I have to inform the House that I have not selected either of the amendments. Of course, hon. Members are free to vote against the substantive motion if they are opposed to it.

I am grateful to be called this morning, Madam Speaker, and I am particularly grateful to be called so early. There were times in the old days when the House had Adjournment debates which were not restricted to three hours, and which went on and on. It was a good idea to change the format, because a three-hour limit on the debate means that we have quite short speeches.

Get on with it.

Get on with what?

I want to raise a subject that I have raised before, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will not be surprised to hear it. It is not an airport or a hospital, but the question of affordable housing. I think that housing is a vital concern.

I fear that, if we are not careful, tenants in low-cost housing will increasingly depend on housing benefit. Any reduction in the housing association grant is likely to increase the numbers of tenants who are dependent on housing benefit, and more tenants would be trapped in the poverty trap.

I remind my right hon. Friend that the Select Committee on the Environment looked at the matter some time ago, and it fired a warning shot across the bows of the Government about the serious consequences if the rate of the housing association grant should fall below 67 per cent. The rate has fallen already to 62 per cent.

The Government must also bear in mind the effects, not just on people who need housing, but on the construction industry. I am told that around 500,000 construction workers have lost their jobs during the past three years. It has been said over and over again that the cost to the Government of every unemployed person is around £9,000 a year because of the cost of providing benefit, added to which is the amount lost in income tax and national insurance contributions.

The diminishing of the housing programme is bound to inflame that situation. We desperately need more low-cost housing. By building more, we will lower the unemployment figures, and also rehouse people who are in urgent need. I think particularly of the homeless, of people who are leaving institutions for care in the community, and of the increasing number of elderly people who require specialist housing.

I worry about people who want to help themselves and who go out to work, often for low wages. They sometimes find that they would have been better off if they had not gone to work but had sat back and relied on benefit. I do not want to see the growth of a benefit-dependency culture. I want more to be done to help people who try to help themselves. That particularly applies to younger people, but the elderly are also disadvantaged.

All hon. Members will have elderly constituents who, during their working lives, scrimped and scraped to put something aside for the proverbial rainy day. Those people find when they retire that their savings do not help them at all when it comes to getting assistance. As the rules apply at the moment, people with capital of between £3,000 and £16,000 find that interest is assumedx2014;that is the all-important word—at the rate of £1 a week for every £250 of capital. I wish that somebody would offer me those terms for my savings—I would put my money with them immediately.

That gives the elderly no encouragement to save; I believe that it gives them a disincentive. I asked the Government earlier this year urgently to re-examine the situation, so far without a response.

I am currently concerned about the annual development programme. In the immediate future, the rented programme will be protected, but I am worried about what will happen in a few years' time. The 12 October edition of The Financial Times correctly forecast a £300 million cut in the annual development programme.

Working on that basis, the Oxford Economic Forecasting Unit predicted the loss of a further 8,000 jobs in the construction industry. However, the increased benefit payments and the loss of income tax and national insurance contributions will mean that the net saving will be only £200 million in the public sector borrowing requirement, not the £300 million that the Government are apparently aiming for. The net effect will be more unemployment in the construction industry and more misery for homeless and overcrowded families. On social and economic grounds, therefore, I plead for careful consideration to be given to the housing association programme.

I must admit that I get very depressed when I see people sleeping rough on the streets of our cities. I realise that it is happening all over the world, and I know the reason for it—there are more broken marriages than there used to be, and young people perhaps have more independence and leave the nest earlier—but that does not alter the fact that it is a blot on everything that we British stand for.

Secondly, I want to refer to a subject that is of great concern to my constituency. In August this year, the Department of Trade and Industry asked local authorities to bid for designation as objective 2 areas. The key criteria for description as a declining industrial area under objective 2 are, first, the average rate of unemployment over the past three years must have been above the European Community average; secondly, the percentage share of industrial employment in total employment must have equalled or exceeded the Community average in any reference year from 1975 onwards; thirdly, there must have been an observable fall in industrial employment as compared with the reference year chosen. Trafford—the council area in which my constituency is located—is one of 10 districts that comprise Greater Manchester, and Trafford council has been working with the other nine councils to formulate a Greater Manchester operational programme for objective 2 status for European funding.

On 11 October, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry announced with a great fanfare that the Government were including more of north-west England in the bid for European funds. He said:

"This is good news for the region. All current Objective 2 areas are on the list, plus new areas which face job losses, such as Barrow. The new candidates from the North West include Central Lancashire, Fleetwood and Lancaster and Morecambe. All the existing Objective 2 areas of East Lancashire, West Cumbria, West Cheshire, West Lancashire and much of Greater Manchester stay in the list the Government has proposed."

The parts of Greater Manchester that have been excluded are certain wards in Stockport and Trafford. I want my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to find out why. I remind him that the west midlands areas included both deprived areas and areas of structural decline, and affluent areas on the fringes of the conurbation.

I want to know why there is one rule for the west midlands and an entirely different one for Greater Manchester. The whole of the Altrincham and Sale constituency has been overlooked. It is impossible to understand what sort of objective criteria formed the basis of the decision.

The exclusion of certain wards in Trafford is damaging. Without objective 2 status, European regional development fund money, which aids capital projects, cannot be claimed. The exclusion will have significant effects on proposed economic and environmental initiatives in the Broadheath and Altrincham wards. The loss of objective 2 will also have a serious effect on the borough. It will undoubtedly mean a substantial reduction in European social fund money for the South Trafford college.

I draw my right hon. Friend's attention in particular to the Broadheath area in my constituency. That area contains an industrial estate—not as large as Trafford park, which is world famous—that was once noted for the part it played in the machine tool industry. In 1975, there were more than 6,500 jobs on that estate; now there are about 2,000.

Terrible, isn't it?

Yes it is, and the terrible thing is that the decline started when the last Labour Government were in power.

Nonsense.

Oh, yes it did.

When the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) was a Minister.

Yes, when the hon. Gentleman was a Minister. There is no point in trying to put the blame on a particular Government.

Do you remember?

Yes. We remember some of the hardships that occurred during that time; some of us have long memories. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman has something to say, I wish he would stand up and say it.

Unemployment locally is above the Community average. Major companies such as Churchill Machine Tools, Kearns Richards, Linotype, Luke and Spencer and Record Electrical have all been casualties of the structural decline and economic recession.

Under the Tories.

Under successive Governments since the end of the war.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the exclusion of Broadheath. In my view, it should have been a prime contender for European funding, because it seems to fit the objective 2 criteria like a glove. European funding would have meant new infrastructure investment to help business with better communications and improvements in public transport, and the local community could have continued to enjoy vital training initiatives organised by the local further education college using European social fund finance.

Broadheath is a prime example of the unfairness of the Department of Trade and Industry ruling, but there are other examples in Trafford, such as parts of Altrincham, where we have redundant British Rail sidings right in the centre of town and other evidence of decline.

I have a horrible feeling that someone in the Department of Trade and Industry thinks that my constituency is an area of leafy suburbs. It is true that we have good residential areas—I do not deny that—but we also have areas that have problems, where there is an industrial base, and I believe that we have been unjustly penalised.

My right hon. Friend knows that I never lose my temper and never raise my voice. I am glad to see that the Whip agrees with me. Similarly, I never repeat gossip. I am staking my claim to go upstairs—I do not mean to the House of Lords but in the hereafter.

You mean downstairs.

If I go downstairs, I know who I will see there.

Those two below the Gangway—the hon. Members for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

Yes, I will see lots of old friends.

I want to tell my right hon. Friend that all those virtues that I possess will disappear overnight unless something is done about this matter. I hope that he will go to whoever made the decision in the Department of Trade and Industry and say how angry I am. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend is being subjected to all my rage, but if nothing is done, whoever made the decision will be subjected to it, too.

I hope that, before we rise for Christmas, my right hon. Friend will ensure that the relevant Ministers at the Department are aware of the anger in our area at the fact that Altrincham and Sale and other parts of Trafford have been excluded. I hope that my right hon. Friend will have some good news for me before I go home for Christmas.

I agree with the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) about the need to build houses in Britain. For many years following the end of the second world war, we built more than 200,000 houses a year, but in the past 14 years there has been hardly any local authority building.

As for unemployment, I would merely comment that it stood at 1·25 million when the Labour Government left office. I voted against that Government 150-odd times; I was not altogether happy with what they were doing. But I can tell the House that most of my constituents would settle for 1·25 million unemployed now, given half a chance [HON. MEMBERS: "And the inflation?"] And the inflation, caused largely by the previous Tory Government, who left a right old mess, and by the quadrupling of oil prices and the rest. I am not here to talk about that: I just mention it en passant.

From the top of the hill where Bolsover castle is, near New Station road and High street, there is a beautiful view over the edge of the Pennines across from the industrial side straight over to the edge of the Peak district. About two years ago, some of my constituents in High street and New Station road asked me to see them regarding what was referred to as a landslip at Backhills.

The local newspaper reports talked about gardens that were disappearing down the side of a hill. Greenhouses were demolished, then garages. I immediately raised the matter with various Ministers, because I could foresee the possibility, given that we were talking about the side of a hill, that eventually some houses might go. That is what happened.

Having watched the television and seen the hotel at Scarborough disappear down the cliff face, and knowing that the Government had given more than £1 million in grant on that occasion, I thought that it would be feasible for the Government to assist people in the landslip area by allocating similar sums.

I was told by the Minister concerned that the Scarborough hotel received money from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food under the Coast Protection Act 1949. We could not apply under that Act, but landslips that occur on the coast and landslips that occur inland should not be treated differently; we should not hand out grants on one hand and, on the other, tell people that they will have to grin and bear it.

I hope that the Leader of the House will pass a message on to the relevant Ministers that some way should be found to ensure that the people in the Bolsover area—four have seen their houses demolished, and another two houses are likely to be demolished in the next few months—are compensated in some way.

Derbyshire county council immediately tried to find out the cause of the problem. At first it was difficult because, very cleverly, British Coal, which had mined underneath the area, had ordered what it called a Mott Macdonald study to find out the reason for the landslip from its point of view. British Coal was very quick to get the study into operation, and it came up with findings that the landslip was nothing to do with coal mining—even though British Coal had been mining under the area as recently as 1973.

I believe that British Coal has some responsibility in the matter. I asked British Coal to compensate these people for the loss of their houses and other assets. British Coal said that, according to the Mott Macdonald study, it was not its responsibility. The study did not include, however, the fact that British Coal had been pumping out millions of tonnes of water in the area. Many local people consider that the dams of water that had built up were part of the reason for the landslip and the houses falling away.

It is significant that a few yards from the landslip stands the church, which is approximately 40 or 50 yd from the escarpment face. Several years ago, I raised in the House the subject of subsidence in Bolsover church, because of the problems that had been created. Arising out of my questions, a settlement was eventually made by British Coal. If it can pay for subsidence in the church, which is a few yards away from the escarpment face, there is surely an argument that the same should apply to the owners of the houses on High street and New Station road that have been demolished. British Coal still refuses to pay, and that is why the Department of the Environment and/or the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food should find some way of assisting the residents of that area.

As I have said, the Scarborough hotel came under the Coast Protection Act 1949, but perhaps the houses in Bolsover could come under another heading. In the mid-1960s, there was a disaster in Wales at Aberfan, where 200-odd kids were killed in a school. I was a member of my local authority at that time. The Government of the day decided to send an inspector to every area in Britain where there were pit tips and said, "If these tips are dangerous, shift them—the Government will find the money." At Clay Cross, we managed to get rid of a pit tip during that period. The money was provided by the Government.

If it was possible in the aftermath of that awful Aberfan disaster for the Government to find the money to get rid of all those dangerous tips—not only in coalfields but in many other areas around Britain—it should be possible to draw the same parallel for the people in the Bolsover area.

Probably more than 80 houses are blighted. The house owners cannot get their homes insured—certainly not for the same price that they paid before—because the insurers have said that it is a bit dodgy. Those house owners have suffered in many ways over the past two years.

British Coal says that it is not its responsibility. I believe that it is, but let us assume that British Coal can sustain its argument that it is not. We then come to the question whether it is a natural occurrence that the people in the area could not have foreseen. It that is the case, it could be argued that Ministers should take a fresh look at the matter, and study the reports sent in by people in the area and the local authorities, to see whether they can assist.

Bolsover district council and Derbyshire county council have set up an assessment to find out what is causing the problem and what the cost of draining the area of the escarpment would be. There is a lot of water in the area, which we contend has built up from pit workings in the past. It is estimated that to find out what the problem is and how to eliminate it will cost £50,000, and that to eliminate it will cost more than £1 million.

The people who live on the side of that hill should not be expected to find £1 million to resolve the problem. The Department of the Environment should take the problem into account when making grants available to the Derbyshire county council, which is taking part in the study, and to the Bolsover district council, which is helping to pay for it.

The massive amount of money that it will cost to drain the whole area should also be taken into account. I hope that the Leader of the House will inform the relevant Ministers of the need to look at ways in which this problem can be settled. I have discussed it with the various local authorities of the area during the past few days.

Will the relevant Ministers in the Department of the Environment and-or the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food meet Bolsover district council, Derbyshire county council and other local representatives of the tenants—the house owners have formed an action group —with a view to considering the possibility of building into the grant settlement, if nothing else, a sum of money to enable the local authorities to eliminate the problem once the assessment has been made?

The Department of the Environment should meet British Coal and ask all the relevant questions that I have sent to it from D. C. Carter Associates, which is acting on behalf of the residents. It is contended that the dams of water that built up in the area as a result of coal mine workings are part of the problem.

Will the Leader of the House pass those messages to the relevant Departments, so that a meeting can be arranged with the local authorities concerned? Those authorities will be pleased to come down to discuss the matter.

I do not believe that the settlements made yesterday took into account the amount of money that will be needed by that area. If British Coal refuses to accept responsibility, that money can come only from the people who live in the area and the local authorities responsible for its administration.

I hope that the Leader of the House will pass on those messages, and that he will be able to impress on the relevant Ministers the need for them to meet the local area representatives and the residents as soon as possible, so that we can get to the bottom of the problem and ensure that the matter is dealt with as speedily as possible.

I am delighted to be called to take part in the Adjournment debate. My subject is the family—at this time of year, as we approach Christmas, that topic is perhaps more important than ever.

Tuesday's Budget represents a turning point in the economic fortunes of the nation. All the economic indicators point to a period of sustainable growth and a gradual return to sound finance. It might be said that some of the social indicators are less favourable. The numbers of young people involved in criminal activities continue to cause concern. Our divorce rate—at four out of 10 marriages—remains at a high level. In fact, it is the highest in the European Community. The number of children born outside wedlock has soared in the past few years.

Teachers up and down the land pull their hair out over the unacceptable behaviour of a rising number of five-year-olds who are encountering school and authority for the first time. Policemen express concern at the number of teenagers who take their names and numbers and threaten to report them for assault or wrongful arrest. The nation wrings its hands and searches its soul over the James Bulger case.

What can be done to stop the apparent rise in the number of young people growing up with no respect for others or for authority, and no apparent knowledge of right and wrong? I wish to make my contribution to the debate on the social issues facing society today. I welcome the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in raising the priority of social issues in today's political agenda.

I strongly support the range of measures to be introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. Certainly, the balance of the criminal justice system needs to be restored—away from the criminal and towards the innocent. I also welcome the wide-ranging debate now under way about the size and shape of the welfare state. Those who oppose such a debate have obviously never read some of the speeches of Beveridge and the other founding fathers of the welfare state.

I wish to explore one aspect of our social fabric that remains undervalued in modern society. I feel strongly that the role of the family in the past 30 years has been sidelined in a way that has become a significant factor in many of our social problems today. I am delighted that 1994 is to be the United Nations International Year of the Family, providing an opportunity to promote the importance of family relationships.

As I draw on my own experience of 38 years, as I read report after report and article after article, and as I talk to those involved with law enforcement, I increasingly take the view that children who grow up in a balanced and stable home, where they receive care and affirmation, are much less likely to become involved in crime or to seek financial support from the state, and more likely to achieve well at school. Those factors are becoming as plain as a pikestaff.

A recent article in The Guardian written by Paul Webster stated:

"A French study of violent adolescent crime puts most of the blame for aggression on the failure of parents to provide role models … Psychiatrists Bernard Zeiller and Tony Lainé examined 600 files on violent juvenile crime in Paris for the national institute of health and medical research. These included seven murders, one by a child under 13.

Sixteen children aged 13 to 18 took part in a study aimed at drawing up a portrait of juveniles likely to become criminals. All had an image of a failed father who had not protected them from criminal impulses as they were themselves delinquent, or alcoholic.

Mothers had failed to provide an environment in which the child's personality could develop. The offenders suffered from narcissism and a constant feeling of insecurity and the fear of abandonment."

A recent article by Janet Daley which appeared in The Times on 25 November 1993 stated, about two thirds of the way through:

"Scientific rationalists that we are, we cannot accept the central mystery of the human condition: that we are all born with a capacity for evil and a readiness to be good. How most of us learn to be good rather than evil is a secondary mystery, but there is little doubt that it requires the presence of other people.

Good behaviour is taught and measured by others, whereas bad behaviour may grow in perverse isolation, feeding on its own introversion. Instructing the young to suppress their innate evil impulses is the individual and collective responsibility of adults. Without constant supervision (and the kind of moral instruction now regarded as authoritarian) the young can and will run amok into amoral, sadistic egoism."

Surely she hits the nail on the head.

Can we any longer doubt that each child is born with a potential for good and for bad? Each young life, if properly nurtured with love and consistent discipline, is able to learn from a responsible role model, and is much more likely to develop into a predominantly law-abiding citizen.

Of course I recognise that some children will have psychological difficulties whatever their parents do. There are also those well-raised children who are derailed by incidents of circumstances later in life. However, as a general rule, children raised in stable and secure homes are overwhelmingly more likely to make a positive contribution to society, and are also more likely to pass on that capability to the next generation. As we debate the Christmas Adjournment, it is an appropriate time to consider the implications of the family in this nation.

An article in The Evening Standard on 4 March 1993 states:

"Mrs. Roberts, chief probation officer for Hereford and Worcester, told the association's annual conference in London: 'Tackling shortcomings and equipping young people with basic social skills are the components of the successful reduction of offending behaviour.

These skills include dealing with people in authority, learning how not to lose your temper, getting what you need by legitimate and acceptable means and finding positive opportunities for creativity and achievement.'

In a reasonably stable and supportive home environment, young people were tremendously responsive, Mrs. Roberts said.

'But sadly, in some of the more desperate urban settings, motivation is less easily tapped,' she added.

'What is needed to reduce persistent offending is what most people acquire during childhood through stable family life, education, the learning of skills and the availability of opportunity.'"

We all agree about what we wish to see in society. I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman does not appear to be willing to define the family. Much has been written about the family as a nuclear family, with male and female parents and a number of children. However, does the hon. Gentleman accept that many studies have shown that, although the trauma of divorce greatly disturbs children, if they come through the divorce and are left with one caring, loving parent who teaches them as the hon. Gentleman has suggested, that parent can be just as successful in bringing up the child in a balanced way and keeping him or her on what the hon. Gentleman would call the right path?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I accept what he says. If he is patient, I shall come to that issue.

Sadly, it is also true that children raised in a setting in which mother or father or both do not care, do not love and do not discipline consistently, are much more likely to develop into adolescents and adults who live in conflict with others and end up in trouble with the law. Importantly, there is also a tendency to pass those problems on to the next generation.

I realise that I am making generalisations, but I trust that the House will not condemn me for that. I recognise that exceptions to general principles can always be found, but I believe that the evidence in support of my general premise is overwhelming.

The way in which a child is raised does not involve simply financial circumstances. Children from rich homes who are deprived of love and consistent discipline are also likely to develop into irresponsible adults. Children from the poorest home, where a mother and father valiantly try to bring them up well, are likely to grow into citizens who make a positive contribution.

My argument is that whether each child born in this nation develops into a predominantly law-abiding citizen, or someone likely to slide into crime or lean on the state, depends largely on the forces that shape and nurture that life in its early years in the home and then in school. Care and affirmation produce children who are at peace with themselves and others. A strong and stable family unit is the best vehicle—perhaps the only vehicle—for delivering children who make a positive contribution, because a stable family offers the best context for parenting and a role model for children.

If we are to find long-term solutions to rising crime or welfare dependency, we must find ways of encouraging and strengthening stable relationships between parents and their children. So many things that we now seek to do as a Government, or as local authorities or other statutory agencies—whether it be seeking to prevent crime or caring for elderly people—should and can be done better by the family. Many of our social problems would gradually disappear if we established family relationships as the cornerstone on which our society is based.

For that reason, I believe that Government should actively seek new ways to support and encourage the family. That would have long-standing and far-reaching benefits to our nation. If we strengthen family relationships, that will also strengthen individual responsibility and responsible citizenship. If we strengthen family relationships, that will foster a great sense of community and neighbourhood. The healthy future for our nation lies in the proper balance of individual responsibility, the stable family and active community, not in ever-increasing state provision.

Many will shake their heads and say that it cannot be done, that it is not the role of Government to tell people how to live their lives. I agree that freedom of choice is paramount, but surely it is the job of Government to set the direction and create the environment in which those choices can be made. When better to consider those matters than now, as we approach Chistmas?

It is also right to give a lead in social policy, and not merely follow behind people's choices, picking up the pieces no matter how high the cost. We must be prepared to make value judgments. If it is right that the personal, social and financial costs of family breakdown are so damaging to our nation, should we be reticent about saying so? If we believe that family relationships are important, we should say so and seek to give a lead.

We have allowed the fear of upsetting minority groups to undermine our moral leadership and social policy for far too long. It is now considered discriminatory to say that we wish to encourage the family. We fear a critical backlash from those who choose an alternative life style, so we remain silent. We must now move the agenda forward. The family is better because it is better for society as a whole. It is sound common sense. People who chose an alternative life style are free to do so, but we must not let the tail wag the dog.

The stable family unit should be our goal, not because of some fancy moral argument, but because it delivers maximum social benefits. It is a practical matter. We have the right to make that call. I do not hark back to a golden age of perfect family life, for it never existed. My call is to learn the lessons of yesterday and today to make tomorrow better.

It is important to stress that, in promoting the family, I am attacking not lone parents but neglectful parents. Research appears to support the view that two parents are better than one. The presence of mother and father enables the burdensome responsibilities of child care and breadwinning to be shared. Let me make my view clear: thousands of single parents up and down the land are doing a magnificent job in raising their children in difficult circumstances. They deserve our support, not our condemnation.

The challenge is to find ways to prevent so much family breakdown in the future, to produce better parents and reduce the number of children who grow up outside a framework of security and discipline. I hope that, as we approach Christmas, we can debate those issues.

Our divorce statistics are truly horrifying, yet when I speak to young people about their aspirations for the future, I find that they aspire to long-term commitment. Most people are looking for a partner to whom they can commit and with whom they can share their life. They want a secure home in which to raise their children. That is their dream, but sadly today, too many lack the skills, the understanding or the benefit of a role model to make that dream a reality for them.

In seeking to support and encourage the family, we are not cutting across the grain of people's aspirations; we are cutting with the grain, seeking ways to help people to achieve their goal in life. We have helped people to own their homes. Let us help them to achieve the personal security that we all seek.

What can be done? We need to reach a consensus that family is important, that family is better and that family can deliver the social benefits that we rightly seek. I suspect that we are much closer to that consensus now than we were even three years ago. What we lack is any clear view on how to take the debate forward and convert it into practical action.

In closing, I shall make some brief suggestions. First, it is clear that too many young people grow up without learning the skills of being a parent or a spouse. We must commit ourselves to educating young people about their relationships and the complexities of partnership and parenthood. A great deal more can be done in our schools to educate young people in those areas. Of course there is no magic formula to being a good spouse or partner and a good parent, but there are timeless principles involved that can be taught and passed on.

Secondly, there is value in more proactive counselling, and teaching young couples before marriage is entered into—and during it. For several years, my wife helped run a pre-marriage counselling course in our church in Plymouth. In some cases, it was amazing how little some young couples on the threshold of marriage knew about each other.

In every case, the course proved of benefit to those taking it. Approximately one in five young couples decided not to get married, or deferred their marriage, as a result of being confronted by important issues that they had not previously considered. Surely that should be seen as a success, not a failure.

We also know from our own experience and with being involved with other couples that expert and wise counselling at the right time for all couples going through a bad patch can mean the difference between reconciliation and separation. We need to explore ways of reaching couples before marital problems become marital crises.

Thirdly, having taught people the skills, and having given them the counselling and backup necessary, parents must be made to face up to their responsibilities. The Child Support Agency has made a valuable start in addressing financial responsibility. Although there is some concern about the way in which the Child Support Act 1991 is being implemented, no one appears to dispute that the principle is right.

We need to extend that parental responsibility to areas of conduct of children for which parents must be responsible. There should be few exceptions to that. There is no doubt in my mind that if parents knew that they would be increasingly responsible for the actions of their children, they would be more careful in how they sought to raise their children in the first place.

Fourthly, our primary school teachers can spot the extreme potential troublemakers and lawbreakers at an early stage of their time at school. Often, such a child is simply reflecting its background, and is unlikely to change its ways without special attention. We can do more in directing resources at that point in a child's life to seek to place that person on the straight and narrow, rather than waiting until he or she has broken into our homes or stolen our car. I should like to see more active thought given to how direct intervention into that child's life might take place in a way that would make a real difference.

Fifthly, we need a gradual increase in the penalties for crime. Having given the help and the skills to encourage people to develop as law-abiding citizens, we must then punish severely those who choose to offend. The absence of a realistic deterrent is one of the biggest issues facing us today. I commend my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary for his excellent attempts to redress that imbalance.

Finally, it has long been my view that we should encourage responsible behaviour and discourage irresponsible behaviour through our tax and financial systems. More thought needs to be given to how our tax system can be designed to enable people to come together in long-term relationships and to stay together. Having recognised the importance of stable families, we should be ready to defend that institution through our tax and benefit structure. That would represent the investment in excellence that we need to see in our nation.

Not for a moment would I suggest that that is a matter for Government alone. I call upon the Church and all opinion formers to recognise the importance of strong family relationships and to redouble their efforts to promote the right message. Let us all work together on that vital task.

There are no short-term, quick-fix solutions, but we can do positive things to build for the future quality relationships in the home. It is a mighty mountain to move, but the lessons learned from some of the more extreme incidents of the past few years compel us to start that task. The tragic James Bulger case is but one.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has given an important lead in his call to get back to basics and to espouse traditional values. It is for all of us to respond. As we approach Christmas, let us trust that the strong and stable family unit will once again become the foundation on which our nation is built.

I shall raise a rather more parochial issue—although one that is of concern in other constituencies apart from mine—than that addressed by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter). It is that of the A34, the Euro-route that passes from Southampton up towards the midlands and is the main trade route from our south coast ports to the midlands. The road has been improved year after year in its various different parts, until now the only remaining section that is not at least dual carriageway is that just to the south, and through parts, of Newbury.

Hon. Members will no doubt remember that in March this year the Government made a dramatic announcement that the route for the Newbury bypass had finally been agreed, and it would therefore go ahead. Interestingly, that announcement was made only a short while after it became clear that there would be a by-election for the parliamentary seat of Newbury. I am sure that the Government would not wish it to be felt that that announcement had been made purely because the by-election was about to take place and that they would not wish the electorate to believe that any such announcement could be made before a by-election and then not fulfilled after it.

Therefore, it is disappointing, to say the least, that since May this year, there has been no firm guarantee that the money for that bypass will be forthcoming. Indeed, we have heard from the Minister that he is conducting a review of the full roads programme, and it seems likely, in view of the Budget announcement, that at least some of the roads that we had believed would go ahead will not be built—or, at the very least, will be deferred.

I spoke to the Minister the other day about other problems on the A34, when I and those with me suggested that the traffic could only get heavier once the bypass had been built and the road was dual carriageway from Southampton to Birmingham. He said that we could not make the assumption that the bypass would be built in the near future. That was a great disappointment to me and the people of Newbury.

The problems on the A34 are many and numerous. There is the immediate problem that the traffic through the centre of Newbury is extremely heavy and there are long queues, particularly during the rush hours in the morning and the evening. Those are a cause of great annoyance not only to those trying to get across the country from Southampton to Birmingham and vice versa but to the inhabitants of Newbury trying to go about their daily lives.

There is also the problem of blight along the route of the A34 bypass. A number of people live in houses that are not close enough to the route to be subject to compulsory purchase but are close enough to be severely affected once the bypass is built. Those people cannot sell their houses on the open market, and the Minister, sadly, is being slow to use his discretionary power to purchase them.

Thirdly, there is danger on the route itself. The section of the A34 immediately to the south of Newbury is a notorious accident black spot, with acccidents every month, if not every week, frequently causing damage not just to vehicles but to people. If all those problems are to be solved, we badly need the money to be firmly allocated to that project.

Another problem with the A34 is the noise it creates. I am speaking here particularly on behalf of the two communities of Chieveley and East Ilsley, just to the north of where the A34 crosses the M4. New road surfaces, some of which are still being researched but some of which have been proven, can reduce the noise on trunk roads. Sadly, they are more expensive and harder to maintain than the normal surfaces.

There is a major noise pollution problem near trunk roads, and the A34 is a case in point. I urge the Minister to ensure that we take note of the need to introduce one of the new surfaces wherever there is a significant noise problem, even if that means a greater expense.

The Government have often made it known that they wish to do something about pollution, and I suggest that they do something about noise pollution, just as they are aiming to do something about atmospheric and water pollution. Apart from the new noise reduction surfaces, a number of other measures, such as noise reduction fencing or banking, can be used. I urge the Minister to consider those solutions as well in our case.

Perhaps the most significant change that could be made would be to legislation on noise pollution. It is ridiculuous that some people are eligible for grants to install noise insulation and others are not.

Let us take a hypothetical case of two towns joined by a major road, which passes through two villages, which constitute two bottlenecks. The Government decide to improve the road on the route, and remove one bottleneck through one village. Unfortunately, the other bottleneck still exists, so the increased traffic on the road will not reach the level at which grants for noise insulation are triggered.

The Government go ahead with the futher improvement in the other village at that point, and because both bottlenecks have been removed, the traffic up that route suddenly increases considerably. The grant level is therefore triggered, and the second village becomes eligible for grants for noise insulation. Unfortunately, although the traffic has risen by exactly the same amount in both villages, only the village where the work is being done is eligible for grants. That does not seem to be either logical or fair. As I said, it must apply not only to Newbury, but to other parts of the country.

If a route is improved and traffic levels increase, all affected houses on the route should be eligible for noise insulation grants—as in Chieveley and East Ilsley—not merely those immediately adjacent to the final work.

In the case of those two villages, the main reason why they are not eligible for grants is that the road running through was improved in advance of the new grant mechanism coming into play. Nevertheless, they suffer, because the road has since been improved in many other places and has gone from being a small, rural route to a major Euro-route that carries all the freight traffic that passes between the south coast and the midlands. That has led to considerable noise pollution in the villages, and so far Government have refused to do anything about it, either through noise reduction methods or by allocating grants for insulation.

Those problems on the A34 deserve urgent attention. I urge the Minister to ensure that something is done to address the problems with the bypass, which will solve some of the traffic problems in central Newbury, and the problems of noise pollution along the line of the A34 as it passes through Berkshire, and I ask that the necessary legislation is introduced before Christmas.

It is somewhat ironic to follow the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) when I, too, wish to discuss roads in my constituency and would not wish the House to adjourn until I have had some response to the special issues that I wish to raise. The hon. Gentleman's complaint is that there is too much traffic on the A34; my complaint concerns the need to upgrade the roads to make Hastings prosperous. I make no apology for once again returning to the subject—one which my predecessor raised regularly as, I suspect, shall I. I hope that hon. Members will bear with me.

The economy of Hastings is exceedingly fragile and, as if in recognition of that, while unemployment fell across the country in the past month, it rose in Hastings. I know exactly where that unemployment arose. Some of it related to what I consider to be a welcome decline in the need for such an extensive defence industry. However, I have enormous sympathy for the people who are consequently on the unemployment register. This shows how large decisions can have a dramatic impact on a small town such as Hastings.

Because our problems in Hastings were recognised, it was granted assisted area status, which is exceedingly welcome, especially as the Department of Trade and Industry has received well over 100 grant applications for assisted area status grants. However, the Department of Trade and Industry was clearly not prepared for the sheer volume of applications. Hastings is perilously close to losing potential business because the Department is not responding as quickly as it originally thought it could and it is even extending the revised period in which grants will be awarded to people in Hastings.

The key reason that Hastings has assisted area status is the appalling state of our roads. One local business man in my constituency recently wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport and he has gone even further in his condemnation of the roads than my usual argument that they would be recognised by 18th-century smugglers. His view is that if the current state of our roads had pertained in 1066, King Harold would not have been killed at the battle of Hastings as nobody would have been able to get in and out of town.

The A21 is a single-track country lane—the main road through which 40-tonne trucks carry goods and services in and out of Hastings and it is almost blocked because of resurfacing work. The A259, the main south coast route, is undergoing significant remedial work to the west, and the eastern part has been totally closed for what has become seven weeks, but was allegedly to be 10 days. That has caused enormous problems not just for business but for residents trying to do what little shopping they can in Hastings in the run-up to the Christmas period. Clearly, local business men and women are exceedingly upset. Our problem is not just that the roads are worn out, hence the remedial work, but that they are not of good enough quality to create the stable economy that Hastings needs.

I was struck with terror during the Budget speech when I heard that there were to be reductions in, and a slowing down of, the roads programme. It is ironic that almost every roads proposal produces instant and aggressive reaction but few hon. Members do little other than recommend more roads for their constituents. There must not be any further delay in the upgrading of the A21 and the A259 in Hastings. I understand that the Department of Transport is actively considering a number of bypass proposals, any one of which should improve our roads. However, they are all at different stages of development and none is linked. The A21 ceases to be a dual carriageway south of Tonbridge. There are at least six different proposals—all at different stages—for draft orders and public inquiries, but none has been given the go-ahead. None of the proposals for the A259 has yet reached public inquiry stage.

The problem is not only that delays are being built into the schemes and that the Minister for Roads and Traffic promised draft orders for the Hastings bypass in spring, but that he is now promising the orders in late autumn. As I reminded him in a recent letter, there are only four weeks before the end of the year. How is late autumn defined?

The links between the various proposals are out of phase and are not logical, resulting in excess costs. Each time a bypass is proposed, and because it is not logically linked to a subsequent portion, we dodge backwards and forwards across the A589 and it becomes a zig-zag instead of a straight line. That costs extra money, when the road is eventually built, and takes extra time. I am not surprised that the Department of Transport has come up with ideas to reduce from 11 years the time taken to get a road from the original proposal stage through to final planning permission stage.

When I was first selected for Hastings and Rye, a venerable gentleman metaphorically patted me on the head and said, "Don't worry about roads. We have been trying to improve them since before the first world war." I should hate to think that there would be another world war or that we could not get our roads improved. We must ensure that we link many of the bypasses and that we use the speeded-up process so that we get a logical road. We must move quickly so that my constituents can benefit from logical and sensible roads which will help them to build up the economy of Hastings, which we all wish to see.

It is dispiriting to talk to people wishing to invest in Hastings who say that it is only half a town and that the other half is the fish in the channel. It is hard enough to attract business to a small town on the south coast without penalising ourselves and without the Department of Transport penalising us by slowing down the roads programme, which is so crucial to ensure that our unemployment goes down and that our average wage, which is one third of the national average wage, becomes a competitive wage so that we can ensure that we have prosperity in a town that desperately needs it. I should hate us to go into the Christmas recess without some comment from the Department of Transport about its proposals for the A21 and the A259 to benefit my constituents.

Having heard several pleas for roads, it comes to my mind that everyone has a road in which he or she wishes to see some investment. I put on record my disappointment that the Scottish Office is unwilling to fund the bypass that would avoid the Avon gorge between Lothian and Central regions. There have been a number of serious accidents there, although, thank goodness, no deaths, over the past 20 years. However, that is not the reason why I stayed in the Chamber to speak today.

I was interested that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) let us know that he was involved in church work and I was interested by his definition of the concept "saved". He spoke about pre-marriage counselling for some of the people in his church and said that he saved one fifth of them from taking the step of getting married. That is a new definition of "saved" for me. I refer him and other hon. Members who listened and nodded sagely to a new book by my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), the second-in-command on our Front-Bench Treasury team, called "The Century Gap". Males especially should read the book. Her thesis is that whereas men are living in the 20th century, women have advanced into the 21st century, and that it is about time that men joined them before they find themselves out of step. We would achieve better results for our children if we regarded their upbringing not as a family matter, but as a parenting matter. It is not only the structure, but the quality of relationships that is important for the future.

I stayed to speak today because I was informed that there would be a debate on agriculture on the motion for the Adjournment. Scottish agriculture is suffering badly at the hands of the European Community. I feel some debt to the National Farmers Union of the Forth valley and I wanted to speak on their behalf. It is a pity that we are not having such a debate and I hope that we shall have it at some time. I recall the change to the sheep meat regime causing consternation among the hill sheep farmers. We had a debate here about that. People in Scotland are suffering.

Another problem is the milk quotas. When I was leader of the council in Stirling district, it was predicted that one tenth of farmers would be out of business, and would have to sell their farms or give up their tenancies by the end of the decade as a result of the quotas because they had invested heavily in new milk parlours. That has come to pass in the Forth valley and it is a great shame. There is a deficit in the milk supply in Europe, yet we do not transfer quotas across boundaries to this country. As a result, many of the companies that process milk have gone to other European countries, taking manufacturing jobs with them. That was verified when we met the Food and Drink Manufacturers Association just before the Budget statement. We have been remiss in a number of areas.

In cereal production, set-aside is being forced on Scotland next year because of the quality and productivity of Scottish farming. I deprecate the fact that Scottish farmers will be punished when cereal production quotas could be transferred to Scotland to allow them to continue to produce cereals. It is a pity that we did not have an agriculture debate today. I would have been happy to take part in it and to speak on behalf of farmers, although there are few in my constituency. It is a national problem in Scotland and it is probably also a United Kingdom problem.

I intend to speak about a matter that is not as specific as the roads pleas earlier. I shall speak about the orange badge scheme—the disabled sticker scheme. I do not know whether the scheme works in the same way in England and Wales. In Scotland, it is becoming a regime that takes away a small benefit which gives disabled people a quality of life that they could not otherwise have.

I hope that the House will think about the scheme. It is not a great financial gift and it is not a licence for people to park wherever they like. Many road traffic schemes, especially double yellow line schemes, mean that people cannot park on certain roads even with an orange badge. Last Christmas, Strathclyde clamped down heavily on parking. A person with an orange badge who did not know the regulations well enough parked near the shopping centre. When he came back to find his car, he saw that it had been towed away by a private security firm hired for the purpose. He had to pay more than £50, and he was lucky enough to have money and a credit card with him so that he could get his car out of the pound. However, he had to walk and to take a taxi for almost a mile and a half.

People cannot use the scheme to park wherever they like, and that is correct. However, I wrote to Strathclyde council saying that it was being rather harsh and that there should be some zoned parking on roads that had double yellow lines near the shopping centre at Christmas for people with orange badges. The incident was a great shock to my constituent, and there has been great hardship for many orange badge users who have had to park far away from the shopping centre.

The scheme has been amended by regulation, not by debate in the House. The purpose of the regulation was to stop abuses, and I applaud that. There were many abuses. When the Labour Government were in power, my good friend Lord Ewing of Kirkford, from whom I took over, was a Scottish Office Minister. He spoke to some of my pupils when I was a teacher of children with learning difficulties. He told them about the orange badge schemes and he pointed out the many abuses. The problem became greater as the 1980s went on. It is right that the regulations should be used to stop abuses, but they have now gone too far and the scheme is far too rigid.

The regulations seem to make it practically impossible for people to get a new orange badge unless they can prove that they have had a double amputation and that they cannot even wheel themselves along. They are asked whether they can travel 200 yds by any means. Let us consider the case of my constituent Mr. Andrews of Grangemouth which illustrates the point well. He had had an orange badge for more than five years and he was told that he had to fill in a new form. He is a very honest gentleman in his mid-70s who has for some time suffered a number of problems with walking and who has had several operations. He said that if he leant on his wife's arm and stopped every 20 yds or so for a rest, he could probably travel 200 yds without a wheelchair. He was then denied renewal of his orange badge. The bottom line was that he could travel 200 yds by some means. It would not have mattered if he could only get himself over 200 yds on his hands and knees. He would still have been denied renewal of his orange badge.

I applaud Mr. Andrews's attitude, which I recommend to anyone who finds himself in such a situation. With personal advocacy that would have done any hon. Member proud, Mr. Andrews took the matter up in the press and contacted the television company; he fought a battle. The council did not say that it was wrong. It said that it would send him a new form and that if he wrote that he could not travel 200 yds under his own steam, it would give him a badge. That is ludicrous. He had to be less honest than he wanted in informing the authorities of his circumstances, to obtain an orange badge. The scheme is now so strict that people who need badges are losing them and that small addition to their quality of life is taken away.

I am reminded of the new incapacity allowance. The suggested method of proving that one qualifies for that allowance reflects the same attitude. One must prove that one is so incapacitated that one cannot do anything for oneself. I hope that is not the purpose of the allowance, which should be to add to an individual's quality of life, not to transform people from being vegetables into active citizens. The inflexibility of the new orange badge regulations works against those who are temporarily incapacitated for one or two years and who have been advised by their doctor that they cannot get about under their own steam. The provision of a badge would help such people more easily to shop and in other ways. The regulations do not allow for a temporary badge. Must the applicant lie and state that he or she is permanently incapacitated, and not admit that—if the doctor is right—they will be able to get about in one or two years? Are such people merely to state that they are disabled and, after a couple of years, hang on to their badges as long as they can? To use a phrase that is common in politics and in life generally, such people are caught between a rock and a hard place. It is time that the Government examined the scheme's inflexibility.

Mrs. Reid from Bo'ness is one constituent who has written to me on that subject. The Scottish Office says that the regulations are set, but that a flexibility clause allows a local authority to use discretion but not grant temporary badges. There is something wrong if flexibility and discretion cannot be used to assist a person who is temporarily disabled or incapacitated. I will be harsh on the Scottish Office and say that it sets the regulations and then passes the buck. That is a favoured way of doing things. I was for 10 years the leader of a council that was weighed down with regulations with which it had to conform, but it was not given the resources to do so.

The transport planning authority appears to have chosen a person—I will not name the gentleman—having the least heart and soul in the bureaucracy to administer the scheme. The terms and tone of his letters upset people, in that he does not countenance any flexibility if he can get away with it—and the regulations allow him to deny flexibility. The Scottish Office Minister responsible should add flexibility to the regulations and exhort local authorities to use the discretion that will give the incapacitated the small addition to their quality of life that the orange badge scheme can provide.

The regulations appear to give plaudits and prizes for being rigid and inflexible, and I am sure that is not the scheme's true purpose. I enter a plea on behalf of my constituents and other people in Scotland and in England and Wales who find it difficult to renew their orange badge, and who are expected to enjoy a lower quality of life. The Government are providing a lower quality of life in everything that they do, but I am sure that they do not want publicly to be found out. I ask the Minister responsible to reconsider the scheme and to introduce a regulation that will provide for easier orange badge renewal by people who have owned one for a number of years—and certainly for those who are in the later years of their life—but which still keeps abusers out of the picture. I hope that we may see changes in the next couple of months.

The House should address four matters in the context of my constituency before it adjourns for Christmas. The House will not be surprised to know that they are the high-speed rail link, as it passes through Kent; grant-maintained schools; the application for objective 2 status within the European Community; and the routing of ambulances.

The high-speed rail link has been a major problem for the people of Kent, as alternative routes have twisted and turned across my constituency and elsewhere in Kent over the past five years. I will highlight the plight of 90 households at Pepper Hill, under whose properties Union Rail currently wants to drive a tunnel. Union Rail blatantly states that those residents will suffer no noise or vibration. That is why I called for a geological survey to be commissioned, to assess the noise and vibration impact on those residents—what I call the rumble.

As the A2 action group of local residents and I are not experts in geological surveys, I asked the then Conservative-controlled Gravesham borough council to appoint a geological expert to investigate the Union Rail survey. I understand that the council eventually did so, and that that expert is already at work.

The ball is now in the court of Union Rail. Last month, it delivered to me and to the borough council a preliminary report on its geological survey. It promised—we know about British Rail's promises—that the result of laboratory tests would be delivered to Gravesham borough council by 29 November. They have not yet been delivered.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport kindly gave Gravesham borough council and myself until 31 December to give our views, which will not least be based on the results of the geological survey. I ask that all pressure be put on Union Rail to deliver the test results now, as they are already nearly one week overdue.

I believe that the rumble will be felt by those residents living over the proposed tunnel, which strengthens the case for the alternative route 226. It would take the tunnel—and a tunnel would be of advantage to all residents of Northfleet—away from properties, to run under an electricity substation.

I understand that the National Grid Company, which owns and operates that substation, produced an option report on the costs and practicalities of renewing that ancient switching substation or resiting it. I hope that the Department of Transport will study that report with a positive mind, to ascertain whether a solution can be found. One must be found, because the existing plan is totally unreasonable for the residents concerned.

The Department of Transport paper for the channel tunnel rail link high-level forum, "Property Purchase and Compensation Policy", commented on compensation safeguarding when the route is announced by Ministers in January. That paper states:

"Safeguarding also brings into play the statutory blight provisions (and purchase notices) of Part VI of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. A blight notice may be served by the owner of any domestic property within the safeguarded zone seeking purchase."

I cite the case of six householders sandwiched between the A2 motorway, which itself will be widened southwards nearer to their homes, and the high-speed rail link route announced. Those houses have for many years been sandwiched between two main transport arteries. They are four houses at Longview off Henhurst road, Cobham, and two houses in Scalers hill, also in the parish of Cobham.

The capital and amenity values of those properties have been ruined by public transport, and their owners must be compensated. I am told that their owners want to move. Those properties should be included in the safeguarded zone, so that their owners' rights will be taken into account. Reverting to the 90 households over the tunnel, I note that the same document states:

"Blight notices would not be accepted for properties within safeguarded zones over bored tunnels except where there are surface works such as ventilation shafts."

That is quite wrong as a policy. The tunnel does damage to the capital value and amenity of the 90 households that live above, and it is not fair to claim that the costs of that compensation make the high-speed rail link that much less viable. It is not fair to the residents, because the other side of the coin is that the proposal makes the capital value, and amenity value, of residents' houses equally less valuable, and they are less capable of sustaining that loss.

I shall now discuss grant-maintained schools. Conservative Kent county council was traditionally in the forefront of local financial management. It put, as a matter of policy, 90 per cent. of the funding of schools directly local financial management. It was not surprising, therefore, that, with the advent of grant-maintained school status, many Kent schools advanced to take 100 per cent. responsibility for funds and decisions relating to education.

It is not surprising that the support of parents of children in so many schools for adopting grant-maintained status was overwhelming; indeed, 50 per cent. of secondary schools in Kent have already become grant maintained. In my borough of Gravesham alone, five of the eight secondary schools and two of the primary schools have voted to become grant maintained, and two further schools are balloting for such status at the moment. Those that have become grant maintained have been successful. They are vibrant; they are go-ahead; they give good education to the young people concerned. The response of the new Labour-Liberal coalition that runs Kent county council has been one of unremitting hostility. The Lib-Lab coalition that is running Kent has allocated £100,000 of education funds to the mindless pursuit of opposing the will of parents in grant-maintained schools—£100,000 from the education budget, which could have been spent on new classrooms, on repairs to school buildings and on new equipment for our schools, just to pursue the petty party political prejudices of the Labour and Liberal parties.

What justification do they give for that approach? The Labour education spokesman on Kent county council, County Councillor Mrs. Esterson, said that, in previous votes of parents before the most recent county council election,

"parents voted against Conservative Kent County Council."

Let us consider that. Now, at St. John's Roman Catholic Secondary School in Gravesend the parents have voted on the matter, and 75 per cent. voted for the school to become a grant-maintained school.

Let us see the logic of Councillor Mrs. Esterson. Presumably the parents voted against the Lib-Lab coalition that runs Kent county council. What rubbish! Of course they did not. They did not vote on political grounds. They voted on the grounds of the education of their children. They voted positively because they felt that in that school they had a good headmaster, good governors, good teachers—indeed, a very good school—and they believe that they will get better education by having 100 per cent. power over the decisions and the spending of the education funds relative to their children.

That does not bother the new Lib-Lab coalition that is running Kent county council. The council is now circulating a misleading letter to parents who are due to vote in such cases. I shall take as an example the letter sent to parents of children at the St. Joseph's Roman Catholic aided primary school in Northfleet.

The first claim made to the parents by the Lib-Lab Kent county council is:

"The Grant Maintained sector has not grown as Government Policy had hoped."

That is an odd statement to make, because what the Government hoped is irrelevant. What counts is what the parents decide, and progress has been made, because in those schools the parents have decided that it is in the interests of their children.

That letter goes on to ask, rhetorically:

"Do you want your Headteacher and senior staff to be heavily involved in non-educational duties? Or do you want money spent hiring extra staff to do such work?"

Non-educational duties? When one has those "Headteachers and senior staff' working on the delivery of quality education locally in their school? That is what they are working on, and they are deciding the best means of so doing. When one bears in mind the fact that the school gets an extra 10 per cent. of funds, they can judge what to spend it on, and that may be partly on administrative and clerical support if they so judge.

The letter also says:

"There is no published evidence whatsoever which indicates that standards in the Grant Maintained sector are either better or worse than in Local Authority Schools."

Where have the authors of those letters been living in the past few weeks? We have seen lists of exam results from schools up and down the country, and what does one note? The grant-maintained schools predominate in the top of that list.

I would point out that high up in that list is the Northfleet school for boys in the borough of Gravesham in my constituency—not a grammar school—a school which is exceptionally well run. The parents are so supportive that the school has become grant maintained, and it has done exceptionally well, as those lists prove.

Here is another extract from that letter from the Lib-Lab county council:

"Whilst the early schools which joined the Grant Maintained sector received significant additional money this was not 'new' money. It has been and is being removed from existing schools, in other words robbing Peter to pay Paul."

That claim is the most pernicious of all. The logic of transferring that 10 per cent. of funds is that that is the amount of education funds that had to date been spent on administrative and advisory support to those schools from county hall. The grant-maintained decisions show that the schools believe that they can get better value for the same money locally in the school than can the county hall bureaucrats.

The problem for Kent county council and other councils is that they are losing that 10 per cent. of funds. How do they react? They should either win contracts from the grant-maintained schools to provide those same services, or they should cut the bureaucracy that provided those so-called services proportionately. Given the petty warfare of Kent county council, under its Lib-Lab control, against the grant-maintained schools, it is unlikely that they would win any such contracts.

My constituents, and even hon. Members, are great enthusiasts for that television programme "Yes Minister". We remember that Sir Humphrey always presented to Ministers painful cuts in services rather than cuts in Sir Humphrey's empire. That is precisely what is happening at the moment at Kent county council. Let us remember that the letter referred to "existing schools". The new Lib-Lab masters of Kent county council go on about cutting schools and nursery schools as a consequence, but they are addressing the wrong options. At the very first test of its competence, the Lib-Lab pact in Kent has failed. It claims that Kent taxpayers are confronted with only two options: either to pay higher council tax or to cut education services. That is not the choice. The bureaucracy has a responsibility to scale down accordingly, and we shall be watching to see whether it does so.

Incidentally, I welcome the 13 per cent. increase in the revenue support grant from the Government to Kent county council, and I would think that, with that 13 per cent., it should be well able in the coming year to develop services and impose no council tax increase whatsoever on the people of Kent.

Lastly, I shall discuss the British application to the European Community for designation of north Gravesham—indeed, of a wide area of Thames-side in Kent—for objective 2 status for European structural funds. My hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), for Medway (Dame P. Fenner) and for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) and I have long campaigned for such status, with the support of our Member of the European Parliament, Ben Patterson, and the local borough councils.

We particularly appreciate the enthusiasm of our right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry in making the application, and I should like to highlight two projects to which objective 2 funding from the European Community could contribute.

The first is Northfleet town bypass. Northfleet is an historic urban area which has always been dependent on heavy industry, but its roads were not built for heavy goods vehicles. Northfleet high street and the Springhead and Dover roads are quite inadequate for the heavy goods vehicles that daily pound along them.

There have been long-standing plans for such a bypass known as the Thames-side industrial route fourth phase. It is now known apparently, as the south Thames development route fourth phase. It would extend from the Springhead lower roundabout westwards to Dartford. This would be a very good project, with which financial support from the Community would help.

The second project that I wish to highlight is the north-east Gravesend access road. There is poor, ancient access to the two business areas—the Norfolk road industrial area; and the Old Denton industrial area, which has large companies such as Comma and Southern Water. We need a new road from the Lion roundabout to the Denton industrial estate, over the north Kent line and onwards to Denton wharf.

This road would bring relief to the residents of Old Denton, an historic and compact area. Heavy goods vehicles are currently rumbling along ancient roads such as Range road, which are lined with very small terrace houses that cannot withstand the vibration those vehicles generate.

We have heard in the House that paramedics on our ambulances now have the expertise to diagnose emergency patients and therefore take them directly to the most appropriate medical centre. In particular, Ministers have highlighted the fact that paramedics can identify appropriate cases and take them directly to trauma centres —intensive care units. My belief is that if they can diagnose up to specialist cases, surely they can diagnose down.

Our intensive care unit in Gravesham is at the Joyce Green hospital, Dartford—an excellent unit, but many miles away. The accident and emergency unit to which all ambulance cases are taken is at West Hill hospital in Dartford, which is also excellent but is miles away. If we now have highly specialised paramedics, I do not see why they cannot diagnose down emergency cases that require, for example, stitches or treatment of burns, which could easily go to the casualty unit at Gravesend and North Kent hospital, which is in our town and is far more convenient. I hope that the national health service will consider this proposal for convenience and for cost-saving.

I shall speak reasonably briefly because time is, alas, too short, which is one of the reasons why I tabled an amendment. On Thursday, 21 subjects were requested for debate. The proposal that we should abandon Parliament from 17 December to 11 January seems wrong. The notion that we should occupy only three hours of a Friday when five hours are available for debate is entirely wrong. There are enough Members here well to fill the three hours available and I have no doubt that other hon. Members, had they been presented with the opportunity of a five-hour debate, would have been here to debate issues.

Where are they?

It is inept of the Government to allow a three-hour debate when five hours are possible.

If the Parliamentary Private Secretary, behind his master, keeps making little jokes, I shall have to analyse in great detail all his silly comments. The Conservative Members behind him, who wish to take part in the debate, will be very reluctant for him to continue his silly antics.

May I continue last night's Adjournment debate on the Child Support Agency? I was here for part of the debate, which was instituted by my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar), and was particularly interested and concerned by the Minister's reply, because, like many hon. Members, I have been presented with cases that are disturbing and distressing for the people involved and for hon. Members.

The Minister's response to my hon. Friend's valid points was simply lacklustre and inadequate. There is a head of steam to get the Child Support Agency legislation changed; the Government should take note of it, because people from all walks of life are adversely affected.

It is worth remembering that the Child Support Act 1991 was presented to the House as legislation to ensure that irresponsible fathers who were not paying maintenance would be traced and would make a contribution to their children. Everybody regarded that as a perfectly just and proper aim, but the aim of the agency is now to tackle the easy money—that of fathers who are paying, who are known, but who are being subjected to an entirely restrictive and unfair formula.

Hon. Members who write to Ministers who piloted the Act through Parliament are shrugged off with an inadequate response, and told that the chief executive will reply. When a reply is received, it is simply a straightforward computer printout that tells Members, for example, that courts previously made decisions about this matter—something, apparently, that the agency believes only people on Mars knew.

Of course we know that information, and that cases varied from court to court. Sometimes that was a strength, because courts took into account differing circumstances. The letter goes on in a pedestrian way, saying that the person can ask for a review, and if they are dissatisfied with it they can appeal. In the meantime, they have to pay for the assessment and collection, which is rubbing salt into deep wounds.

Last night, as the Leader of the House will confirm, the Minister admitted that, in 616,000 cases, the agency has traced only 9,000 absent fathers. I believe that Government policy is to use the Child Support Agency not as a child support agency but as a Treasury support agency. It has been given the task of raising money from people who already accept their responsibility and pay maintenance.

I have a typical constituent's letter. I shall not give his name, because these circumstances are always private and distressing to the people involved. He writes:

"I am an 'absent Father' who firmly believes in the paying of maintenance for my 3½ year old daughter. I made a voluntary arrangement with the DSS … to pay £28·00 a week. I have never missed this payment ever since it was agreed by all parties concerned, approximately 18 months ago. I am currently making arrangements through my solicitor to transfer my equal share of the matrimonial home and its contents into my ex-wife's name.

I parted from the marriage with my car (value £1,800·00). The house has equity of approximately £12,00000 plus contents.

I am now in a relationship with a Divorcee who has two children from her previous marriage. She receives £5·00 per week for child maintenance on an irregular basis.

I have recently had a form from the CSA and find that they do not take into account the fact that I am now in a new relationship with my new partner and that I also provide for two children aged 9 and 4 years. The CSA say they are not my responsibility. I am their Daddy as far as they and everyone else is concerned. They together with myself are going to suffer badly, to a point where we may have to sell our home, if the CSA is allowed to continue.

I ask you to look at the CSA formula and tell me if you agree with it.

For the sake of my family, myself and thousands of other absent parents who willingly pay maintenance, I implore you to do something".

That is not uncharacteristic for a person who is acting fairly and handing over equity in the home.

The Minister's response is that it is simply nothing to do with the formula that the Government have laid down. That is grossly unfair. If the Tories claim that they are the party of the family, the Child Support Agency is bringing pressure to bear on families which will lead to further break-ups. If they are trying to save taxpayers' money, if there are further break-ups, that will mean further claims on the welfare system. I strongly urge the Leader of the House to pass the information to the Minister who replied so inadequately last night. Things must be changed.

I shall conclude my remarks about the Child Support Agency by mentioning a female constituent who has written to me. She has received six maintenance payments in three years and has complained about the lack of maintenance. She is the sort of person whom, we were told, the Child Support Agency was designed to support.

The Child Support agency took several weeks to write a letter. It then got the address wrong, although it had been given the correct address, and then said that it wanted information about the income of the former partner within two weeks. The former partner refused to give that information, so the agency allowed another two weeks. The woman wrote to me within the past few days to say that the information was still not available. On that example, even when the Child Support Agency is doing the work, it is not effective, and the figures given by the Minister bear that out.

Another young women wrote me an appealing letter. She had a baby and does not seek maintenance. She did not say so in her letter, but she said that she wanted the name of the father on the birth certificate. She does not have much money, but she would like the DNA test to be taken by the man, who disputes the claim. She is having great difficulty.

I referred her to the Child Support Agency, which told her that it would be three years before it could tackle her case. She is an ideal young woman for the agency to help, because she is a single parent and simply wants the name of the father on the birth certificate so that the child is not fatherless. That is not an unreasonable aspiration.

Another example is that of a man in a high-earning category—he earned as much as a Member of Parliament. He fathered a child and accepted his responsibility. His marriage has recovered from the sense of betrayal that had been incurred, and he and his wife were settling back. He has two teenage children to look after, and they are ready to go to university.

Through the door came a letter from the Child Support Agency. There was nothing private or confidential about it. His wife opened the letter—they were exchanging correspondence—and all the old wounds reopened. That day, when he returned from his well-paid, responsible position—a pillar of society, if one likes—his wife had packed her suitcase ready to go. He told me that it had been a difficult week, but it looked as though the marriage could be saved.

That is the effect in thousands of houses up and down the country. Yet the bland, ineffective reply of the Minister yesterday made it sound as though it was all some sort of administrative procedure. We are talking about an area of great sensitivities and difficulties. Relationships are being trampled on with hobnailed boots. I hope that the Minister will take the message. It is fair to say that the message is not simply coming from Labour Members. Some Tory Members have criticised the agency—there are anxious mothers and fathers battering at their doors as well.

Another subject that I shall mention is one that I have raised in the House previously—wheel clamping. I am raising the subject again because it has been raised again in Bradford—wheel clampers have been about again. In this case, they clamped the car of an articulate young women who, I am happy to say, will sue them. They held on to her and kept her by her car for two hours while she organised the recovery of the imposition of £75. I have had an Adjournment debate on this subject, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar).

Wheel clamping is taking place in Bradford, and women are being placed in jeopardy. They are often clamped late at night, at 11 or 11.30 pm. We are not talking about people parking cars in other people's back or front gardens—we are talking about what appears to all intents and purposes to be wasteland. People come out of the Alhambra theatre in Bradford to find that their cars have been clamped and they must find £75. A few months ago, the fine was increased from £50—an arbitrary imposition.

Many people are angry, because they are placed in danger by these cowboys. Indeed, in one case—it is not West Yorkshire Outdoor Securities Ltd., although that is the most prominent cowboy organisation in Bradford— one clamping company was clamping cars without the permission of the owners of the land. It was simply putting on a clamp and extorting money from innocent car owners.

A consultative document was issued by the Home Office, and responses to it had to be in by the end of May. However, there is still no sign of any activity by the Home Office. It should produce some proposals as soon as possible. The matter is causing concern.

I must tell the Minister about a woman who came to Bradford—she is not one of my constituents. She came 10 miles with a companion to go to the Alhambra theatre. Her car was clamped. The last bus and the last train had gone, and she had no other means of getting home. Fortunately, her companion had £50, which was handed over, and she was able to get her car. She went to the police. The police sat on their elbows and said that it was nothing to do with them—it was not a breach of the peace.

I shall tell the House what I say to people who are clamped and do not have the support of the police. I tell them to say that they will picket on behalf of the National Union of Mineworkers, and see what the police will do then. During the miners' strike, the police discovered all sorts of laws that could be utilised. However, in the case of men and women whose cars are clamped late at night, they cannot do a single thing.

The law needs clarifying along the lines of the Scottish court decision that clamping on private land in this way is extortion and theft. Since that court decision, there have been no traffic jams in Scotland, following the removal of those cowboy crooks.

My final point relates to a matter raised yesterday—the "Dispatches" programme about Aims of Industry and British United Industrialists, which have been raising money for the Conservative party. In response, the Leader of the House said that there were all sorts of conspiracies, and that it was not worth troubling his mind about them.

The Conservative party is a continuing conspiracy. On the programme broadcast on 1 December, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), a former Prime Minister, made the clear statement that, if people were asking others for money for political parties, it was a political donation. A Scottish Minister said exactly the same thing about British United Industrialists. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup made the point generally, but specifically referred to Aims of Industry.

It appears that not only Labour Members are concerned about this—distinguished former Tory Prime Ministers are saying that such donations are for political purposes and therefore should be recorded as political donations. If that is the case, firms such as Lucas, which was named on the programme, are in breach of the law in not declaring such donations as political donations.

It was made clear that Aims of Industry and British United Industrialists know what they are doing. They are raising money which they have repeatedly said is to help the Conservative party at general elections. That should be sorted out and, if the 1985 legislation has been breached, the Government should call on the relevant Departments to institute prosecutions.

It was made clear by a member of the Wallasey Conservative party that Aims of Industry had campaigned on behalf of the then Lynda Chalker in Wallasey. If that happened—the programme has strong evidence that it did—the election laws of 1983 must also have been breached.

The Leader of the House is cautious and believes that the Conservative party is the party of law and order. Here is a test: if it is the party of law and order, he should pass on the message to the Home Office to institute prosecutions against Lucas and other companies that have made illegal donations without admitting them, and certainly to ensure that Aims of Industry is prosecuted over its activities in Wallasey.

Everybody knows that public buildings and taxpayers' money are being used to subsidise dinners at No. 10. Many of us believe that those who turn up for such dinners include representatives of tobacco companies, which is why there is no ban on advertising cigarettes. The industry influences the Government through the money that it donates to the Conservative party. I believe that the beer barons are also making massive contributions to the Conservative party, which is why they did so well in the Budget.

If I am wrong, I expect that the Conservative party will want to raise its head over the sleaze surrounding it and start the prosecution process, so that it can refute, clearly and firmly, any accusations by people like me on the basis of evidence provided by television.

I wish to discuss the subject of credit card fraud, which is particularly important at Christmas because we are expected to spend some £15 billion in the shops this month, much of which will be transacted on plastic. Unfortunately, fraud using credit cards has doubled in the past five years.

People in this country have far more credit cards than our European neighbours. The French have 20 million cards and the Italians have only 5 million, yet we have 83 million credit, cheque guarantee or retailer cards.

Banks and retailers that issue cards are losing more than £400 million a year, or £761 every minute of the day, at the hands of fraudsters. Last year, more than 2 million cards were reported stolen. Of those, 150,000 were taken as a result of muggings and 300,000 during burglaries.

Black market prices in London suggest that, once stolen, credit cards can be sold to a middleman for between £50 and £150. The platinum cards—whatever they look like—can be sold for some £300. Once a middleman has bought a card, he passes it on to an encasher who uses a team of petty criminals to buy as much as they can using the cards. Those goods are then sold at knockdown prices from the back of a lorry, at car boot sales or elsewhere. By the time the process is completed, the average loss on a stolen card is £600.

Another problem is counterfeit cards from the far east. The police estimate that between 25 and 50 per cent. of gold card fraud is committed on counterfeit cards. So what measures can be taken to cut that fraud? Credit cards can be passed through an on-line system, which detects whether a card has been stolen. However, that system is expensive and not all retailers are linked up to it. Another system is to check the signature on the back of the card. Hon. Members will have noticed how many times their credit cards are returned to them without the signature being checked. Unfortunately, that is happening too often. Moreover, how many times do signatures differ during the day? Mine certainly differs from time to time, so even that checking procedure is made more difficult.

The result of the over-reliance on signatures and the reluctance to use on-line system means that 60 per cent. of all card fraud is committed after a card has been reported stolen. Barclays bank has its own system for Visa and Barclaycard. It looks at the purchase pattern of the person using the card and, if it is irregular, staff check up on it. However, the scheme to which I am most attracted uses photo identification and laser-etched signatures on the back of credit cards. It is being used by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the National and Provincial building society and the Trustee Savings bank. The Royal Bank of Scotland launched its pilot scheme in October 1991, when 30,000 customers at 39 selected branches in Edinburgh, London, Glasgow and Manchester were invited to apply for the new-style cards. They are "highline" cards with a photograph on the back and an etched signature.

The results achieved during the trial period were remarkable. Of the 360 cards lost or stolen, only three were used fraudulently, with a total loss to the bank of £494, as opposed to the £45,000 that it would normally have expected. Following that success, the card is being tested further in Lancashire and is now available to all Royal Bank of Scotland customers.

The National and Provincial building society has experienced similar success with its photo credit card, which differs from the Switch and hole-in-the-wall card of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Just five months after it was made available to the society's 300,000 Visa card holders, more than a third of the customers have taken up the offer to have their photograph put on the back of the card. It is an encouraging take-up rate and 1,000 customers a day are now applying for those new credit cards. Staff at those branches have Polaroid cameras with which they can take photographs of the customers. They charge £2 for a photograph, which is what customers would expect to pay commercially. Remarkably, no fee is charged for the cards. Too often, customers are asked to pay £12, £20 or even more for credit cards, even without photographs and laser-etched signatures.

The beauty of having a signature etched on to a card is that a third of cards used fraudulently are intercepted between the time a company sends out the cards and the time the recipients receive them. If a signature is already etched on a card, it is much more difficult for a fraudster to put his signature on it, thus helping to crack down on such fraud.

The public seem to like the new system. All the polls show that people using the cards back the use of photographs and laser-etched signatures. Retailers also like it and it has been endorsed by the British Retail Consortium because it helps it to crack down on crime. Scotland Yard has also welcomed the scheme. It pointed out that, even if a fraudster could remove the picture of the owner and replace it with his own, he would be reluctant to do so because, where suspicion occurs, the card is retained by a member of staff and the police then have a good idea of what the fraudster looks like. So thieves and fraudsters hate such schemes.

I am not enamoured of the idea of making such a scheme compulsory, but the evidence shows that companies issuing cards should embrace such new technology. It is a wonderful addition as a form of identity in general. I favour the idea of identity cards. A cheque guarantee or credit card with a photo on the back is an absolute boon. The cost of a card without a photograph is about 25p and with a photograph it is £1·20, but the massive savings that can be achieved will more than pay for the extra price.

Banks should not drag their feet over implementing new technology to reduce credit card fraud. It wastes police time, when such fraud could be stamped out. Given the fantastic reduction in fraud through using that technology, why should police time be wasted by not using it? Consumers who do not use that technology pay for the fraud every month through credit card protection schemes, inflated borrowing rates and card charges. It is up to us as elected Members to call on the banks to make every effort to tackle this problem. Our constituents have the right to be protected against credit card fraud and no stone should be left unturned in pursuit of that aim.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) for his kind comments. I had better not go further because if I did the political editor of New Statesman and Society will see yet another conspiracy. The Leader of the House will be pleased to know that I will not go into the subject of the Child Support Agency which I spoke about yesterday in the Adjournment debate. As I said then, many of the problems being experienced with that agency were raised when the right hon. Gentleman, as Secretary of State for Social Security, introduced the measure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South spoke about wheel clamping. I shall give a brief history of how that matter has been pursued in the House by a number of Members, including myself. In the summer, I secured an Adjournment debate on the subject and had some meetings with Ministers and civil servants. Unfortunately, that did not bring any results, so I introduced a ten-minute Bill, and a consultation document was published. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South said, responses to that were due by the end of May, which was a fairly short response time. Since then, there has been nothing from the Home Department. I have tabled questions and had correspondence with the relevant Minister, but there is still delay in taking a decision.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South said, for well over a year private wheel clamping has been banned in Scotland and there have been no horrific consequences or enormous traffic problems. Such wheel clamping still takes place in other parts of Britain, although there has been a bit of a lull recently. I was interested to hear that there are still problems in Bradford. During the Christmas period, people drive into areas with which they are not familiar to do Christmas shopping or to go to pantomimes. From previous years, we know that that is the peak time for clamping. There will be an upsurge in cases and more unfortunate people will be subjected not only to considerable indignity and inconvenience, but to occasional danger and certainly considerable cost. Given the increased charges in Bradford, it is obvious that the clampers there do not think that inflation is only 1 per cent., as the Chancellor said in his Budget speech.

The construction industry is facing a bleak Christmas and is experiencing its longest recession for years. As we know, many famous companies, household names, have gone out of business, and the industry believes that at least one other major contractor is likely to go under. The problem affects not just the big names but it is widespread in the industry. Subcontractors are being squeezed at all levels. More than half of the brickwork contractors who were in business a couple of years ago have disappeared. They are experiencing dramatic reductions in orders and a considerable squeeze on their cash flow.

There has been comment about the time that it takes to get money from main contractors and clients, and I am pleased to see that such matters are being addressed. A former Member of Parliament, Sir Michael Latham, is looking at the issue of contracts in the construction industry, and the industry is looking forward to a report from a man who is knowledgeable in this area.

I was pleased to hear the Chancellor acknowledge some of the difficulties that are being experienced not just in the construction industry, although that is the industry in which difficulties have been exacerbated, but by small companies who experience delays in the payment of their bills. The Chancellor is looking at some remedial measures including, I am pleased to hear, the German system of compulsory interest after a specific delay. That will help companies to stay in business.

Such difficulties are also experienced by the work force, the operatives in the industry. There have been major reductions in the number of people working in construction. One of the industry's worries is that many people with valuable skills who have been made redundant two or three times during the prolonged recession will have left the industry never to return. The industry wonders what skills shortages it will face when there is an upturn in building.

Those who are still lucky enough to be in work face considerable problems over pay reductions and the worsening of conditions. Wages for skilled craftsmen in London have reduced by about a third over the past two or three years. Many of them have been forced into casual employment and, effectively, companies are nodding and winking at such people who also claim benefit. Many companies would not be able to price jobs at current levels and people would not be able to work for current wages if they were not illicitly claiming benefit with the collaboration of companies. If the Chancellor is looking for cuts, I suggest the return of some degree of regulation and proper contractual employment in the building industry.

Quite apart from what will happen on deregulation, companies face pressure on health and safety standards. Underlying all the problems is the fact that the industry is experiencing its worst slump since the war. A couple of weeks ago an east midlands builder told me that that week he had advertised for bricklayers and for the next three days he was inundated with calls. Many of those who called had been laid off in the previous few weeks because house building companies had constructed to the first level and were leaving the sites vacant over the winter while they waited to see what would happen in the housing market. Far from being static, the situation is declining further.

The Secretary of State for the Environment should give some encouragement to the building industry about future prospects. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could have done that. Although there was a welcome announcement about the Jubilee line, the commercial property sector is quite flat and house building is still just staggering along and is the only area in which there is likely to be any development. It is worrying that public sector housing is not receiving the necessary support through the Government allowing councils to use capital receipts or encouraging housing associations. Such moves would give a much needed boost to house building.

Government Departments have not been helpful to the industry, as we have seen with the celebrated Bristol case. The curtain walling contract for the Ministry of Defence procurement office in Bristol will be awarded to a foreign company because only overseas companies were allowed to tender for the project. That was based on an out-of-date, 18-month-old report from the Bath technical institute. That situation has now passed, and British companies would have been able to complete the project.

The House does not have to take the word of the institute. I have talked to major developers who have been involved in similar projects who say that they have had satisfactory work within an adequate price from British companies. Unfortunately, the attitude of many Departments is to encourage overseas competition in a futile attempt to cut prices. That is done in a way which is inconceivable to any of our foreign competitors. It is unlikely that the French army would allow a British contractor to tender for a curtain walling contract or that the European Parliament in Brussels would invite any non-Belgian company to tender for its roofing work.

It is also as unlikely as the Bundeswehr inviting a number of overseas companies to tender for its ammunition contracts, as occurred in the infamous bribery case involving a Ministry of Defence official. The core problem is that the Government are encouraging overseas competition to the detriment of British companies. That occurs in a number of areas, but particularly in the Ministry of Defence.

Finally, I think that the House should review the period of the recess. Prolonged breaks are damaging to our standing with the public. It is not bad for hon. Members, who are thick-skinned about the matter, but it is bad for democracy when the parliamentary representatives are constantly attacked in the press. Hon. Members may safely rebut criticism from highly paid journalists who write about our pay, because they always seem to be reluctant to put their wages and conditions alongside ours. That is a challenge that they seem reluctant to take up.

We make ourselves targets by having prolonged breaks. There are so many issues which the public are crying out for us to debate and scrutinise. We should hot adjourn until those issues have been fully discussed.

In the Christmas spirit which should characterise the debate, I should like to begin by asking my right hon. Friend—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With great respect, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan) has not been here for a great deal of the morning. Some hon. Members have been here from 9.30 am waiting to speak.

Order. It is entirely for the Chair to choose who is required to speak. To my knowledge, the hon. Member for Eastleigh was here before the hon. Gentleman.

I am grateful for your ruling on that issue, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will try to keep my remarks brief, so that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks) will have a chance to make points for his constituents.

In the Christmas spirit, I will ask my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to pass on the thanks of my constituents to three of his ministerial colleagues for actions they have taken to help my constituency during the Session.

First, will my right hon. Friend thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport for receiving a delegation from Eastleigh to consider the future of the British Rail Maintenance Ltd. works? There has been considerable concern about how the jobs there will be affected by rail privatisation. My right hon. Friend received the delegation in a sympathetic way and suggested the setting up of a railway liaison group, which is meeting later today to consider ways in which those jobs can be saved, and my right hon. Friend has promised to attend meetings of the group regularly. In view of his busy schedule, we are extremely grateful for the interest which he has shown.

Secondly, will my right hon. Friend thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment for his sympathetic view of the future of Hampshire in the context of the local government review? There is a strong feeling in Hampshire that it would be wrong to move towards unitary government. Hampshire county council is older than this Parliament, and it is an effective county council which is widely respected. Hampshire brought in the lowest shire council tax in the country last year, and I believe that it would be wrong to abolish the council. I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for saying that Hampshire might be an exception which would be allowed to retain a two-tier system.

Thirdly, I am particularly grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor. Only 10 days ago in the House, I made a speech about unemployment and suggested two measures which I though would be of concern, particularly in my constituency, but also across the country. I thought also that those measures would help to reduce unemployment.

The first measure was more help to small business and, in particular, action to penalise companies that did not pay their debts on time. The second was more help to provide training. I am delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend adjusted his Budget at the last moment to take account of those two concerns and that he made recommendations in those directions.

I should like to address my main remarks not to either Front Bench but to the Press Gallery, which is characteristically packed for today's debate. I spent 20 years as a journalist and I have great sympathy for those who ply the trade. I think that journalists come in for a lot of unfair criticism. People do not realise how speedily journalists must produce their articles. One need only look at the coverage this week of the Budget. It was remarkable that most newspapers were able to produce such detailed and extensive coverage within a few hours of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor sitting down.

I believe that most journalists do a remarkable job. This country is blessed with a press which is much more entertaining than most papers abroad. When the British press is compared with Die Welt, Le Monde or the New York Times, one sees that it is a pretty good read. It is also diversified. We have the highest newspaper readership of any country in Europe. We must admire the quality of the press, which maintains a high standard of language, unlike some of our television companies. One reads much less bad language in the press than one hears on BBC 1 or ITV of a Sunday evening now that swearing and bad language have become commonplace on television.

Two issues concerning the press have been raised. 'The first is the question of privacy, which has been extensively discussed and which I do not wish to discuss further this morning. The second—which I believe most people would regard as more important—is the accuracy of the press. I was interested to note that the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission said that 70 per cent. of the complaints that the commission receives deal not with privacy but with accuracy.

As I said, producing accurate articles soon after an event is difficult. Inevitably, mistakes are made. We all make mistakes. Only this week, we have seen typing mistakes in the transcript of the messages between the Government and the IRA. The information was produced quickly and mistakes were made, and that happens in journalism, too. I once made a terrible mistake when I was working for the BBC. The former leader of the Liberal party, the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) was standing in the European elections in Italy. We followed him around for a day and watched him eat spaghetti and talk to the Italians, then rushed to the studio to record a piece for the six o'clock news. The opening line in my commentary was, "Sir David Steel is the first Englishman to stand for election in Italy." Within a few minutes, the BBC switchboard was jammed with hundreds of thousands of calls from people complaining that I did not realise that the right hon. Gentleman came from Scotland.

It is easy to make mistakes, but sometimes there is too much of a rush to produce an article without properly investigating the circumstances. Only last week, I was rung up at 11 o'clock at night and asked about a report that money was being filched from the railway pension fund to pay for the royal train. Late that night, I contacted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, who made it clear that there was no truth whatever in the report. I pointed that out to the BBC "Breakfast Time" programme, but those concerned were not interested in whether it was true—it was too good a story, so they ran it, with comments from Opposition Members.

I regret to say that two newspapers did the same, not just reporting the untrue allegations but suggesting that they were true. The Guardian said:

"The Government has taken £730,000 from the British Rail pension fund and transferred it to the royal train's budget to make the train more attractive for private investors to take over."

We do not look for favours from the Daily Mirror, but we do expect normal standards of journalism to apply sometimes. That newspaper ran the headline:

"BR regrets that £730,000 has been diverted to Royal Train".

The story reads:

"Transport Secretary John MacGregor has shunted hundreds of thousands of pounds away from British Rail pensioners to keep the Royal Train running."

The Guardian at least had the grace to publish a letter from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport two days later pointing out how untrue the story was—although, interestingly, right at the bottom of its correspondence column. To my knowledge, the Daily Mirror has made no such apology. Newspapers have a duty to try to check the accuracy of stories before they print them, and when they get them wrong, as inevitably they will, to print proper corrections. Some newspapers have now introduced local ombudsmen who look into complaints and that is a significant improvement. I should like to suggest another simple change. Most newspaper editors could adopt the practice of American newspapers such as the New York Times and print a regular corrections column—not dictated by politicians but in the interests of their readers, and put things right where mistakes have been made. That would be good for the readers and for the reputation of newspapers. The Times, when it was the top people's newspaper, made a regular habit of printing corrections. Alas, that happens no longer. If local and national newspapers introduced a regular corrections column, they would be doing their readers a great service. In the Christmas spirit, I offer that suggestion, and I look forward to hearing my right hon. Friend's comments.

I was in the Chamber for the start of business and, except when I went to the toilet on one occasion, I have been here ever since.

I should like an answer before the Christmas recess to the issue that I am about to raise. It is almost a business question and, as the Leader of the House is here, perhaps he will agree to a debate on airport capacity, particularly as it affects Heathrow airport in my constituency.

Everyone knows that Heathrow airport is the busiest international airport in the world and that there is a great deal of pressure on it to expand. A planning application for terminal 5 is currently with the Secretary of State for the Environment, and we are expecting the pre-consultation approach at the beginning of next year.

Linked to that, the British Airports Authority has asked the Department of Transport for permission to contribute towards the widening of the M4 in my constituency. It is amazing that the Department of Transport can have consultations about the widening of the M4, as it relates to terminal 5, before there has been a planning inquiry and an acceptance of the need for terminal 5 and the proposal to build it.

A working party looked at runway capacity requirement for the south-east into the next century. The working party sat for many months and came up with the wonderful recommendation that it would keep all the options open and make no recommendations. I do not know what it cost the public purse, but it was a joke.

The Department of Transport has said that it will require from August of this year until May of next year to consult on all the options, about which the working party could not come to a conclusion.

One of the options is a third runway at Heathrow. That is one of the most nonsensical ideas that I have ever come across, since I have been a Member of Parliament or before. Even the air traffic control people have said that if there were a third runway at Heathrow it would never be more than 30 per cent. utilised because the congestion is not on the ground but in the sky.

I do not know why that was an option, especially as Stansted has capacity for approximately 8 million passengers, and only approximately 2 million use it. If ever there was a case for Stansted to use its vacant runway and terminal capacities, it is this.

The Secretary of State for Transport has said that he must keep the consultations open. He said, "Unofficially, Terry, I can tell you that in my view there will be no third runway at Heathrow." His spokesman for aviation has said much the same. The Department of the Environment has said that it would never agree to pulling down thousands of homes in three villages in my constituency in order to put a third runway at Heathrow.

While all this behind the back, nudge nudge, wink wink attitude is taken, the issue is driving people crazy. My constituents want a definite assurance that there will be no third runway at Heathrow. People are concerned that their homes are blighted, that, having lived there for many years, they will have to move away. They are concerned that they will not get the right compensation if they have to move, which they do not want to do. I cannot understand why this situation should be allowed to go on.

The Labour party has earned no great credit in this matter. Its candidate at the last election has been winding up people there. Old people have been worried sick because he told them, prior to the 1992 election, that within six weeks of the Tories getting back into power there would be a Cabinet announcement that a third runway would be built at Heathrow. All this time later, there has still not been such an announcement. There will not be such an announcement, but he is trying to get people in my constituency worked up. He has linked the opposition to the runway with the opposition to the fifth terminal, and he has united people in the battle.

Another issue is that we still have night flights. Anybody who was in London overnight will know that the first flight coming in from east to west, across central London and above the M4, was at 5.25 am. I am told, "Don't worry, Mr. MP, people do not usually stay awake after they have been woken up by an aeroplane; they go back to sleep." That is another nonsensical report that has been produced by idiots who have nothing better to do with their time.

There should be a move towards the complete abolition of night flights. We should say to the aviation industry—to the airlines and the British Airports Authority in particular—that Heathrow is situated within a community and that that community should not be manipulated for the benefit of airline passengers, airlines and airport owners. They should adjust to the needs of the community.

Many of those people were there long before the airport. Others came later, and obtain good-value properties under the flight path. However, the airlines tend to believe that because the economic benefits come from Heathrow, that is the overriding factor and nothing else should be considered.

I have a simple answer to solve much of the problem. There are 77,000 domestic flights a year in and out of the world's busiest international airport. There is no reason not to halve that number by telling people flying from airports such as Manchester, Liverpool and Plymouth that they cannnot come to the world's busiest airport, but must go to other airports such as London City, Luton or Stansted. We cannot continue to have 77,000 movements a year, plus general aviation movements at Heathrow, when there is a demand for international airlines to use it. If we halved the number of domestic flights to Heathrow, we could use some of the space created for international flight use. We could also cap the level of movements.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House must tell his colleague, the Secretary of State for Transport, that I want an answer to the problem before Christmas. I want an announcement before Christmas that there will be no third runway at Heathrow—it is unnecessary and impractical. I want the fears of my constituents, especially old age pensioners, who do not understand what is going on, allayed immediately. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, does not allay their fears, he will face the biggest row and fight that he has ever experienced over transport.

Before the House adjourns for the Christmas recess, I wish to raise three issues. They do not, on this occasion, include Pitsea post office, as I am prepared to let the guilty parties, the post office and Tesco superstore, wrestle with their consciences.

I pay a warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) for his magnificent effort in yesterday securing more than £300,000 in Konver from the European Community. I also pay tribute to the excellent European Member of Parliament, Miss Patricia Rawlings, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. My constituents and the rest of Essex will benefit greatly from that extra money.

First, I have been the unpaid spokesman for hospital radio broadcasting for as long as I have been a Member of Parliament. I am beginning to think that I have not done a fat lot of good, as, each year, I have made the same speech, but have been unable to deliver the goods to interest the House in that important issue.

All Members of Parliament receive letters from constituents about hospital radio broadcasting. They make the right noises, but there has not been the will in the House to deliver to hospital radio broadcasting what it wants. At first, we tried to obtain zero-rated VAT for hospital radio broadcasting. We then tried to get hospital radio broadcasting its own frequency. We have now reduced our expectations and merely want to replace the present induction loop system with a generalised frequency.

There are 640 hospitals with more than 260,000 beds. The organisation employs more than 12,000 volunteers, and is the largest voluntary organisation in the country. It broadcasts more than 10,000 hours of programmes every week to 8.2 million people. I hope to goodness that the House will take the subject seriously. We all have constituents who work as volunteers in hospital broadcasting. Let us give them what they want—the Christmas present of their own frequency.

My second topic for discussion is China. I was appalled that, by just one vote, Beijing failed to win the Olympic games. What is the world thinking of? Have we forgotten Tiananmen square and the disgraceful events that took place there? It is outrageous that we seem to have forgotten the atrocities that took place in China a short time ago.

Basildon constituents are interested in matters in China. I wish to bring to the attention of the House the position of Bishop Cosmas Shi Enxiang. He is a Catholic bishop who is loyal to the Vatican, which puts him at odds with the Chinese communist authorities that require Catholics to be submitted to the Government-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. I suppose that he is in an old folks' home. In reality, he is in detention. I hope that, before Christmas, the Government will do everything they possibly can to secure the release of that bishop.

Thirdly, in 1991, I introduced a ten-minute Bill to amend the Pet Animals Act 1951. I appeal to the House to explain to our constituents that purchasing pets before Christmas is a serious matter. It is a disgrace that that Act, which is more than 40 years old, enables children under 16 years of age to go to pet shops and purchase kittens, dogs, alligators and other amphibians without proper parental consent and information on how to look after them.

I hope that the House will have a happy Christmas recess. I hope that the nation will enjoy the Christmas break. From one Essex man to another, I have great expectations of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and I hope that he will give a Christmas present to hospital radio broadcasting, to the Chinese bishop and to pets throughout the country.

It seems like only a few weeks ago that we last held a debate of this kind; indeed, it was only a few weeks ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar) was right to draw our attention to the way in which people view what must seem to them—they even seem to me—to be protracted breaks. They are longer than the electorate expect the House to have.

The Leader of the House seems anxious to pack us off for the Christmas recess as soon as he can, so much so that the debate is held on a Friday, and many of my hon. Friends anticipate the wishes of the Leader of the House on those matters. It is not hard to see why. The debate today has focused on deprivation and hardship. It has been demonstrated from the Conservative Benches that deprivation and hardship can be found in parts of the country where Labour Members, perhaps, do not look for it closely enough.

The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery), who opened the debate, spoke movingly of affordable housing, of the importance of objective 2 status and of economic deprivation. I thought that he might talk about Jarrow, where he used to be a teacher, or Hebburn, where he served on the urban district council, as it then was. I thought that he might talk about Consett, in the north of England, which was his first parliamentary battle.

But no; instead, he told us of the economic deprivation in his constituency. I thought of Prestbury and Alderly Edge and the communities that seem to be having a rough time. I thought of the industrial decline, to which he referred, since the end of the war—I assume that he meant the Falklands war—his cry that something must be clone and his hope that the Department of Trade and Industry would do something before he went upstairs. I took that to be a reference to the Committee Corridor and the 1922 Committee.

The theme of deprivation and neglect by Government departments was taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who referred to British Coal's responsibility, or its attempt to avoid it, for subsidence and housing damage in the high street and New Station road part of his constituency.

The theme found an echo on Conservative Benches. The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) also spoke about tunnelling undermining property and property values. Although one appeal was directed at the Department of Trade and Industry and British Coal, the other was directed at British Rail.

The theme, however, is the same. If those great engineering works are to be undertaken, responsibility must be accepted for the homes of those who will be affected by them. The rapid abandonment of Britain's coal mining industry by the Government leaves environmental problems behind. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover is quite right to draw the attention of the House to that and to demand an adequate response from the Government.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) spoke of a turning point in the economic fortunes of the nation and drew our attention to crime, divorce, badly behaved children and the undermining of the institution of the family, perhaps pointing to the direction in which he thought that our economic fortunes had turned. I agree with the emphasis that he gave to poor parenting. He chose a French study as evidence, but there is also evidence to be drawn from a study by Professor Colvin, based on samples drawn from Newcastle, which makes much the same point. At the heart of the problems is poor parenting, rather than single parenting, so it is on that that we should concentrate, but the study also drew attention to economic deprivation.

The hon. Member for Sutton drew attention to the duty of the tax system to underpin the family. I take that to suggest that he will oppose the Chancellor's pinning of the married couple's allowance to the new 15 per cent. rate and that he does not fully support the way in which the Child Support Agency works. That theme was taken up later by others.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) hoped that the Government would reward his constituents for voting Liberal by building them a new bypass, which suggests that he does not quite have the measure of the present Administration.

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) gave us a reprise of "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" by telling us that average wages in Hastings were only a third of the national average. Presumably, she will have something to say to her constituents when their disposable income is hit by the 4 per cent. extra tax burden resulting from the Budget, when those in the public sector have to get by with their wages frozen and when the council tax for Hastings and Rye, like that of every other council, goes up well ahead of the rate of inflation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) rightly drew our attention in this pre-Christmas debate to the plight of the disabled and, in particular, to the inflexibility of the regulations governing the orange badge scheme.

I was pleased to see the hon. Member for Gravesham making common cause with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover about the effects of underground works on property values and the right to a compensation scheme. If he focused his complaints on Kent county council rather than on the Government generally, we can understand the political reasoning behind that. I hope that I do him no harm by identifying him with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. My hon. Friend is as well known in his constituency as the hon. Gentleman is in his. That unique partnership might carry a certain bipartisan value in Kent. I understand that that is the way in which public administration is now conducted in that county.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) spoke for both sides of the House when he drew attention again to the shortcomings of the Child Support Agency. Hon. Members are complaining not aboout the principle of the agency but about the way in which it operates in practice. People who made agreements that they thought were lawful and reasonable, and that were accepted by both parties, are being hunted down for more money and those whom we assumed that the legislation and the agency were directed at are getting away with not making payments.

The sums of money involved can be high, as I know from my constituency case load. In one case, which is not unique, a constituent is having to pay £60 a week from a £200 income. Not only is that a substantial amount of money, but it is not the sort of money that he would be able to pay, or be expected to pay, were the child still within his household.

The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) spoke with authority about counterfeit credit cards and credit card fraud and rightly drew to the attention of the House the spectacular rise in crime under the present administration. My hon. Friend the Member for Warley, West drew our attention to another aspect of crime: the way in which the wheel clamping industry is operated by cowboys against the interests of citizens who do not deserve to be punished or penalised in such a vigorous manner.

The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan) drew our attention to unemployment and to what I hope is an unrelated matter, the standards of journalism, and suggested that regular corrections columns should be carried in newspapers. He especially referred to The Guardian. The idea that a newspaper should have a corrections column as a regular feature says something about standards of accuracy that are now expected. It is probably right that there should be some facility for putting right yesterday's errors. Perhaps that suggestion should also be recommended to the Editor of Hansard so that such a facility was available to us as well as to our friends in the press.

Disgraceful—an attack on Hansard.

The hon. Gentleman shouts disgraceful as if Labour Members would want to make exclusive use of such a facility. Of course not; it would be available to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

The hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) spoke of the defence industry in Essex, of the Konver programme and of defence diversification. It is a policy that Conservative Members seem to oppose in general but are happy to have specifically applied to the areas that they represent.

I should like to comment on the area that I represent, which the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale knows well. It is, of course, the area that contains the Swan Hunter yard. It is a yard in receivership, which some six months ago directly employed 3,000 people and now employs fewer than 1,000 people who can expect to lose their jobs if no action is taken in the next six months. I accept that there is a case for defence diversification in Essex, but I expect that, if the Government still pretend to represent the whole country, they should accept that areas that once relied on defence industry employment, such as Tyneside, Merseyside and Barrow in Furness, deserve and need assistance, and they need it now. The work force at Swan Hunter have served the country well in peace and war and deserve better from the Government than neglect, the rundown yard, the redundancies and long-term unemployment that will be their fate if something is not done and done shortly.

I shall mildly correct the wrong impression given by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) in saying that it had only been a few weeks since we debated such a motion. He may have misremembered or misthought that we had such a debate before prorogation. In fact, the previous recess motion debate was some considerable time ago—in July, when large numbers of hon. Members were complaining that it had not come earlier.

I was referring to parliamentary weeks. We were not sitting throughout the summer.

Very good: what a mistake to make.

I missed that, but I am sure that it was entertaining.

The other thing that struck me was that nobody referred to the other amendment on the Order Paper or whether it is the official policy of the Opposition not to have a recess. I see from the Order Paper that the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) wants the House to sit until 24 December, and among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin), assiduous as are all Essex Members of Parliament, wishes the House to resume on Sunday 26 December. [Interruption.] If every motion before the House today were passed, hon. Members from the northern parts of the country would not even get home for Christmas lunch before they would have to turn round and come back.

I am not sure whether that point applies to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East, but I know that it applies to a number of hon. Members. I find some of the complaints a little ironic in view of the constant pressure —not, I accept, from the hon. Members for Bradford, South and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—for me to seek to advance the Jopling report to ease the burden of work in the House so that hon. Members can spend more time on their other work in their constituencies.

I shall not be able to comment in full on every speech. However, in view of the friendly references to the county to whose representation we both contribute, I shall make some quick reference to what my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) said, not least because he was kind enough to pay tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), who has just appeared in the Chamber, and to myself as the right hon. Member for Braintree. At this moment, we also have here my hon. Friends the Members for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) and for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris). Indeed, we have one third of the parliamentary representation of the county of Essex in the Chamber. No other part of the country can make that claim.

Only for the past five minutes. It is a plot.

I am prepared to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks) publicly that there is no conspiracy in this. I did not know that any of my hon. Friends from the county would be here today. The quality of their representation has been revealed.

I shall not be able to satisfy my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon on every point, but I have one important point to put to him. According to press reports in Hong Kong and in the European Catholic press, Bishops Shi Enxiang and Chen Jianzhang—fortunately there is an aid to pronunciation in the notes in front of me—were released on or around 20 November. Both names were on the list of cases of concern prepared by Amnesty International and they have been the subject of western representations. I am not sure whether there has been absolute confirmation of their release, but I know that the reports have appeared. Both my hon. Friend and I will welcome the bishops' release if it proves to be the case.

My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) made a number of points about housing matters, about the social security system and about the position on objective 2 assisted area status for his constituency. I will, of course, draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. I know that my right hon. Friend regretted that it was not possible to propose Altrincham and Sale for objective 2 status. The straightforward reason was that the unemployment rate in the relevant period was well below the national and Community averages.

I hope that, in considering what he said to us about housing matters, my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale will acknowledge that the Housing Corporation's programme will provide for 53,000 new homes next year, producing a total output of around 173,000 over the three years 1992–93 to 1994–95. That is 20,000 more homes than we promised in 1992. It is important that I should put that point on the record.

One other contribution to which I especially wish to refer is the speech by the hon. Member for Bolsover, because it was different from the contributions that he sometimes makes in proceedings in which I am involved. I much respected the way in which he put the case on behalf of his constituents, who clearly have an extremely difficult problem. I will ensure that his comments this morning are looked at thoroughly by the Ministers concerned. He will know that the Government, with the support of both sides of the House, have approved the subsidence regime under the Coal Mining Subsidence Act 1991, which provides extensively for the repair of or compensation for properties damaged by coal mining subsidence.

I realise that the question whether coal mining has caused the subsidence is one of the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman. I will ensure that the specific issues raised by him are brought to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. My right hon. Friend will consult local authorities until 10 January on his proposals for the revenue support grant in 1994–95.

I understand that no approach has been made on the specific issue that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but my right hon. Friend stands ready to meet any right hon. or hon. Member or authority to discuss proposals during that period. That responds to some of the hon. Gentleman's requests. I cannot promise a successful outcome, but I can guarantee that the hon. Gentleman's representations will be carefully considered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) made a lengthy and thoughtful contribution to the debate on family matters, which I am sure will be studied by Ministers in the Home Office, Department of Health and Department of Social Security. My hon. Friend will accept that it is not possible for my response to be as wide-ranging as his speech.

My hon. Friend recognised the importance that people generally attach to the traditional family and that many lone parents are doing a magnificent job in difficult circumstances. I am sure that he much welcomed the proposal in the Budget speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor, amplified in a statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security, to help towards the child care costs of those who seek to maintain or to regain their independence by making use of family credit. They will include many lone parents, but not only them.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) remarked extensively on the importance of road schemes in their localities. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the statutory orders for the scheme with which he is concerned have been made. Construction is not due to commence in the current financial year, but is a priority in the programme, and it is being considered in the review announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in August. At this stage, I cannot pre-empt the results of that review, which are due to be announced early in the new year.

Progress on a number of schemes in the Hastings area—where there are currently five schemes in the national road programme for improving various stretches of the A21—will greatly depend on the time needed for the statutory procedures. My right hon. Friend recently announced a package of measures to cut the time that it takes to progress new roads, and it is hoped that the A21 and A259 schemes mentioned by my hon. Friend will benefit from those proposals.

The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) commented on the tightening up of the orange badge scheme, and I will draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Transport and for Scotland.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) raised a large number of matters relating to his constituency—in particular, those arising from the channel tunnel rail link, which he also raised in an Adjournment debate a month or so ago. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has promised that the Government will take full account of the comments of my hon. Friend and those of Gravesham council in reaching decisions. I have no doubt that they will carefully consider the points that my hon. Friend made today.

The Government share his view that it is unacceptable for local authorities to seek to obstruct or to undermine the case for grant-maintained status through the dissemination of inaccurate or partisan information. I urge my hon. Friend to draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State the information that he revealed today.

I have done so.

I am glad to learn that.

I am about to run out of time, so I will not add much to the comments of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security in last night's Adjournment debate on the Child Support Agency, when he acknowledged genuine concerns and the need to investigate them, as Ministers are doing—which the hon. Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar) might have acknowledged.

I assure all those right hon. and hon. Members to whose speeches I have not been able to respond that their messages will be faithfully transmitted, and I hope that they will receive an appropriate response—

Naturally, I am pleased to be able to raise the subject of transport in south-east London this afternoon. It is a matter of great importance for my constituents, and I know from discussions with my colleagues in south-east London and north-west Kent that it is one which features heavily in their constituency correspondence.

One of the most vocal critics of our poor transport service has been my hon. Friend the Members for Dartford (Mr. Dunn)—my good friend and neighbour. Unfortunately, he is unable to be with us for this debate as he has a long-standing and pressing constituency engagement. Nevertheless, I am sure that he will read the proceedings closely and with great interest. His constituents and mine share many of the same problems. However, I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) in his place—he will participate in the debate as well. Similarly, the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) shares the same transport problems as we all do in south-east London.

I have raised the issue on many occasions in debates, questions and meetings with various Ministers at the Department. But I regret to advise that to date there has been relatively little improvement in transport provision in our area. Today, I do not want merely to highlight the inadequacy of transport in south-east London, nor to speak only on behalf of the hard-pressed local commuters, although I intend to speak on those matters. I want to range widely over both road and rail transport problems in our area. There are major concerns.

At the outset, I must say that I share the concerns of my constituents and experience the same problems as I journey from my home in Crayford to Westminster either by road or rail. At the start, I shall be positive and thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his recent visit to my constituency to see at first hand both the local problems and the considerable potential in our area. The visit was much appreciated by all involved.

Regrettably, as we told the Minister during his visit, many people in my area feel that the Government do not have a coherent strategy for transport in south-east London. While applauding in general terms the Government's aims to increase road building and to improve railway services through increased expenditure and a coherent strategy nationally, we feel somewhat neglected in our area. There appears to be no real rail strategy, and no road strategy either.

I am grateful for the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), who is in his place, in discussions that we had with the Department. When one looks at the increased number of new Networker trains now starting to operate on Network SouthEast in north Kent and south-east London, I am sure that all hon. Members will be encouraged and delighted. However, if one is travelling every day from Crayford station, Erith station, Barnehurst or Bexleyheath, and is subject to delays, cancellations and overcrowding on a regular basis, the individual traveller sees little benefit and questions the strategy of British Rail. Similarly, if one is travelling to London to shop, to a film, to the theatre, travelling to visit friends or relatives, going on holiday or whatever, the service provided on the British Rail lines through my constituency and the borough of Bexley in general is extremely bad.

My postbag regularly contains horror stories from my constituents about late, poor or non-existent services. To add insult to injury, already hard-pressed travellers and commuters in my constituency face a large increase of 8 per cent. on the cost of their fares from 1 January.

Commuters from Bexley are justifiably angry at having to pay for an increase far above the inflation rate. They commend the Government on keeping inflation so low but criticise British Rail for putting up fares so much. They are irritated at having to pay so much more for an inadequate and appalling service. People are late for work, appointments and social engagements simply because of British Rail's failure to deliver a first-class service.

In the mornings I listen to the radio—either Capital FM or my local community station, RTM Radio on 103.8 FM —which regularly lists cancellations on local services. RTM gives an excellent report each morning, highlighting both good and bad news for commuters and travellers. Regrettably, the news is too often bad.

British Rail may apologise, and sometimes does. Occasionally it even informs the public. But in general its attitude is wrong and it appears unconcerned. New timetables have made the position worse and the decision to close Charing Cross station for rebuilding work for several weeks during the summer angered the travelling public even more and made the service even worse in August.

I have often raised the issue of British Rail in the House, even in Adjournment debates. I have met British Rail executives and taken up the issue of the poor value for money provided by British Rail with the Government and British Rail. Unfortunately, there has been little improvement. The fact that people travelling on commuter lines from south-east London and north-west Kent are still experiencing one of the worst services in the country is unacceptable. I hope that when British Rail is privatised and lines are franchised, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London will look for more effective operators of our local railway service, because improvement is essential. We are putting our trust and hopes for the future in my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State.

Three railway lines serve my constituency. One runs along the river, through Abbey Wood, Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green en route to Dartford. The second goes through Bexleyheath and Barnehurst, located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath. Those stations are well used by residents in my wards of Bostall and Crayford, and Northumberland Heath, as well as by my hon. Friend's constituents. The third line goes through Sidcup and Bexley and serves Crayford—the town where I have a home. I regularly use Crayford station and know about the problems suffered by Crayford line travellers.

In theory, one would think that my constituents were well served by such a network of railway lines and collection of stations, yet in practice nothing could be further from the truth. At my regular surgery at Erith town hall on Friday evenings, my constituents tell me of the poor service and my postbag contains even more complaints. The existence of the hardware—trains, stations and tracks —does not make a good service by itself. British Rail should adopt a different approach to its customers. It needs a commitment to service, concern, and value for money for travellers. The citizens charter has had some effect and publicity clearly brings some results. This Adjournment debate has resulted in many groups contacting me and trying to put a gloss on their operations.

A letter from the divisional director of Nework SouthEast, Mr. Fearn, is indicative of some of the problems that we have been suffering. Mr. Fearn says that British Rail is providing 15 new Networker trains in daily service in our area and that customers have commented favourably on those trains. That is only natural when one compares them with the old cattle trucks that are used for the rest of the time. Anything would be an improvement on those. However, I admit that those trains are super and very good news.

When they work.

I endorse the comment by the hon. Member for Greenwich.

However, in our area we have no competition. Competition, publicity and private enterprise bring choice and better services for consumers.

Mr. Fearn's letter shows that the passengers charter has highlighted poor results in our area. It says:

"we fell short of the demanding train service punctuality standard set under the Passenger's Charter on Kent Link for the 12 months to 5 November. This has triggered a 5 per cent. discount payment on renewal of customers' season tickets."

The fact that BR failed to meet its requirements is well known to my constituents and those of other hon. Members.

One example of how Network SouthEast does not look after passengers is that it stopped the half-hourly Sunday service and substituted an hourly service on the Bexleyheath line and other lines in my area. Mr. Fearn's letter states:

"In terms of the timetable, we reinstated the Sunday half-hourly service on the North Kent and Bexleyheath lines to Dartford in October this year."

Those services should not have been cancelled in the first place. It is fine to say that those of us who campaigned to have the half-hourly service reinstated have had some success, but the half-hourly Sunday service should never have been cancelled. However, we welcome a sinner repenting.

On the issue of fares, Mr. Fearn's letter states that the number of fraudulent passengers has been reduced to less than 1 per cent. compared with 4 to 5 per cent. in the past. That is also good news. I learned from Mr. Fearn's letter that Erith and Slade Green stations are to receive major facelifts by next spring, subject, of course, to the contract being granted to private contractors. That is good news because Erith station has been in desperate need of restoration and refurbishment for many years, and the platform buildings at Slade Green need refurbishment.

South-east London suffers from the great disadvantage of the lack of choice. It has no underground network and in that respect it is the most underprivileged part of the metropolis.

My hon. Friend puts his case superbly. Is he aware of the campaign that I and others have been running against the British Rail tactic of having no staff on stations in the evenings? For a public service that is disgraceful and downright dangerous.

I thank my hon. Friend and endorse his comments. I am aware of his campaign and have supported it. He is right to demand a first-class service that passengers must at all times feel safe in using. In the absence of staff, severe problems could arise.

As I say, we in south-east London do not have an underground network and have to rely exclusively on British Rail. Not for us the choice and competition that exists, for example, in north-east London where there is real choice between various BR lines and a substantial underground network.

Many people in Erith and Crayford and in neighbouring areas in the south-east of London look with considerable interest to the extension of the Jubilee line to south-east London. The 12-month delay in the go-ahead for this essential addition to our local transport network caused great local disappointment. I have followed the history of the proposal and I understand the difficulties that have been encountered, but, to say the least, the delay has been unfortunate.

My area needs the Jubilee line extension much more than the crossrail link is needed across northern London. Whatever our political persuasion, we all eagerly look forward to its completion and operation. It is the first step towards giving more choice to south-east London travellers. The Jubilee line extension is welcome and positive news.

Yesterday, I took part in the debate on the Budget, with which I was delighted. In his Budget speech my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor gave the go-ahead to the extension of the docklands light railway which will go south of the Thames to Lewisham. There is some movement, I am delighted to see, not only on the Jubilee line but with the extension to the docklands railway into south-east London. For that I must congratulate my hon. Friend The Minister for Transport in London and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on the work that they have done in getting the finance and the go-ahead.

I am always disappointed that some Labour Members do not welcome such developments. They should, because we can always debate station locations or whatever once we have the principle and once the projects are up and running. I think that that is important.

I am grateful for the money that has been invested in London transport. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury mentioned a figure of £1.75 billion yesterday. That sum includes the cost of work on the Jubilee line and on the docklands extension. That is big money, and we are extremely grateful in south-east London for that development. It is something for which we have worked hard. My hon. Friends the Members for Eltham and for Bexleyheath have campaigned behind the scenes on the issue.

We want an improved and extended tube network. That is not a subject for debate today, and I will not go into the details of the enlarging of financing for the tube across London. I want to talk about subjects that relate to south-east London and are most important to my constituents.

I will say, however, that tube financing has again hit the headlines of The Evening Standard in today's lunchtime edition. The paper reports on capital expenditure and whether it should come from private or public funding, or from a mixture of both. I have to say that it is of no concern to my constituents whether the funding or ownership is public or private. They want a first-class service to which they have greater access and on which they can rely. I am disappointed with the headlines in The Evening Standard, because it is a first-class evening newspaper for the whole of London. I was rather disappointed that it should have taken that view. The funding is of no consequence to the travelling public in my constituency who want a first-class service.

It is probably fair to The Evening Standard to say that the editorial is rather more thoughtful. We should make the point that journalists respond in the same way as hon. Members. They should be patted on the back, and then one should pass over the headline.

I thank my hon. Friend for his witty intervention, and I believe that my hon. Friend is a former journalist. I endorse what he said. The paper's editorials are read with great interest by a vast number of my constituents. The editorials are always well thought out, and I enjoy them. The headlines in today's paper are disappointing. I will leave the issue of the tube by saying that we want it in south-east London, we like it, but, at the moment, we ain't got it.

I wish to speak now about roads, a subject in which my hon. Friend the Minister is even more involved. One desperately needed improvement in our transport network in south-east London which was proposed was the building of the east London river crossing. As my hon. Friend knows following his recent visit, my constituents in Crayford and Erith are suffering the daily nuisance and disturbance of hundreds of heavy goods vehicles using suburban roads and the high streets.

Those roads are wholly inadequate to deal with the heavy burden of traffic, especially the large lorries which cause delays to traffic trying to negotiate town centres. It has also proved to be dangerous to other road users and to pedestrians. In particular, I am concerned about young children and the elderly who are put at the greatest risk by the juggernauts which go through, for example, the centre of Crayford and try to negotiate the one-way system there.

The lorries use residential roads to cut through from the industrial estates to make their way to the Dartford tunnel or the Blackwall tunnel. The latter, of course, is not large enough to cope with the volume of traffic that is travelling from south-east London across to east London, to Essex or to the M11 and destinations in East Anglia or the north.

The Queen Elizabeth bridge has made the traffic flow on the M25 much better. We all welcome that excellent addition to our road network in the area. But using the crossing point at Dartford puts many miles on the clock for those wishing to travel from south-east London up to the M11—and for those who wish to travel to the north circular and north London, who have to travel east before they can go north and west—and takes much longer because the number of such journeys adds to the traffic congestion.

I warmly welcome the recent statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham to the effect that the approach road to the proposed east London river crossing would not destroy any of Oxleas wood. Many people in my area campaigned vigorously to save that historic woodland. We all share the view that it is important to keep such woodlands and open spaces. It is excellent news that the woods are to be saved from destruction and that the motorway approach will not plough through that attractive area. Yet we in south-east London are left rather in limbo as a result of the decision.

I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to reappraise the situation and examine alternative solutions to the problem. My constituents in Erith and Crayford would welcome an announcement from the Government about what they propose to do to deal with the traffic problems in our area. Is the east London river crossing to proceed, and if so, when? If not, what do the Government propose to do to improve traffic flow and alleviate traffic problems in south-east London?

Is my hon. Friend aware of the tremendous traffic pressure on the Blackwall tunnel and the A2, especially during the rush hour? I am sure he is. When the tunnel is closed for repairs or when an accident happens, the snarling up is tremendous. There are too many cars trying to gain access to too few river crossing points in our area. We need answers from my hon. Friend, and I urge him to review the position and perhaps suggest that some of his colleagues and officials in the Department try the commute from Crayford, using the A2 and the Blackwall tunnel, at around 8.15 in the morning, when they will see the snarl-up developing.

Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will also enlighten me about suggestions that we have read in the paper about the possibility of a new bridge at Blackwall to relieve some of the congestion. The existing tunnels are inadequate for the traffic that they serve. Moreover, they bend, and that slows down the flow of traffic.

As I said earlier, we were absolutely delighted when my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London visited my constituency and met Bexley council leader, Councillor Len Newton and his officials at the new Erith leisure centre. The centre, provided by the council, is an excellent amenity for the north of the Bexley borough. My hon. Friend came to discuss the problems of traffic and road transport in our locality. Having known him for many years, and being a friend of his, I am particularly grateful for the time and interest that he took, despite the inclement weather. Standing on the waterfront at Erith, my hon. Friend received a frosty welcome—not from the residents or council officials but from the weather. I am glad that he has had the opportunity to see at first hand the problems created by juggernauts using inadequate roads. My hon. Friend is now well briefed on Bexley's proposals and hopes and we await his decisions and actions in that respect.

Councillor Newton and I emphasised to my hon. Friend the concerns of the councillors and residents of Bexley about the ridiculous suggestion that the east London river crossing should go ahead and be built and that traffic should be allowed to flow along the Thamesmead spine road—the A2016. That would increase local congestion and add to the chaos and anger not only in Erith but in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath. Such a scheme would be a disaster for traffic management in our area. In addition, it would fail the basic test, which is that the east London crossing should be part of a strategic road network for south-east London. The Thamesmead spine road solution would increase problems rather than reducing them and is therefore a non-starter.

My hon. Friend also saw the problems caused by the traffic flow in Crayford town, and how that historic and residential town is being destroyed by the juggernauts, lorries, vans and cars which constantly thunder through the town centre, causing considerable congestion and potential hazard. When he was standing outside Crayford town hall in the bitterly cold weather, chatting to people at the local bus stop, my hon. Friend received first-hand experience of the problem.

We in south-east London know that there are great plans for the east Thames corridor. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is keen to develop the potential of the area and we are keen for the corridor to go ahead. We are looking for more investment, factories, homes and jobs, and the regeneration of the riverside. In my constituency, both Thamesmead and Erith are ripe for such development.

The prospect of the corridor is exciting and challenging and offers much scope and potential. To realise that potential and to encourage industrialists, house builders and new residents to come into the area, we need a better transport network. That transport network must include substantial road and rail improvements, and an improvement in services is essential.

What is the key question for my hon. Friend the Minister? My constituents are growing impatient and I urge my hon. Friend to take action. All is not gloom and doom, because there have been positive signs on the underground, the docklands light railway, the Jubilee line and even British Rail, as described in the letter from the director that I highlighted earlier.

Another encouraging sign is that we have seen a considerable rise in bus service in the past few years. The Hoppa bus has been a tremendous success, and I praise the Kentish Bus Company. That company's depot is in my constituency, and I visited it recently. The service to local people has improved beyond belief. There are better buses, a more reliable service, cheerful and polite drivers—which is important for passengers—and better routes have been provided. I congratulate the Kentish Bus Company for the improved service.

Bus services are far better than they were, and many local people—particularly the elderly—are very grateful for the improved service which, together with their bus passes, is a real lifeline for many pensioners.

When I was a newly elected to the House 10 years ago, I received many letters from disgruntled passengers, whose buses never turned up or were always delayed and many of the staff were not as polite as they should have been. That has changed dramatically. The use of the Hoppa, which picks up people where they need to be picked up and ensures that they do not have to walk considerable distances to a main road bus stop, has been a great improvement for local residents. We have a large elderly population in Erith and Belvedere that is very grateful for the improved service that enables elderly people to get to the Bexleyheath shopping centre and elsewhere.

I thank my hon. Friend for the attention that he has given to that part of London. We can be proud to have such an effective Minister to deal with the problems of London, particularly problems of transport. I am sure that my hon. Friend's in-tray is full of suggestions from hon. Members who represent London constituencies and that he knows that there is still much to be done.

We need to improve the road and rail network across the south-east of London. I know that my hon. Friend understands the frustrations of travellers, the annoyance of local people and the concerns of hon. Members. I urge him to look at the problems of our part of London and to come forward with a strategy and proposals to solve them. I know that he will do it, we believe that he will do it, and I hope that he will do it very soon.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on not only arranging the Adjournment debate but on persuading the business managers to allow it to continue for longer than the usual half-hour. The issue of transport in south-east London deserves a lot of attention in Parliament and action on the ground.

I want to mention the most visible, frequent and popular form of transport—walking. We must remember that, whatever our interests as rail passengers, most of us get to railway stations on foot. Whatever our interests may be as car drivers or passengers or bus passengers, we normally walk to bus stops and make many journeys by foot. We must think of the journeys made by those who have no choice as they have no car in the garage or street and are forced to be pedestrians.

There was a remarkably sensible editorial in The Evening Standard. I rang up that newspaper this morning to congratulate it on a good editorial and article featured on Monday—I wrote the feature, but it was improved by another writer. The editorial in today's Evening Standard gets even more clearly to the heart of the issue of London Underground than we have to the issue of British Rail surface lines. If we had sustained capital investment in London Underground, it could run without subsidy after a few years, with the potential of increasing its capacity; the Government are providing help with crossrail, the Jubilee line and docklands light railway extensions.

As London becomes more prosperous—a world city building on financial expertise, flexibility, the fact that English is a common world language and the fact that it houses many universities—there will be less long-term unemployment, more people sharing in prosperity and more people with a choice in life. The key to achieving that aim is London Underground.

I wish to mention the centre of London before returning to the subject of south-east London. The most recent large line built in London is the Victoria line, which has been up to capacity between Victoria and Green Park. Most people do not want to change trains at Victoria or Green Park, but want to travel across London. That is where crossrail can help. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) talked of crossings over the Thames. There are fewer rail crossings over the Thames in east London than road crossings, which is why I want to redirect attention towards a proposal from the south-east London branch of Friends of the Earth for a rail tunnel at Woolwich. That tunnel would make it possible for people to make connections to Network SouthEast lines as well as to underground lines—a major improvement.

It will be interesting to listen to my hon. Friend the Minister's words on progress on the possible east London river crossing bridge and, in addition, to hear whether he will say who will consider the economic prospects, and the social and environmental benefits, of having a rail tunnel under the Thames at Woolwich.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford for his words on Oxleas wood, which is currently not in my constituency. The independent impartial boundary commissioners propose to bring the ward which contains it into Eltham constituency. Shrewsbury ward is currently in the constituency of the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Austin-Walker), and I do not think that I am being controversial when I say that the greatest fuss is about the impact of the southern approach road. The issue of the bridge has successfully cleared two inquiries, but the proposal to wreck Oxleas wood did not clear either of them.

Where the route should go is a matter for discussion and debate. If one considers the route south of the M11, across the Thames where the proposed bridge might be, the road as previously proposed would have turned south-west towards Brighton. However, we all know that most traffic is trying to get to the channel ports which are to the south-east. Even if the Thamesmead spine route is not used, we should recognise that the economic reasons for the road going south-east are the same as the environmental ones. Although it will be difficult for Members of Parliament and residents of the Bexley area to accept, the road should go through Bexley rather than Eltham.

On the subject of pedestrians and buses, I echo what has been said about the flexibility of the development of London bus services, which I welcome. I also welcome the non-appearance of the total deregulation of London's buses, which marks a wise decision. The Select Committee on Transport considered the matter and made suggestions to the House and the Government. We need to make bus services more flexible. London Buses has much to contribute, but I do not believe that it will run many buses directly. It is the advantages of tendering and flexibility that matter.

I shall now give an illustrative example of local people's interests. In Middle Park avenue, on the Middle Park estate, which is in my constituency, there is what could be described as a rat run. If it is not a rat run, it is a tempting run, through which people drive their vehicles too fast. It is a prime candidate for traffic calming. I am sad that London Buses objects to bringing in some traffic-calming measures on the ground that if they were made, it would not run its buses through the estate. In other parts of England, I have seen bus operators perfectly content to negotiate traffic-calming features of one kind or another. I would ask the people in London Buses, and the emergency services, to stop being so stupid in saying a flat no to suggestions on behalf of local residents. Too many of London's casualties are pedestrians and local people who are hit by vehicles driven by local people and outsiders.

Slowing the speed of traffic has contributed to bringing the present total number of road deaths to below half the peak level, even though traffic has increased and will continue to increase. I ask bus operators and the emergency services to do all they can to find a way forward, rather than digging out the historic negative that one cannot do something in a new way, because it has never been done in that way before.

I echo what has been said about the benefits to London of having my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) as the Minister of Transport in London. It is good to have a Minister for Transport in London, but it is even better that it is my hon. Friend, who has a constituency interest in London and a background in the transport industries.

One reason why road traffic flows in London is the helpful work of the police. Most of their work is in keeping traffic flowing, but there is a problem and I hope that the Select Committee on Transport will make inquiries, both of the Home Office and of the Department of Transport.

In general, traffic policy is settled by the Department of Transport. Some of the budgets are held by the Home Office. The police, on their performance indicators, will normally be judged on crime, and traffic will not get much of a look-in. That applies also to capital investment in virtually automatic technology, such as speed cameras and cameras to detect red light jumping, and to a variety of ways in which technology can be of value.

It is important to try to get rid of the rumour that the people in the traffic branches of the Metropolitan police are called black rats, because they are down a sewer and never seen. They should be out in the open, getting respect for their professional expertise and being honoured for the dangerous work that they do. Stopping vehicles or attending scenes of car crashes on busy roads is a dangerous business; it can be as dangerous as it is on the motorways. I hope that that matter will get attention at New Scotland Yard, the Home Office and the Department of Transport.

We are in the same situation we were in seven years ago, when I was at the Department of Transport, on the question whether local authorities can be trusted to use new technology, or even old technology, to enforce rules on parking on yellow lines. I am not asking my hon. Friend for a detailed response on that matter, but wish to flag it as a matter of significant concern.

Rail investment matters both above and below ground, Denis Tunnicliffe at London Underground was very open in praising Ministers before the last election on their commitment to getting a level of investment that would allow a decent, modern metro to be maintained and extended. I am sure that hon. Members will want to recognise the efforts made by Transport Ministers in the collegiate discussions with the Treasury over the budget level in a difficult financial year.

We are not spending enough. I do not believe that we should draw too many lessons from the Central line power failure, because that was unusual, and the Central line has had £700 million of capital investment in addition, that line does not come into south-east London, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford. If we can get tube links into south-east London, which will require some capital investment, that will be good.

On the surface, when will aproval be given for the doubling up of the rail tracks at Borough Market junction? Anyone who looks towards Westminster from the 29th floor of Guy's hospital will see the bottleneck that stops Thameslink services going through London Bridge. Four times as many people want the service to go through London Bridge as want it to go through the Elephant and Castle. That is the key to all the Kent line services. I do not expect my hon. Friend the Minister to come up today with a detailed policy statement, but I want him to say to those to whom he talks that there will be constant, persistent, consistent pressure, because that is the key to getting the best value for other investments in the Kent services.

Let me return to the subject of the rail lines going through the south-east constituencies. The main channels of communication go along the railway line. They unite Greenwich and Woolwich, as I was saying to the Local Government Boundary Commission inquiry in my constituency recently. They unite Kidbrooke and Eltham. No doubt my colleague, the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) will say something on that subject as well. The roads performs the same function. Watling street, the A2, or the Old Dover road—part of it, by the Royal Standard, is still called the Old Dover road—is a natural way of uniting constituencies, at least in the borough of Greenwich.

I hope that, when the House considers those proposals, it will look at the transport links and decide that if Shooters hill and Shooters Hill road are used as the division, that will make it possible for hon. Members to represent their constituents' transport interests in the House. I look forward to doing that for some years to come, representing Eltham and making sure that my hon. Friend keeps his ministerial job going well.

If we get better safety provisions for pedestrians, cyclists and motor cyclists, some access to allow those using cars to commute to central London—although not too many—and improved rail services and choices, we will be able to make sure that London transport contributes to the quality of life in London rather than detracting from it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) on achieving an Adjournment debate on a subject that must be dear to everyone—not just those who represent south-east London—who has to find his or her way from it by road or rail. We do not yet have the sophistication of the tube line, as the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) pointed out.

It is important that we accept the principle of a high-quality public transport system, for two good reasons —one economic and one social. The economic reason is that if we are to get the people of south-east London to the centre of London or elsewhere so that they can participate in the prosperity that we hope that a capital city such as London will achieve, we need a good transport network. If we want the tourism of a capital city such as London to develop and enhance the city, we need excellent transport services. If we want serious reductions in unemployment —if we are beginning to see some reduction in unemployment, it is only by 0.5 per cent. in my consitituency—we need to ensure that people can move about the city.

The vast majority of people who use the buses are women who are tied to their homes through having young families or who have part-time jobs, the elderly, people with disabilities and children of school age, particularly those of secondary school age. For that social reason, it is important that we have a proper and systematic system working throughout the capital but particularly in the south-east, which has been cut off from the rest of London because of defects in the transport system.

I shall now spend some time bemoaning the state of British Rail and Network SouthEast. I know that other hon. Members will join me in that, because those of us who have to travel on those trains know that they are dirty and overcrowded, with trains being cancelled and delayed. The Kent link and the Kent coast line have the worst punctuality record of all the London lines. We have already accepted that we have a poorer transport system than elsewhere, but we also have the worst service. One in five trains is routinely late and delays and cancellations have exasperated and frustrated commuters for as many years as I can remember. When I travelled in this morning, I did not leave as normal from Hither Green, but left from Catford Bridge and, of course, once again the train was late. Although it was not at peak hour, the train was still quite crowded.

It is illogical that Ministers or British Rail believes that the reduction in the number of people travelling into the centre of London because of the rise in unemployment during the recession is an excuse for removing huge numbers of trains. Will the Minister tell us, now that, according to the Government, we are coming out of recession, whether there will be more trains on the timetable rather than fewer trains? I doubt it.

No doubt the Minister will talk about the Networker trains and how wonderful they are. They are much cleaner, brighter and smoother than the old, rickety trains to which we are used. However, they too have had problems. Doors have malfunctioned and elderly people in my constituency have had difficulties boarding them. I hope that that will be considered and that some redesign is possible to remedy that fault.

The hon. Member for Eltham mentioned the problems that we face in south-east London over the lack of decision on the channel tunnel, which has been going on for many years. Houses down that line are blighted. I am deeply concerned that, in my constituency, two of the major areas, Grove Park and Hither Green, will be affected as long as Waterloo remains the terminal. I know that residents in streets such as Millborough crescent and Springbank road are already under siege because they feel that their properties have been devalued. When we heard that the line was to be changed to run along the east London corridor, there was great relief. Unfortunately, the issue has been thrown back into the pot and it appears that, for several years to come, those constituents will suffer because there will be fewer trains to take them into central London and much heavier use of the track by channel tunnel trains. I should like to be able to reassure my constituents that the Minister thinks that is not likely to happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Dowd) and I were probably the only hon. Members who gave a small cheer during the Budget debate when the Chancellor said that the docklands light railway was to come to Lewisham. The rest of the House was relatively quiet at the time and it may have sounded rather odd that the Chancellor's only support for that announcement came from the Opposition Benches. However, I am glad that it was only a small cheer, because I received a letter yesterday from the Department of the Environment. It states:

"The approval we have given remains subject to the condition that no Government grant will be made available."

That leaves so much uncertainty that we are concerned about whether the whole proposal will eventually go through. I know that the Minister is visiting Lewisham on Monday to look at the plans. I hope that he can confirm that a target date will be set and that the DLR will go ahead. I know that controversy surrounds the scheme, because, for that to happen, other stations on the line may have to be closed, which may not please people elsewhere.

We conducted a survey on British Rail in my constituency during July and August this year. It was not a straightforward survey which we carried out by standing on the platforms while people waited for cancelled and delayed trains. We did not ask them merely to say yes or no to a series of questions. We handed the questionnaire to people and then let them get on to their trains, once they had arrived. People had to post the completed questionnaires to me, which, as hon. Members know, was asking a lot of them. They had to make an extra effort to respond to the survey.

The results of the survey were horrifying. I received well over 300 replies in a couple of weeks. Three out of four people, in the past six months of travelling on British Rail trains through Lewisham, had experienced having to stand in the guard's van because the train was so overcrowded. Some 98 per cent. of those replying felt that their trains were overcrowded. Some 84 per cent. said that they could not get a seat and two out of three feared travelling at night. One of the main reasons for that fear is that there are no staff on the stations. Another aspect of that is that people have an opportunity to dodge fares. I pass through stations regularly and I come home with pockets full of tickets that I have not handed in to a member of staff. I may decorate a room with them one day as a way to use them up. Two thirds of those who replied feared travelling at night and two thirds felt that there should be more staff on duty.

Some Lewisham commuters went further and wrote letters to me explaining some of their more serious worries about the state of British Rail. One described the overall service as appalling, chaotic and perhaps even dangerous. We should all be worried if people travelling in the rush hour fear for their lives or fear injury because of the dangers caused by overcrowded trains.

On the point about there being no staff on stations, the hon. Lady will be only too well aware that some ghastly sexual crimes have been committed on local railway lines. One of the risks of having no staff on stations is that if there is an incident on a train, there is no one to whom to report it. When I raised that matter with the authorities, I was told that people could ring stations in London and that there were cameras monitoring people. That is wholly unsatisfactory and puts at risk many of the travelling public. That should be unacceptable in this day and age.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that intervention; he is right. The lack of staff especially affects women, although not only women. A number of people wrote to me saying that they did not fear travelling at night because they simply did not travel at night any more. They will not travel by train in the evening because of their fears, so they travel by taxi or by minicab instead. It is nonsense for people to be turned away from a public transport system because they fear for their safety. Having staff on stations is crucial for that reason, and is also important in terms of giving people information.

With the changes in the timetable in the past year, there are stations in south-east London and in Kent where there are no staff on duty. If a passenger misses a train by one or two minutes, he or she may wait on his own for almost an hour because a station is unstaffed. Unfortunately, even in the middle of the day, that is not a pleasant experience in this day and age. I hope that British Rail will heed the needs of passengers in south-east London.

Some respondents have been travelling on British Rail for 40 years. They say that the service has never been so insultingly bad as it is at present.

One wrote:

"I cannot remember when I last had a seat on a rush-hour train out of Lewisham … Cancellation and late running are not the main problem, though the situation is far from ideal. The main problem is that with each new timetable a few more services have disappeared and that the remaining trains are shorter."

British Rail is suffering from inadequate investment in south-east London. People wanting to travel to work in a positive frame of mind arrive at their offices, factories or shops feeling frustrated, stressed and under considerable tension as a result of travelling into central London.

I welcome the news that there is to be no deregulation of London's buses, but I am extremely concerned that the Government are still going headlong into privatisation, which is causing considerable anxiety to members of the public who rely on bus services to get around.

I have written many letters to the Minister on behalf of constituents about the travelcard. I know that he said that its future is safe, but we cannot be convinced of that. I hope that the Minister will reiterate today that the travelcard will remain in existence, come hell or high water.

I remember the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) speaking some time ago about motorway coning and saying all that would be stopped when he became Prime Minister. Has the Minister ever thought of holding a national no roadworks day, on which motorists could use the roads without having to skirt cones, barriers and other obstacles? Will he at least suggest to the utilities—British Gas, British Telecommunications and London Electricity —that they consult so that, if they must dig up a particular road, they all do so the same day, instead of digging it up separately week after week? I am sure that central London's car users would greatly appreciate such an arrangement. Perhaps there could be at least a London no roadworks day, later extended to other parts of the country.

I would normally say that one could drive a bus through Government transport policies, but I fear that the bus would be snarled up in the jam on the south circular. This debate has provided a useful opportunity to inform the Minister of problems encountered by rail commuters and others in south-east London. I know that the phrase "an integrated transport policy" sends civil servants into paroxysms, but perhaps the Minister will ensure not only that British Rail is the subject of proper investment and considers the passenger to be of paramount importance but that roads and bus services are considered as part of an overall strategic plan for south-east London travel. The Government should also get their act together in respect of the channel tunnel, so that my constituents using the line from Hither Green down to Kent stations will not suffer from its heavier use by channel tunnel trains on which they will not be able to commute.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) on his good fortune in being called for today's debate, particularly since it has allowed relatively full discussion compared with the normally short Adjournment debate. I congratulate him also on his good choice of subject. He selected a topic of real concern to all right hon. and hon. Members who represent south-east London constituencies. It is noticeable that in today's debate we have heard a unanimous expression of concern from both sides of the House about the serious problems that exist and the way in which people in south-east London are badly served by current transport arrangements.

Network SouthEast traditionally has been the main transport service for south-east London. It has, I am afraid, an unenviable record which has been mentioned by every speaker who has contributed to the debate. Its punctuality record for the past year, is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mrs. Prentice) pointed out, the worst of all the Network SouthEast regions, with the possible exception of Thames, which just about matches the failure of Network SouthEast on punctuality.

The written answer that I received a couple of weeks ago, giving the latest figures, shows that in the most recent period, up to 5 November this year, only 79.9 per cent. of services arrived reasonably punctually on the Kent coast line and only 78.2 per cent. on the Kent link line. On both the Kent coast line and Kent link services, fewer than one in five trains routinely arrive on time, against targets—which are not especially ambitious—of 82 per cent. for the Kent coast line and 88 per cent. for the Kent link. That record of unpunctuality is a daily experience for my constituents and those of every other hon. Member who represents south-east London.

I shall now quote from a letter that was sent to me on 26 November by a constituent who also happens to work for ITN. I hope that he will have some influence on coverage of the issue.

"In the past three weeks literally not a single train that I have tried to take has been on time. Many have been delayed by more than 15 minutes, others are cancelled altogether.

I have written so often to the Network Customer Service Manager that my letters are now ignored—I have not had a reply to the last four anyway."

No trains and no replies to his letters—what an appalling record.

In the past, those problems have been attributed to the poor condition of the old, out-dated rolling stock that people have to travel in on the Kent link and Kent coast services. Now the new Networkers are being introduced. We were promised that their introduction would be the solution; they would be modern, comfortable and reliable and we would all have a more attractive and pleasant rail service to and from London.

I agree with the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford that the Networkers are fine when they work, but unfortunately they do not work all that often. For a brand new supply of rolling stock, it is astonishing how many of my constituents—and, I expect, constituents of other hon. Members—have had to write with descriptions of lengthy delays that occur while the doors are made to work. The doors jam, apparently, if passengers lean against them. It seems extraordinary, in 1993, after getting on for two centuries of experience of building rolling stock, that it is impossible to design and build trains whose doors do not jam if passengers lean against them.

I hope that the Minister can give us some sort of answer as to when we can expect those problems to be sorted out and when Network South-East will run trains whose doors open reliably and do not cause the type of problems and delays that we have come across. I must also ask him for an indication of when Network SouthEast will achieve a reasonable target performance, given the abject failure to which I have referred. It is reasonable for us to expect that at least 90 per cent. of trains arrive punctually as a matter of course. When can we expect even that rather modest target performance to be achieved?

Investment in the rail service is crucial. There is an urgent need for increased investment, not just in new rolling stock, but in improved signalling and track. The hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) rightly referred to the bottleneck on the approach to London bridge. That has been a serious problem and it has to be tackled. I ask the Minister, when can we expect that problem to be resolved? Secondly, can we expect any progress on the other rail investment issue that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Eltham—the rail crossing at Woolwich, which would serve a very useful purpose, linking the Kent services with north London and, in the course of so doing, making it possible to run an orbital service around the whole of London? We hear about the problems and the appalling congestion on the M25, but the link at Woolwich offers the opportunity of an orbital rail service around London. When can we expect any news about the possibility of progress on that issue?

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East asked about the channel tunnel. When will the uncertainty end, and when can we expect the high-speed link to be operational? That is one of the most disgracefully delayed features of investment in British Rail's infrastructure in the last decade. It may not appear to be directly relevant to south-east London, but, in the absence of a dedicated high-speed rail link, the rail network between London and the Kent ports has to be used to accommodate passenger and freight traffic to and from the channel tunnel.

It is clear that Network SouthEast is having to change the programming of local services to accommodate additional traffic that will come from the channel tunnel. That was brought to my attention by the Blackheath Society, which is concerned about changes to the timetabling of trains at Blackheath and about the fact that the two trains an hour that run through Blackheath at off-peak times are leaving the station in close proximity to each other. It has reasonably asked that the times should be spaced out at a more reasonable interval, but it was told by Network SouthEast that it was not possible because of the channel tunnel.

I did not believe that, so I took the matter up with Network SouthEast. It replied:

"I can understand your frustration at the current situation affecting users of Blackheath Station, the spacing of services is clearly not ideal.

The current timetable has pathways built into it for Channel Tunnel services. The decision to introduce this in advance of the tunnel opening was taken to enable us to iron out any problems before the new trains take up their pathways."

Network SouthEast obviously requires a great deal of time to iron out problems as the current timetable has already been operational for some months.

"At the time this decision was taken and the timetable process activitated the Channel Tunnel was due to open in May 1993, this date has now of course been postponed. The inclusion of these pathways entailed a complete rewrite of the timetable with both Network SouthEast, European Passenger Services and Railfreight Distributions aspirations to be catered for. British Rail's main commitment was that there would be no curtailment of Network SouthEast services but clearly there would have to be timing changes with considerably more services than in previous years approaching and leaving the London area."

There we have it—our services will be squeezed even more because of the need to accommodate channel tunnel traffic. Given the likelihood of yet further delay in the construction of the dedicated high-speed link to the channel tunnel, that is likely to be a continuing frustration and problem. As the hon. Member for Eltham said, with the congestion at the approach to London bridge and the difficulty in accommodating the existing volume of traffic, heaven knows what the consequences of a substantial additional volume of traffic from the channel ports will be. Therefore, when can we expect the high-speed link to be operational?

The London underground has not been available to south-east London. It has been south-east London's traditional complaint that the underground has passed it by. I suppose that we should raise half a cheer for the news that the Jubilee line and docklands light railway extensions may be coming to south-east London. It is only half a cheer because important questions remain unanswered about both.

There is the important question whether there will be a station on the south-east London part of the Jubilee line. It is extraordinary that there is no commitment as yet—the Minister may be able to assure me that I am wrong—to build a station at north Greenwich, the one point on the Jubilee line that is in south-east London. It would be astonishing if there were a hole in the ground with a concrete box in it and underground trains passed through south-east London for the first time without stopping there. Will this be the fate of south-east London—the tube, at last, but it does not stop for us? Or will we get the worst scenario, which now appears to be under consideration— a park-and-ride facility for 1,000 cars on the north Greenwich site to fund the construction of the station?

The delay is for the same reason that delayed the Jubilee line for 18 months—the Government's insistence that there had to be a contribution from the private sector towards its construction.

We all know about the nonsense of the Olympia and York contributions. Supposedly, it was £400 million but that has gradually reduced. As my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) revealed in the House yesterday, it is probably worth no more than £200 million now because of the phasing negotiated with the Government by the bankers acting for Olympia and York. At least that problem is supposedly resolved.

In the case of North Greenwich station, there is no resolution. I understand that British Gas is reluctant to meet the Government's request for £25 million for the station. That is not surprising, given that the same Department of Transport is proposing to cut a significant part of the development site with its bridge across the Thames at Blackwall. While the negotiations continue, there is uncertainty about the station. The latest proposal I have heard is that there might be a park-and-ride facility for 1,000 cars to provide the money that British Gas will not produce. If that were so, it would be an outrage.

The area is already grossly overcongested with traffic. To attract a substantial additional volume of commuter traffic into the area simply to pay for the rail link will be a gross disservice. It will not only adversely affect the environment of everyone living in that part of south-east London but ultimately blight the future development of the peninsula. It will be a case of infrastructure investment not assisting development, as most of us believe it should be doing, but distorting future development and creating a pattern that is incompatible with the sort of development that most of us want to enhance and improve our local environment.

If the Jubilee line station is a problem, the docklands light railway station is an even greater one. We have the supposed announcement of the extension of the docklands light railway accompanied by some interesting figures. The Budget statement announced that a project that was supposed to cost £140 million will now cost £100 million. I grant that the Minister is not responsible for that. It is extraordinary that he is not responsible. It is an amazing comment on transport policy under this Government that the Department of the Environment is now responsible for the docklands light railway. What a way to run a transport system.

The Government are now saying that the scheme will cost only £100 million, rather than £140 million previously estimated. Like many other hon. Members who have been troubled by the failure of the original section of the docklands light railway to provide a reliable and dependable service, I am naturally concerned about the reduction in cost. Is this another example of cheeseparing leading possibly to malfunction and breakdown of the service? So there is a big question there.

It seems likely that the real saving, so far as one can identify it, is from a decision to drop two stations from the docklands light railway extension, respectively at Island Gardens and Greenwich Cutty Sark. I am still waiting for answers to the questions that I put to the Department on this matter. But the only explanation appears to be that the cost is such that the two stations must be dropped. What a way to plan a rail system. Stations that were to provide an important access point to people using the facility must be dropped, supposedly because they cannot be financed.

It is not a question of the scheme not having extremely favourable cost benefit implications. All the financial analysis suggests that it will be one of the most profitable rail investment projects that is feasible. We notice that the Secretary of State for the Environment, in his press release, talked about the great benefits of the scheme. He said that it would help attract tourists to Greenwich. It is astonishing that in the same breath he should be praising the merits of the scheme for bringing tourists to Greenwich when he is proposing to drop the station that would serve tourists who want access to Greenwich town centre. It is nonsense. I am only sorry that the Minister will not be in a position to answer my questions, as the matter is not within his responsibilities.

The people of Greenwich are feeling sore. They will get a glimpse of two quasi-underground services—the Jubilee line and the docklands light railway—apparently without any new stations. What an extraordinary fate and what a way to plan rail infrastructure investment. It has been planned to serve not the public but merely the whims of the market on the basis that, if a private developer does not stump up the money, we cannot have our station. Such thinking is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with transport planning.

This morning, we learnt that the Government plan to sell London's underground. It is typical of the Government that such a decision is announced not in an election manifesto or a ministerial statement to the House but simply in a newspaper report that says that the Government have now decided to sell London Transport. It is a wonderful sense of timing, just after two weeks that must have done everything possible to encourage potential buyers that it is an attractive prospect. In the past two weeks, we have seen the worst chaos of London Transport in memory, with a massive power failure that halted the entire Central line for five days. Apparently, the cable concerned is 70 years old. Yesterday, we were told of the extraordinary experiments being run by London Underground on driverless trains.

The news raises the question about whether the sale is designed to save money rather than improve the quality of the service. But this blinkered vision—I hesitate to say "tunnel vision" because it would be an inappropriate pun —puts all the emphasis on a commercial approach and is typical of the Government. Their policy is sell, sell, sell and, if the thing cannot be made to work, sell it to someone else. It is a deplorable surrender of responsibility. The Government are washing their hands of their responsibility to deliver a proper service to Londoners. It is the product of political dogma seized on by a desperate Government, who have failed lamentably to look after Londoners' transport interests. Incidentally, they have reneged disgracefully on their election pledges to provide desperately needed increased investment in London Underground, a point which the Opposition will continue to make in the months ahead.

We also notice that the Government have abandoned their manifesto pledges on London's buses. The manifesto pledged to deregulate London's buses and I admit that we welcome the abandonment of that pledge. However, it has only a limited advantage because the Government are proceeding with their other ideological predilection—privatisation. We shall therefore see a privatisation exercise involving net cost tendering, which raises questions about the continuation of services in areas where they may not be commercially viable.

We all knew about the problems that would be caused by deregulation—chaos in central areas, excessive interest in profitable routes and, consequently, a great deal of traffic congestion and problems. But one of the problems associated with net cost tendering is the disappearance of many less profitable services in areas where whoever seeks to take on the routes simply cannot run them viably.

The subsidy provision for London Buses in the current year is some 50 per cent. less than it was last year—some £52 million as against £100 million in 1992–93. We do not yet have figures for the revenue support grant for next year. If that downward trend in subsidy continues, a question hangs over whether those unprofitable services can be run in a framework in which the Government are going for net cost tendering. What will happen if a contractor takes on an unviable service, says "We shall try it", and then finds that it cannot make money. If the line does not provide adequate returns, will they say, "We are sorry but we cannot run that service any more"? How will those services be sustained under a privatised framework? I hope that the Minister will answer because we are worried that, following privatisation, the number of services in some parts of London, particularly the south-east where routes are far from profitable, will be seriously reduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East asked about the travelcard. I simply endorse her concern that the travelcard must remain available. It is all very well for Ministers to say that they will continue with the travelcard, but can they guarantee that it will continue to be available on the same terms and at the same real cost, without a huge increase in price?

Many of us are concerned that even if a token travelcard continues to be available, a rapid and considerable increase in cost will take away a great deal of its value.

I have spoken mainly about public transport and I shall now turn to vehicular traffic in south-east London, which is causing serious problems. Traffic congestion in south-east London must be among the worst in any part of the capital, as those of us who travel through the hopelessly congested main routes into London and some of the smaller routes which are extensively used as rat runs, know all too well. The consequences of such congestion in terms of atmospheric pollution and the health hazards that flow from it are serious.

It is no coincidence that there is an above-average incidence of asthma, especially among children in south-east London. That together with the figures for the increased emissions of NOx and carbon monoxide and the atmospheric pollution from industrial sources that south-east London unfortunately suffers, constitutes a real health hazard for people there. Against that background, it is worrying that the Government still seem preoccupied with road building and investment in new road infrastructure rather than in improving and extending the public transport network.

Some hon. Members have spoken about the decision to abandon a ridiculous proposal to bulldoze Oxleas wood as part of the east London river crossing scheme. I hope that the Minister will give a categorical assurance that there will be no reappearance of the ill-fated scheme to drive a road anywhere near that part of south-east London which already suffers excessive traffic volumes and atmospheric pollution. The damage that would be caused to parts of Plumstead and the areas around Oxleas wood would be just as unacceptable as the damage to the wood itself.

There is severe congestion at Blackwall, and the Department of Transport is right to look at a third crossing to relieve it. The bridge that the Minister appears to favour has certain cost and speed of construction advantages, but a high-level bridge would have serious environmental consequences. Has a low-level bridge with a facility for it to be opened for ships on the Thames been considered? Would such a bridge be feasible and would not it cause less environmental damage than the current proposal?

More parochially, in the interests of my consituency, what is the possibility of exploring a scheme to divert through traffic from the historic town centre of Greenwich? Everyone who knows the area is aware of its enormous architectural importance and of the damage being caused by the volume of heavy traffic through the area. Progress is being made on a scheme, which I hope the Department of Transport will endorse, for a heavy goods vehicle ban in the town centre. That would be a step forward but to solve the problem we need a proper bypass to keep traffic out of the town centre. Will the Department encourage work reasonably soon at least to study that option?

We have had a wide-ranging and important debate on an issue of enormous concern to all hon. Members who represent south-east London constituencies. The situation is intolerable and the people of south-east London are ill-served by current policies and transport systems. We shall continue to highlight those failures and will press the Government to change their policy in important areas and increase investment in public transport. As concern has been expressed by hon. Members in all parts of the House, I hope that the Minister will deliver some good news and will fight to ensure improved traffic provision and arrangements in south-east London.

May I first apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to other hon. Members? I had intended to be here for the whole debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) on getting not just the Adjournment debate but a particularly elongated version. Unfortunately, my plans this morning went awry as I am sure hon. Members will appreciate. It was nothing to do with British Rail, but I did not get here at the time I expected.

I am grateful for the few moments in which I have been permitted to speak. Obviously, I shall restrict my comments to ground that I feel has not been covered and to which perhaps the Minister could respond. South-east London is particularly prone to problems with Network SouthEast, and people think that hon. Members from that area go on at disproportionate length about it. The reason for that is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) said, that London underground is to all intents and purposes the north London underground. There are, I believe, 14 stations located south of the river out of a total of 260 stations. Apart from New Cross and New Cross Gate, there are none in south-east London at all.

Network SouthEast has been working hard recently to improve its performance, but, as has been made plain, it has had mixed results. It is also working hard on its public relations. I was present at a useful meeting at Bromley town hall with representatives from Bromley, Greenwich, Bexley, Croydon and Lewisham. The Minister's colleague, the Minister for Public Transport, was present and we found the meeting to be extremely useful.

The meeting heard a quite surprising number of relevations about cuts in services or what will, in effect, be cuts in services. Those revelations were made only through that forum, which was an entirely unofficial body. We heard of the problems that making slots available for channel tunnel traffic is likely to cause. We also heard of the details of the franchises that are ultimately to be let for services in the south-east. Will the temporary reductions, or the allegedly temporary reductions, in the normal commuter services for south-east London be made good in the years to come? Ultimately we all hope—if any of us are still alive at the time—that the dedicated link should relieve congestion through south-east London, and then we shall look to those services being returned.

Another area where the pressure for slots is having an effect is the reduction or the almost complete cancellation of the Thameslink service into south-east London. We have been told by Network SouthEast that all the slots are going to the Gatwick-Luton link. While that is perfectly reasonable in itself, I do not see why we in south-east London should lose all our Thameslink services. The service is immensely useful and it is important for south-east London. Why do all the services need to be sacrificed? A reduced service is better than no service at all. I would ask Network SouthEast to reconsider that.

My final points relate to the A205, which is part of the south circular road, for which the Minister's Department took responsibility some years ago. Its performance in charge of that route has been problematic, to put it at its mildest. It is a major route, although that part is little more than a disjointed series of highways and byways. The idea that it can be compared with the north circular road is erroneous. The north circular road has the characteristic of being a route in a way that the south circular does not.

Recent repairs, particularly those at Dulwich common, caused chaos throughout south-east London and not just in the immediate vicinity. People started to re-route their journeys into central London from a long way back. Will the Minister give any assurances on the stewardship of the A205? The red routing of the A205 is under public consultation at the moment and, regardless of people's attitudes, all local authorities are determined to co-operate with the traffic director to ensure that that is as beneficial as possible.

In conclusion, I will raise with the Minister a subject that I have raised before. Perhaps he will be able to say something about it again. It concerns where the Catford town centre relief road stands in the current order of events. There have been at least five different start dates for the scheme. I wonder whether we are still working to the same one that we were the last time the subject was raised. I believe that the start date was in the latter part of this year or the early part of next year. Those are just a few points, and I am grateful to hon. Members for allowing me to make them.

I have been in this place on and off for about 10 years and I still have not a clue how it works. I came here briefed that my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennet) and I might have to speak for two and a half hours between us. I now find, after an extraordinarily interesting debate, that I have to make about two and a half hours' worth of replies in about six minutes. I trust that the House will indulge me, therefore. I shall try to cover the major areas and if there are others that I leave untouched, I shall be happy to write to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford for initiating this important debate. He spoke extremely well. It was typical of him that when I went to Bexley recently to look at the problems, at his invitation —I am grateful to Councillor Len Newton and his colleagues for their hospitality to me and my colleagues —my hon. Friend was there with us the entire time. He is absolutely right that it was extremely cold and also that the visit was very useful. I am grateful to him for drawing my attention to the problems of his constituency. I try to get out and about in the city as much as I can. I know it pretty well, as do most hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, but there are always aspects that one needs to know better. I acknowledge the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend): I will say a word or two later about staffing at stations. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), a former transport Minister of great distinction, spoke with authority. The hon. Members for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford), for Lewisham, East (Mrs. Prentice) and for Lewisham, West (Mr. Dowd) also spoke.

Let me just say to the hon. Member for Greenwich that I know that his hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) regards having to speak on transport as something of a demotion, and I know that there is a lot of irritation in the shadow Cabinet about the fact that he, and not the Member for Kingston-upon-Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), whom Conservative Members all desperately miss, is no longer in charge of transport, but I hope that the hon. Member for Greenwich will not feel that he has been dealt too poor a hand by his colleagues. The way in which the Labour party works is pretty labyrinthine and impenetrable, and I do not know what kind of signals it is sending by having him demoted to shadowing me, but it is a personal pleasure to see him. I trust that he will stay on the Opposition Benches shadowing me for many years to come.

That is an old line.

It is a very old line, and all the better for that.

I am glad that there is real all-party agreement about our policy on buses which, I repeat is to proceed with privatisation, net cost tendering and the flexibility of routes. It is all extremely good stuff. Just to reassure Opposition Members, I should say that the prospect of deregulation remains firmly on track, although it may not be until the next Parliament that we engage upon the process.

To the hon. Member for Lewisham, East, let me say that I realise that it is all good knockabout political stuff for Opposition Members to question whether the travelcard will survive. I suppose that if I were in their shoes, I would do the same. It is good irresponsible stuff. There is not the slightest foundation in fact for the Opposition's allegations and there never has been. None the less, this is politics and most of us are over 21—embarrassingly so in my case—and I for one do not object to what is, after all, the stuff of politics.

Let me be serious, though, and say that there never was, and there is not, any threat whatever to the continuation, not just in name but in form and in substance—

And price?

And, indeed, as the hon. Gentleman says, in terms of price.

In real terms?

And in real terms. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will let me have a copy of the speech that he would like me to make. I said on one occasion in the Chamber that if it did not have such unfortunate antecedents I would ask the House to read my lips. I shall not proceed down that road.

Dangerous.

It is a fairly dangerous statement, as the hon. Gentleman says. None the less, this is a serious point.

Frankly, I have rather resented the fact that many people in London have been genuinely troubled by the rather irresponsible nonsense that has emanated from far too many Opposition Members, who have sought to question every aspect just to unsettle all those elderly people who really care about such issues—who have got quite worried because they have heard a Member of Parliament, no less, say, "Perhaps there will not be concessionary fares or a travelcard." Those people may not have the intelligence to read through the pretty obvious political signals. Opposition Members bear a heavy responsibility for taking that sort of approach. Let me make it clear once and for all, beyond peradventure, that there is no threat whatever to the travelcard or concessionary fare arrangements.

As to London Underground, I shall have to skirt over a great deal of what has been said today. The article in the Evening Standard is not so much a statement of policy as a statement of the fact that my dear old friend Dick Murray, transport correspondent of the Evening Standard, was faced with a blank page on a damp Friday morning and had to write something. It is all good stuff, but it is very wide of the mark.

I take this opportunity to make it quite clear that we have no plans, in the short or medium term, for the privatisation of the underground. What we do have is the breadth of vision to recognise that there are three sources that could help to finance the underground—passenger fares, grants from the hard-pressed taxpayer and the involvement of the private sector.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham I welcome the leader in the Evening Standard which—aside from the hyperbole, which sometimes went over the top—said that we ought to ask ourselves questions of this sort. It said, in a characteristically fair way, that the last thing one should do is to deride that approach or attack it on ideological grounds. It is a sensible proposition, so let us look at it.

The important thing that the leader in the Evening Standard said, and which I endorse, is that this is all about improving services to passengers. Passengers are all-important, and we must do nothing unless we are sure that it will deliver benefits to passengers-whether it is moving down the road to more private capital, or more taxpayers capital or doing something on fares.

I have looked at all the industries that have benefited from the introduction of private capital over the past 14 years, and a pretty clear case is made that we should introduce as many of those opportunities as possible. The form of introduction is still very much to be determined. It is too early to speculate on the idea of privatising the underground.

I am sure that all hon. Members are pleased that the Jubilee line extension has been given the go-ahead. As to the question about the North Greenwich station, I understand the point that the hon. Member for Greenwich has made. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows the political background to this—and I use the word "political" with a small "p". British Gas, as the major property holder in the area, is thinking very hard about how to develop the facility there. The Jubilee line scheme will proceed on the basis that the station is constructed—that is to say, the box will be built—and an arrangement will be arrived at with the developer to provide the station facility in due course. It is in everyone's interest that that should be the case. I do not want the hon. Member for Greenwich further to denigrate the economic prospects of his own constituency and to cast further doubt on its economic viability. It is an extraordinary form of community politics to commit suicide on behalf of one's own constituents, as Opposition Members seem to do on many occasions. I will tell the constituents of Greenwich, if the hon. Member for Greenwich will not say it, that they will have a station that will serve them not for five years but for 150 years.

I am glad that the extension of the docklands light railway to Lewisham has been welcomed. It is right that the Department of the Environment is in the lead on this. As any sensible person would expect, I have been kept closely involved with its impact in transport terms. I am not the Minister in charge of the financing arrangements—which is not difficult for me to come to terms with—but I will continue to exercise considerable interest in the transport implications of the project, which is a very exciting one. I am always sad if a good development such as that which brings Lewisham into the city is not welcomed. Thank goodness that at least the hon. Members for Lewisham, West and for Lewisham, East, who should perhaps be able to say a word on the subject, appreciate the scheme.

I am delighted that the Chancellor was able to give the go-ahead to that project, which will be delivered in due course. The eventual mix of stations will be a matter for the private sector to decide in the sensible way expected of it. It is an obvious proposition to put stations where people are likely to board the trains. If one is in the business of selling a service, that seems to be a rather shrewd idea, which is good for passengers and revenue. We have had enough doom and gloom. Both the Jubilee line and the docklands light railway extensions are good news.

I want to talk about the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford and the Kent link line. It is my hon. Friend's debate, and I apologise to him that so much of the debate has involved broader issues. London is receiving a large share of the rail investment—£800 million is being spent on the Kent link modernisation. We should like to spend even more, but we should not forget that in October British Rail announced its intention to operate 41 four-car units on operating leases from ABB, which will mean accelerated replacement of the Kent coast service trains.

As my hon. Friend rightly said, there is currently a problem with the rail service quality in his district. In view of the amount of money being spent, that is genuinely disappointing. I am sorry about that, as I am a great admirer of both British Rail managers and London transport managers who do a hard job, often in difficult circumstances.

I think that the issue raised by the hon. Member for Greenwich on the possibility of building trains with doors that open and shut as required is not a bad one. I am told that the fault has been identified and the staff are working 24 hours a day to correct it. I am sure that people are working seriously to do so, and that the hon. Gentleman would not want to be churlish, but would want to welcome those people's efforts. I am told that all the units should have been adjusted by Christmas. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford mentioned the closure of Charing Cross station during the summer. I think that he will understand that Network SouthEast tried hard to avoid any inconvenience, but it was difficult in the circumstances.

I am glad that there has been a general recognition that the decision on the specific route of the east London river crossing was correct. In answer to a specific question, I wish to make it clear that I remain committed to the concept of improved east London river crossings, and my Department is currently engaged in an extensive study on that subject.

It is exciting and interesting that travelling from Tower bridge towards the east a range of opportunities have arisen for various reasons including the augmentation of the Tower bridge capacity, the tunnel between Tower bridge and Rotherhide, the east London line extension crossing the river, the docklands light railway extension, the third Blackwall crossing, the Woolwich metro possibility and other ways of taking forward the Woolwich crossing. There is also a possibility of a full east London river crossing to the A2, and a truncated east London river crossing. I understand my hon. Friend's reservations about that. There is the possibility of a lower Thames crossing.

The key factor is that all propositions should be put together and evaluated so that we have a clear idea—I am sure that it will be an all-party agreement—about which suggestion should have top priority, and those on which money should not be spent as a priority. I hope that I have shown the complexity of the subject. I took the point raised by the hon. Member for Greenwich about the prospect of a low bridge at Blackwall and the possibility of its opening for occasional river traffic. It was a good point and I will ensure that my staff are aware of it and that they explore the possibility. At the moment, as the hon. Gentlmean knows, the bridge is our preferred option on the basis of cost.

I am sorry not to have a chance to say a great deal about issues such as the Thamesmead spine road in my hon. Friend's constituency—

Order. I must explain to the Minister that the debate can go on until three o'clock so long as the Adjournment is moved at half-past two. The hon. Gentleman therefore has more time than he probably thinks that he has.

It was when you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whispered in my ear that you were keen to get up to the north that I thought that I might never be called again in a debate if I did not let you off at half-past Two, but I thank you very much for your kindness.

What I will do is prevent you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from getting the train that you have no doubt planned to get for a long time: I have 20 pages here.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. There are some people who, by their office, are unable to speak, and we all take guidance from Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I should like to speak on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway), who has attended the debate with great interest. I suspect that he would like to get away also, so I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will not go through all 20 pages.

I am clearly torn, but when one is being torn by a Whip of Her Majesty's Government, one knows which way to tear, so I shall not intrude on his good will for much longer.

As I have a few seconds, I shall tell my hon. Friend who has the Adjournment debate that during my visit I was pleased to see the progress made on the Thamesmead spine road and confirm that the main works can commence on phase 4 of the project with the announcment of the Secretary of State's decision on the orders public inquiry.

I saw some of the traffic problems in Crayford town centre and was interested to learn of the long-term plans for the new industrial access road. I understand that transport supplemenary grant support is being sought for that scheme. I hope that my hon. Friend will appreciate that I do not therefore want to say a great deal more about it at this stage because of the Secretary of State's forthcoming announcement on the 1994–95 settlement. He did a good job in explaining the issue to me.

We need to make the best use of existing road space. One way of doing that is to introduce red routes. By the end of next year, we expect the A2 Rochester way and the A20 Sidcup bypass to be red routes. The benefits that we have seen from the red route pilot schemes are impressive, one of the important factors being that they do not suck additional traffic on to the system, but merely regulate the flow of traffic that is there far better. That benefits business, local residents and public transport particularly. I hope that all those benefits can be brought to south-east London as the programme of implementation, in which the traffic director is engaged, unfolds.

There are two ways of approaching the debate: one is to go through absolutely every issue that has been identified by my hon. Friends and others; the other is to accept that there may be some issues that I have not fully dealt with. I shall write to hon. Members about points that they have made for which I should give an answer.

Finally, I shall say to my hon. Friend that these debates have been useful. The true function of an Adjournment debate is for a Member to raise a matter of genuine local interest. My hon. Friend is tremendously assiduous in these matters and has served his constituency well for the past 10 years. I hope that he will continue to do so for many more. I hope that what I have said will give reassurance on some of the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. I will, of course, extend the same civility to him. If there are any other issues, I will write to him.