“Delivery of the Business Plan is monitored quarterly as part of the Department’s approach”—

that apostrophe is wrong—

“to performance management and within the framework of its Public Service Agreement with”.

And there it ends.

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Write your own happy ending.

Alan Duncan
The Department may well be consulting on that.

The DTI lists as its objectives a few clear targets: it should support successful business, promote science and innovation, ensure fair markets and secure sustainable and affordable energy. The departmental budget is about £6.8 billion, and about half of it is spent on science, which I shall come to in a minute. The Minister for Science and Innovation is nodding his head, and he will be pleased to hear that I think that that is one area where the money is well spent, although unfortunately I cannot say the same for everything else.

The DTI is also responsible for employment rights, energy policy, postal services, overseas trade and inward investment, competition policy, insolvency, business support, consumer issues, company law, the protection of intellectual property, and weights and measures. We believe that there must be a Department of State with a Cabinet Minister who sits around the table and defends the wealth-creating sector of the United Kingdom. If there is no voice for the wealth creators, the spenders will dominate every aspect of Government. The purpose of the debate that we have initiated today is to say that we think that that voice has been too weak, and appears to be imperilled by many of the rumours circulating at the moment.

Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
When my hon. Friend looks at the annual report and the role of DTI Ministers, has he assessed how much of their time is spent promoting British industry and British business and how much of their time is spent imposing ever more regulation and burden on small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of the economy?

Alan Duncan
I regret the fact that at the mere mention of imposing regulation there are groans from Government Members, which shows that they do not understand the effect of so many regulations. Regulations are especially punishing for small business, which, unlike larger business, feels that it has weak representation in getting its voice heard in the corridors of Government. I will address promotion in some detail in a moment, so I hope that my hon. Friend will be patient.

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman provide three examples of regulations that if there were a Conservative Government—which I think unlikely—he would abolish?

Alan Duncan
I will cover that in a minute.

Let us examine the regard in which the Department is held at the moment. The Secretary of State admits that the DTI could do better, and recognises that it has underperformed. He said as much at the British Chambers of Commerce conference:

“The question is, could the DTI be improved, should changes be made? The answer is yes”.

I think that they appreciated his candour. They certainly agreed with him at the time. All the groups to which anyone speaks believe that the leadership and effectiveness of the Department of Trade and Industry are weak where they should be strong.

The Engineering Employers Federation argued that the structure is not sustainable because overlap with the Treasury often occurs in promoting economic growth. Martin Broughton, president of the CBI, said that the DTI had not been dealt with as a serious Department by the Government.

A study that the London Chamber of Commerce published today shows that nine out of 10 company directors in London support the creation of a dedicated Department for business, headed by a Cabinet Minister, to replace the DTI. The Secretary of State might say that we have already got that, but dissatisfaction with the Department’s current effectiveness lies behind the numbers in the survey. More than two fifths of directors said that the DTI was not fit for purpose in its current guise.

Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South) (Lab)
rose—

Alan Duncan
I shall give way to a former Minister.

Nigel Griffiths
Will the hon. Gentleman guarantee to provide a Department in that form?

Alan Duncan
I would love to be in a position to guarantee a Department in that form. We believe that there is a good case for a strong Department, perhaps with enhanced powers, to be a stronger voice for business, commerce and British interests at home and abroad. It is currently perceived as too weak.

The CBI’s view is that any changes to the structure of Government must strengthen the economic weight attached to Cabinet decisions. It believes that it is vital for a strong champion of business, which understands the realities of today’s global economy, to be at the heart of Government. It said that it did not want the competitiveness agenda to be undermined in critical policy areas, including employment and energy.

Most organisations that have to deal with the DTI believe that it is not doing as much as it could, although I confess that I would not go as far as Mr. Chris Rea, the chairman of Rotherham-based AES Engineering, who said that the DTI is a “complete and utter joke”. However, I agree with him that it needs to undergo a complete cultural transformation. That is what, essentially, I am trying to convey to the Secretary of State.

Let us take a quick canter through the Department’s responsibilities and ascertain whether it has performed as well as it should. We have debated post offices several times. In 2001, the Government promised to keep them open except in unavoidable circumstances. Those unavoidable circumstances appear to be arising thick and fast every day. The Government have presided over the largest annual closure of sub-post offices. In total, more than 4,000 have closed since the Government came to office. We know from a recent statement that they intend to close a minimum of a further 2,500 in the next two years. That amounts to a closure rate three times that under the Conservative Government.

The Government hide behind the access criteria, but even their analysis of those criteria in past years has shown that they can shut two thirds of all post offices and still meet the criteria, because 99 per cent. of people in rural areas live within 3 miles of a post office.

The bigger subject, which we have often considered in the House, is energy. We have had no end of reviews. In 10 years of a Labour Government, energy has been high on the agenda for five years. The publication of a White Paper—the third such White Paper since Labour came to office—was delayed twice. It was the product of the Government’s third major energy review, under their eighth Energy Minister. Yet no definite decisions have been made about the future of our electricity generation. Further consultations are under way, and there are questionable elements in the White Paper published just before the Whitsun recess—about the reform of the renewables obligation, for example—which will delay things further.

David Howarth (Cambridge) (LD)
On the subject of the uncertainty of policy, will the hon. Gentleman take the opportunity to inform the House of the Conservative party’s policy on nuclear power? Subject to one or two legal cases, we know the Government’s view, and we know the Liberal Democrat view, which is clearly against, because we believe that nuclear power will crowd out carbon capture, renewables and energy savings—so what is the hon. Gentleman’s view?

Alan Duncan
The idea that having a choice in how power is generated and having a fair regime for nuclear energy will crowd out renewable alternatives is, in my view, absurd. In that, we agree wholeheartedly with the Government, and share the same view. The only thing that we have not done that the Liberal Democrats have done is to rule out nuclear power altogether—a simple posture that is unrealistic in its assumptions about how electricity will be generated in future. I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what Conservative party policy is. We want a cap and trade regime for carbon, in which permits are allocated as far as possible by auction and far less by historic use. We want a properly understood and priced regime—the Government have been slow on this—for handling waste. We would reform the climate change levy, which attacks nuclear energy even though it is a non-carbon-emitting process, and we would have a fair planning regime in order to enhance the regime under which a future nuclear power station can be built by having site and type approval. Does that suffice?

David Howarth
Yes.

Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend clarify why the Liberal Democrats are against nuclear power on land, but in favour of it when it is in the back of a nuclear-powered submarine?

Alan Duncan
I confess that even at my most imaginative I am unable to disentangle the thought processes of the Liberal Democrats, but I have no doubt that their spokeswoman will be able to do so when she rises to her feet and explains all to a baffled and mystified House!

Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Before my hon. Friend moves on, I would be grateful to hear whether he believes it possible—or, for that matter, likely—for us to meet our carbon reduction targets without nuclear power.

Alan Duncan
That would depend on a number of factors. One is the early and effective advance of carbon capture technology, which I am coming on to in a moment, and another is the scale and scope of the contribution that the renewables sector can make. There is no doubt that in the absence of carbon capture, it will be very difficult to make the carbon emissions reductions that we all want to see. The Government have to admit—this is partly another charge to be levelled against the DTI in some respects—that carbon emissions are rising and that their plans are probably insufficient to meet their emissions targets. In March the Government signed up to an ambitious EU target to get 20 per cent. of all energy from renewables by 2020, but the measures outlined in the energy White Paper are nowhere near sufficient to meet it.

Another issue is carbon capture. I stood here a mere two weeks ago, and in an immediate response to the White Paper I said that buried in the statement was bad news for carbon capture. I was scoffed at by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who sat there grinning from ear to ear, saying that I did not know what I was talking about. I did, and I do. A mere hour later, BP announced that it was pulling out of carbon capture in Peterhead, which was the most developed and advanced experiment in the entire country. It was a pioneering project destroyed by the Government’s refusal to include it in the renewables obligation. Once again, the competition has been deferred, so buried in that news was very bad news for carbon capture. I hope that the Secretary of State will have the good grace to admit it.

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that he was very quick in bringing this matter before the House after the statement was made. In fact, I too raised it during the statement, and no indication was given of any difficulty with it. Given that the Government have announced that there is to be a competition, and given that the current partners in the Peterhead scheme have already invested about £50 million in the pre-engineering phase, most of which appears to have been lost, what confidence can other projects have in this competition, which the Government are to announce some time later this year?

Alan Duncan
As I understand it, the Government have announced a competition that will either open or close in November. By whatever means they hold the competition, they cannot escape from the accusation that research and experimentation in carbon capture has been deferred, probably by as much as two or three years, compared with the point that BP had reached. That is a disaster in terms of wanting clean coal to make an effective contribution to our power generation mix. The Government’s track record on carbon capture is therefore pretty grim.

The Government’s strategy for nuclear waste is also unfortunate. Anyone who is to invest in a nuclear power station will need to know the planning regime and the costs of building and dismantling it. Those are now pretty well within the scope of a potential investor. But what they do not have—and they can only get it from the Government—is a clear understanding of the costs that they will face for handling, looking after or treating nuclear waste. Until the Government say in clear terms how new nuclear waste will be handled, and how the Government and the investor will interact, no company is likely to invest. If ever there were urgency, it is to clarify that. The Government have said that urgent decisions need to be taken about our future power stations, but no such decisions can readily be taken until they are clear about the handling of nuclear waste.

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee described the Government’s proposals for dealing with radioactive waste as “incoherent and opaque”. Its report details serious concerns over the institutional framework for dealing with it. Will the Secretary of State tell us exactly what the regime will be for nuclear waste?

Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman believe, however, that once that regime becomes clear, it must be the investors who pay the price for that waste, and not the public sector picking up the subsidy through some back-door minimisation or transfer of risk to the state?

Alan Duncan
Yes. Our view and the Government’s is that the nuclear sector should have no subsidies. We must accept, however, that government and the planet will outlast the life of a nuclear power station and probably its commercial capacity to handle waste. Thirty, 40 or 50 years from now, the ultimate stewardship or treatment of that waste might have to be handed over. That is exactly the kind of detail that is necessary for anyone to decide to invest; without it, they will not do so.

The biggest area of DTI activity in which it scores well is science. The budget for science is about £3.5 billion, and is largely administered by the research councils. Broadly, the Government have done well on that. They have doubled the budget in the past 10 years. My criticism, however, is that science projects need continuity and certainty, which does not get bounced from one year to the next. I am critical of the Government’s decision to claw back £98 million from the science budget to pay for things that they knew had to be paid for, such as the Rover inquiry. In future, I hope that the Government will appreciate that continuity of science budgets is crucial.

Earlier, mention was made on the Conservative Benches of regulation. We never hear much from the Government about that. They deny that regulation does any harm. The small business sector in particular, however, finds regulation increasingly costly and burdensome—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) have any experience in business? Perhaps he would like to tell me now. He does not.

The fact is that anyone who wants to set up a business must face no end of instructions. If one reads the Government’s “short guide” to setting up a business, one finds that it is about 50 pages long. That is intimidating for someone who simply wants to register as a sole proprietor or as a limited company with very few employees and get on, be self-reliant and earn a living for themselves and others.

Rob Marris
The hon. Gentleman asked whether I have any experience in business. The short answer is yes. I spent most of my working life in the private sector. I helped to run a small business in retail—ladies’ shoes, as it happens—and I was a partner in a law firm, which is private sector as well. That is where the majority of my career was spent. I agree that small business often finds it harder to cope with regulation than larger business, and there are exceptions from certain regulations to take account of that. However, on the question of regulation, what three regulations, by way of example, would his party abolish?

Alan Duncan
I shall pick one straight away. I would not force all businesses to put no-smoking signs in every public room throughout the country for ever and permanently. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will persuade his party to vote against such ridiculous and numerous regulations.

Mr. Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that whether it is the ladies’ shoe sector or the legal sector, the single thing that helps small businesses most is to operate in a low-tax light-regulation environment? The biggest failure of the DTI under this Government is that it fails at any time to make the case for that competitive environment, which can be achieved only by sharing the proceeds of growth between increases in public spending and reductions in taxation.

Alan Duncan
I agree. It has been calculated that more than 30,000 new regulations have been introduced by this Government—more than 14 every day. The average British company has to spend over £13,000 a year implementing new legislation. On the back of that, we have dropped from fourth to 10th in the international competitiveness league. Let me point out the crucial deceit in the last Government. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry might not have seen it coming, but he should have were he genuinely defending British business interests. The Chancellor raised corporation tax on small business. Where was the voice of the DTI in objecting to that?

Jane Kennedy (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
As a Minister, I struggled to ensure that in the drive for regulation, which largely came from Europe—I know that the hon. Gentleman has quite an enlightened attitude to Europe, having listened to him in the past—the potential for burden was minimised. Colleagues in the Government work equally hard to do that. Does he accept that to minimise the impact of regulation from Europe on business we have to be part of an effective lobbying group? Being effective in lobbying in the European Parliament is an important part of that. Surely his party’s isolation within the European Parliament will not help in his avowed attitude to such regulation.

Alan Duncan
Based on the first half of the right hon. Lady’s comments, I am happy to act as a reference for her return to government as a Minister in the impending reshuffle. As for the second half, it is not about lobbying in the EU. An EU directive is an instruction to member states to make their domestic law conform to certain stipulations. Most of the gold-plating—indeed, all the actual gold-plating—is home-grown. It is the culture of the United Kingdom and the way in which we write our law to adhere to directives that causes so much of the problem. I applaud her attitude when a Minister of trying to keep that to a minimum, but the culture of Departments and the way in which we write our law tends to make those directives go far further than they need ever do. That is what I would like to see changed.

Mr. Redwood
Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour Members are being disingenuous? They will remember that our party made 63 deregulatory proposals as part of our manifesto for the last general election. We brought them to the House of Commons and debated them. We sent them to Ministers who kept on losing them. We are still waiting for them to implement them, and many of them would have made the work of business easier. I can promise my hon. Friend that the forthcoming economic policy competitiveness report will have an even longer list than the 63 because the Government have made so many more regulations in the past year.

Alan Duncan
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We all look forward to his report on competitiveness, which I am sure will make an important contribution to our policy making.

Let me turn to the issue of business support. A year ago, the Government announced their intention to reduce 3,000 business support schemes to a mere 100. Let us stop and think about that for a moment. The very fact that the Government imagine that a quantum leap can be made from 3,000 to 100 is a vivid illustration of the absurdity of the present regime. There are 3,000 schemes, and most people simply do not understand how they work. The Government are spending perhaps £12 billion on these schemes, and can provide no measurable evidence of the effect of that expenditure.

Only 15 per cent. of small businesses have had any contact with the schemes. Instead of a clear structure for support, there are roughly 3,000 schemes administered by around 2,000 public bodies. That is absurd. The system needs vigorous and urgent rationalisation, a proper assessment of its effectiveness, and an explanation from the Secretary of State of how he expects it to work in the future. The chief executive of the Small Business Service has described it as

“an incredibly complex system… an inaccessible business support system for customers that is inefficient and ineffective for Government”.

That takes us to a issue on which deep thought is needed: the issue of regional development agencies, on which the Government spend the second largest amount in the DTI budget. Each of the nine RDAs has a budget of anything between approximately £250 million and £450 million, and for a long time there has been no convincing explanation or analysis from the Government of what good they actually do.

As we all know, over the years Governments of different colours have wrestled with the best model for enhancing the economic development of our regions, and with the task of releasing pockets of poverty from economic inactivity. Where previously we had the development corporation model, involving some fantastically effective and evident flagship schemes in derelict docklands, we now have a lot of jam spread very thinly throughout the country. It is not clear whether that is to do with regional policy or with economic development. We do not know, for instance, whether the RDAs’ remit includes a demand that they should invigorate an enterprise culture in areas dominated by the public sector, such as the north-east.

Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that as a consequence of the devolution of technical expertise from the DTI down to the regions through the regional development agencies, the country has lost what was for a long time one of the DTI’s strongest attributes—individual civil servants with sector expertise? An exporter seeking to extend his business to overseas markets can no longer turn to anyone in the DTI with that expertise.

Alan Duncan
I largely agree with my hon. Friend. Serious, preferably cross-party, debate could be had on the issue. It is no good the hon. Member for Burnley (Kitty Ussher) shaking her head. She is welcome to intervene and say why my hon. Friend is wrong, or to speak later, but this is exactly the complaint that we hear wherever we go in the country.

Miss Kirkbride
Talking of issues that might well be subject to party political agreement, when the Trade and Industry Committee has travelled abroad one of the main criticisms of RDAs that we have heard relates to the competition between them. Most people in India, China and Brazil, for example, think that England—or the United Kingdom, for that matter—is a small country stuck in the middle of the Atlantic. They do not know the difference between the west midlands and Tyneside, and they find that competition between the RDAs that turn up for the trade fairs trying to sell the wares of one particular region gets in the way of money coming to the UK.

Alan Duncan
I am going to come on to that in more detail in a minute, but essentially I agree with my hon. Friend. Regional development agencies opening offices abroad has become an absurdity. The Trade and Industry Committee has today published a report criticising the proliferation of those offices abroad. What is the point of having nine regional development agencies possibly competing with each other on the streets of Shanghai for business? That business needs to come to Britain if it possibly can, regardless of which region it goes to. It has become nutty. The Secretary of State needs to address that problem urgently.

I cannot see the logic of having RDA offices abroad to the point where we are simply exporting competition among ourselves into foreign markets that we would like to win for Britain. That means that our efforts abroad have become incoherent. I will come on to that, but it illustrates further the irrational and fragmented structure and activities of RDAs.

With some RDAs, I talk to people locally and they say, “We like them.” For example, they may have promoted the region effectively with advertising and branding, as One NorthEast has done. However, if one scratches a bit further, one discovers deep frustration among the business community about a wealth of resource ineffectively spent. It tends to be a spoonful of jam here and a spoonful of jam there, with a little joint venture in skills, a little joint venture in a building project and a little joint venture in some training project. That means that the RDA builds up an entire client base in its region and that, whenever there is a threat to abolish it, there will be people in the region who say, “That is half my project down the spout. The RDA should stay.”

The question we should ask is not whether RDAs should have all those partnerships with people that somehow justify their existence, at least cosmetically, but whether the RDAs are having a genuine effect and changing the culture of enterprise and the economic prospects of the region.

Jeremy Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, although it is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) said, that regional development agencies are too small to compete internationally, in many ways they are too big to deal effectively with the diverse problems of a particular region? If we take the west midlands, it is difficult for a regional development agency to come up with a strategy that is equally applicable for Warwickshire and for Wolverhampton, which the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) represents. That is part of the problem that RDAs face.

Alan Duncan
My hon. Friend has a good point. It means that the focus of the RDAs’ activity gets averaged out. Do they think that they should provide the bricks and mortar, restore derelict areas and clean up sites so that they are fit for further occupation? Do they think that they should be champions of infrastructure by asking that the A1, for example, be widened as it heads north past Newcastle? Should they be the ones that encourage enterprise and arrange for school leavers aged 16 or 17 to acquire the skills to get jobs that can give real added value? The RDAs do not really know what they are about. They are a bit of this and a bit of that. The danger is that in the end they are a lot of nothing. Therefore, I encourage a rigorous debate on the future of RDAs, with a clear picture, in policy and in purpose, of what they are there to do.

Let me move on to the allied issue of trade promotion. The biggest gripe one regularly hears is that UK Trade and Investment is an ineffective body for the promotion of British trade overseas. It is thought that inward investment increasingly means buying British companies, rather than bringing new investment into the UK. It is thought that UKTI’s efforts abroad are utterly fragmented and never cohere. It has concentrated on China, India and Brazil but its structure of offices does not seem to have much rhyme or reason. Although I accept that under Andrew Cahn much work has been done to sharpen up its act, under this Government we have completely lost the brand image of Britain abroad that we used to have. That is down to there being a multiplicity of offices, and to UKTI having lost its vim and vigour. That is destructive to the reputation and interests of British industry in other countries. I am also critical of the fact that DTI Ministers have made inadequate numbers of visits abroad to promote British interests.

Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con)
It is only fair to record that it is the view of the Trade and Industry Committee that UKTI staff working at overseas posts are of exceptionally high calibre, but in a report published this morning we express reservations. There are morale and management problems at the centre of UKTI, and the Government must address them.

Alan Duncan
My hon. Friend is the Chairman of the Select Committee and I am sure that Ministers will read his report fully. From what I have heard about it today, it sounds as if it matches the conclusions that I and my Front-Bench team have reached over the past few months about UKTI and RDAs.

I wish to make a plea to the Secretary of State and his Ministers—or, perhaps, to his and their successors. Personal visits abroad matter, but over the past 10 years DTI Ministers have paid very few visits to much of the middle east. Some of our closest allies have received no trade visits at all. I understand that the Secretary of State will soon visit the United Arab Emirates, which is to be welcomed. However, there is at present a lot of money in the middle east and despite the Iraq war there is deep affection for Britain. People in the middle east understand that Britain is a good place to put their hundreds of millions—or even billions. We have neglected countries such as Oman and Kuwait. The last trade Minister to go to Yemen was Anthony Nelson in 1996, and he—[Interruption.] Yes, he joined the Labour party—but at least he was right to go to Yemen.

It is a serious point. It causes deep insult to people who instinctively have affection for us that our governmental apparatus appears to neglect them and that we send only Defence Ministers to their countries. That must be remedied. I can honestly say that I believe that I personally, and at my own expense, have been to more such countries than have the Secretary of State and his entire team over the past 10 years. I urge the Secretary of State to appreciate that this is a severe deficiency in the practices of his Department.

The Rover inquiry has cost a lot of money. [Interruption.] Yes, millions of pounds. However, we must remember that the problems that we faced in respect of Rover were made far worse by the ill-judged interference and intervention of one of the current Secretary of State’s predecessors in that post, the right hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers). Two offers were on the table for Rover, and he took the one that he thought would save him votes. That accelerated the demise of the company. It cost people their pensions and pay-outs, and eventually their jobs. That is a stain on the reputation of the right hon. Gentleman.

The Government have also delayed the publication of legislation on construction for more than a year. The amount of manufacturing jobs is shrinking. Business investment is at a record low. Research and development spending has fallen by 9 per cent. as a proportion of GDP since 1997. Many of the figures that matter most in making up our competitive position are pointing in the wrong direction.

Within three weeks, we will know the fate of the DTI. My party is against its abolition, as that would be reckless and there must be a voice for business at the Cabinet table. On balance, we would favour the Department being enhanced. However, it is essential above all, regardless of the structure of the Department, that its culture is changed so that there is a stronger voice for enterprise and business in the UK. The DTI—or whatever the Department is called—must be what it has not been over the past few years: a voice for business around the Cabinet table, and a voice for Britain in the world.

16:59:00

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Alistair Darling)
I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

‘acknowledges the outstanding performance of the economy under this Government with the longest unbroken economic expansion on record, in contrast to the boom and bust of the previous Government, with inflation and interest rates both on average half of the previous 18 years and over 29 million people in work for the first time; notes that the UK is recognised as one of the best places in the world to do business; supports the Government’s approach to better regulation and a 25 per cent. reduction in administrative burdens by 2010; praises the balanced approach to protecting working families through measures such as the national minimum wage and flexible working, while achieving the highest level of employment; commends the Government’s unprecedented commitment to a national post office network with clear access criteria and the financial support to underpin it; applauds the more than doubling in real terms of science funding after decades of under-investment; welcomes the Government’s leadership in tackling the challenges of climate change and energy security; endorses the commitment to reduce the number of business support schemes across Government to under 100 by 2010 after the Department of Trade and Industry’s successful simplification of its own programmes to under 10; recognises the increasing contribution of regional development agencies to regional prosperity and jobs; approves the new strategy of UK Trade and Investment which has received widespread business support; and calls on the Government to build on its achievements to secure the country’s growing economic prosperity.’.

I have to congratulate the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), who spoke for nearly three quarters of an hour and said very little, although he said it very well. We are no further forward in knowing what the Conservative party’s policies are, except on one matter. He now tells us that, having stood on a Tory platform of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry, it would be completely reckless to do so. I am sure that all those who follow the development of Conservative party policy—be it on grammar schools or the DTI—will follow this one with great interest. I presume that the grammar school compromise is that it should not be abolished but enhanced. We will have to wait and see what the Tory definition of “enhancement” is.

The House will understand that, for obvious reasons, I do not propose to say anything further about the DTI itself, except for one thing. During our exchanges across the Floor of the House, it is important that we record the fact that within the DTI, as within the rest of Whitehall, there are many dedicated and effective men and women who have served this Government—many have also served previous Governments—in an exemplary manner. Much that they do will continue to be necessary, however Whitehall is organised in future. However, it is important to record that many people have contributed greatly to policy development and, therefore, to the development of the economy.

I shall deal with many of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, but I want also to speak to the amendment, which sets out our record over the past 10 years. I am very happy to debate for the rest of our time today and on many future occasions the contrast between what has happened in the past 10 years and what happened in the previous 18. Indeed, as my starting point, I could do no better than quote the report of the very committee that was chaired by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), which the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton said would be published shortly. I look forward to that. My understanding is that it was ready last December, so it must be really good if it has been kept back. It says, among other things, the following:

“The UK starts from a strong economic position. It is the fourth largest economy in the world and it has the highest employment rate in the G7 group of industrialised nations.”

That is quite a good tribute to the British economy and does not fit easily with the Conservatives’ motion.

Mr. Redwood
rose—

Mr. Darling
Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Redwood
I am delighted that the Secretary of State has given way. He is of course quoting from advice into the committee, not from the committee’s report. Why have we lost 1 million manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years, and why should we believe that the next few years will be any better?

Mr. Darling
Whether or not it is advice into the committee, it is extraordinarily good advice and I commend the right hon. Gentleman on having given it. He well knows that there have been major structural changes in our economy over the last 10—indeed, 20—years, as I shall discuss shortly. Despite the fact that the services economy has grown rapidly—I was surprised that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton did not say anything about that—we still have a very strong manufacturing sector, particularly in pharmaceuticals and aviation, for example; I shall return to that issue shortly. The key for us, especially in today’s global economy, is to make sure that the United Kingdom economy is a good place to do business—we have that—so that as these changes take place, we get the new jobs and industries and the new research and development that will ensure our future prosperity.

When any objective observer looks at our economy, they will see that we have had the longest period of sustained growth on record. We have low inflation—it is about half what it was between 1979 and 1997—interest rates are half what they were when the Conservatives were in power, and employment has reached a record high of more than 29 million. That is 2.5 million people more than in 1997, and contrasts with the position for much of the 18 years in which the Conservatives were in power. People forget about that, but it should be remembered that whole generations lost the opportunity to get on and to do the best that they could for their families, because, at a time of massive change, no help was given to them when they needed it most.

Mr. Redwood
rose—

Mr. Darling
The right hon. Gentleman is at least making a fist of defending the previous Government—something that his colleagues singularly failed to do.

Mr. Redwood
I am grateful for that praise from the Secretary of State. Can he explain why 5.4 million people of working age are on benefit and have no realistic chance of a job today? Is that not a shameful record? What he is talking about is creating jobs for migrants, who are doing good things for our economy, at the expense of those who are already here.

Mr. Darling
I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Since 1997, through the new deal and other measures, this Government have done more than any other to help people who were previously workless to get back into work. Many of the measures that we introduced were opposed—indeed, the Conservatives and the Liberals opposed the very funding of that programme—but they have made a difference. The right hon. Gentleman is right in that there are still people who would be capable of work, with the right support, and we want to ensure that they get into work, especially at a time when the economy continues to grow. It is right both economically and socially that we do everything we can possibly do to achieve that.

The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton raised other issues about our performance, but productivity has increased. We are closing the gap on France and the US, and we have overtaken Germany. Real-terms business investment has grown by almost 50 per cent. in the past 10 years and there was a 5 per cent. increase in research and development in 2005 over the year before. There is also much research and development and innovation taking place in intangible assets—such as skills and software, which are not always captured in the statistics but are very important to the service economy—and that is making a real difference. Of course, research and development in pharmaceuticals and aerospace are bearing fruit. Our pharmaceutical industry is doing extremely well, because that industry sees Britain as a good place to do business. Indeed, some firms have relocated their activities in the UK because they see it as a good environment in which to develop.

We have a strong basis for the future, although there are of course other things that we need to do. The hon. Gentleman mentioned regulation. However, despite being invited on three occasions to name three regulations that he would repeal, he could come up with only one—the taking down of the no smoking notices. I am sure that for some firms putting up such notices might be a burden, but I would hazard a guess that even if they were all taken down again it would not make much difference to whether businesses felt free of regulation.

When one presses Conservatives—although perhaps we will not do so today—on what it is that they really do not like, it is not long before they start talking about, for example, the right to request reasonable time off to care for children. They have never been keen on the maternity and paternity leave provisions that we have introduced. Even today, they are uncomfortable when such matters are raised.

I agree that reducing the regulatory burden on industry is essential. The companies legislation, which the House debated at length last year, removed many of the regulatory requirements on companies. The unfair commercial practices directive from the EU, something that is not universally popular in this House, repeals 22 separate consumer regulations. I am clear that the DTI has to play its part in reducing the regulatory burden. We should ask ourselves whether we need to regulate, and if we do not, we should not. It is important that we change the culture. Under successive Governments, if something undesirable happens, there is a call to ensure that it does not happen again, so legislation is introduced, but sometimes the consequences are not fully thought through.

We need to ensure that we have the appropriate regulatory environment, but we also need to ensure that we have the right corporate tax environment. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman could not acknowledge that we have reduced corporation tax. We reduced it to 30 per cent. in the early years of the Government and when it comes down to 28 per cent., it will be the lowest in the G7. Indeed, it will be lower than in all the other major economies.

Sir Robert Smith
In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State praised the staff of the DTI. The north-east of Scotland would have much praise for staff in the DTI’s energy sector and their work with PILOT on the regulatory side of the industry. However, the weakness of the DTI as a voice in Government is exemplified by the corporation tax issue. The Government introduced a change in the tax regime during a tax year without warning when they introduced the supplemental tax in the North sea. People in north-east Scotland felt that the DTI, for all its work with the industry, did not have the ear of Government when it mattered—which that change did, because it had an effect on the investment climate.

Mr. Darling
I do not agree. Many people in the oil industry said that they wanted stability in the North sea oil tax regime, but earlier this year when they saw the reduction in corporation tax rates in the Budget they said they would like to take advantage of them, too. I understand why they might say that, as I also understand why low gas prices, which actually benefit large sectors of our economy, might have an adverse effect on North sea investment decisions. In addition, owing to the high cost of operating in the North sea compared to other fields throughout the world, the industry has to tackle a number of issues. We are working on a number of aspects with the industry, through PILOT, with which the hon. Gentleman is familiar, and we met recently—in April. We do not expect universal agreement on everything all the time, but I think the industry itself would readily accept that over the past few years the PILOT regime has worked quite well to resolve some of the difficulties that the industry faced. As I said a couple of weeks ago when I launched the energy review, although the North sea oil field is mature, it is in all our interests to do everything we can to exploit its remaining reserves.

I said earlier that I thought it strange that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton had not mentioned the services industry, especially as we are a world leader in the export of services. According to the International Monetary Fund, we are the world leader in financial services, so we should bear in mind how important that is to the economy— not just self-evidently in the City of London, which is the pre-eminent place in the world to do business, but in other parts of the UK, such as Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester or Bristol. The financial services industry is very important to us, as are other parts of the service industry where we are doing extremely well.

I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point about trade later, but when I visit different parts of the world, I find much interest—in China and India, for example—in Britain’s services industry. The fact that exports of services have grown by more than 120 per cent. over the past 10 years demonstrates the importance of that sector of the economy.

Despite everything the Conservatives say, when we look around the world and ask what outside commentators say, we find that the World Bank ranks the UK as the top country in Europe for ease of doing business. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that, of all OECD countries, we are first for economic stability and second for product market regulation. Ten years ago, in the last year of the Conservative Government, the UK was bottom of the G7 in terms of gross domestic product per head, yet now it is second only to the US, overtaking France and Germany. Our economy has of course grown by more than 28 per cent. over the past 10 years. We have a strong foundation for development in the future. Of course, there are more things we need to do, but the position now is a world away from what it was 10 years ago when we came to power.

As I said, I listened to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton for 45 minutes, but I waited in vain to hear what the Conservative policy positions might be in some of the key areas he covered. I want to consider two in particular, because they are important. Both are long-term issues about which, for the good of the country, it would be useful to know what all the political parties think and whether they have set views—it might be too much to expect the Liberal Democrats to go that far, but it would be helpful for the rest of us. Those two big issues are energy and science and technology. The future of this country depends on our ability to invest and to get ahead of other countries.

Two weeks ago, I published an energy White Paper in which I made the point that we have two pressing issues to confront: climate change and security of supply. Even if people were in doubt about the importance of security of supply two weeks ago, a look at the newspapers of the past few days would have brought home to us the real problems we will face unless we start taking decisions now about security of supply to avoid becoming over-dependent on importing oil and gas from parts of the world where the political situation may be difficult.

Our strategy is to save energy; we want lower carbon energy. I was very sorry that BP decided it could not continue with carbon capture and storage—those of us brave enough to be facing Trade and Industry questions tomorrow will be returning to this subject—although I understand the problem caused by the cost of maintaining the Miller field. However, it is not right to suggest that after simply pressing a button, the company would be ready to go. It spent a substantial sum on preliminary work, but the project will involve not only power stations but the chemical processes to capture the carbon, in addition to transport and storage. The commitment could stretch to hundreds of millions of pounds. It would not be possible for the Government to award a contract to one company without a proper competition process.

More than half a dozen groups of companies are extremely interested in this. They realise that there is a lot of work to do on intellectual property and that contractual matters will need to be sorted out. Such preliminary work must be done. BP has told us that it would be interested in working with us in the future, albeit, unfortunately, perhaps not on the Peterhead field. CCS is important, but it is commercially untried and untested. It is not being developed anywhere else in the world. We are the first Government to say that we are willing to enter into a partnership to do that, but, given the public money involved, I must ensure that we get things right.

Mr. Weir
I understand what the Secretary of State is saying, but the White Paper makes it clear that there is a need for CCS technology, especially in developing countries. It also states that there is a need for developed countries to move ahead with the technology

“to show leadership and to prove the validity of the technology, firm up costs and reduce technical risks.”

As the Secretary of State said, a lot of money has been spent on Peterhead. The Government indicated their support for the project some three years ago, but it now appears that we are starting from scratch again. Given the number of coal-fired power stations and other carbon-emitting developments that are being built in China and India, should we not be taking a lead and pushing ahead with the one project that was the most advanced?

Mr. Darling
I understand why the hon. Gentleman and the leader of his party believe that it would be right to enter into partnership with BP, given the base at Peterhead. However, given the amount of money we are talking about and the fact that half a dozen other groups are interested, it is not possible for the Government simply to say, “Never mind the rest of you. We’re just going with one particular company.” We would be open to substantial criticism if we were to go down that avenue.

Alan Duncan
I accept that the Secretary of State cannot offer special favours to one company. However, he can change the rules of a regime so that everyone is affected equally. I understand that if the Secretary of State had said that successful carbon capture could be included under the renewables obligation, BP would probably have kept its project going.

Mr. Darling
Whatever else carbon capture and storage is, it is not renewable—it mitigates the effect of carbon. If I were to do such a thing, it would remove all the support for renewable energy itself—wind farms, marine power and so on—because the costs of carbon capture are so great that that would clean out everything else. In passing, I should point out that the hon. Gentleman is against the renewables obligation. Under his party in government, it would not be there in the first place, so that is not a terribly good point to make.

Alan Duncan
We have never said that.

Mr. Darling
The hon. Gentleman has said that; he has been extremely critical of the obligation.

The hon. Gentleman talked about our energy targets. We are one of the few countries that will meet its Kyoto obligations. We are on track to meet our 2050 target on reducing CO2. However, we must return to the point that we have raised time and again: exactly what is the Conservatives’ policy? The leader of the Conservatives said earlier this year:

“Anyone can say they’re green. It’s easy to do the softer things like ride your bike, visit glaciers and rebuild your house to make it green. But it’s only clear you mean it when you do the tough things as well.”

He is quite right. I was surprised, therefore, to find that this afternoon a Conservative council has turned down yet another application for a wind farm. Conservatives are blocking wind farms all over the country. The London array, which is an offshore scheme—one of the largest in Europe if it goes ahead—is being blocked because the electricity cannot be brought ashore. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), who speaks from the Conservative Front Bench, said a short while ago:

“Both the renewable energy industry as a whole, and our rural communities throughout Scotland, will benefit from a moratorium.”

That seems to be something less than a wholehearted commitment to renewable energy, which I understood to be one strand of the Conservatives’ thinking.

Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend talks about renewable energy, but does he agree that the Conservatives are equally confused and in a mess on nuclear power?

Mr. Darling
I was going to come to that. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton said at the beginning of last year:

“From about the age of 12, I have had an instinctive hostility to nuclear power. I treat it with profound suspicion.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 779.]

I was surprised, therefore, that on the day that I published my White Paper he urged me to go and build nuclear power stations as quickly as I possibly could. I was even more surprised that this morning, in an interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC, when he was asked what is Tory policy on nuclear, he said that “It’s pretty well the same as the Government’s.” [Interruption.] Well, we had better have a word with the BBC, because according to the transcript that I have here that is precisely what he said. Again, this is so reminiscent of the grammar school debate, where we are not sure whether the Tories are for something or against it, and then their leader comes along with a characteristic grammar school compromise and says:

“Let’s give green energy the chance and then have nuclear there as a last resort.”

In other words, perhaps in 2020 or 2030, if it has not worked because the Tories have blocked all the wind farms, we will start considering nuclear. That policy makes absolutely no sense at all.

In relation to planning, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton has said that he supports a streamlined planning system. I welcome that. However, on the day before that, the shadow planning Minister had condemned the proposals. We all know in this House that if we want infrastructure of the sort that we need, whether for energy, transport, housing or whatever, we will have to reform the planning system. The test will come when proposals finally come before the House and we see whether they are supported.

I welcome what the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton said about science. He did not say much, but he said that we were doing the right thing. We have indeed doubled the amount that we are spending on science, and it will rise to just under £4 billion by 2010. We have spent £3 billion on rebuilding our science infrastructure in universities so that we have the first-class facilities that we need. Importantly, we are putting money into getting that research from the laboratory into the marketplace, which is absolutely essential. We are beginning to see the results of an improved science base in this country, with the decoding of the human genome, the fact that a fifth of the world’s top 100 selling medicines were developed in the UK, and the fact that we have only 1 per cent. of the world’s population but produce 9 per cent. of all science papers and 12 per cent. of all citations. Our expenditure on research and development has been increasing. Encouragingly, in the past three years 25 university spin-out companies have floated on the stock market to the value of £1.5 billion. That is all very welcome.

I hope, in the interests of the long term, that we will have the Conservatives’ support. I was rather surprised and disappointed to see that the Tory technology and science taskforce said that a Tory Government will not spend any more on science. We are spending more because we think that it needs to be spent.

Mr. Dunne 
I have had the privilege of witnessing some of the investment that the Government have put into large science projects by visiting the Synchotron project at Hanwell outside Oxford. Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why that excellent project was held up for more than a year by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers), who decided that he thought it better, despite all the scientific evidence available, to locate it nearer to his constituency than where the scientists wanted it in Oxford?

Mr. Darling
I have no knowledge of that, but I will happily look into the matter and write to the hon. Gentleman. There would be more force to what he said if he accepted that those who speak for the Conservative party have not always been saying the same thing. I was disappointed that when the shadow Chancellor went to silicon valley in California last year, he said:

“I have seen the future and at present Britain is not part of it.”

He was roundly condemned by academics and research institutions the next day. He was also condemned by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), who is of course the source of much wisdom, and who has said:

“After a slow start, licensing income is now growing fast, and we are better than the US in generating spin-offs”.

The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), who is also often a source of great inspiration, has said: “British research is fantastic”—what a tribute to the new Labour Government! I very much hope that we will have the Conservative party’s support on science.

There is also the automotive industry to consider. The industry has had its problems, but a new generation of Astra car is being developed at Ellesmere Port. That plan was very much at risk just a year ago. The new Mini is being produced in Oxford, and BMW recently completed the millionth Mini. Toyota now manufactures engine parts in Deeside, and the north-east has the most productive car plant anywhere in Europe.

Mr. Fraser Kemp (Houghton and Washington, East) (Lab)
On the automotive industry, the support that we have had for research and development over the past few years is greatly welcomed; it allowed us to maintain production of the new Almera and the convertible Micra, a car that sold in huge numbers. Would my right hon. Friend care to reflect on the fact that in the past few weeks, Nissan has, for the first time in a long while, begun to export cars to Japan from the Tyne? That is a tremendous endorsement of the plant, and of the British motor industry.

Mr. Darling
I agree with my hon. Friend: that is a tribute to Britain’s car industry. Who would have thought 20 years ago that we would be exporting cars to Japan? The traffic seemed to be in the other direction. There is also the example of the aerospace industry.

Jane Kennedy 
Before my right hon. Friend moves away from the subject of the car industry, an equally successful plant is the Halewood plant in Merseyside, which produces X-type Jaguars and the Freelander 2 using a groundbreaking production process that is driven by new technology. Partnership between the trade unions and the management has enabled the plant to produce two completely different makes of car on the same production line at the same time. It is the first place in the world where that has happened. If he is in the region in the next few weeks, as he may be, he might like to extend his visit and come and visit the plant and meet the staff involved.

Mr. Darling
I should be happy to do that, if it is possible. My right hon. Friend makes an important point—the automotive industry has been transformed over the past few years, and we need to remember that. Of course there have been difficulties, such as those encountered by Peugeot, but there have been great successes, too. Similarly, in aerospace, although Airbus has its difficulties—I think that there are more problems yet to be resolved in that respect—we now have every opportunity to develop the new technologies that are likely to power new aircraft and enable them to fly. Of course, we have expertise from firms such as Rolls-Royce. I have mentioned the pharmaceutical industry, but there is also the environmental industries and bioscience to consider. They are all areas in which we are doing well. Incidentally, they are also the areas in which the regional development agencies have been able to help. I think that having RDAs is good; it has enabled us to focus help on different parts of the country, all of which have different needs, but of course it is appropriate to take stock and ask ourselves whether improvements can be made.

The point that the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) made about representation overseas is one about which I have expressed concern, and it is an issue that we need to consider. It is quite possible for us to market Britain while drawing attention to the fact that we may have particular strengths in different parts of the country, depending on what we happen to be involved in at the time. Before he asks, I have not had the opportunity to read his report, but I shall certainly do so.

Peter Luff
I am encouraged by what the Secretary of State has just said. I do not like to be at all confrontational in these matters, but may I gently remind him that each and every one of the offices that was opened overseas was approved by a Government Minister? May I ask him to put a moratorium on approving any further offices, at least in the meantime?

Mr. Darling
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right. Should a proposal come up, I will scrutinise it with great care. In fact, when I get back to the office, I will search my in-tray and see whether there are any proposals.

The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton mentioned a promotion by UK Trade and Investment. Yes, the agency has been through some restructuring, as has the whole DTI. It is a tribute to its staff, at a time when there were substantial staff reductions and thus difficulties, that they concentrated on the job in hand. It is right to concentrate on those parts of the world where there are developing markets. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about visits. I am not the greatest traveller in the world, but from my visits to China, India, Brazil and Russia, I know that it makes a difference if Ministers go out. Despite what he said, companies across the world think highly of Britain, and there are many areas where people can see great potential, particularly in our research. UKTI has done a great deal to encourage investment in this country, as well as investment in countries abroad, and that is something that I want to develop.

Mr. Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I believe that my right hon. Friend is soon to visit the United Arab Emirates, so will he congratulate the team in the Dubai embassy, who are very good at promoting opportunities for investment not just in the UAE but throughout the Gulf?

Mr. Darling
My hon. Friend is quite right: work has been carried out to promote trade across the world, but especially in the Gulf. It is important that we do whatever we can at whatever level to make sure that we promote British interests and British trade.

Finally, I want to touch on a point that has not been mentioned, but it is a significant part of the Department’s work. As well as making sure that Britain is a good place to do business—we have a competitive market and a liberalised economy, far more so than some parts of the European Union—we believe in having a fair society and we believe that fairness at work matters. Whether it is the national minimum wage, equal treatment for part-time workers or maternity and paternity leave—most of those measures were opposed by the Conservatives—it does, in fact, matter. When the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton talked about red tape, I was surprised that he could name nothing more than the no smoking notices that he wants taken down. I think that I am right that, last autumn, he launched the campaign for enterprise, which was hostile to what it described as Labour’s family-friendly legislation. It was not awfully keen on protection for sacked employees and it was not terribly keen on trade union rights. I seem to remember, too, that it coined the phrase, “discrimination is not a dirty word”. That probably gives us an inkling of the Conservatives’ position, so I very much hope that we can achieve consensus about the need to make sure that there is fairness in the workplace. We must recognise that people need to balance their responsibilities at work with their family responsibilities. Just as the leader of the Conservative party said that it is easy to talk green, so it is sometimes easy to talk about being family friendly: the proof is what we are prepared to do about it.

Mr. Dunne
The sentiments that the Secretary of State has just expressed about fairness are ones to which we can all sign up to varying degrees. However, how can we square that with fairness for some of the more vulnerable members of our communities? At the same time that he says that we need fairness in business, post offices have been closed up and down the country, even though they provide the only access to financial services, cash, benefits and pensions for many of the most vulnerable people in the community.

Mr. Darling
It is very well for the hon. Gentleman to say that we can all sign up to fairness. This is the first Parliament in which he has served but, over the past 10 years, some of us can remember Conservatives fighting to get into the Lobby to vote against all those things. The national minimum wage, we recall, was going to cost millions of jobs: that is what the Tories said but, in fact, they were so wrong in that prediction that they have been forced to say that it is a good thing. As for post offices, I would make two points to the hon. Gentleman. First, we are committed to a national network. Secondly, unlike the Opposition, we can pledge the money that is necessary to support that network.

The weakness of the Conservative party’s policy is summed up by a comment from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton in the Financial Times last year. He was trying to defend the Conservatives from the perception that they were always attacking big business. I was struck by his remark that the party—the Conservative party, that is—was not involved in an ideological exercise but in a branding one. That is the problem that the Conservatives have. Whether on grammar schools, energy policy, nuclear policy, planning or any other topic, there is too much emphasis on branding, without the implications being thought through. They do not have an economic policy. We do. I commend the amendment to the House.

17:35:00

Susan Kramer (Richmond Park) (LD)
I feel that in this debate we are picking over the carcase of the almost dead. The Government amendment to the Conservative motion is astonishing in its lack of mention of the DTI. The word “Government” but not “DTI” frequently appears in it. The rather sniffy comments from the Secretary of State about the Liberal Democrats may reflect his chagrin that the policy that we have long advocated of eliminating the DTI is suddenly about to turn into Government policy. I understand why he might be feeling a little sniffy. We saw that coming a long way away. Indeed, we recommended it as far back as 1995. It is true that it has taken a long time for a good policy to be implemented, but I suspect that in the next few weeks it will be in place. That is perhaps long-term thinking at its best.

I associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about many of those who work for the DTI. The words had the air of a eulogy. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) say, “Sounds to me like ‘Thank you and good night’”, but the words are fairly earned. Many civil servants at the DTI have carried out their roles very well, and I have found that many Ministers have performed their roles and represented their areas of responsibility well. The problem is an institutional one, not a problem with the individuals involved in the Department.

The mover of the Conservative motion, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan)—I see that he has had enough of the debate and has chosen to leave—crafted something quite elegant in its criticisms of the DTI. However, when it comes to the punchline, the call for action, it says just about nothing, other than, “We’ll burnish it up a bit.” That seems to be Conservative policy.

Peter Luff
Can the hon. Lady clarify which functions of the DTI she would scrap?

Susan Kramer
We have always been glad to go through the process. As I continue my speech, I shall indicate various functions that we do not consider appropriate. We have been clear about that in the past and we are looking at the issues again in further detail, because we think that will be extremely relevant to the conversations over the next few weeks. The Conservative party has not had the courage to call a dodo a dodo. It is time we did so.

Mr. Kevan Jones
One of the things that the DTI has been promoting in the north-east which it can be proud of is the science city initiative in Newcastle, which has been lauded and supported by the Liberal Democrat-controlled council. Is the hon. Lady saying that the DTI is wrong to undertake such an initiative, which has been warmly welcomed by Liberal Democrats in Newcastle?

Susan Kramer
Many of the things that have happened, particularly in science, technology and innovation, are positive. We have been, and continue to be, very supportive of cutting-edge basic research science. The hon. Gentleman is missing the point that many of the functions of the DTI could go elsewhere and be better carried out there. It is the institution itself that is fundamentally flawed. There are pieces of the DTI that work, that are relevant, that are effective and that are appropriate for Government to do. However, there is nearly always a related Department that also has an interest in those tasks, and they should be transferred to that Department. The dead wood should be dumped and the cost to the taxpayer saved—[Interruption.] For people who think that they have read Liberal Democrat policy over 10 years, I find that comment extraordinary. Both sides are about to support what we have been saying, and I will try to take them through the policy as we head on through this speech.

Perhaps the DTI had a rationale back in the days of nationalised industries, but we have ended up with a rag-bag organisation. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton listed many of the DTI’s activities: it is involved in regulation, energy policy, trade policy, skills, science and innovation, nuclear decommissioning, the Royal Mint, the Royal Mail and oversight of the Government’s stake in QinetiQ. It has a rag-bag of activities, which means that we end up with a completely unfocused Department that has no clear and effective voice in the areas in which that voice must be effective. It is time the Department was restructured and the ineffectual activities were abandoned.

I have been DTI spokesperson for a few months, and every time an issue comes forward my first words are, “Which other Department is involved?” There is so much overlap and duplication in the policy area, and so little clarity on who takes the lead, that the Department has, in a sense, made itself ineffective.

Mr. Kemp
On the subject of clarity, will the hon. Lady advise me which Department, under her proposals, would be responsible for regional selective assistance, which many hon. Members have to talk to the DTI about to help local companies with research and development?

Susan Kramer
If it still exists—I think that it has recently changed its title—the Department for Communities and Local Government would be the home for some of the active and effective parts of the DTI. The endless crossover and difficulties in communications suggest that that Department would be the right home.

Mr. Redwood
Will the hon. Lady tell us the net staff saving and the net saving per annum from her proposals?

Susan Kramer
I am going to carry on.

Mr. Redwood
You don’t know.

Susan Kramer
We will update our past plans—but in our previous manifesto, we came up with some £8 billion in savings over the life of the Parliament. We want to take another look at that range of issues.

I suspect that the Government will shortly step forward and tell us about the saving that they will make from the restructuring, which will be a fairly large sum. There will be an interesting conversation about those issues, and I will be interested to see what the Conservatives have to say as the savings are laid out, and whether they intend to reject them.

Mr. Kevan Jones
Will the hon. Lady give way?

Susan Kramer
I am going to carry on, because otherwise we will have had only three speakers in the entire debate, which would be insane.

Let us consider some recent events, if we are going to discuss the effectiveness of the DTI. The problems of the Post Office exercise more people in this country than any other issue. The DTI has looked on the Post Office as an organisation in terminal decline. Some 2,500 more branches are about to close, and there is the move to WH Smith—nearly always in unsatisfactory circumstances—of 70 more Crown post offices. What shows the negative view that the DTI is taking of the Post Office, even more than its looking upon it as a declining network and set of services rather than examining its potential, is the fact that it is also eliminating Postwatch, just at the key time when its services are needed to support consumers as they go through the process of trying to work out what the individual closures will mean.

Indeed, part of the problem with the Department is the constant fault in implementation. The timing of abolishing Postwatch shows lack of sensitivity to the way in which services should be delivered on the ground if they are to be effective. People need support to go through a proper consultation process about a critical decision, which will determine whether some communities thrive or decline further. It will have a big impact on many elderly people and on deprived communities. That is a good example of the Department’s general failure.

Hon. Members of all parties generally support the new National Consumer Council’s underlying mandate. However, proposed legislation is inadequate to implement it. In the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill, one has to hunt for any direction that makes the NCC a consumer champion. The intent that Ministers describe is not in the Bill, and therefore cannot be guaranteed.

The Government’s plan for the new NCC requires merging Postwatch and Energywatch. No headquarters have yet been identified. Redundancy notices should be issued shortly if the transition is to be accomplished by next April. Morale is declining in all the various parts of the organisation. Again, implementation has been fouled up. That appears to be inherent in the way in which the Department currently functions.

We all supported estate agent reform, but again opportunities have been missed. There is no ability to introduce, for example, lettings and direct sales as part of the reforms. Positive licensing is absent. The public want that to ensure that when they make the biggest investment of their lives, they are dealing with a trained and qualified estate agent, not someone who put the sign out yesterday morning.

As the guardian of public interest, the NCC should be a vital body, yet the implementation process is again fundamentally flawed. That could disillusion the public about protection in the long term.

On energy, the Department could not even manage a consultation on the costs of nuclear power without running into trouble with Mr. Justice Sullivan and a judicial review. Something of a farce is now happening, with a repeat of a consultation. It is not clear that the required information on costing—for example, the Ernst and Young report, which is available only in heavily redacted form—will be in the public arena to enable us to hold an effective consultation. Indeed, the Government have refused to publish the submissions to that consultation until the end of the process, so no one can rebut them or respond to them at all. Flawed process is a constant feature of the Department’s actions. That leads to general scepticism that the Government’s direction, especially on nuclear power, is essentially driven by Downing street rather than by the Department, or by a reasoned review of all the issues.

Mark Tami
Perhaps the hon. Lady could explain Liberal Democrat energy policy. Locally, Liberal Democrats appear to oppose every scheme, whether it is for a wind farm or onshore or offshore energy. Is there a national Liberal Democrat policy, or simply an opportunist policy of local opposition?

Susan Kramer
The hon. Gentleman picks up scraps here and there. Liberal Democrats certainly support renewable energy. There will be instances of opposition by local parties, but the Liberal Democrats have been overwhelmingly supportive. We will continue to be so, and to play a leading part in promoting the sort of political framework necessary for renewables.

Renewables are the core of the energy policy that we want to pursue. Our fundamental argument with the Government’s case on nuclear power is that it will effectively crowd out carbon storage and capture—the alternative transitional technology until we achieve an all-renewables-based energy system—as well as renewables. The BP Peterhead experience will be looked back on in a year or two as the first example of a carbon capture and storage programme that got crowded out by the nuclear announcement and by the direction being captured within the energy White Paper. Time will tell, but I suspect that we will look back on that as the very first example and illustration of what is really going on in this sector. There are finite resources for investment in future energy technologies, and they are now being diverted to what I regard as the most inappropriate technology.

The Minister also raised the issue of security of supply, but nuclear energy, even under the most optimistic programme that he could put together, would be providing something like 4 per cent. of the UK’s total energy usage. It does not eliminate the need for oil and gas. We hear about 20 per cent. of electricity being provided from renewables, but the Government constantly get electricity and energy muddled, and they have never been able to tell us how they will reach the EU target of providing 20 per cent. of energy—not electricity—from renewables by 2020. That is another feature of the DTI’s general problem in dealing with a wide range of issues.

The Government constantly talk about not subsidising nuclear energy, but we have heard clearly again today a commitment from both the Government and Conservative Front Benchers to what amounts to the most significant subsidy of all—the transfer of risk in connection with waste to the public and away from the commercial sector. That has always been one of the key core arguments against nuclear power, because that is the largest subsidy of all.

Mark Tami
Whatever the hon. Lady thinks about nuclear power, does she not believe that waste is an issue for us to consider now? We have to tackle waste, so the problem has to be solved—now and for the future.

Susan Kramer
One can only agree with the hon. Gentleman’s argument that what has been done and ignored in the past has to be dealt with now, but unfortunately, creating more waste only adds to the problem and does not diminish it. It also adds to overall costs, so there is an underlying set of issues that has to be dealt with—[Interruption.] If only we were talking about rubbish, but this is waste, and it is far more dangerous.

The Minister spoke about the huge manufacturing potential in this country, but there really is substantial potential in marine renewables, if only we exploited the incredible skills built up through the sub-sea oil and gas industry. I have visited players in that industry and it is clear to me that they see nuclear power as their death knell. They thought that a source of funds might be provided for their industry to help them build on the real potential. Many projects are sitting in prototype, but they are unable to move off that prototype base into real demonstration and production, precisely because the funding lying on one side will be directed into nuclear if that is where the Government intend it to go. If the Minister does not know that, I suggest that he do some travelling and talk to some of the people in those industries. If he did, he would find it an eye-opening set of experiences.

Let us move on to the issue of science. I support what the Government and Opposition Front Benchers have said—that the Government have done many things very well in this area. However, the clawback of £68 million over the last year and the additional £30 million clawback from regional development agencies has been very disappointing. Half the latter came from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, but the research councils have suffered as a whole.

We were utterly frustrated to hear the Government describe this as “unspent money”, when it was really unallocated money in what had been promoted and produced as a multi-year programme, under a set of changes to the way in which grant money was to be allocated, supposedly allowing time to work out where best to make the allocations. According to the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, the money was being diverted to cope with the overspend on the Rover inquiry, but, sad to say, there is a strong suspicion that it was really to do with part of the overspend on nuclear decommissioning. Here we have nuclear decommissioning actually impacting on what everyone has described as the most important aspect of what we are talking about—science and industry.

On trade issues, others have talked about UK Trade and Investment, so I will not go into it further, but let me say that one of the biggest disappointments has been the Doha round. When it comes to meeting our targets for trade and industry, along with international development—and with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a player—we have been incredibly inadequate and we need to strengthen what we do. This again illustrates the fact that the existence of a Department of Trade and Industry will not necessarily provide the international tool that we need to achieve our goals in what has been identified as one of the most important strategies of this Government—or, frankly, of any other Government. If developing countries are to have a future, something with the characteristics of a development trade round must succeed. Nearly all the time benchmarks have now been passed, and the hope offered to some of the poorest countries in the world has been lost.

I hope that some of my colleagues will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to talk about small business. I was asked earlier what kinds of programmes we would be willing to eliminate, and we think that some of the business support services, which are described by the people whom they are offered to and targeted towards as utterly ineffective and inappropriate, ought to go into the dustbin. We want to make sure, however, that business, including small business, has a genuine and proper voice at the highest levels of government.

The Budget was a good illustration of the fact that small business, especially, has no significant voice in the key decision making and discussions in this Government. The policy that had the effect of raising corporation tax on small businesses seemed driven by a Treasury desire to discourage people from incorporating rather than remaining as sole traders—a side issue if ever there was one. It completely failed to recognise that those small businesses, given their nature and the way in which they function, could never take advantage of the research and capital allowances on offer. Clearly, the conversation with representatives of small business never took place.

Mr. Kevan Jones
The hon. Lady has now spoken for nearly 20 minutes. In her opening remarks, she said that she would enlighten us about the dead wood in the DTI, and explain how getting rid of it would result in a saving of £8 billion over the lifetime of a Parliament? When will she explain where the dead wood is, and where the savings will be made?

Susan Kramer
As I made clear, the £8 billion figure was in our previous manifesto. As there have been changes in the DTI, we are working through the numbers again. That is not inappropriate. We did not call this debate; we are responding to it. We will come forward with the numbers. We are not changing policy. [Interruption.] I have just described the business support services aspects; one can tell that that has not stirred the blood of many people to come and participate. There is plenty of scope to eliminate aspects of the regional development agencies’ activities, many of which compete with export schemes, and even the Government seem to have finally realised that that is a complete waste of time and money. As we work through the structure, we will come out with hard numbers, as we always do.

As the DTI disappears, two essential elements must remain and be captured within whatever the new structure is. First, there must be a voice for business at Cabinet level, where it will have an impact. That is less an issue for large business—which is able to lobby and reach Government in the ways that it finds necessary—than it is for small business, which has been under-recognised and under-heard over a long period. We envisage that role being in the Treasury, perhaps in the No. 2 slot. It should be a powerful voice, and perhaps the word “Business” should finally be brought into the Minister’s title, so that it is evident that that voice is at the Cabinet table, and heard within the context of economic development.

Secondly, the energy portfolio must be put in a place where climate change can be the umbrella, so to speak, under which it functions. In the past, energy policy has essentially been business-driven, and exceedingly slow to recognise environmental and climate change issues. That is partly why we are in such a pickle today, with the struggle to reach the necessary targets over the years. The structure that I am proposing will be essential. There are business voices that very much want energy, transport and planning to go off into a sort of infrastructure Department that would separate them permanently from the climate change discussion, other than in a most tenuous way. We do not support that, as it would be utterly inappropriate.

My goal in coming into this role has been to put both myself and every other Front-Bench DTI spokesman out of a job. It looks as if I will achieve that later in the year. When the Department is eliminated and elements of it restructured, it is crucial that it is not done simply to accommodate rival politicians who are looking for particular titles, or to sort out different political balances within the party. There needs to be a sunset clause on every aspect of what the DTI does, so that it will be examined and a decision will be made on whether it is a worthwhile and appropriate activity for the Government to carry out—and whether it can be carried out within a particular Department or constructed in an alternative way. An alternative home should be made available for those aspects that are worth while; that would be more effective, and would eliminate duplication. Those parts that are inappropriate should disappear for good.

18:01:00

Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South) (Lab)
I do not recognise in the motion the description of the Department of Trade and Industry and its functions as in any way reflecting its work. I notice that it omits the key word “manufacturing”. That is deplorable. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) made a passing mention of manufacturing and the number of jobs lost, but he did not say what the Opposition would do to ensure that manufacturing continues to play a vital role in this country’s economy. On the issues that the motion does mention—energy, science, research and development, workplace rights and business support—and on manufacturing, the record of the DTI and Ministers is a creditable one.

I feel passionately about manufacturing. As right hon. and hon. Members know, I come from a constituency that is massively and predominantly in the service sector—finance, insurance and connected services—but my constituents know that there would be no financing or insurance of products if they were not being manufactured. It has been a drive of the Government to ensure that as much manufacturing as possible is carried out in this country, and in automotive, pharmaceutical and other key areas that has been achieved.

That has been achieved by a strategy started by the first inquiry into manufacturing in 30 years—the developing our manufacturing strategy—and by creating the manufacturing advisory service and a centre of excellence for manufacturing in every region. We heard about the benefits of that. The right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), who spoke for Halewood, highlighted the multimillion pound—£7 million—DTI investment that has brought in £1 billion of investment in Jaguar and the new X-type. There are many other such examples. In fact, more than 50,000 manufacturers have been helped by the Government’s manufacturing strategy, which is why manufacturing productivity has risen by 30 per cent. since they came into office.

Mr. Ben Wallace (Lancaster and Wyre) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is not seriously saying that, given that 1 million manufacturing jobs have been lost under his Government’s strategy, that that strategy is a success?

Nigel Griffiths
The 1 million manufacturing jobs that the hon. Member should be telling the House about are the 600,000-plus manufacturing jobs lost in one year alone in the first Tory recession and the 400,000 lost in one year alone in the second recession. Those are the records that we had to rescue this country’s manufacturing from, and we did a creditable job in doing it.

Our success is shown by the fact that, whereas under the last Government manufacturing jobs flooded other countries, we have repatriated key projects such as the construction of the new Mini engine. A substantial investment by the DTI has multiplied itself 10, 20 and 30 times in another massive investment at Hams Hall so that the engine can be made there. The Department has also underpinned £1 billion of investment in aerospace. Our Rolls-Royce Trent engine now powers almost a third of the world’s commercial aircraft, again as a result of the Government’s manufacturing strategy.

Manufacturing productivity increases have returned this country to the world-beating league in certain key areas. That is one reason why our pharmaceutical industry now exports more by value than almost any of its foreign competitors, our aero-engines—as I have said—power a third of the world’s commercial aircraft, a quarter of Ford cars in the world have engines with “Made in Britain” stamped on them, and projects like the one in Brazil are being returned to this country.

This Government established the Automotive Academy to increase skills and productivity. They established the Chemistry Leadership Council and the national aerospace technology strategy, and have worked closely with industry to reflect its needs in those crucial areas. And they have done more. Ten years ago there were only 75,000 apprentices in the country, which was a disgrace. Now there are more than 250,000, 70,000 in manufacturing alone. However, I urge my colleagues—who I know will take my words to heart—to do still more to promote even higher-quality manufacturing apprenticeships and jobs.

The DTI is an unsung hero in another key area, that of decent rights for working people. We have delivered to part-time workers rights that they never had under any previous Government. More than 3 million have been given the right to four weeks’ paid holiday, more than 6 million have benefited from pay and conditions equal to those of full-time workers, and more than 1 million—1.5 million, I believe—have benefited from the national minimum wage. I will not make political points about who supported those measures and who did not.

As for the DTI’s contribution to the environment, I applaud the work of the Minister for Energy, my hon. Friend the Minister for Science and Innovation—the former energy Minister—and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in securing a £1 billion investment in renewables, including £800 million for microgeneration, more than £110 million for offshore wind generation, £60 million for energy crops and biomass, and investment in key technologies such as photovoltaics, which now power some of the computer laboratories and libraries at Napier university in my constituency.

I challenge the Liberal Democrats to name two onshore wind turbine projects for which they have supported planning permission. It seems to me that they never support such projects on their doorstep, although they have a general and, I am sorry to say, rather hypocritical policy of supporting them nationally. I note that they remain seated, and do not attempt to name even one such project. In fact, I do not believe that they support any of them.

I am glad that on science, at least, we have consensus in the House. In 10 years we have taken science investment from £1.3 billion to £3.5 billion. That has led to spectacular successes, one of which was mentioned earlier. Let me add to the many tributes paid to Lord Sainsbury. He was an outstanding science Minister, I believe the best science Minister. He was a great ambassador on behalf of science to Government and a great securer of Government resources for science.

On UK Trade and Investment, I thought that the criticisms of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) were a little unbalanced. Had he read today’s report from the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, he would have seen in paragraph 38 praise for the success of UKTI, for its strength in attracting R and D facilities from overseas into this country and for the targeted investment in China and India, which is proving immensely profitable for UK companies. UKTI, its predecessor, the DTI and other Departments have succeeded in making this country the magnet for foreign investment because of our favourable tax regime and our regulatory regime, which is far more favourable than that in many other countries.

The report touches on regulations, as the hon. Member did. It says in paragraph 3 that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks this country

“as having…the most liberal product market regulation amongst the G7 countries.”

That reflects what is being said by other surveys that the hon. Member should be reading.

The RDAs have been giving business advice and have been highly praised for the business advice that has been delivered through the small business network, which has advised 600,000 small businesses.

I was provoked by this: I was rather surprised that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) raised the issue of post offices. I note that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, who speaks for the Opposition, wisely steered clear of that because the Conservatives closed 3,500 of them.

In fairness to the Liberal Democrats, no one knows more about the betrayal of post offices than them. Their councillors in towns and cities such as Aberdeen refuse to let local citizens use the post office to pay the council tax, rents, business trade waste bills, home help and other charges. By contrast Labour-run councils such as Edinburgh pay a fee to the Post Office to allow that to happen. Of course, the net result of that is that 20 per cent. more post offices closed in Aberdeen. Again, the Liberal Democrats have failed to put at least some money where their mouth is. Instead they wanted to save money and they did not care that it cost us the post offices.

Nationally, Liberal Democrat policies on post offices are just as bad. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) wrote a policy paper advocating the privatisation of post offices along Dutch lines, which has meant mass closures. By contrast, this Government have invested some £3 billion in post offices to secure the best possible network that can be secured in this day and age. That reflects what Labour councils such as Edinburgh have done. The Government have given financial support because it was worth while putting money into post offices.

Susan Kramer
I rise just to confirm with the hon. Gentleman that 2,500 branch post offices are to be closed. Do I understand that, if any of those are in his constituency, he will support the closures? That is the implication of what he has just said.

Nigel Griffiths
I will come to that directly but I thought that I was giving way to the hon. Member because she had thought of one wind turbine project on mainland Britain that the Liberal Democrats support.

David Howarth
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Cambridge local plan, which went through when I was leader of Cambridge city council and which supports wind farms.

Nigel Griffiths
I ask the hon. Member, are the wind farms there now?

The position is clear. I make sure that in my constituency people do not have to travel beyond the recognised distance to visit a post office. I also support my local postmasters and postmistresses who decide that they want to move out of that business and into another one. That might be one of the reasons why I got their support in the election—because they realise that in Edinburgh we have had a realistic strategy that has led to managed closures, even though we regret some of them, of course. However, I am not in favour of the Liberal Democrats telling this House one thing—that they will save every post office at all costs—and then failing to support post offices in Aberdeen by not paying for the services there.

David Howarth
Does the hon. Gentleman’s newly confirmed commitment to localism mean that he now considers the post office to be a local service rather than a national one?

Nigel Griffiths
No, I shall explain what I am saying. The Government are being criticised because they are unwilling to pay high fees to post offices to deliver certain services where technology has taken over. However, local councils are, like the Government, spending money; the sum being spent on this programme is £3 billion. If local councils are willing to spend money, they should do so. Under Labour, they did so in Edinburgh, but they did not do so in Aberdeen, which is indefensible.

Susan Kramer
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nigel Griffiths
No. I have given way often enough, and other Members wish to speak so I do not wish to hog the proceedings.

The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton was wrong to criticise my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for saying that the Department of Trade and Industry could do better and that it is not perfect. That, of course, is true of every Department. I welcomed my right hon. Friend’s commitment to seek to improve the quality of service. He listened, and he took on board some justified criticisms about UK Trade and Investment and regional development agencies. I know that he will study the Trade and Industry Committee report with great care, and that the Government will respond with a considered view. I urge the House to reject this absurd motion.

18:17:00

Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the characteristically lively and well argued speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths), even though I did not agree with every word he said. He did, however, anticipate my opening remarks. The debate is about the effectiveness of the Department of Trade and Industry. If true perfection were the test of which Departments to abolish, in my opinion many others should come before the DTI. My list would include the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and the Department of Health before the DTI.

I wish to spend a few moments analysing Liberal Democrat policy. I am the Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee, and I must be as non-partisan as possible, but I must say that the Liberal Democrats are profoundly and seriously wrong, and I urge them to reconsider their position. Their policy is good news for the two major parties in the House because it will lose them the votes of business, but I genuinely believe that what they advocate is not in the interests of UK business.

Two issues flowed from the Secretary of State’s opening remarks. Whenever I speak in this House on DTI or economic matters, I seem to have to make the following points, and especially the first. The Secretary of State talked a lot about macro-economic stability and the Government’s great economic record. It is worth reminding the House that that is built on Conservative foundations. The reforms of the Thatcher and Major Governments and the golden economic inheritance of 1997—the likes of which few incoming Governments have ever received—enabled that record to be continued. The Government should, however, take the credit for not having blown it, which previous Labour Governments did. They did not blow it, although they have nibbled at the edges of that inheritance and made matters more difficult.

The roots of what have been achieved lie in Conservative policies. Those with longer memories will remember the mess that we inherited in 1979; that was the real mess that had to be cleared up, and it was done very successfully. [Interruption.] I did not catch the Minister’s sedentary remarks, but I am sure that they were characteristically witty and well argued.

The Secretary of State also rightly paid tribute to the success of the automotive sector in the UK. That is also a Conservative policy that has come to fruition. I had the privilege of being a special adviser at the DTI in the late 1980s when the then Secretary of State, now Lord Young of Graffham, set as an industrial strategy—to employ a word that he would not like me to use—the attraction of all internationally mobile automotive investment to the UK. He aggressively wooed Nissan, Toyota, Honda and other companies, and they all came. It is from those companies driving up standards, particularly in the automotive supply sector, that so much of the good that has happened to the automotive sector has come. So it is worth remembering that two of the great bits of credit that the Government have sought to take in fact belong to the Conservatives. But never mind—we move on.

I want to emphasise in my, hopefully brief, remarks that the DTI has a crucial role to play, albeit in perhaps a slightly different incarnation. However, the centrality of the need for not just a Minister but a Department representing business within Whitehall is crucial. At a time when Britain faces competitive challenges as a result of globalisation—an issue that many people in this country, and even in this House, do not fully understand—it has never been more important to have an effective voice for business. We need not a junior Minister in the Treasury, where other issues will always take priority, but a Department that stands on its own, free in the Whitehall jungle to argue the case for business on each and every issue that impacts on it. It is not a sign of weakness that the DTI has to interact with many other Departments; it is a sign of its importance and of the number of issues in Whitehall that affect businesses. The voice of business must be there and expressed clearly.

David Howarth
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Luff
I will give way once or twice but not more, in view of the fact that a number of other Members want to speak.

David Howarth
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and the argument that he is making is certainly one to take into account. However, is not the difference between having a Minister and a Department that the latter spends its time looking for activities to justify its existence? In general, those activities are not about supporting business in other parts of government, but about inventing new regulations. That is the danger of having a Department devoted to such matters.

Peter Luff
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has seriously misunderstood the DTI. I have some sympathy with the arguments of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) about the Small Business Service, which seems to be a relatively unloved part of the DTI. However, her proposal certainly would not save £8 billion in the lifetime of a Parliament, even if the SBS were abolished. I cannot think of any other function—she did not, I think, name one—that could be abolished within the DTI. [Interruption.] I will run through the list later, but I doubt whether there is another function that we could even consider abolishing. Of course there are things that could be reformed, improved and made more effective; but abolition, no. All these functions have one thing in common. They are not the rag-bag that the hon. Lady suggested; they are coherent and deal with issues affecting business. That is the common theme that gives them their importance, and the DTI its coherence. Perhaps the DTI is not always as effective as it might be, but broadly speaking it is a very coherent Department.

The DTI has done a lot of things well. Under this Government, I would single out the handling of the problems relating to Airbus, where a very successful outcome was achieved by the Minister for Industry and the Regions. Actually, the DTI’s handling of the fallout from MG-Rover—working, to be fair, with Advantage West Midlands—was not bad, either. However, in a number of areas it has fallen short of the high standards that we have a right to expect. Reference has been made to deregulation, and the Department has not been effective enough in getting other Departments to be as strong on deregulation as they might have been.

Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con)
A recent report by the Hertfordshire chamber of commerce estimates that the burden of regulation has cost £431 million since 1998. According to the chamber of commerce:

“This government continues to write cheques that they expect businesses to cash”.

Regulation is becoming so burdensome that it will kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Peter Luff
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I am currently doing battle with regulations emanating from the Department for Communities and Local Government and DEFRA, not the DTI. It is really important that the DTI is there arguing the deregulatory cause, to make sure that such burdens are reduced and minimised.

The Government were slow and confused in their handling of energy policy. I personally welcome their conversion to the nuclear cause, but it is a shame that a previous White Paper effectively dismissed the nuclear possibility. Of course, their handling of the energy review did not cover them in glory: it led to a successful judicial review that has significantly delayed the energy review’s implementation. Aspects of the post office closure programme have also caused my Committee concern. We have produced one quite critical report already, and another report, to be published on Saturday morning—I will not say much about it, as I must not leak my own report to the House—will have further things to say about the closure programme. We were concerned, moreover, about the lack of priority that the Government in general and UKTI in particular attached to places such as India. However, the Government have responded magnificently, and I am very grateful for the serious way in which not just the DTI but other Departments treated our report.

The real problem for the DTI is that it has taken quite a hit on efficiency savings. Its staff have struggled hard to face round after round of cuts. It has not been confident of its own future, which has been very damaging and has demoralised it. That is another reason why the Liberal Democrats are seriously mistaken in the position that they are adopting. They do not understand the demoralising effect that such talk has on hard-working civil servants. That is another reason I urge the Liberal Democrats to abandon their policy.

The Department has also been subject to external pressures. The report on UKTI, which we published this morning, highlights the fact that that organisation has had three strategies in four years. Those strategies have been imposed on UKTI by the Treasury, so the ineffectiveness of UKTI—which my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) mentioned—is not its fault, but that of the Treasury for demanding arbitrary and unnecessary changes in strategy. The organisation now needs a period of stability, because it is capable of doing a very good job.

Mr. Weir
As a member of the Committee, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about UKTI. Does he recall that when we spoke to members of UKTI abroad, many of them were well thought of and were doing good work, but they felt that the problem lay back here, with the continual changes that the organisation had been put through? A period of stability is essential if it is to make progress.

Peter Luff
It will not surprise the House to learn that I strongly agree with my—for these purposes—hon. Friend, who was present for our consideration of the report. He makes an important point. Although performance is obviously variable, in the main the UKTI staff overseas do a first-rate job and we have been consistently impressed by the quality that they offer to exporters. We have often had reservations about management back here, and that could be an element in the successive strategy reviews and the demoralisation. We are concerned about that, as we say in the report.

The functions of the DTI do need to be done, somewhere. The “Capability Review of the Department of Trade and Industry”, which has not been mentioned so far, is an excellent document. It has some criticisms to make, but it is an objective and fair document. Its major concern is the one that I expressed about the lack of political stability undermining confidence in the Department. That is one of the major reasons why the Department has not performed as well as it might have done.

The document lists the areas with which the DTI deals. I remind the hon. Member for Richmond Park that those include inward investment; outward investment; encouraging innovation; management of Government assets and liabilities, including nuclear liabilities and coal, steel and shipbuilding; Government interests in public corporations, such as the Royal Mail and British Nuclear Fuels; competition policy; and company law. Those functions have to be performed by someone. What is the point of moving the deckchairs around for no net benefit?

The capability review is clear about the importance of the DTI strategically in delivering any Government’s objectives, never mind this one’s. The voice of business is also clear on that point. I have received a briefing from the British Chambers of Commerce which mentions the importance that it attaches to maintaining the DTI, although it has doubts about the way in which it is administered.

I also have a copy of the detailed report of a survey for the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which says that 59 per cent. of respondents think the DTI is fit for purpose, but 92 per cent. think there should be a Government Department responsible for enterprise, business and the private sector, and 92 per cent.—presumably the same 92 per cent.—think a Cabinet Minister should be responsible for business interests in the community. Fascinatingly, the survey also lists the duties that the respondents think are important for a Department with responsibility for business, and the Liberal Democrats must answer the questions raised by those findings. I am aware that I sound partisan, but I speak out of passion for UK business, not out of partisanship. Some 99 per cent. thought that it was essential, very important or important to have a Department that supported small businesses, and 85 per cent. think it should promote corporate and social responsibility. Some 75 per cent. think it should be responsible for employment relations, 96 per cent. for deregulation, 97 per cent. for productivity, and 98 per cent. for the promotion of UK trade overseas. Those are high figures. The only area of responsibility that the respondents do not think important is regions policy. There is a strong consensus in the business world about the need for a Department, not just a Minister, with responsibility for business.

Susan Kramer
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Luff
I must give way to the hon. Lady because I have said much more than I intended to about her party’s policies.

Susan Kramer
In that same report, only some 7 per cent. of businesses think that any of the tasks have been performed with any quality over the past God knows how many years. Businesses have thrived without that, so the hon. Gentleman is arguing for something that the present environment demonstrates is relatively redundant.

Peter Luff
The hon. Lady is simply wrong. Although the DTI does not get hugely good scores, 66 per cent. think that it has been good or adequate at creating the conditions for business success, to take one example.

I must bring my remarks to a conclusion. I refer the whole House to the excellent Engineering Employers Federation report on the business of Government, from which I had intended to quote at length. It makes an extremely cogent case for changes in the handling of responsibilities, as well as for the need for a Department for business.

I had hoped to say much more, but time is against me. The DTI is an extremely important Department but there is much room for improvement, so I shall have great pleasure in supporting the motion. I am slightly nervous about the wording on UKTI, which does not do justice to the organisation; the problems it has experienced are not of its own making, but due to external factors. UKTI, like the whole DTI, could do better; it needs stability and a vote of confidence. I am delighted that the official Opposition called the debate because I agree strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton that opportunities on the Floor of the House to argue the case for the DTI and its functions come all too rarely. I am delighted that my hon. Friend did so with such passion when he opened the debate. We need less duplication—RDAs in particular need to be re-examined; we need less external interference and a period of calm in the Department so that it can do its crucial job of standing up for British business in a challenging world.

18:30:00

Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con)
I am aware that time is pressing so I shall simply touch briefly on the role of small businesses and the problems they often experience with the Department of Trade and Industry. I have never run a business, but I felt that if I used the words of people who run businesses in St. Albans, and struggle with the regulations, the Government might understand the burden their regulation imposes.

I realise that these comments about people struggling with regulations are anecdotal, but the reality is that St. Albans has lost many small businesses over the years. Mr. Nigel Cox runs a printing business in St Albans. He said:

“I’ve got so fed up with it, I’m going to retire…It’s too much hassle employing staff any more. It’s becoming too much paper work, I can’t even remember the numbers of the forms.”

He is not alone. Mrs. Linda Gibson, of London Colney, said:

“I spend a lot of my time dealing with formalities…The area where it is getting worse is employment. I only employ my husband, and he’s not too much trouble. I would think twice before employing staff.”

[Laughter.] I am glad her husband is not too much trouble, but the point she is making is about all the forms and form filling.

The regulatory burden has cost small businesses dear. As I said in my intervention, the Hertfordshire chamber of commerce estimated that the cost is staggering—more than £431 million. The Secretary of State said that things have improved enormously, but Sally Low, director of policy and external affairs at the British Chambers of Commerce, would beg to differ. She said recently:

“Red tape and regulation are costing businesses in Hertfordshire a phenomenal amount of money…It is critical for future economic growth in the city that politicians in Westminster”—

that is us, so we need to wake up—

“and Brussels realise the impact excessive regulation is having and take action to ease this burden.”

My hon. Friends have been calling for such action for a long time. If there is one thing we take pride in, it is being a party that supports business, especially small businesses. We should be

“freeing firms from the cost of red tape and allowing them to get on with the job of running their businesses”.

Those are the words of our local chamber of commerce, but they are echoed around the country.

According to the Government’s figures, calculated in 2006, the burdens barometer was more than £50 billion. Not only do small businesses find the financial burden huge, but trying to set up a business is demoralising because the number of forms to be filled in is colossal. People may turn to their local Business Link—I have visited mine—but for many it is an intimidating process. The last thing I want is for people who plan to start up a business, especially young people, to be deterred from doing so by concern about the costs and aggravation they will incur.

Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
Is the hon. Lady aware of the report published last year by the Federation of Small Businesses, which found that only 4 per cent. of the 19,000 members who responded to its survey actually use Business Link? They find its plethora of services unacceptable.

Anne Main
I am aware that Business Link is not always as friendly towards small businesses as it might hope. Perhaps the Government could address that problem.

I am extremely aware of the time, so I shall cut short my remarks. On behalf of small businesses in St. Albans, such as Bravingtons and Patons on my high street, and those that are folding—sometimes because of high business rents, but sometimes because of the sheer burden of regulation—I ask the DTI to be a bit friendlier and listen to the small voice of small business.

18:34:00

Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
Our debate about the DTI perhaps reflects the fact that priorities are changing. The Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee made a good point about the way in which the Department’s functions hang together for business. However, energy is now perhaps a more environmental matter, given that it is one of the major sources of pollution. There would be sense in considering a way of removing energy from the DTI and linking it to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I wish to make a few remarks about energy because it is obviously very important, especially for Scotland.

We have had the energy review and the Government have come up with the new nuclear option. Luckily, strangely enough, one of their planning functions that is devolved to Scotland means that Scotland will perhaps be saved from new nuclear stations. However, the problem of waste will affect us all. The Government and official Opposition Front Benchers had an interesting discussion about that. When the Government introduced the energy review, they talked about the private sector meeting a “full share” of the costs of disposal, but we have not yet had an explanation of what a full share actually means. Today, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) seemed to be talking about a deferred subsidy to the private sector. Under any provision, it appears that the public purse will have to bear the cost of disposing of new nuclear waste.

I have argued in the House on many occasions about the transmission charges affecting energy in this country, which result in higher costs of energy production in the north of Scotland than in the south of England and act against the interests of renewables. Nothing in the energy review will change the situation. The review includes a section on fuel poverty, but it does little to add to the attack on it. For example, nothing is proposed to help rural areas by examining price mechanisms and social tariffs. Various specific issues influence fuel poverty in rural areas.

We have already discussed carbon capture. The fact that BP is pulling out of the Peterhead project will be a huge blow to Scotland. Some 300 people are employed on the project, so its winding down will have a serious impact. However, it is worse than that. As I pointed out earlier, the energy review makes a lot of carbon capture’s potential to help developing countries that use a lot of coal and other fossil fuels to clean up their act. Such projects will be important as we move beyond Kyoto towards a new carbon reduction scheme, so it is clear that the developed world needs to deal with this.

The Government first said that they were in favour of carbon capture some three years ago. However, although BP, Scottish Power and others have made a massive investment in Peterhead, little progress seems to have been made in any other area. The argument that the Government cannot simply award a contract to one project does not hold water if we are seriously considering the technology as a contributor to carbon reduction, rather than just another aspect of energy policy. It is worth noting that even in the United States, which is often seen as an ogre by the green movement, a $90 million tax allowance is available for a carbon capture and storage pilot project. Other countries are pushing ahead on such projects, so, yet again, we might be left behind.

Carbon capture and storage could be important for not just Peterhead. Scottish Power is investing in cleaning up the Longannet and Cockenzie coal-fired power stations in Scotland, which could be important for the future of energy in Scotland and the UK.

I want to speak briefly about the Post Office—and I will be brief, as I hope that others may yet contribute. What can I say about the Post Office? I have talked about it in this House for the past six years and things do not seem to be getting much better. I shall end with a story. The Government have taken away much business from the Post Office, but sometimes the Post Office does not help itself. A constituent contacted me today to say that they were moving house and went into their local post office with the simple aim of getting a redirection of mail form, but they were informed by the local postmaster that he could not supply one; it could only be downloaded from the internet. There were no redirection of mail forms in the post offices in Angus. That is utterly ludicrous. Not everybody has access to the internet, and for something as simple as that form to be not available is an absolute disgrace.

18:40:00

Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
We have had a valuable and constructive debate this afternoon; it has been brief, but it touched on an important issue that goes right to the heart of government and the future structure of government. In his opening comments, the Secretary of State paid tribute to the Department of Trade and Industry staff, and we certainly wish to associate ourselves with that, given their dedication and the expert work that they do. Our criticism, such as it is, focuses on the failure in leadership at the Department, rather than on the personnel, with whom we hope to work in due course.

I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to business in this country. There are many outstanding businesses in this country that do a remarkable job around the world. The entrepreneurial spirit still thrives in this country, but that does not mean that we should not do better. He asked various questions, and in particular he asked about our position on science policy. I should like to say to him and to the House that we broadly support the Government’s position on science, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) made clear when he expertly opened the debate. Outstanding scientific work is being done in this country, but not enough is being done to turn that science to commercial advantage. It has to be recognised that leading companies at the forefront of technology are having to ask whether their next investment should be here or overseas because of the situation with regard to tax, regulations, skills and other matters.

I listened with great care to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) for some clarification of Liberal Democrat policy on trade and industry until I virtually lost the will to live. I think that none of us yet understands which DTI activities she thinks should be retained, and which she thinks should be got rid of, but what certainly came through, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) said, is the fact that business will be in despair at her proposals, which essentially remove the voice of business and subjugate it to the almighty Treasury, and give more power to the unloved regions, although she cannot even tell us what those proposals will cost.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park certainly seemed confused about aspects of energy; she spoke about the incompatibility of investment in nuclear with investment in other forms of renewables. In fact, today companies at the forefront of the sector are diversifying, and it is the giants who are investing both in the major elements of nuclear, and in aspects of renewables. BP has announced an $8 billion investment in alternative energy, and E.ON is prepared to invest in not just nuclear, but offshore wind and tidal power. The involvement of those major companies in investment in those forms of energy is the key to helping new technologies to come forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, made an excellent and insightful contribution, as always. He was not always as impartial as he set out to be, but thank heavens for that. He reminded us that the foundations for the economic success for which the Government have been able to take credit were laid well before it came to power in 1997. One of the great things that the Government did right was not to roll back the changes that the last Conservative Government made, which made this country one of the most successful economies in the world. He is absolutely right to say that there must be a Department that represents business—not just a Minister in the Treasury, but a Department that will argue the case for business with other Departments, and which will make sure that the needs of business are fully understood.

My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) made a strong contribution and a passionate defence of small business and its needs, and the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) made a thoughtful contribution about the failings of the energy White Paper, although he misrepresented our position, as we have made it quite clear that there will be no subsidy for nuclear new build.

Sir Robert Smith
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Hendry
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I do not have time to give way to him, especially as he has not been in the Chamber for most of the debate. It seems that in virtually every debate in the Chamber, someone creeps in from the planet Zarg and makes an out-of-this-world contribution. Today, that role fell to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths), who said that there is a “creditable record” on manufacturing. He said so of a Government under whom 1.2 million jobs have been lost, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) made clear, and under whom the share of gross domestic product attributable to manufacturing has dropped from 20 to 13 per cent. I hate to think what the hon. Gentleman would regard as a disappointing or even a bad record but, nevertheless, we were glad to hear his contribution, and perhaps his next appointment in the new regime will be as Minister for space.

Nigel Griffiths
rose—

Charles Hendry
I am afraid that time is against us. The hon. Gentleman had the chance to make his contribution.

Little makes as clear as the energy White Paper the consequences of the Government’s indecisiveness. The Government say that they want a new fleet of new-build nuclear power stations, but businesses could not possibly invest when they do not know the nature of the waste disposal programme, how decommissioning will be required to take place, or the costs of those activities. They do not know at what level carbon will be taxed, which makes it difficult for any business to come forward and invest. The Government say that they want to encourage renewables, yet the British Wind Energy Association reacted to the planning White Paper by saying that the UK

“is no nearer to the 2010 renewables target with the Planning White Paper”

and that the proposals will not bring any

“benefit for renewables in the short term”.

The association argues that the changes would affect only five of the 74 wind farm applications that are stuck in planning, and that there will be no benefit for one of the major sources of renewable energy from the changes proposed by the Government.

The Government say that they want Britain to take the lead in carbon capture and storage, but it is dithering and delays by DTI Ministers that have led to the cancellation of the only viable CCS pilot project in the UK. BP delayed the closure of that plant by a year to give Ministers time to introduce proposals to make the project feasible, but I am afraid that ministerial delays mean that an additional three years of delays have been built in before a pilot scheme can be made to work. It is the delays and indecision by DTI Ministers that have increased the likelihood of power cuts in the years ahead.

It is not necessarily what politicians think that matters—it is what business thinks that should matter most of all. In a recent survey by the British Chambers of Commerce only 8 per cent. of UK businesses described the DTI as

“playing an important role in promoting business.”

Nearly two thirds of businesses—61 per cent.—thought that the DTI is either ineffective or very ineffective. Just 7 per cent. think that it is effective. What business needs is a Department of Trade and Industry that regards its primary goal as supporting business, not regulating it. Some 30,000 new regulations have come into force since the Government came to power 10 years ago; there are 14 new regulations a day; and it costs the average business £13,500 a year to implement them. We need a DTI that is up to speed with business, and we need a culture that stops the unnecessary and over-zealous interpretation of EU directives, rather than one that fails to argue its corner and defend British business adequately in the EU. We need a DTI that does more to ensure that the needs of business are incorporated more effectively in the debate about skills, as we face unprecedented pressure and competition from countries such as China and India. There is no business today that is safe from the threat of relocation overseas, and even world-class British businesses find it hard to justify each new decision to invest here, rather than abroad.

Business tells us that it needs clarity: it does not need those 3,000 schemes, which should be slimmed down. It is frustrated by constant change, by nine Energy Ministers in 10 years and by the lack of a strong voice in discussions with other Government Departments. We do many things outstandingly, including bio-pharmaceuticals, finance, technology, design, services, aerospace and top-end engineering. We do many, many things that are brilliant. We are still a nation of great genius and innovation and brilliant leadership, but that is in spite of the Government, not because of them.

We need to know from the Government that they are still committed to a Department at the heart of Government, a voice at the Cabinet table, that will argue for wealth creation, because that is the cornerstone of everything that we want to achieve. The Government have taken that for granted for too long. British scientists and British business can still lead the world, but to do so they need a DTI and DTI Ministers who are more focused, more visionary and more purposeful than they are at present.

18:50:00

The Minister for Science and Innovation (Malcolm Wicks)
I will do my best to be both focused and purposeful in answering the debate. We have had an extensive debate and it has been interesting in all sorts of ways. The shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry opened the debate with a 45-minute speech, but that was not long enough, because he clearly did not have time to spell out much detail—to put it mildly—of Conservative party policy as it affects the DTI. When he did the saloon bar rant, as I might call it, on the need for a bonfire of regulations, he was challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) to name just three regulations that should be abolished. After a while the hon. Gentleman said that he would take down all the no smoking signs that are going up—surely an indication that despite what we usually think, there can be smoke without political fire.

We then had an interesting contribution from the spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrat party, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer). I was particularly interested in her plan to save £8 billion from the DTI budget—to be fair, I must add that that was to be saved over the lifetime of a Parliament. She, too, was unable to speak for quite long enough to say how that arithmetical conjuring trick would be managed. The science budget is about half of the DTI budget. It has gone up substantially and is some £3.4 billion a year. Clearly, to manage £8 billion-worth of cuts in the departmental budget over the lifetime of a Parliament would involve enormous slashing of the science budget. We will have to spend some time making sure that any academics who, sadly, voted Liberal Democrat last time know exactly what the plan is to slash the academic, science and research base of our country.

DTI issues affect everyone’s lives, from their gas bills to better training at work to parental leave, and from the level of the minimum wage to advice to a budding entrepreneur. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), is always a mild and reasonable man—but for two minutes I almost thought he was a Tory politician. He argued that all the great benefits to the country from a new Labour Government were based on a Tory economic heritage—but then he remembered where part of his salary comes from and became the reasonable even-handed Chairman of the Select Committee. Like the Opposition spokesmen and others, he paid tribute to the very good officials we have in different parts of the DTI. I thank him, and echo those words about the excellence of our officials, whatever our political differences might be about the DTI.

Let me take a step back and look at our work in context. Britain faces two major challenges—globalisation and climate change—alongside many other challenges. They are challenges, of course, but opportunities as well, for those willing to reach out to embrace them. We need to make globalisation work for us, and for the people of our country, and ensure that we shape globalisation rather than being shaped by it. That is the nature of the challenge. Over the coming decades there will be global changes at least as profound as those brought about by the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th century. What took 200 years to evolve in that earlier epoch will take perhaps 20 or 30 years in the new global industrial revolution. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths) spoke about one important aspect of that—the challenge for modern manufacturing.

The DTI is at the centre of ensuring that globalisation is good for UK employees through the creation of new high-value jobs, and that it is good for the consumer through fair competition and prices. In 2005-06, UK Trade and Investment—we have heard quite a lot about UKTI—helped nearly 6,000 UK companies move into overseas markets and landed more than 1,220 inward investment projects, with nearly 90,000 jobs being created or safeguarded. I saw at first hand the excellent work of UKTI at the recent Biotech 2007 conference in Boston.

The Government are responding to the changing business climate, which involves dealing with the challenges of globalisation and energy security. The DTI is tackling those challenges head on, taking tough decisions and making a real difference. We have heard about the energy White Paper, which will provide a framework for delivering a secure, low-carbon energy mix for the United Kingdom, tackling the twin challenges of climate change and—this is, as the Secretary of State noted, increasingly important—providing energy security. The White Paper announced specific measures to make inroads into reducing our carbon emissions and ensuring secure supplies for decades to come.

For the UK, but also for Europe more generally, globalisation demands what we increasingly refer to as a knowledge economy, which means a strong emphasis on science and innovation. The DTI continues to invest in our science base at unprecedented levels. The figure is currently £3.4 billion, which is more than half the DTI’s budget and double the sum of 10 years ago. That figure will rise to almost £3.9 billion in 2010-11. We have a worldwide reputation for being excellent at science. In the past few years, we have spent more than £3 billion building world-class laboratories, and one can see that huge investment in any local or regional university.

Patents are up 98 per cent. and income from intellectual property is up by 112 per cent. Since 1997, the value of collaborative research between universities and businesses has increased by more than 50 per cent.

Mr. Redwood
rose—

Malcolm Wicks
I apologise, but I do not have time to take an intervention.

We take innovation—the appliance of science—seriously in all sorts of ways, and R and D tax credits and the new technology strategy board are important parts of that.

I listened very carefully to what the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) said about the difficulties faced by small businesses. We do not understate those difficulties, and we need to cut unnecessary regulation. There are now 600,000 more small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK than there were 10 years ago, so something is going right, and I hope that that includes the estate of Verulamium as well as the rest of the United Kingdom. The work of the Small Business Service and its delivery partner, Business Link, is very important.

It is also important to consider some of the domestic challenges that we face. As this century progresses, in our judgment there will be growing demand among our citizens for a better balance between economic activity and their private lives—what we often call the work-life balance. Reforms in the labour market, which now help parents and carers to make choices about flexible working to balance their time at work and time with their families, are important.

We are taking action across a wide range of areas that I do not have time to discuss. We want to ensure open and competitive markets, which are a hallmark of our approach. We are committed to reducing the administrative burdens of regulation by 25 per cent. Our plans will see 500 areas of red tape abolished, which will deliver an overall £2 billion reduction.

It is important to discuss the political differences between us. There are areas of consensus that I welcome, but whereas the previous Conservative Government devalued science, Labour has invested heavily in it. Labour has produced an energy strategy of which we can be proud to tackle climate change and bring about energy security, which is so important to national security.

It is worth quoting again the views of the leader of the Tory party, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State quoted earlier. What was his contribution to energy security? He said:

“Let’s give green energy the chance and then have nuclear there as a last resort.”

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire) (Con)
rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

Division 134
06/06/2007 18:59:00
The House divided:
Ayes: 167
Noes: 320
Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House acknowledges the outstanding performance of the economy under this Government with the longest unbroken economic expansion on record, in contrast to the boom and bust of the previous Government, with inflation and interest rates both on average half of the previous 18 years and over 29 million people in work for the first time; notes that the UK is recognised as one of the best places in the world to do business; supports the Government’s approach to better regulation and a 25 per cent. reduction in administrative burdens by 2010; praises the balanced approach to protecting working families through measures such as the national minimum wage and flexible working, while achieving the highest level of employment; commends the Government’s unprecedented commitment to a national post office network with clear access criteria and the financial support to underpin it; applauds the more than doubling in real terms of science funding after decades of under-investment; welcomes the Government’s leadership in tackling the challenges of climate change and energy security; endorses the commitment to reduce the number of business support schemes across Government to under 100 by 2010 after the Department of Trade and Industry’s successful simplification of its own programmes to under 10; recognises the increasing contribution of regional development agencies to regional prosperity and jobs; approves the new strategy of UK Trade and Investment which has received widespread business support; and calls on the Government to build on its achievements to secure the country’s growing economic prosperity.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That, in respect of the International Tribunals (Sierra Leone) Bill [Lords], notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.—[Huw Irranca-Davies.]

Petition

Kingskerswell Bypass

19:19:00

Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge) (LD)
I have a petition from residents of the villages of Kingskerswell, Aller and Edginswell, who are objecting to the proposal for a bypass around their village. I do not agree with their conclusions, as I am in favour of the bypass. However, it is important that the Government take note of the petition that they wish to be laid before the House. I therefore support the petition, in so far as it should be laid and discussed.

The petition states:

The Humble Petition of the residents of Kingskerswell, Aller and Edginswell, Devon object to the scheme because it would be highly damaging to the precious countryside and environment in the county of Devon. It should not be built because the costs involved are excessive and there are alternatives to relieving congestion on the A380.

And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

To lie upon the Table.

Mr. Speaker
Order. I declared the second Division to be off, but I note that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) is not present to introduce his Adjournment debate.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I know that there are always difficulties in the Lobbies, but it seemed to me that one of the problems was that we were continuing with the Division because the Clerks could not hear and had not been informed of what was happening. We could not hear ourselves. It took a little time, and one or two of us were unaware of the fact that you had called off the Division. I understand the problems, but I hope that in future a way of dealing with them will be found.

Mr. Speaker
I see that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland is now present.

Policing (Middlesbrough)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]

19:21:00

Dr. Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for giving me a chance to get here. If she had not done so, I should have lost the debate. I also thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak about aspects of policing in the Middlesbrough area of my constituency.

Most people are aware that the Government have made combating crime and antisocial behaviour a key community priority. In practice, the police and our local crime-fighting partnerships have been supported consistently by resources and backing from the Government, and it is on the concept of partnerships and their success in Middlesbrough that I want to concentrate.

We cannot rely on the police alone to fight crime; crime-fighting must be the business of the whole community. In order to identify the problems and determine the appropriate strategies with which to confront them, we must ensure that there is broad participation by all the relevant stakeholders. The supervision of policing through an active and involved police authority is central to the process, as is full support from the local authority. Combined with a highly competent and dedicated chief constable and a committed team of senior police officers, that approach has given Middlesbrough what is perhaps the country’s most impressive crime-fighting partnership.

That partnership is certainly performing. Let us look at the facts and figures. In 2006-07 crime was down by 5.1 per cent., with around 1,298 fewer victims than in 2005-06. Robberies were down by 12.7 per cent., house burglaries by 23.8 per cent., vehicle theft by 34.7 per cent. and sexual offences by 8.6 per cent. The key driver of those reductions was the crime detection rate, which rose by 5.2 per cent.

I believe that Sean Price, who became Cleveland’s chief constable in April 2003, has been one of the key factors in this great success story. He has united and lifted the morale of a force that had been divided by internal tension under its previous leadership. He has established a hands-on management style that has led to higher personal involvement by senior officers in front-line policing, and has delegated more decision making to officers on the beat. He has also successfully argued for extra officers to be deployed on the ground. As a result of his determination, along with the support from the Home Office, Cleveland will soon have the highest number of officers in the force's history. That equates to 1,727 full-time police officers, 197 police community support officers and 50 special constables.

The force has been able to recruit 23 more police officers and, crucially, 20 of those new posts have been earmarked for neighbourhood policing. That has been accompanied by an intense programme of collaboration with Middlesbrough council and with community and neighbourhood groups across the town. The Cleveland police motto of “putting people first” is not just a catchy mission statement. It forms part of their whole ethos.

In Cleveland, we now have at least one dedicated police officer in place for each neighbourhood across the force area, based in well known public buildings. As the chief constable said recently:

“The public and their elected representatives have made it clear that they want a more visible presence on the streets and greater contact with officers dedicated to their area. Neighbourhood policing is delivering that improved service to our communities.

There has been a growth in public confidence across the force in officers they see on a regular basis and can easily contact.

With a neighbourhood policing team to cover every ward within the force area, both uniformed police officers and community support officers are now allocated to their own regular beats.”

Sean Price's comments were echoed by our police authority chair, Councillor Dave McLuckie, who recently said:

“In all our consultations and discussions with local people we know that what they value most is a visible police presence on their streets and in their communities—and that is what neighbourhood policing is all about.

As an authority we have been clear in putting the objective of maximising resources for front-line policing as a top priority—and this is reflected in the fact that in the current year the force will have the highest numbers of officers in its history, achieved with the support of our local authority partners, all of whom play a key role in tackling crime and disorder.”

Middlesbrough demonstrates the importance of visibility to a successful neighbourhood policing model. It is key to gaining public confidence.

The council and other private and voluntary agencies have helped the police immeasurably by allowing their premises and facilities to be used by the police neighbourhood teams as drop-in offices and venues for ward surgeries. In my own area of Middlesbrough, the council has allowed the use of community centres in Park End and Marton and libraries in Hemlington, Coulby Newham and Easterside. The teams have also worked with local churches by using church halls in Stainton and West Marton and businesses such as Spar have enabled the police to use their facilities as a community policing base in areas such as Nunthorpe.

Local housing associations are also helping. The Anchor housing trust has allowed the Marton neighbourhood policing team to use its community centre in Gypsy lane, Marton, and the Guinness Trust has opened up its centre in Coulby Newham. The Sure Start initiative has also helped by basing neighbourhood police teams in its centres in Hemlington and Beechwood, which gives local mothers and young women the opportunity to talk to the police about issues of concern to them.

That approach to community policing means that special initiatives managed by the police can be targeted at very small neighbourhood areas and tailored to meet community concerns. A good example of the local partnerships can be seen in the outlying estate of Hemlington, which has social exclusion problems and a history of antisocial behaviour on the part of a small, but persistent number of youths. Police have teamed up with colleagues from Middlesbrough council, youth services and housing organisations in a bid to clamp down on that antisocial behaviour. A couple of weeks ago, a dispersal order was put in place so that youngsters can be moved on, taken home or even arrested if they are behaving in an antisocial or criminal way. The partners hope that the young people will instead make use of the facilities at the nearby Hemlington recreation centre, such as its skate and play parks, youth shelter, football pitch and tennis court. These are early days, but I have high hopes that the exercise will yield positive results. The role of the council in the partnership should not be understated.

The mayor of Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon, is a former police officer, and he pioneered the concept of zero tolerance. He has been re-elected twice and his leadership has made a great contribution to the town. Since coming to office, he has introduced new initiatives and projects to fight crime and social disorder.

The council’s lead member for community safety, Barry Coppinger, has also recently hit the headlines with new crime-busting policies and projects. The most significant and recent example was the initiative to combine a CCTV system with live audio microphones that enable controllers to warn offenders. That might have seemed like a gimmick to some, but it works. Moreover, that initiative has been developed by a neighbourhood “community company”, thereby allowing local people to manage and control its development. It has also created new jobs for local people in personal and premises security. The task now is to cement that partnership and to build on its achievements to a level where people in Middlesbrough can live without the fear of crime.

In order to realise that goal, we must ensure that support from central Government continues. Such programmes must also not be seen as the preserve of the Home Office—other Departments must also be part of the process. The Department for Education and Skills, for example, has a key role to play in supporting projects aimed at disaffected young people and backing programmes to combat bullying and truancy. That will have a knock-on effect on the level of crime and antisocial behaviour on our streets. The new Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government should also pay regard to what is being achieved in Middlesbrough. It helps little if the police and the council are tackling crime only for it to be seen that sentencing policy fails to complement the tough approach that must be taken to isolate and deal with the core of troublemakers.

The Department for Communities and Local Government should be aware that there is a clear link between neighbourhood design and architecture and crime. Like many other towns and cities, Middlesbrough has ambitious plans for redesigning estates and building new ones, and to replace both the planning mistakes of the 1960s and outdated Victorian terraces. In the new communities and estates that will spring up, the need to design-out crime must be the central feature. DCLG must be prepared to be guided by local communities and Middlesbrough partnerships.

I invite a cross-departmental group of Ministers to visit Middlesbrough to meet the people I have mentioned, who are implementing the partnership model and serving their communities. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.

19:34:00

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Vernon Coaker)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) on securing this debate on policing. He is always an eloquent and effective champion for his constituency and his police force. Indeed, he has raised such issues with me many times. I should say at the outset that if he contacts my office, I am more than happy to visit Middlesbrough at a time appropriate to him and his colleagues, in order to see the work that he has outlined for us this evening. 

I take this opportunity to congratulate Cleveland’s chief constable, Sean Price, whom I know personally from his time as a senior police officer in Nottinghamshire, where his work was very effective. I am happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating him on the performance improvements that he has brought to the Cleveland area and the steady progress that he continues to make.

I also welcome the opportunity to reflect on the progress made not only by Cleveland police but by police forces across the country. My hon. Friend has highlighted the progress that Cleveland has made in introducing neighbourhood policing, which has been very effective. I am an enthusiastic supporter of neighbourhood policing and the tremendous benefits that it brings to our communities. I want to say something about that, but first I want to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Councillor Dave McLuckie on his work, and in congratulating Ray Mallon, the mayor of Middlesbrough, whose contribution my hon. Friend spoke of. What we are seeing is that partnership is crucial if we are to achieve our aims, and it is clear that in Middlesbrough such partnership has been very strong.

We should bear in mind the work not only of Dave McLuckie and Ray Mallon, but of the council and the various housing associations and schools. My hon. Friend referred to the difference that has been made in Hemlington. It is also important that we see the full use of the powers that have been made available to police forces, local authorities and other bodies in tackling antisocial behaviour. I was very pleased to hear about the use of a dispersal order, which is a very effective way of tackling antisocial behaviour.

My hon. Friend mentioned the level of support that Cleveland police currently receives from the Home Office and what it can expect in future. He will know that the Government are committed to providing a well-funded police force in Cleveland and in England and Wales as a whole. I do not think that our commitment to that can be called into question. For 2007-08, Cleveland, like all forces, received an increase in general grant funding of 3.6 per cent., above the rate of inflation, which comes on top of a sustained increase in funding. My hon. Friend will probably like to know that since 2000-01, Cleveland’s total grants have increased by £30 million, which equates to 14.9 per cent. in real terms.

That money has been spent well. As at 30 September 2006, Cleveland had 1,681 officers—222 more than in March 1997. There were also 116 more civilian staff than a decade ago, which has of course helped to release officers for front-line duties, which I know is where my hon. Friend’s constituents want to see them. I am pleased to hear that so many officers are providing that visible presence on the street. Last September, there were also 111 police community support officers—an innovation under this Government. That figure has also  increased, and I shall say a little more about neighbourhood policing and PCSOs in due course.

However, it is important that we do not just focus on inputs but look at the results, which have also been impressive in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Between 2002-03 and 2005-06, overall recorded crime in Cleveland fell by 2.5 per cent., representing nearly 2,000 fewer victims of crime a year. Especially impressive was the performance on burglary, which fell by almost half in that period. The results in the Middlesbrough basic command unit, which serves my hon. Friend’s constituents, are equally noteworthy. Between 2003-04 and 2005-06, recorded domestic burglary fell by 13 per cent. and robbery by a staggering 54 per cent., so the investment is making a huge difference to my hon. Friend’s constituents.

Middlesbrough is also one of just 40 respect areas nationally—identified for their strong track record in tackling antisocial behaviour and its causes. The local crime and disorder reduction partnership has made good use of the full range of tools and powers available to tackle antisocial behaviour. In 2005-06, it used 137 acceptable behaviour contracts and in 2005 it took out 34 antisocial behaviour orders. We know that those powers work and that their use has brought important respite to communities living with the burden of antisocial behaviour. As my hon. Friend said, Middlesbrough has also made good use of other powers such as dispersal orders, crack house closures and parenting orders.

Importantly, action is being taken across the breadth of the respect programme. Middlesbrough is one of 77 areas with funding for an expert practitioner to co-ordinate parenting services for families involved in or at risk of antisocial behaviour, while the council and partners are implementing a family intervention project to tackle the behaviour of the most antisocial families in the area.

The area has also led the way in experimenting with talking CCTV to promote good, and challenge bad, behaviour. I congratulate my hon. Friend on saying that talking CCTV is not a gimmick, because I completely agree with him. Indeed, on Monday my officials were in Middlesbrough to attend the launch of the council’s scheme selectively to license private sector landlords in an area of the town where antisocial behaviour has been an issue. It is only the second council in the country to have such a scheme in place—another example of the work it is doing

The range of action is encouraging and I urge the council, police and other local partners to keep up their proactive approach to tackling antisocial behaviour and its causes so that residents in Middlesbrough can enjoy their neighbourhoods. I pay tribute to all of those in Middlesbrough and Cleveland generally whose efforts have led to those excellent results.

I know that my hon. Friend is interested in future funding arrangements. I have to tell him that no decisions have yet been taken on police funding for the three years of the comprehensive spending review. It is no secret that the financial climate will become tighter. However, the funding increases that we have given in the last few years have provided a very solid foundation on which the police can build as we move into a period of consolidation.

I was very pleased to hear my hon. Friend talk so warmly about neighbourhood policing and I too would like to congratulate Cleveland on the progress it has made in rolling out neighbourhood policing across the force. All of us know of the demand for a visible, accessible and responsive police force, with a presence on the streets, and that is what neighbourhood policing is designed to achieve. I understand that there are now 15 dedicated neighbourhood policing teams across the Cleveland police area, which includes 173 police sergeants and constables and 126 PCSOs. In my hon. Friend’s area in Middlesbrough, I am advised that there are four neighbourhood policing teams, which include 61 police sergeants and constables and 34 PCSOs. Those teams cover areas that are coterminous with the clusters of community councils that are the main resident representation body in each local authority ward area.

The progress made by Cleveland is being repeated across all 43 forces and we remain on track to deliver on our commitment to provide a dedicated neighbourhood policing team for every community by April 2008—a significant achievement. In fact, we recently reached a significant milestone in the neighbourhood policing programme: forces across England and Wales increased PCSO numbers to 16,000—a tremendous achievement. The police service doubled PCSO numbers over a seven-month period and I take this opportunity to congratulate everyone who worked so hard to make that happen. In addition, more than 12,000 police constables and sergeants are dedicated to neighbourhood policing in England and Wales.

I know that my hon. Friend is concerned about continued support for his police service and we shall do all we can to ensure that every police force can maintain a strong and visible presence on the street. It is of course a matter for chief constables, such as Sean Price, to determine the best staffing mix for their neighbourhood policing teams, taking into account local circumstances. We have extended to police forces the freedom to determine their own arrangements, while providing greater sustainability for neighbourhood policing in the future. My hon. Friend will know that those changes had an unintended impact on Cleveland, which we have done our best to address by providing an allocation for new PCSO recruitment in 2007-08 as an exceptional arrangement. That shows our commitment to support the measures in Middlesbrough that my hon. Friend described. The outcome is that the Cleveland police force has been allocated £2.6 million towards the cost of neighbourhood policing in 2007-08, which is an increase of 63 per cent. over funding in 2006-07—the highest in the country.

The force will have at least 166 PCSOs in 2008, contributing to the roll-out of neighbourhood policing across Cleveland. It will not be expected to increase PCSO numbers further, although it is free to do so if it wants, but it would need to look to partners for funding, in line with other forces. That is important because, as my hon. Friend pointed out, community safety is a shared responsibility and local decision making, with the involvement of the community and local partners, is crucial to the success of neighbourhood policing. Wherever I go, I realise that co-operative working by the police, the council, health authorities, schools and residents is fundamental to delivering not just effective neighbourhood policing but neighbourhood management.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, in Middlesbrough—as in other areas—people need to see that broken windows, smashed-up bus shelters, graffiti or litter are sorted out quickly. If they see that graffiti is cleaned off quickly, broken street furniture is dealt with and litter is swept from the streets, other aspects of neighbourhood policing will also be seen and people will believe that things are improving in their area. The effectiveness of the neighbourhood management model in Middlesbrough that my hon. Friend described—the effective working partnerships—means that we can have a combined approach to tackling some of the quality of life issues that confront people. As we all know from our constituents, when people open their doors they want to be proud of their neighbourhood and to have a visible police presence. I congratulate all those in Middlesbrough who have made that possible in their area.

I shall finish with some more general remarks about the future. In March 2007, the Home Secretary announced the establishment of an independent review of policing in England and Wales, to be led by Sir Ronnie Flanagan. It will focus on four specific aspects, which will help areas such as Middlesbrough. It will further reduce bureaucracy, focusing resources on the front line and freeing up police officer time. It will embed neighbourhood policing in areas such as Middlesbrough, ensuring that it becomes a permanent part of the policing landscape. Local accountability will better ensure that the public drive local policing priorities; Middlesbrough is leading the way, with local people helping the police to determine those priorities. It will also focus on how the service can best use its resources to meet all the challenges that it faces. The report will be produced at the end of this year and there will be an interim report in August. My hon. Friend will recognise that that will be highly relevant to the matters that he has raised today.

I repeat my thanks to my hon. Friend for securing this extremely useful debate and the way in which he put forward the interests of his constituents. He has demonstrated that the only way to move forward on issues relating to crime and antisocial behaviour is for everyone to work together. By working together, real progress can be made. I congratulate everyone in Middlesbrough and the whole Cleveland area on the work that they have done.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Eight o’clock.