This is an unusual occurrence. We are meeting on a Wednesday morning to debate the government of London. We have to hold such a debate in our national Parliament because there is no government of London that can debate the issues affecting the people of this capital city.

Over the years we have had many debates on the issue, and there is a growing consensus throughout London about the need for an elected authority for the capital city. Indeed, ours is the only capital in Europe without a single, elected government. The steady stream of history shows that when cities remove their elected tier of government, or any sort of central authority, chaos ensues. The central government commission of 1837, looking into the administration of the capital, concluded that it was necessary to set up a single authority to deal with London's affairs. That authority eventually became the London county council, which in turn became the Greater London council in 1965.

The GLC had a good record of administration of services, of pioneering work in education, architecture and housing, and of delivering to Londoners real hope for the future. A whole generation of good council housing would not have been possible without the work of the LCC, and later the GLC. Similarly, the body had an imaginative transport policy, and a highly imaginative arts policy—especially in the latter period of the GLC under the able arts section leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks).

When, in 1983, the Government published their document on the so-called streamlining of government in the major metropolises and in London, the GLC responded with an interesting document called "The Future of the Greater London Council", published in January 1984. It stated prophetically:

"There is no doubt whatsoever that in the next 20 years metropolitan areas throughout the world will pose greater and greater problems. For, unlike the United Kingdom, the rapid expansion of metropolitan populations of many other countries increases apace. Every day another 100,000 people join those living in the urban areas of the world. By the turn of the century, it is estimated that over half the world's population will live in metropolitan scale cities. Given this future, what example is this democratic country to set the world in 1984 of how to organise its public affairs to meet the metropolitan needs of its capital city, London?"

Despite that statement, and the enormous campaign demonstrating the popularity of a central authority for London, the Government, with their large majority of the time, hammered through the destruction of the GLC, together with the sale of a large number of its assets. This achieved, not a cut in public spending or a saving on bureaucratic expenditure, but a transfer of power away from democratically elected politicians and accountable officials to wholly unaccountable but equally—if not more—expensive quangos throughout London.

A large number of organisations surrounding London Pride recently produced a document describing the money that London puts into the national Exchequer, and the money that it gets back in return:

"Yet for decades London's contribution has been taken for granted. While other European cities have been investing heavily to secure long-term success, so long as central London has seemed crowded with tourists and commuters London has been assumed to be doing all right. Benign neglect is no longer good enough. The time has come for the capital's needs to be recognised and its potential fully realised."

The document goes on to describe what constitutes a world city. London fits all the criteria to qualify as an important world city; the only thing it lacks is a unifying authority that can deal with the serious problems that it faces.

I have mentioned how the government of London has been broken up since the GLC finally went out of existence in 1986. There is, for instance, the sad sight across the river of that empty mausoleum County hall, which has been surrounded by scandals—a point to which I shall return.

All around London we see the problems bequeathed by the lack of a central authority. But more than anything, we must examine what is democratic and what is undemocratic about London. Londoners elect about 1,600 councillors every four years by an elective process. Those councillors are elected to run their local authorities. They take considerable personal financial responsibility for the affairs of those local authorities and risk surcharge and personal debarment from office if they are deemed to have overstepped the mark in any way, whether justifiably or unjustifiably.

However, Londoners have no say in the non-election of an equally large number of people to a series of quangos and appointed bodies all around London. They have enormous access to expenditure— £6 billion a year—they are accountable to no one, they are not open to the public in the way that local authorities are and hardly any of their members are elected to any other body. The Government are essentially appointing their friends to organisations that they think are appropriate to run the affairs of Londoners.

In 1995, it simply is not good enough to say that Londoners do not have the right to elect their own local authority to deal with the important strategic issues facing London. The expenditure of more than £6 billion a year is the responsibility of a mixture of health authorities, housing action trusts, city challenges, London Regional Transport and the London Residuary Body, which manages to get through £72 million a year.

The London Residuary Body sounds like something out of George Orwell. As it was created in 1984, it is highly appropriate that its Orwellian nature should be examined. What is the body for and what has it done? It has an appointed board of directors who are paid. Its job was to oversee the disposal of the assets of the Greater London council and the transfer of its staff.

One of the London Residuary Body's greatest claims to fame must be its treatment of County hall. That building was built by public subscription. It is a fine building for all to see across the river, as are its ancillary buildings, the north and south wings. I make no such claim for the architectural beauty of the island block, having suffered many meetings there in the past in my days as a trade union organiser within the GLC.

What is happening to County hall? When visitors from all over the world come to the House, hon. Members take them out on to the Terrace and point to all the wonderful buildings along the Thames—where the Archbishop of Canterbury lives, the United Nations office, the Shell centre and south bank. But Conservative Members seem to forget about the large building opposite and when visitors ask what it is, they say that it is County hall. When they are then asked whether that is the home of London government, they say, "No, it's empty." The only thing that it seems to be used for is the training of police dogs. They charge up and down the corridors looking for phantom thieves, whereas the thieves are elsewhere around the world at the present time.

We must examine seriously what has happened to County hall. The London Residuary Body told the world that it had sold County hall to a Japanese property speculator known as the Shirayama corporation. I understand that Mr. Shirayama had a wonderful deal with the London Residuary Body in that he did not have to pay any money straight away. He was allowed a considerable delay on payment. I understand that £10 million due under a secret agreement has still not been paid.

The Government intervened on a number of occasions to ensure that the building went to a group of Japanese property speculators rather than the London School of Economics, such was their obsession to ensure that the building was not seen to be in public hands in any way.

The National Audit Office is looking into the matter, which I believe to be a serious scandal. I hope that when it has reported, the Government will be prepared to take action and return County hall to the purpose for which it was always intended—a centre for the government of London.

Is it not a fact that that building hosted meetings of huge numbers of organisations, which may have been unstatutory, semi-statutory or fully statutory, representing the people of London in dealing with all-London strategic matters? Is it not also a fact that the final decision about the destruction of one of the finest and oldest civic councils in the world was made by a single leader of the Conservative party because policy is vested in the leader of that party?

My hon. Friend is right. A vendetta against the GLC was promoted by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She sought to destroy the GLC because it represented a central authority and because of its popularity among people who saw life in London improving under the imaginative policies of the GLC.

The GLC was also a valuable resource for meetings for all kinds of community organisations, groups and others. Under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), the GLC was an incredibly open building. Anyone could go in and hold meetings there. It was a real resource for the people of London. Its destruction is bitterly resented by many people to this day.

The Action for London group has done marvellous work in demonstrating the appalling waste of resources that that empty building represents. I should like to know how much of our money is being spent on guarding, sealing off and securing that empty building, denying its use to the people of London. That is an appalling vista.

In December last year, David Puttnam, in his London lecture, spoke at some length about the artistic merits of London and its abilities to promote good theatre, film, the arts and so on. He said:

"Bette Midler once said, in her inimitable and caustic way, 'When it's 3 pm in New York it's still 1938 in London.' And that was before the democratically elected authority for London was wiped out by a vindictive Government eight years ago.

In a very real sense it's not 1930-anything in London. It's far closer to 1890-something and all of us are losing out in consequence. The self-same reasons that led our Victorian fore-fathers to establish the Metropolitan Board of Works and then the London County Council—the need for better planning, better transport, better housing, better education, better public health and civic amenities—all of these are once again zooming up the agenda and crying out for clear and forceful solutions; not solutions thought up by concerned groups of well-intentioned citizens, but long-term strategies argued, implemented and resourced within the framework of the elected and democratically answerable city government."

That is what we are searching for today.

If one wants to know what the people of London think, one must look at the recent polling evidence produced by the Harris research centre for Carlton. There is incredible pessimism about the future of London which I see every day in my community and my constituency. I find it among young people, the unemployed, the homeless, the rootless and the poor in London.

The survey showed that 61 per cent. have no confidence in London's future, an incredible 61 per cent. felt that their children probably would not have jobs when they left school and 77 per cent. believed that the next generation would be unable to obtain decent housing in London. It showed that 17 per cent. were deeply concerned about crime, 16 per cent. about pollution and 15 per cent. about traffic. It showed that 43 per cent. believed that travelling in London had become harder during the past five years and 81 per cent. believed that there was insufficient decent housing in London. When asked whether they thought that there should be an elected council or authority for London, 61 per cent. were for that and only 29 per cent. against. That is an enormous figure.

We must bear in mind all those concerns about the future of the capital city and address them urgently because they are deeply important.

In 1984, the GLC produced a document on ministerial commitments made during the passage of the Local Government Act 1985 which abolished it—page after page of them, from the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) on auto-pilot in all-night sittings, droning out soothing words in an attempt to appease my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West. He did not succeed one jot, but he tried hard. Those commitments will come back to haunt the Government. I could quote them all, but I do not have time, so I shall simply quote one concerning housing resources.

The right hon. Member for Acton said:

"Although the boroughs welcome the chance to take over and manage the GLC stock, I know that many councils and tenants still need reassurance that resources will be available … We have repeatedly made it clear that abolition will leave that total resource to London essentially unchanged. London's HIP allocation will be shared among the boroughs alone without a top slice being pre-empted by the GLC".

He continues:

The distribution of allocations will take account of expenditure liabilities inherited from the GLC … We cannot guarantee the availability of a particular level of resources for London beyond the assurances that we have already given."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 5 February 1985; c. 1107.]

Many of us would be quite happy to get the resources at the level of the assurances that he has already given. My borough and those of every one of my hon. Friends around me are building almost no homes at all at present. Some 12,000 families are on the transfer list in my borough. There are 8,000 on the waiting list. Every homeless family hostel is chock-a-block. Bed-and-breakfast millionaires abound in London. Why? Because of a vindictive attitude by the Government towards expenditure on housing in London. Those are the issues that must be addressed.

Poverty in London is absolutely appalling. London is a city with more than 6 million residents in 2.8 million households. Some 1 million people in London claim income support and 733,000 claim housing benefit. About 831,000 existing households, plus an estimated 250,000 households, need a new dwelling. About 500,000 people live in households with more than one person per room. More than 500,000 households in London share or lack basic amenities. One million people are over retirement age—50 per cent. of them rely on state benefits. Some 40 per cent. of pensioners live alone. As one who spends a lot of time working with or meeting pensioner organisations in London, I can attest to the misery and poverty of many older pensioners in London, particularly the older women pensioners, who have no access to occupational pension schemes. About 400,000 people are registered as unemployed in London, including 100,000 young people and 175,000 long-term unemployed. About 300,000 children live in non-earning households and about 300,000 are eligible for free school meals. Some 100,000 households include lone parents looking after children. Some 780,000 people in London have a limiting long-term illness, including 32,000 children.

Living in London ain't nice. It ain't happy and it ain't healthy, and those issues must be addressed. That cannot be done while we fail to address the need for a central authority for London to tackle those issues. When one looks at the national statistics for poverty, misery and homelessness throughout the country, one finds that the worst areas are all in London. Seven of the 10 poorest parts of the country are in London.

The point that my hon. Friend makes is reinforced by a report, "Out of Sight—London's Continuing Bed-and-breakfast Crisis", which I and, I suppose, all hon. Members received today. Is my hon. Friend aware that Wandsworth, the borough that I represent, has one of the worst bed-and-breakfast records in the whole of London? Hundreds of properties are boarded up and are waiting to be sold rather than the council allowing homeless people whose roots are in the borough to live there. It is interesting that the Minister who will reply to the debate was the leader of the authority that encouraged that policy.

It is nice of the Minister to be here this morning, as I understand that he is quite busy in the dental surgery some mornings of the week. It is good of him to come at all.

We must look seriously at the problems of homelessness and the misery that it causes in London. What is it like for children to be brought up in bed-and-breakfast hotels? What is it like for their parents? What play space is available? What quality food is available? What cooking space is available? It is not even cheap. It costs us millions each year. People who have been allocated a hostel or bed-and-breakfast place by the local authority, because they are homeless, come to me and ask: "Mr. Corbyn, is it sensible to be paying out several hundred pounds a week for me and my family to live in bed-and-breakfast when the council could buy or build a flat for less than that?" I tell them: "You are absolutely right. The council agrees with you, but it is not allowed to buy or build." It is nonsense and something must be done about it.

The problems of poverty and ill health in London are often related to other factors. Air quality and water quality in London are poor. The quality of air in London is seriously damaging to people's health, particularly during a period of still weather. One in seven of London's children now suffers from asthma. If one goes into any school, particularly infant or primary schools, and goes into the school secretary's office, one will see all the inhalers on a shelf above the secretary's desk, to be given out to particular children at lunchtime. There is an epidemic of asthma among London's children—and, indeed the elderly. If one goes into a children's ward in any hospital, one will find many children suffering from chronic asthma, related—not entirely, but mainly—to air pollution in London. Those issues must be addressed.

Some 150,000 people in London are waiting for access to a hospital bed, to undergo elective surgery. In my own borough, no elective surgery is being carried out until after April. I was trying to explain to somebody from another country how it is unfortunate if someone needs an operation in the latter part of the financial year in London. That person could not understand the concept of having to be ill in the early part of the financial year, not the latter part. Again, we have the nonsense of the internal market and fundamentally unaccountable health authorities that administer Government health policies for London.

Transport—the one area in which the GLC gained the most publicity during its latter years—is the greatest concern to everyone in London, whether they are waiting for a bus that does not come, as the buses are held up on overcrowded and congested roads, or whether they are trying to get on an overcrowded train, paying through the nose for the highest fares anywhere in Europe. London Underground and London Transport as a whole are entirely strapped for cash and unable to invest in the vital new railway and tube lines that are needed. A proposal is made for the Chelsea to Hackney line—a proposal that has been around for a very long time—but then we hear that it is unlikely to be even thought about until the start of the next century, despite there having been reports for the past 30 years of the importance of that particular line.

That area requires the attention of democracy in London. There is a need to address the problems of the democratic deficit in London.

The purpose of the debate is to highlight some of those problems. Indeed, many of my hon. Friends wish to make, I imagine, broadly similar points to those that I have made on health and housing. We must address the problem of the lack of a democratic, accountable authority for London. Londoners need to have some pride in their city as a whole. It cannot be governed by a plethora of 32 boroughs, one City of London, a couple of dozen quangos and a Government office for London, which is handing out Government money through the single regeneration budget without the agreement of elected councillors, or of any elected authorities. Indeed, it is being done solely by an appointed civil servant answerable only to Ministers and not to anyone to do with London.

A gauleiter.

As my hon. Friend says, a gauleiter for this capital city. Those issues must be addressed.

Once a year, the London Labour Members of Parliament go in delegation to meet the Home Secretary, who is the police authority for London for the time being, and, in a separate meeting, to see the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. I used to think that the worst possible way to run a police force was to have the Home Secretary as the police authority, answerable to the House for his actions once a year in an Adjournment debate. I now find that there is something worse—the Home Secretary being the police authority for London, being advised by a group of bankers, appointed by himself, to say how the police authority should be run.

A proposal must be made by the House, at the earliest possible opportunity, for the creation of a new authority for London, which will have responsibilities for overall planning in London. What mad schemes have been approved in the past 10 years to have allowed London to have 22 million sq ft of empty office blocks—office blocks are still being constructed—and no housing programme worth speaking of other than a small number being built by housing associations, and the problems that go with that? Who would have thought that London Transport, the wonder of the world for many people for many years, would now be threatened with privatisation, break-up and deregulation? Our health authorities are unaccountable, with two regional health authorities covering Thames regions, which include London. A London health authority should be involved in a London-wide elected authority. Likewise, why cannot Londoners have a police committee in the same way as other parts of the country?

My hon. Friend skimmed over the question of who owns County hall. I can only go on what I read in, for instance, the Evening Standard. The fellow involved sounds like a crook to me: if he were a Labour councillor, he would probably be surcharged. He uses various aliases; he is known as Mr. Heinz, of the 57 varieties.

If the Minister had any guts, he would deal with the matter on behalf of Londoners and the British people as a whole. I believe that there is a scandal that needs to be investigated. Instead of closing the door when it is all over, as they did in the case of Barings, the Government should expose the gang of crooks who are supposedly in charge of County hall.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In fact, the National Audit Office is currently investigating the scandal surrounding the sale of County hall to the Shirayama corporation and the gentleman who seems to own it. He goes by a number of aliases, usually the names of types of Japanese motor car. I do not know how many makes of Japanese motor car there are, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West has explained on a number of occasions, there seem to be quite a lot. We hear of Mr. Honda, Mr. Toyota, Mr. Mitsubishi and so on.

May I offer my hon. Friend some up-to-date information? I walked past County hall a few minutes ago, and absolutely nothing is going on there. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) pointed out, it is a scandal. Both the Minister and the Secretary of State have discussed the matter with me; I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will tell us a little more about what the Government are actively doing about the scandal that is taking place on the other side of the river.

Those of us who have lived through the saga of the abolition of the GLC and the sale of County hall will not allow it to be swept under the carpet. We will persevere, because we want the building back in public hands and public use rather than the obscenity that it is now.

I believe that there is a strong case for an elected government for London, with responsibilities for overall planning, transport, health, a police authority and a housing strategy to tackle homelessness and the social, health and economic cost of poor-quality housing. There should also be a co-ordinated and supportive strategy for the development of the arts in London. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West had an excellent record as chairman of the GLC arts committee, providing access to the arts for all people: minority tastes of all sorts were catered for. That was an exciting period of growth in the arts—film, theatre and other entertainments—throughout London. All those facilities are now threatened; indeed, many of them have closed. That is very sad.

Similarly, the Inner London education authority used to manage expenditure on education. However, its resources for the arts, music, out-of-London pursuits, adult education and many other things have been destroyed with ILEA itself.

It is also crucial for London to address the problems of its economy. As I said earlier, there are 400,000 registered unemployed people in London, but I believe the number of people out of work to be closer to half a million. Half a million members of a population of 6 million want to work but cannot find jobs.

In its latter days, the GLC did its best to rebuild some of London's manufacturing industry, to encourage different areas of enterprise, to put money into co-operatives and to support those who tried to produce quality goods and services. It was very difficult, because the GLC's powers to act within local government legislation were limited. I believe that a new elected authority for London should have overall strategic responsibility for all the matters that I have mentioned, and powers to rebuild and plan London's economy.

Are we to go forward into the 21st century as a city with an incredibly rich minority of people living in certain high-security enclaves—as described by Richard Rogers in the past few weeks in his Reith lectures on the radio—and a mass of poor people living on high-crime, poor-quality estates, looking forward to a life of unemployment and surrounded by filth, degradation and destruction?

London can be an exciting and wonderful place in which to live, but it requires planning, direction and vision. I do not believe that that vision is fulfilled by a plethora of quangos composed of Tory placemen, and by the scandals and sleaze that surrounded the destruction of the GLC. I hope that today's debate will strengthen the case for an elected authority to make London the city that it can, should and—I believe—must be.

I hesitate to intrude on a debate about London. Let me clarify my provenance: for eight years I served as a London councillor in Bexley. Moreover, I believe that my constituency would be viewed as part of the 'Thames gateway by the all-seeing, all-powerful body offered to us by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) as a new government for London. I think it entirely inappropriate for the Medway towns—which include my constituency, 30 miles out of London—to be subject to government from County hall, or by some new body in London.

I well remember that, when I was a Bexley councillor, the council governed very well. As a near-unitary authority, it provided social services, housing, education, roads, parks, leisure facilities and many other benefits. My only recollection of the GLC is of a body that intruded into minor planning applications and housing matters. Exercising an extraordinary policy of municipalisation, it bought houses scattered all over the place. Far from acting as a strategic authority, it was a nuisance authority.

The last days of the GLC were marked by a bizarre campaign against the Government's proposals to do away with it. The hon. Member for Islington, North described the GLC's popularity—revealed, he said, in that great campaign at the end of its life. The so-called popular campaign, however, involved the expenditure of a seven-figure sum on advertising and other PR material, sent out from County hall under the auspices of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone).

How can the hon. Gentleman explain the fact that, years after the abolition of the GLC, the most recent opinion polls show that 66 per cent. of Londoners still believe that we should have a strategic authority for the capital?

I set as much store by those polls as I do by some other current opinion polls. What London really needs is a strengthening of the government of its boroughs.

Does my hon. Friend believe that that opinion poll—or, indeed, any poll—has informed Londoners about how much they have saved as a result of the GLC's abolition? It is probably £200 a year.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Indeed, it was one of the main reasons why we did away with the GLC.

The hon. Member for Islington, North also mentioned ILEA, one of the most bloated education bureaucracies that the country has ever had.

What?

Precisely so. It would be entirely inappropriate to foist ILEA on London again.

My message to any new London body would be, "We do not want you in north Kent." We want unitary authorities, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is currently considering their establishment. If we are to have good governance in our part of Kent., we must have nothing to do with London. We certainly do not want a new Greater London council, stretching to the M25 and beyond—stretching to the Medway towns as part of the Thames gateway—as suggested in recent reports of Labour's thinking. My message to the hon. Member for Islington, North is, "Hands off the towns of north Kent." If there is to be a co-ordinated development of the Thames gateway, it will be better organised by central Government than by some new GLC.

I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman), who appeared to have two reasons for his view. One, understandably, was his experience of the GLC as a Bexley councillor. I assume that he played some part in the legal affair that was responsible for the destruction of "Fares Fair", which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone).

indicated dissent.

He says no, but I think that it was a Kent and Bexley initiative.

It was Bromley.

My hon. Friend corrects me: it was Bromley, which is next door.

The remarkable feature of the speech by the hon. Member for Gillingham, who is not a London Member, was that he accused a possible future Greater London authority or the GLC of the time of having designs upon north Kent and the Medway towns—a proud and ancient area which was related to London in function and history. I have heard no suggestion at any time that a Greater London authority should extend its boundaries thus far. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to tell me where he got his false accusation from.

I understand that there has been a suggestion in the Evening Standard.

If the hon. Gentleman believes everything that he reads in the Evening Standard, including an inaccurate account last week of my history, which said that I attended a public school, although I went to a grammar school in Hammersmith, it shows the standard of his judgment publicly and in this place. I shall ask him about another matter. I am a past member of the transport planning and highways committee of the GLC, to which I was co-opted at different times.

So the hon. Gentleman is to blame, then.

I shall shortly take great pleasure in dealing with highways.

The hon. Member for Gillingham said that that committee and the GLC, using its powers as a strategic planning authority—at one time I was a leading member of part of the planning committee for north-west London—interfered in minor planning applications. Will the hon. Gentleman give an example of that?

I shall give an example relating to the renovation of an estate on the edge of the constituency of the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), who is not in his place. As is normal, there were consultations with tenants and postmen about the numbering of the flats on the estate. Those consultations were concluded in a short time, but it took five months to get a decision from the GLC. That was interference in a minor, insignificant planning issue.

I asked for an example and the Minister has given one. If that delay occurred, it must have had some sort of statutory basis and the GLC must have had some responsibility in that matter. Perhaps the Minister could respond to that at a later date rather than delaying our proceedings now. Speaking as a former part-time student postman—[interruption] This issue is not funny. Too many Conservative Members do not understand real life. That is why they are in trouble. As a former post person I know that it is important to get a good numbering sequence. If the Minister engages in canvassing, he will know that that is the case.

I do not say that that justifies what the GLC did. It may not, because bad mistakes can be made in any organisation, and especially in the Government. The strategic planning of London was destroyed, as was the coherent traffic planning of London, which brings me to the matter of highways. The GLC introduced delayed traffic signals and the first freeways, and that was done after exhaustive consultation, in which I was involved, with each borough. It was broken up by Baroness Thatcher who dispersed coherent planning in London not only for roads but for transport.

I shall now turn to "Fares Fair". That was upset by Bromley council through a legal point which destroyed the concept of public transport introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East with great boldness and initiative. The people of London look back to that time. A public transport system needs to have as many people using it as possible so that fares can be reduced. That applies especially to the underground, which can carry more people because of its infrastructure. That was the vision of the late Lord Ashfield and of Herbert Morrison, who together created the former London Transport. That has been destroyed by the Conservative party.

I shall give an example of how current fares are unfair. After years of development, the docklands light railway, which is the responsibility of the Government, still does not run at weekends. That is because the concept is wrong. An extension of that railway is planned to Lewisham. A Bill has gone through the House so that the line can run from Island Gardens in the Isle of Dogs under the river to Greenwich and then to Lewisham. That is a much-needed link. It is to be privatised and not long ago I saw a commentary in a business paper about who would take over. It stated that on that commuter route to the extraordinary development in Canary Wharf in the Isle of Dogs—which, incidentally, did not receive the necessary planning permission—it was probable that a premium fare could be charged. That was to be an attraction for the investor.

"Fares Fair" is one thing, but fares are unfair and not just in the general proportion of revenue which is so high in London compared with the rest of the world. That is an example of fares being jacked up on a line for which the capital investment has been put up by the public. Currently, public subsidy for the DLR is 70p per passenger mile. That information was contained in an answer a few days ago. That shows the disintegration of public transport in London for which Conservatives are wholly responsible and which the Minister appears to defend.

In the context of the GLC's relationship to London docklands and the railways, it is worth pointing out that the GLC in combination with the five Labour boroughs failed to do anything for docklands for years. That railway is there because the GLC failure was recognised by the Government and docklands was taken away and we got rid of the GLC.

I knew the chairman of the former docklands joint committee, the late Councillor Percy Bell, who was a well-known east London councillor of great sagacity and who gave great service. The docklands joint committee produced an outline for docklands. One of its publications in the early days dealt with a transport spine for tube, bus or tram. That committee considered the need for the DLR, but it was disrupted by the work of a certain leader of the GLC, Sir Horace Cutler, who did not co-operate in the way that the boroughs had been co-operating.

The President of the Board of Trade, who at the time was the Secretary of State for the Environment, opened new houses built under the Becton district plan produced by the borough of Newham. The marshes had to be drained and I understand that a year's public investment of the then Thames water authority, on which elected members from the GLC sat, was absorbed on draining that area from Tewksbury to London. That was instituted by the committee. Therefore, the hon. Member for Gillingham was not correct in his history. That land, a third of my constituency, went under the suzerainty of the London Docklands development corporation, which had powers for planning and borrowing and for goodness knows what, literally to do anything under the Bill. When the statutory instrument came to the House for a one and a half hour debate and although a third of my constituency and half the LDDC area was involved, I did not get the opportunity to speak. That shows the authoritarian nature of Conservative Members. Even if a body such as the LDDC was needed, it should have been accountable to this elected House rather than to the Secretary of State.

I have unexpectedly used some illustrations which were given by Conservative Members. I could go on. What about the new towns? Could any organisation in the world have produced those? They were the pride of Britain after the war. The education service has been mentioned. It was economical and was one of the greatest education institutions in the world. I shall give an example. When the Conservative party wanted to break up the London county council education service in 1963 or 1964 when the GLC succeeded the LCC, there was tremendous debate in London. It was saved because the LCC had a comprehensive series of occupational and adult education courses throughout London. Those were well known because of the Floodlight booklets—attempts are still made to publish them. Specialist colleges all over the place had been built up to a peak of professional expertise. Where those colleges were sited in each borough was a matter of chance, but let us consider what happened when the LCC was split up into boroughs.

I shall not name the borough nor the well-known institution, but one highly specialist college on medical matters had a worldwide reputation. People not just from all over London, but from the south-east used to travel up to it at night and at weekends. That college, in a central London location, was in the hands of the local borough. The borough pressed for money for that college, and we know why. When that request came before the relevant committee, the elected councillors asked, not unnaturally, how many of the college's students came from the borough. When they were told 5 per cent., the response was, "We can't have that," and that college disappeared.

Further and higher education and training are all the rage. The break-up of the further, higher and technical education systems of inner London, which the hon. Member for Gillingham may describe as bureaucratic, is one of the greatest losses to education. That happened at the flick of a finger of the noble, or less than noble, Baroness Thatcher.

In Newham, we have to spend £8 million of our standard spending assessment on the homeless because the formula agreed by the Minister and his senior colleagues does not provide enough money for the homeless. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) mentioned that problem. That £8 million has to be shaved off education and social services to meet our statutory responsibilities. Some of the homeless in our borough are transferred to us from Westminster. The council bought up private houses which it cannot sell through private enterprise, so it is housing the statutory homeless in them. That is good for them, but the system is rotten, bad and retrogressive.

Democratic accountability is at the heart of the issue. It has been attenuated in London to a degree that the Scots would find absolutely unbelievable. What remains of the London borough administration is being hogtied by the vicious standard spending assessment and revenue support grant formulae. They are causing revolts in the shires, so one can imagine the effect that they are having in east London, in particular, the deprived boroughs of which have such well-known problems.

As for the police, Sir John Quinton has been appointed chairman of the advisory committee to the Home Secretary. He has been given that job not on the grounds of policing criteria, but because, as is clear from correspondence, of his expertise in budget cutting and budget allocation. Although the advisory committee has a wide remit and people have been appointed to it by the Home Secretary, it is steering towards economies. It is not focusing on how the police can do their job in association with Londoners. It is considering how the police can operate with reduced finances.

There will be a great deal of debate later today on democratic accountability and the democratic deficit. One of the biggest democratic deficits nearest the House is the governance of London. Even before there is an elected authority for London under another Government, I hope that combined representatives of the boroughs could get together on a non-statutory basis. Perhaps that group could incorporate some aspects of the Association of London Authorities and the London Boroughs Administration. I hope that the Under-Secretary would agree that that group could, during whatever life remains in the Government, through consensus, come to some conclusions about London. Even the Government have found through their encouragement of London First, London Pride and from all the programmes, as well as organisations concerning London that are multiplying and holding conferences all over the place, that a vacuum needs to be filled. That vacuum must be filled by a proper and proud successor to the LCC and GLC to serve the people of London in the next century.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). I am not one of those hon. Members who believe that everything that the GLC did was wrong. It did a great deal of good work, but in the latter years of its existence it did a great deal of harm.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) suggested that there was a tremendous force outside the House to recapture a government for London. He mentioned an opinion poll in which 66 per cent of respondents were in favour of that. I do not know where that opinion came from—possibly from the Evening Standard—but I should not attach too much credence to that opinion poll if the hon. Gentleman pooh-poohs some of the suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman), which also came from the Evening Standard. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and we cannot be too selective when quoting from that newspaper.

Although I represent a constituency that is about 250 miles from London, I live here during the week; I have lived in three London boroughs and had six years' experience in local government. I therefore have a good idea of what certain Opposition Members mean by democratic accountability. What I perceive as important and as democratic accountability is not necessarily shared by some Opposition Members.

From time to time, I agree with some of the things that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West says. If what he said about London was correct, I would be fighting to catch your eye this morning, Madam Deputy Speaker. A number of my hon. Friends who represent London constituencies share my concern at what happened in the GLC in its latter years and do not want a London-wide authority, so their absence this morning is understandable. If there is such strength of opinion among Opposition Members about the need for such an authority, I should have thought that far more Opposition Members would be present. Apart from the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford), the Front-Bench spokesman and the Opposition Whip, however, we have only the hon. Members for Newham, South, for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and for Newham, North-West. The latter two Members are here, of course, and they represent all the things that many of my hon. Friends and I found unacceptable in the GLC.

Champagne socialists.

I do not know about that. I used to get the Refreshment Department bills of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West, which was an interesting experience, until I finally managed to sort out the Department. I do not know about champagne socialism, but a vast amount of ratepayers' money was wasted in the final years of the GLC. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham asked how much money was wasted. An independent survey—my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State may wish to comment on this—has suggested that if the GLC had been allowed to continue, it would have spent £1.5 billion. And for what? I am not convinced that Londoners would have received a better service.

I should like to compare and contrast briefly my experience of so-called democratic accountability because my constituency is in one of the large metropolitan areas of the north-west. I do not wish to be ruled out of order, so I shall be extremely careful to make those comparisons briefly.

I must record my appreciation of the hon. Gentleman paying my bills from the Pugin Room from time to time. He just said that the GLC, had it still existed, would have spent £1.5 billion. He asked what that would have been spent on. A quick list includes new towns, seaside and country homes, housing, the London mobility scheme, the south bank arts complex, London Transport, London's waste disposal, the fire brigade—the GLC used to run the ambulance service and there were no complaints then—historic houses such as Kenwood and Marble Hill, the magistrates courts, bridges, tunnels, the Woolwich ferry, the Thames barrier, the national sports centre and strategic parks. I could go on. That is a lot of money, but what a lot of good services.

Now that the hon. Gentleman has made his speech, perhaps he will give way to me. I accept that a great deal of money was spent, but many of those services are continuing without the madcap ideas that were evident when the hon. Gentleman was in office. I think that he was a Member of Parliament when he moonlighted from time to time as chairman of the GLC. I do not believe for one moment that there is a great weight of opinion outside the House or, indeed, among Labour Members, for the return of a London-wide authority.

My hon. Friend is dealing with the democratic deficit, a matter raised by the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). Does he agree that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are in fact calling for a fourth tier of government in London? If their proposals were accepted, we should have the boroughs, central Government with their Minister for London, Members of the European Parliament and a London-wide authority.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes his point in his own way. If Labour Members had the opportunity to institute an authority similar to the GLC, there would be enormous increase in bureaucracy but not necessarily an improvement in the services provided for the people of London.

I have lived in three London boroughs—Wandsworth, Westminster and Lambeth. My colleagues have talked about waste, and I must say that services in Lambeth have certainly improved since Labour lost control there. It was something of a novelty for my wife and me to look out of the bedroom window the other day and see someone sweeping the street.

I shall pick up a number of points made by the hon. Member for Islington, North. He referred to County hall being used for meetings of non-statutory organisations. That conjured up in my mind a picture of senior citizens meeting for various cultural activities. However, he did not mention the fact that the GLC was often used as a platform for political campaigning at the ratepayers' expense and for promoting organisations with which I suspect that most of his constituents would not have agreed had they been asked. However, it was not only at the GLC that such things happened.

The hon. Member for Newham, South mentioned the police. I remember the days of the Greater Manchester police authority, in those days an offshoot of Greater Manchester council. It spent an enormous amount of money—hundreds of thousands of pounds—on a police monitoring unit. Vast sums of council tax payers' money were spent on hindering the police in the apprehension of criminals.

The hon. Member for Islington, North was very unfair to our health services. He may have been describing what is happening in the capital and other urban conurbations, but in financial terms local health services are now far better planned than ever before. We no longer experience the kinds of difficulties at the end of the financial year that he described. Not only in London but in my constituency there have been vast increases in the resources provided to the national health service, and they mean that the concerns expressed all too flippantly by the hon. Gentleman pale into insignificance.

Certainly, my constituents had to wait for the election of the Conservative Government in 1979 to get the brand new hospital that they now enjoy—Lord Healey had cut the hospital building programme so savagely when he was Chancellor because the Labour party got the economy into such a mess, and I have no doubt that if it were ever to be in power again we should find ourselves in the same mess because it wasted money nationally just as it wasted money at the GLC.

The hon. Member for Islington, North mentioned the use of County hall. I noticed that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who is no longer in the Chamber, did not give the name of the individual whom he was accusing. I think that he has a duty to do so. It is generally understood in the House that the National Audit Office is examining some of the issues to which he referred. The NAO is respected and I have no doubt that, as and when it reports, we shall listen carefully to what it has to say and take appropriate action if necessary.

The fact that it is necessary to use today's business to raise matters relating to London does not worry me in the slightest. We do not need a talking shop costing millions and millions of pounds just across the river. Hon. Members have the opportunity to raise issues relating to their constituencies and regions, as they are doing now.

The hon. Members for Islington, North and for Newham, South also mentioned transport. The hon. Member for Islington, North is perhaps not aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has recently made a number of important announcements on air pollution following a report by those who take an interest in pollution, not least the Select Committee on Transport. I greatly welcome the opportunity to tighten the MOT test in respect of exhaust emissions.

It is the buses and lorries in London that create much of the pollution, and diesel-powered vehicles are the greatest polluters. It is those vehicles that we should be examining. If Labour Members are concerned about reducing congestion in London, they might like to suggest that a London borough such as Newham could institute a pilot scheme with the help of the Department of Transport to introduce road pricing so that we could see how it works and how it might benefit London. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newham, South laughs—he is a great cyclist, but I do not recall the GLC doing a great deal for cyclists when it was in a position to do so.

Unitary authorities—the London boroughs—now have the opportunity to make sensitive decisions affecting their areas. They are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to be unitary authorities and I look forward to the day, in the lifetime of this Parliament, when my constituency will get back to the position in which it was before 1974 and does not have to do as it is told by members of the Labour party who have a majority on the Merseyside passenger transport authority, who could not give two hoots about spending money in my constituency and who abuse their position. I look forward to the day when my constituency has the same system of unitary government as London.

We have heard a remarkable amount of old rubbish from the Conservatives. It is striking that they cannot find a London Member to defend the effects of the abolition of the Greater London council but have to drag in an hon. Member from Southport to drone on about matters on which he is ill informed. The GLC established a cycle unit and introduced cycle routes across much of London, but since abolition the programme has not been developed.

We still see the achievements of the old London county council and the GLC. There is hardly a road, a public housing scheme or a hospital—hospitals were once run by County hall—that those two forms of local government did not help to create. They created London as we know it, certainly to a greater extent than any other force or organisation. It is a record of which we are proud—a dramatic and tremendous achievement in rebuilding London after the war, but it is now being lost. Everyone in London today feels that it is less worth living in this city than it was a decade ago. Opinion polls conducted by the Evening Standard chart that progress year by year.

I have heard the Under-Secretary of State ask what the GLC did about the docklands. We created the infrastructure that the London Docklands development corporation inherited. It then stepped in and the legislation involved wasted the best part of 18 months as it went through Parliament.

We have been asked about transport. I remember Sir Horace Cutler, under the Tory administration between 1977 and 1981, proposing that we should build the Jubilee extension into docklands. It was blocked by the Treasury. When I became leader of the GLC in 1981, we proposed that the Jubilee line should be extended to docklands. It was blocked by the Treasury. If County hall had been allowed to get its way, the Jubilee line would have opened and would have been running for the past seven years, and because we never borrowed money to build such projects—we paid for them out of the rates—we would not have incurred the debts created now that the Government have finally got round to the project 15 years later. We were planning to go on to build the Chelsea to Hackney link, which would probably have been operating by now as well.

County hall thought in London's interest, which meant inevitable conflicts. Whenever there was a Conservative Government and a progressive administration in County hall, there was conflict. In 1896, Lord Salisbury complained that the then Liberal administration at the London county council was practising socialistic and revolutionary schemes and proposed that the LCC should be abolished. When Herbert Morrison was creating what I think was a marvellous record of municipal enterprise and achievement in the 1930s, Conservative Members of Parliament were demanding that the LCC be wound up. We saw the same thing in the late 1950s, when boundaries were extended in the hope of creating permanent Tory control. Finally, when Mrs. Thatcher was in power she had a big enough majority to push through the lunacy which had been defeated on previous occasions and London has lost out.

We heard allusions from Southport that the GLC did barmy and dreadful things. I will tell the House what I am proud of. I am proud that the GLC took up the issue of racism in London. I am proud that we took up the issue of women's interests being neglected in London and tried to make local government respond more to their needs. I am proud that the women's committee funded dozens of child care schemes across London. I am proud that we took up the rights of lesbians and gays in London. I am not ashamed of those things. We moved those issues to the centre of the political agenda as those groups were not achieving their full potential because they were suffering from discrimination. It is a legitimate right for those elected to represent London to represent all Londoners, whether they are women or black and irrespective of their sexual orientation. I shall not go on any longer as I know that we have to fit in two more speeches.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) on initiating this important debate, which has, although it has been short, provided an excellent opportunity to highlight many very important issues. It is somewhat surprising that, from the Conservative Benches, we have heard only from the hon. Members for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) and for Southport (Mr. Banks). No Conservative Member who represents London, other than the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford), who will respond, has spoken. That is perhaps indicative of the way in which the Government—

rose—

No, I shall not give way as we have very little time. It is indicative of the way in which the Government have treated London with contempt.

There is so much in London about which we can be proud. The city boasts a whole range of attributes and qualities, which make it a vibrant and exciting place to live in, to work in and to visit. London's rich legacy of history and fine buildings, magnificent parks and outstanding cultural attractions, its impressive, if somewhat neglected, river, its cosmopolitan and multi-cultural atmosphere, and many more attributes, make it a unique and great city.

I am sad to say that there is another side to London, too much in evidence in recent years, which tarnishes the bright spots and raises real fears for the city's future. London now suffers from a higher level of unemployment than almost anywhere in Britain—second only to the north in the proportion of people out of work, it having lost 470,000 jobs in the past seven years alone.

That of course relates to London as a whole, but when one looks at the specific problems in the most deprived areas of London, as the Evening Standard did in its important and disturbing survey of life in east London, entitled "The Betrayed", the characteristics highlighted are more representative of what one might see in the third world than in the capital of one of Europe's leading countries. It is made all the worse by its proximity to the gleaming office blocks of Canary wharf and the affluence of the City.

The devastating loss of manufacturing industry has left London's economy seriously unbalanced, and over-dependent on services. In the week in which we have seen the collapse of Barings, we should not be complacent about a city which is over-dependent on financial services for its economy.

Not only are there serious questions to be asked about London's economy, but the city is facing an acute transport crisis, as a result of years of under-investment—points well made by my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, North and for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)—coupled with an abject failure to recognise the damage being caused by ever-worsening traffic congestion. That means that people cannot move quickly and cheaply around the city and far too many of our children are suffering from the appalling incidence of asthma, of which traffic-generated air pollution is unquestionably one of the major contributory causes.

While I mention health, what can one say about a city whose once proud hospitals are facing closure as a consequence of the crude political vandalism of the Department of Health? Hard-working and dedicated doctors and nurses are demoralised and angered by ill-considered cuts. Patients, London's long-suffering public, are infuriated by the incompetent decision making and administrative bungling of the Secretary of State for Health and her army of highly paid accountants, administrators and assorted quangocrats.

Before we leave the subject of health, I cannot fail to mention the London ambulance service, which is staggering from one crisis to the next, bedevilled by malfunctioning computers—the telephone system went down yesterday. Despite all the Secretary of State's promises of improvement, it is turning in far and away the worst performance figures of any ambulance service in Britain.

Behind all the statistics and all the evidence of London not coping as well as it should, there lies one inescapable and fundamental theme, to which everyone who has looked seriously at the issue returns without exception. London is seriously disadvantaged by the lack of its own city-wide government. Unique among European capitals, unique, indeed, among capital cities in the developed world, London has no single voice speaking up for the city and representing the views and aspirations of its citizens. Instead, London suffers from fragmentation, from divided and unclear responsibilities and from the malign consequences of the excessive centralisation of decision making, which has become such a hallmark of the Government, who, ironically, when they came to power, pledged to devolve power rather than to centralise it.

It is not just the accumulation of power by Ministers that is causing concern; the proliferation of quangos and other undemocratic institutions is too. They have been established in breach of Tory promises. Let us look back to the Second Reading debate on the Bill which abolished the GLC. The then Secretary of State for the Environment, Lord Jenkin, could not have put it more clearly. He argued that the fears expressed—not only by the Labour party but by several Conservative Members—about centralisation of power and proliferation of quangos were ill founded. He said:

"They say that, after abolition, Whitehall will take over. Wrong again. Only 5 per cent. of service spending in London, and virtually none outside London, will go outside local government. They say that the abolition councils will be replaced by quangos. Wrong again. Only two permanent new appointed bodies will be created".—[Official Report, 3 December 1984; Vol. 69, c. 36.]

With huge swathes of spending on London Transport, health, urban regeneration, employment and training all taken out of the hands of democratically elected local bodies and vested in the hands of Ministers, and a whole swathe of quangos administering services all over London, the judgment of Lord Jenkin is about as spectacularly inaccurate as the failure of Mr. Nick Leeson to judge the movement of the Tokyo stock market. The consequences for London have been about as disastrous as the consequences for Barings.

Instead of a democratically elected London-wide authority speaking up for London in the national and international arena, we have a whole series of fragmented initiatives. As the Evening Standard rightly and aptly reminded us yesterday, by printing Tony Travers's excellent article entitled, "Why Paris is pulling ahead of London", we are losing out in the international arena because others are doing things better. Jacques Chirac, the right-wing mayor of Paris, has no illusions about the important role of the city government that he leads.

"Paris' ambition is to lay claim to the title of European capital by the year 2000"

is his unequivocal objective. His publicity machine has little difficulty in putting the knife into London. Paris, he boasts, with justification,

"has a high performance transportation infrastructure."

The contrast with London could not be more striking.

London has suffered disastrously in the nine years since the abolition of the GLC, and Londoners are crying out for the restoration of a democratic city-wide authority to fight for their interests and to oversee the future planning and development of their city. London needs a strategic authority that can promote London's interests in Europe and throughout the world, that can attract vital new inward investment, which is so critical to our capital city's future, and that can begin the long hard process of rebuilding industry, jobs and hope in London's devastated areas—most notably in east London.

London needs a strategic authority that can plan the new transport policies that are vital to unblock the congested arteries of our city, to ensure a substantial shift from the use of private vehicles to public transport and, in doing so, to clean up the city's polluted atmosphere that is so damaging to the health of our children and to the attractiveness of our city to visitors.

Economic development, transport planning, land-use planning, oversight of London's environment and all the strategic functions that cannot be carried out by individual London boroughs should and will be given back to a democratically elected city-wide authority by the next Labour Government. We will consult widely in due course about the city-wide responsibilities that the new authority may assume, including, possibly, the role of the police authority and the oversight of health policy. As we have already made clear, that authority will be a streamlined and lean body, not involved in day-to-day service delivery, which is best handled at a local level. It will focus on the big issues, the issues that need to be planned and co-ordinated across the whole of London, the issues which are fundamental to the success and vitality of our capital city in the 21st century. The Labour party will give back to Londoners their rightful say on the government of their city and, in doing so, will give London back its pride, its self-esteem and control over its destiny.

Of course, the Opposition's proposals would give London a huge bill and more bureaucracy. That is what we should concentrate on. The two most important points about the government of London arc the quantity of government—we already have quite enough—and the quality of government. There is a strong link between the two. The hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) talked about a "streamlined" authority. That is the word that the Opposition used when they set up the GLC and the LCC. What did we get? Bloated bureaucracy. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Government set it up."] They were wrong—absolutely wrong. [Interruption.] That is right, and it was wrong.

As the quantity of government grows, so the quality of government drops. Many of the calls that we now hear for a new strategic authority for London are totally misconceived. There would be an extra layer of government, and that would solve nothing. We do not want more bureaucrats, bigger bills or slower decisions on even minor matters. I, too, was a child postman. We want less but higher-quality government. We want local government to work with the private sector and to adopt the standards of efficiency and customer service that we expect and receive predominantly from the private sector.

Opposition Members have quoted the Evening Standard. I should like to quote The Economist which, in August, after detailed consideration of the government of London, concluded:

"a big central authority for London was likely to damage, not enhance London's long-term economic interests."

The city, The Economist said,

"can continue to adapt and grow flexibly without central planning".

That is the City.

I am not referring to the City of London; I am talking about London. Opposition Members have not defined the city of London. Interestingly, they have very carefully not stated any borders. The article also said that

"London's fragmentation was a source of strength rather than weakness. The lesson for rising megacities is that a central strategic authority is not essential for prosperous growth. Self-governing neighbourhoods work better than a single city hall and are a safer base for an urban economy".

Reference was made to ILEA and to the fact that it had good services for adults. I accept that, but it needed to do so. ILEA tested the IQ of London children aged five and found that it was average, but, after 11 years of ILEA education, the IQ test showed that the standard had dropped. That is why London needed adult education.

It is against the background of less but better government that we look to the principles of promoting the role and responsibility of the individual and freedom from unnecessary regulation and over-government. The Government have a key role. We seek to empower the individual and reduce bureaucracy, particularly when the latter serves no purpose. The lesson of London during the 1980s was too much government, gerrymandering government, and too much waste. [HON. MEMBERS: "Westminster."] The housing of London is where the gerrymandering was done. The GLC gerrymandered housing throughout London. One needs only to see the mess—

Will the Minister give way?

No. I have only five minutes. Mr. Corbyn: Just on Westminster?

No. We will not refer to Westminster. We may refer to Roehampton, which I happen to know even better than Opposition Members do. That was a GLC gerrymander if ever I saw one.

As I have said, the lesson of London during the 1980s was too much government, too much waste and too much bureaucracy. People have forgotten that, although the GLC was responsible for a mere 11 per cent. of local services in the capital, it had a budget of almost £1 billion—excluding ILEA—92 councillors and 20,000 staff. In the five years until its abolition, it increased its spending by 170 per cent., when prices generally rose by just 29 per cent.

I remember a former leader of the GLC on an elephant in Battersea park. That explains the emphasis of the GLC.

Everybody agrees that London is a major world city. But, when we look closely at London, we see not one city but a series of small towns and villages, each with its own identity. To use a dental phrase that has been thrown at me, we see an amalgam of villages. That variety is its strength as well as the cause of some of its problems.

It also makes London hard to define. For example, no Opposition Member has dared to define its boundary. Is its boundary the 33 boroughs, the area within the M25, or is it further away? London's influence is substantial. As The Economist pointed out, London dominates Britain far out of proportion to its population. In terms of public transport and commuting, London dominates the south-east. Should a strategic authority for London include key parts of the south-east?

I notice that Opposition Members have produced several proposals, which have been leaked to The Independent, the Evening Standard and so on, for various forms of authority, but they have not come to a real decision. They talk about the M25 and an ill-defined central area. They shift and churn in various directions—U-turns and S-turns. I warn Londoners of the cost to London—the direct bill on the doorstep—of delay, particularly to business. People in business in London have made it clear to me and to others that the key is that London is not as heavily regulated as other European cities.

Business supports a strategic authority.

No, it does not.

The only other European city of a size or status anywhere near equal to London is probably Paris. We have heard much about Paris, with its mayor, as an example of how a great capital city should be run. Although Paris has one titular major, the city is in fact run by eight unitary authorities, with small parishes below them. It does not support the case for a single authority or a single mayor for London.

We touched briefly on public transport. Much is made of the GLC's so-called "Fares Fair" policy, but we should be clear that that was no panacea for road congestion. During its operation road journeys were reduced by a mere 2 per cent. In economic terms, it was not a great success for London Transport. The policy was based on the premise that the taxpayer should always foot the bill.

I realise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that although I would like to add more I have completely run out of time. We need to reflect on the impact of our efforts to reduce the quantity and increase the quality of government in London. London is far from the problem city that many critics would have us believe. It is the favoured location for European business men, who are encouraged by low tax and low regulation, and by the high quality and flexibility of the work force. London is rich in arts and culture, drawing visitors from the rest of Britain and the rest of the world. Overseas visitors find London clean and safe, and even the education standards—

Order.

I am delighted to have secured the opportunity of a debate on the middle east peace process, which besides being a matter of wide interest is of particular interest to many of my constituents.

I am delighted to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office here, because he has played an especially important role in co-ordinating Britain's policy on the peace process. I pay tribute especially to the important job that he did in updating the 1975 trade agreement between Israel and the European Union.

A week ago, the House heard important news about the latest developments in the Northern Ireland peace process. From that process, we know how much the lifting of the threat of terrorism, the enjoyment of peace and the presence of hope contribute, how much those have meant since the peace process began and how they are changing the atmosphere in the Province.

In their efforts for peace, the people of Israel seek and deserve no less—the opportunity to enjoy security, to build an atmosphere of peace and to move forward in the peace process towards, I hope, a permanent solution. I seek to put at the forefront of today's debate and to draw to the attention of the House the issue of security, which is so vital for the people of Israel.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, won the 1992 Israeli election on a platform promising peace with security. He realised that the one could not be achieved without the other. We all know that since 1948 Israel has faced a constant and often painful struggle to achieve security. She has fought wars and suffered terribly at the hands of terrorists, who have shown ruthlessness and who have stopped at nothing to inflict damage on Israel, her people and the Jewish citizens of other countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that security is of paramount concern for Israel. Unless the peace process can guarantee security it cannot guarantee peace.

Many people in Israel and throughout the world hoped that the declaration of principles and the Oslo accords would bring about a peace process that encompassed and met Israel's natural and legitimate security concerns. Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat deserve the high praise and recognition that they received for their part in commencing that process.

I think that everyone agrees that Israel has every right to live free from terrorism, but does my hon. Friend not concede that the building of the settlements around Jerusalem—an entirely illegal act—is fuelling Hamas and the very forces that are trying to destroy both Mr. Arafat and the peace accord?

I shall deal with that aspect in a minute. I recognise that there are issues between the parties, but the vital point that I want to make is that security must be an overriding consideration. As we know from our own experience in Northern Ireland, once there is security there are good prospects for establishing an atmosphere of peace and all that that means in terms of an eventual solution to the outstanding problems.

In recent months the peace process in which we invest so much hope has been overshadowed by a terrorist menace that has struck at the heart of Israel. We have seen the escalation of the terrorist activities of Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have perpetrated serious acts of terror and exploited their own young people by sending them on suicide missions.

Last October the bus bombing in Tel Aviv was carried out by Hamas; 22 people were killed and 42 injured. In January this year at Beit Lid, in perhaps the most callous attack to date, one suicide bomber detonated himself in a crowd while another waited for rescuers to gather to aid the wounded and dying and then detonated his explosives, killing 19 more people.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we think about terrible events such as those we must look at both sides of the equation, not just one? Is it not true that since the Gaza and Jericho agreement was signed more than twice as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed?

I shall acknowledge later in my speech the importance of stability among the Palestinian people, and especially of stability for the Palestine National Authority. But the hon. Gentleman should join me in recognising the serious terrorist threat directed against Israel while Israel and her people are playing their part and entering into negotiations in the peace process. The people of Israel are being asked, not for the first time, to make a substantial sacrifice in the cause of peace by enduring those attacks while still searching for peace. To be realistic about the prospects for peace we must recognise the strain that that puts on the Israeli people and therefore on the peace process as a whole.

The campaign of terror organised by those groups from outside Israel has not been confined to the territory of Israel. A most serious aspect of their activities consists of attacks directed against Jewish communities throughout the world. In 1992 I had the pleasure of visiting Argentina with the Inter-Parliamentary Council Against Anti-Semitism with Members from both sides of the House. We visited the Jewish communal offices in Buenos Aires, where we enjoyed warm hospitality in a happy, friendly family atmosphere.

Last year I and other Members who had been on the visit watched television pictures of the appalling atrocity that took place in those offices, where more than 100 people were murdered by a terrorist bomb. There have been similar acts of terrorism against Jewish communities in this country. It is a matter of good fortune, but no thanks to the behaviour of the bombers and extremists, that the two bombs at the Israeli embassy and at Balfour house, the headquarters of the Joint Israel Appeal, did not cause fatalities, although planting them was a ruthless, reckless and wicked act that caused several injuries.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), plainly there are issues to resolve between the various parties, but I urge the House and the Minister to agree that surely the need for security overrides those considerations. We have our experience of Northern Ireland, and our Government have rightly been conscious of the need for a cessation of terrorist violence and for the decommissioning of arms as part and parcel of getting the peace process under way. The same must apply to Israel. That country has an entirely natural and legitimate concern that violence should end and that the peace process and the resolution of the outstanding issues should take place in an atmosphere of peace.

Prime Minister Rabin deserves great credit for continuing negotiations with the Palestinians against the background of those acts of terror both in Israel and abroad.

Israel has been placed in a terrible dilemma. Its experience has shown that the incidence of terrorism can be reduced by the closure of the territories. At the same time, part of Israel's dilemma is that closure means a deterioration in the economy of Gaza, which in turn undermines the Palestine National Authority. I must say to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) that I recognise that the stability of that authority is very important.

Given the severity of the terrorist threat that I have described, it is not hard to see why Israel recently took the decision to close the Gaza strip and prevent Palestinian workers from entering Israel. Given the need for the authority to be stable, it is not hard to see why Mr. Rabin showed that he was conscious of the issue by deciding to ease the closure of the territory after meeting the PLO chairman last month.

Mr. Rabin was frank about his position, and said that he had probably acted against Israel's security interests to prevent tension among the Palestinians. The House would do well to recognise the statesmanship and courage that Mr. Rabin has shown in pursuing peace in the circumstances. I am sure that that courage extends to the people of Israel too.

Israel is also faced with a dilemma regarding the deployment of troops on the west bank, which—understandably—has been judged to be necessary for security reasons. Pressure exists for the troops to be redeployed from the west bank to allow arrangements for autonomy and elections to proceed. I hope that we can recognise that dilemma, and sympathise with the people and Government of Israel.

In extending our sympathy and support to Israel, it is right to support the position of the new Palestine National Authority and to give it stability. We must give it every encouragement, as it could be very important in dealing with terrorism and disorder. I make no bones about paying tribute to Chairman Arafat for the course on which he is proceeding in the face of considerable personal and political risks.

I welcome the fact that the British Government have played a constructive role in seeking to bring stability to the new Palestine National Authority, not least by granting it £75 million in aid.

I turn from the question of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians to wider issues of the peace process. Syria is an important element of the process and, at present, there is a great deal of uncertainty about its intentions and position. In many respects, the Syrian track of the peace process—an important one—is at an impasse. President Assad put forward a formula of, in his words,

"Total peace for total withdrawal".

But that has not been sufficiently explained in tangible terms.

I suggest that Israel has shown flexibility towards Syria, and that, in my judgment, calls for a response from Syria. Israel is bound to be cautious, in view of the strategic importance to Israel of the Golan heights.

Does my hon. Friend deprecate the fact that Damascus has become a safe haven for no fewer than 10 different terrorist groups, most of which are aimed against Israel?

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. That factor undermines Israel in many respects, and I shall turn to that in a moment. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has visited the Golan heights, as I have, and stood among the disused Syrian bunkers with their commanding views across Israeli villages and the kibbutzim below. If he has done so, he will appreciate the special strategic and security implications for Israel.

I commend to the House the flexibility that has been shown by the Prime Minister of Israel. Last year, he told the United Kibbutz Movement:

"I view the Golan Heights through the security prism, first and foremost, no matter whether settlements exist there or not … if we reach the point where we need to remove settlements for the sake of peace, I have been and will remain in favour of it … For me, peace is a higher value for Israel's future and security than this or that group of settlements."

[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I hear the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and we should commend that approach. Mr. Rabin, while putting security as the foremost consideration, is showing flexibility, and I hope that that flexibility will result in a response from the Government of Syria.

I also hope that Syria shows flexibility in respect of the important issue of the future of south Lebanon. Israel's position must be equally flexible, and governed by quite natural considerations of security, given the vulnerability of its northern borders. Everyone hopes that the Syrian Government will respond to that clear flexibility.

Confidence must be built, a starting point for which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth). The Syrian Government must show that they are serious about curbing terrorism in the middle east, and rebut any suggestion that Syria is in any way a safe haven for terrorist groups. One could not escape noticing the fact that the leader of Islamic Jihad, Fathi Shkaki, claimed responsibility for the Beit Lid outrage from Damascus. I join my hon. Friend and other hon. Members in support of the contention that Syria must rebut any suggestions that it is involved in terrorism, and I urge my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister to exercise all the Government's influence with the Syrians to move the peace process forward.

Jordan is a happier story, as it has played a full part in the peace process. I am sure that all Members would want to recognise the leadership of King Hussein over the Jordanian people. King Hussein waited for the Palestinians to begin their part of the peace process and to arrive at an agreement before concluding a peace treaty with Israel, which has removed the remaining differences between Jordan and Israel. Since then, a number of border crossings have been opened and the free passage of people and goods has commenced.

The King and the Government of Jordan deserve our support. They have shown clearly by their actions that they are interested in a warm peace, not a cold peace, and in many ways that sets a good precedent. They have stood firm in the face of discouragement from Syria at various points during their involvement in the peace process. King Hussein has been at pains to deny the charge that Jordan's treaty with Israel weakens Syria's negotiations. He said:

"On the contrary it might have created a precedent in the right direction".

I am sure that many Members on both sides of the House agree with the King, and I hope that his actions set a helpful precedent which others could follow.

There are many difficult hurdles which the peace process must overcome. One of the most difficult of those is the issue of the future of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has special significance for three great faiths, and I feel it proper to recognise the way in which the holy sites have been maintained and made accessible to all since 1967, for the first time in 2,000 years. That is important to people of many faiths.

Jerusalem presents a difficult problem. There was wisdom in the Oslo agreement, which sought to postpone discussions on Jerusalem until negotiations on the final settlement were complete and progress on other fronts had been made. I do not want to criticise the Palestinians—I want to support them in their endeavours—but they might be wise to reflect on the wisdom of the agreement and to act within the spirit of it. One way in which they could do so is to think carefully about the use that could be made of Orient house in east Jerusalem, which has been suggested as a site for some form of diplomatic headquarters. The Palestinians must think carefully about that. Perhaps they should think again and concentrate on promoting other areas in which progress can be made.

As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary rightly stated, the parties to the negotiations have to work out and agree the timing and the pace. Surely they would be well advised to consider the effect of the timing and pace of their actions on the future of Orient house.

Finally, on relations between Israel and this country, my right hon. Friend will shortly make his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister. It will be the second visit to Israel by a British Prime Minister in office—Lady Thatcher made the first in 1986. I warmly welcome the visit, which will cement the excellent bilateral relationship between this country and Israel. I also warmly welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend will be accompanied by a group of prominent business men, which I hope will help to develop the growing trade between the two countries, as Israel is our third most important trading partner in the middle east. I hope that more good will come of my right hon. Friend's visit.

The visit also has significance beyond trade, important though that is. The peace process in the middle east means a great deal to the region and to many people throughout the world. We have a good record of contributing to that process and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister deserves our strong support across the House for the further efforts that he will undoubtedly make to move forward that process, in which we have all invested so much hope.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on winning this Adjournment debate. At this time in the middle east peace process, it is important for the House to have an opportunity to discuss the issues and for Opposition Members to have the chance to support the efforts that the Government and the international community are making to ensure lasting peace in the middle east. It is also important for hon. Members on both sides of the House to set out some of our concerns.

We do not have much time and I do not want to take up any more than necessary, but it is important to say one or two things, given that the thrust of the speech by the hon. Member for Hertsmere concerned the security of Israel. I have been in this House for 16 years and have heard many people talking about the security of Israel from different perspectives. The argument has moved on, but it has not really changed. The hon. Gentleman fell into the trap of thinking that dealing with security in its military sense is the only way to guarantee Israel's security, without realising that the best security and harbinger of peace in the middle east would be a comprehensive peace settlement. That is the only security and future that Israel could and should be striving for, and that must be what all hon. Members dedicate themselves to.

The hon. Member for Hertsmere is right in saying that we must concentrate our efforts on a comprehensive peace settlement for the middle east and the various aspects of it. I agree with him that one of the most crucial aspects of that peace plan is for the Israeli-Syrian peace accord to be moved forward. I agree that the Syrians have made it clear that it must be full peace for full withdrawal and the Israelis have said that the depth of peace will be commensurate with the depth of withdrawal, but we need to go beyond that.

We have had many hints from the various capitals of the world that the two countries are close to concluding that agreement. We need to press harder to encourage them to take that extra step for peace. Then we must move on to the peace accord between Lebanon and Israel and to a further comprehensive peace that will remove all the inhibitions and problems that Israel faces. Israel cannot complain at the moment that it has somehow lost out because of anything that has happened so far as part of the declaration of principles, the Oslo agreement, or any other agreement for that matter.

I also pay tribute to the Israeli Government. They are the first Israeli Government to be elected on a platform for peace during the 16 years that I have been in this place and that should be recognised in the House. They were not only elected on a platform for peace, but have had the determination to make it happen. I have sat here through two previous Israeli Governments—the Likud Governments of Begin and Shamir. The latter went to Madrid and signed the original peace accord. As we now know, he did so with no intention of moving any way towards giving the Palestinians any rights, responsibilities or freedom and certainly with no intention of giving them a Palestinian authority, let alone a Palestinian state. This Israeli Government command respect and support because they fought on a platform for peace, and what is more important, a platform that set out land for peace, as outlined in Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.

There is a different environment in Israel and I hope that the Israeli Government will be re-elected in the forthcoming elections. It is vital for the Israeli people and the middle east peace process that that Government, who are committed to peace, should be re-elected.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem is the crux of the middle east problem. I have difficulty agreeing with much of what the hon. Member for Hertsmere said on that matter. It is clear to anyone who has worked in the middle east, understands it and realises the problems that the lack of comparability and equality between the two parties, who are supposed to be negotiating equally across the table, is the problem. There must be an equality of legitimacy between the Israelis and the Palestinians and that cannot happen unless the Palestinian authority can sit at that table as a directly elected authority. I am sure that many of my hon. Friends agree and will support me, as will Conservative Members, when I say that an early election on the west bank and Gaza is one of the vital cogs in the process. The forum, size and nature of the authority is for the Palestinians to determine and to agree with the Israelis and we must try to help. Whether it is a 100-person council, 65 persons as proposed by Egypt, 40 or 20, as proposed by Israel, is not as important as the fact that those elections take place. Unless and until they do, there cannot be the legitimacy of equality over the negotiating table, which is so vital if we are to move the peace forward.

As the hon. Member for Hertsmere secured this debate, I am sorry that we were not able to invite him to listen to the talk by Emma Murphy, the British academy postdoctoral fellow, at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies last week. She gave an excellent paper which, for the first time, brought together all the concerns and fears and began to look at the declaration of principles, the Oslo accord and the way in which they have impacted on the two countries. What Israel has done to exploit—I use that word as it is supposed to be used—the Oslo accord and the declaration of principles is no less than any other Government would have done in negotiations with another party. Later today, we will discuss the various ways in which Britain might secure the best place for Britain in Europe.

I was not surprised when Emma Murphy set out in such detail in her paper the way in which the accord could not work because from the outset it was structured to favour the Israelis to the extent that there was an imbalance that would not allow it to be a success. She identified two international failures:

"Firstly, the international community has failed to insist that economic and political development in the West Bank and Gaza Strip should go hand in hand and secondly, Israel has been speedily rewarded both politically but more importantly economically, for its participation in the process, without regard for its own failures to fulfil either the spirit or the letter of the DOP"—

the declaration of principles. If any Member wants to challenge me, he need not merely take my word for that. Let us hear from Danny Doron, president of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Israel, who said:

"The firms are moving here on the belief that the peace process is a done deal."

Previously they were reluctant to deal with Israel for fear of damaging their business with the Arab world.

Let us list what has happened to Israel since then. By August 1994, it had announced that 20 countries had established diplomatic relations since the Israeli accord. Prime Minister Rabin has been to China, Indonesia and Singapore to open up those markets, which were previously closed to Israel. Even Vietnam has had discussions with Israel. Even the Japanese Security Dealers Association authorised its members to conduct trading through the Israeli stock exchange for the first time, and the Japanese Trade and Industry Minister offered training to Israeli managers and workers in Japanese firms.

So it is difficult for anyone to come to the Chamber and argue that Israel has lost out. What should concern us is how the Oslo accord has worked against the best chances of a real peace agreement in line with the declaration of principles. As a result of that dialogue, the Palestine National Authority has been given direct responsibility for education, culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism. But it must co-operate with Israel in the more strategic areas of water, electricity, energy, financial development, transport, communications, trade and industry, environment, labour, media and the hunt for international aid and finance. Most notably, Israel divests itself of the expensive function of government but has retained its influence over matters directly related to the economic development of the authority which it handed over to the Palestinians.

So, from the outset, the Palestinians' hands have been tied because they were given the most costly matters to look after while economic matters must be agreed with Israel. Moreover, as a result of the Oslo accord and the newly developing peace, Arab money is pouring into the west bank and Gaza and, for the first time ever, that money is now accessible to Israel. Who would have thought that Israel would have had access to Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian and diaspora Palestinian finances? As it now has that access to the occupied territories' markets, it is not much of a loser.

None the less, the world community, including this country, finds fault with the Palestine National Authority and asks why it has not done this or achieved that, without realising, understanding or accepting the imbalance in its relationship with Israel. It is perhaps ironic that it took 26 years thoroughly to reduce the occupied territories' economy, yet the international community expected a massive turnround in the space of months. When Israel's disengagement fell behind schedule and elections failed to materialise, Israeli closures strangled the lifeline of the Palestinian income, aid only dripped into the west bank, Gaza and the occupied territories and living standards fell, the result—not surprisingly—was a loss in public faith in the opportunities presented by the deal and a rise in political tensions.

It is crucial that those issues are understood. For the benefit of the hon. Member for Hertsmere and with the agreement of Emma Murphy, I shall place her extremely enlightening document in the Library so that the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues can read it.

The benefits for Israel are great. The Troika visited Israel recently for discussions with Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres. Apart from correctly raising issues which it regarded as blocks to the success of the middle east peace process—the settlements and the failure of the international community to help Palestinians in Gaza—it also discussed special, favoured terms for Israel. The European Mediterranean Association agreement, which I understand is 95 per cent. agreed—we are arguing over the last 5 per cent.—will give Israel, the only non-European Union member, privileged access to research and development and bidding for projects in European countries. It has gained that privileged access because of its commitment to resolving peacefully the problems in the middle east.

At the same time, Israel is telling the European Union, which is the largest single contributor to the peace process—it is giving 500 million ecu—that it must keep its nose out of the political side of those negotiations. That is no longer possible. Without seeking to attack Israel, we must remind it, as the United States Government did when they temporarily suspended $10 billion of aid some years ago because Israel was not working as hard as they thought it should, that if it wants that association agreement to be concluded, we expect certain measures from it. If it intends to be a partner to the European Union, it is not too much to ask that it listens to what we have to say.

One of the most important measures is Palestinian elections. It is essential that the Palestinians can sit down at the negotiations as an elected authority to negotiate with their elected counterparts in Israel. It is also important that we understand the conditions under which those elections can and will take place. The International Human Rights Law Group, in its book, "Guidelines for International Election Observing", defines the following minimal conditions for free and fair elections:

"no unreasonable limitations placed on a citizen's ability to participate in the political process, including the right to a secret vote and the right to be elected to office; and respect for the rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of assembly for a period adequate to allow political organizing and campaigning and to inform citizens about the candidates and issues."

There must be a full withdrawal of Israeli military presence if those elections are to take place. I firmly believe that, if an elected Palestinian authority can negotiate with its Israeli counterparts, a comprehensive peace plan will be well on the way to being established. That is the best and only security that Israel can possibly want.

It is some 13 years since I last had an opportunity to participate in a debate on the middle east and Israel. During that time, while other responsibilities enforced my absence from such debates, a great deal happened—most recently, an advance in the peace process. I therefore warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on initiating this debate and welcome the opportunity to make a new contribution to it.

The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) emphasised several times that, in his view, the best way to obtain security for Israel was a "comprehensive peace". In a speech 13 years ago, I made the obvious and, I hope, now generally agreed point that the best way to advance the peace process was to promote direct negotiations between Israel and her neighbours. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that, given everything that has happened since then, that is not just the best way but the only way to achieve substantial progress in the peace process. Intermediaries have an important role, but it should be restricted to bringing about direct negotiations, which have achieved results in respect of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

A powerful message must be given to Syria. If it refuses to participate in direct talks with Israel, it is effectively saying that it has no interest, in advancing the peace process and bringing about détente. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere said, a second message that we should give Syria is about terrorism. Eliminating terrorism is the best confidence-building measure that one can have. Syria must not only say that it opposes terrorism but show that it will do something about it, instead of accepting the presence in its capital of many terrorist organisations, which seem to be able to operate with no interference and perhaps even with encouragement from the Government.

My right hon. Friend made an interesting argument about the need for negotiations between the two partners to the accord; but is that the whole picture? Surely the United Nations has some part to play. What about United Nations resolutions 242 and 338? At a time when Israel is obviously breaking international law in the occupied territories, surely the wider community and the world has a part to play.

As I said, intermediaries do have a role, and I recognise that the United Nations can be an intermediary. Nevertheless, the history of efforts to obtain peace and improve security in the region shows that the only effective way to make real and lasting progress is for the parties to sit down face to face and negotiate—although that may be the result of a process and work by intermediaries. It is common sense that one will be unable to build confidence with a neighbour unless that neighbour is prepared to come and talk directly, instead of, so to speak, corresponding through solicitors. I reiterate that.

indicated assent.

I notice that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State recognises the disadvantages of using lawyers on those occasions.

And on many other occasions.

And also on many other occasions.

Obviously, it is also important that we do everything possible to retain and build on confidence in the peace process throughout the region. I support, in part at least, what the hon. Member for Dundee, West said about that.

The first effective way to do that is to improve the safety and security of all parties in the region, not only by negotiations between countries, but by eliminating terrorism, which is very destabilising to the process, and not only life-threatening but worse.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, especially as I am another lawyer.

My right hon. Friend has mentioned terrorism. Does he agree that one needs to widen the net, and that, as it is now public knowledge that the Hamas illegal money is probably laundered through London, and as President Clinton has frozen similar assets in the United States since 24 January 1995, Britain should do the same?

My hon. Friend, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and who I know takes a close interest in these affairs, makes a valid argument. I entirely agree that attacking money laundering, whether it be in connection with drugs, terrorism or any other aspect of criminal behaviour, is an important way of fighting crime.

The second way to enhance confidence in the peace process, which has already been mentioned, is very important—it is to promote economic co-operation and trade. That will enable the people of the region—the people of Gaza and of Jericho as well as the people of Israel, Jordan and all the surrounding areas—to witness direct economic benefits in their lives, such as more jobs and greater prosperity.

There is enormous scope for advances to be made by co-operation between Israel and her neighbours. That co-operation can bring benefits, whether it be on transport infrastructure, tourism or water resources. Everyone recognises that there is an enormous number of ways of advancing co-operation.

I hope, and I am sure, that the United Kingdom Government will do all that they can to promote that co-operation and to bring about those benefits. The forthcoming visit of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to Israel will provide an opportunity to do that, especially as he will be accompanied, not only by right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, who will respond to the debate, but by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Export Trade, who I hope will build on the target set by one of his predecessors—me—to double trade flows between Israel and the United Kingdom. I am happy to say that we have made good progress towards that object.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I do not want to give way too often, because I know that several hon. Members wish to speak, but I shall give way briefly.

In considering the economic developments that I am sure that we all want, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be helpful if, during the visit by the Minister for Export Trade, the Minister will argue that the policies of economic separation between the Palestinians and Israel that appear to be being pursued and actively encouraged by the Government of Israel are of no help in that process?

With the time limitations, I should not like to go too far down that route. Obviously there are ways of developing co-operation, which, for instance, might take the form of development of industrial estates on the borders between Gaza and Israel, which would provide job opportunities and opportunities for the use of Israeli capital and skills to provide work for inhabitants of Gaza.

Something else that would be essential to taking best advantage of opportunities for economic co-operation is the dismantling of the remaining and distasteful aspects of the boycott. Undoubtedly, we now have the best opportunity that we have ever had to give the people of Israel, and indeed her neighbours, peace and economic advance. I am sure that we in the United Kingdom—including my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State in his negotiations and all his contacts—will take every opportunity to advance that process and to build on what has been achieved.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on securing the debate.

The last time that I was in the middle east was about 18 months ago. That was at a time when the Madrid and Washington talks were generally felt to be on the rocks, at least by people living in the middle east. There was pessimism at that time among the people of the west bank and the Gaza strip about what the future held for them. Few people at that time knew—certainly I did not—of the talks that were going on in Oslo. Yet as soon as a couple of months later we witnessed that historic moment on the White house lawn when the peace accords were signed between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin.

Much has been achieved. Much was achieved in that moment. The declaration of principles achieves a great deal. However, since that day in September 1993, there have been some reminders of the great importance of the peace process. Some of those reminders, as the hon. Member for Hertsmere reminded us, were the attacks of Islamic fundamentalists. There was also a reminder, in February 1994, when Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 people at the Ibrahim mosque in Hebron. That was a salutary reminder of the importance of the peace process.

We all support the peace process, but one thing must be understood; it cannot stand still. It is a fragile process, and unless it constantly moves forward it is likely to fall apart. As time is short, I shall concentrate on two aspects that are vital in ensuring that the peace process moves forward and does not fall apart.

The first aspect has already been alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross)—the necessity for early elections to the Palestine National Authority. One of the top Palestinian negotiators on elections, Dr. Saeb Erekat, has said that the issue of elections is the make-or-break issue for the peace process. Elections will be the cement that binds that process together, which allows the Palestinians to act as full partners with Israel in making progress in the peace process.

A great deal of emphasis has rightly been placed on the need for economic revival in that part of the world, yet, if that is to happen, elections are a vital component. The fact that elections have not so far been held is one reason for delay in the provision of some of the aid that was promised by World bank donors as long ago as 1993.

We need to consider the ways in which barriers to those elections may be removed. An early redeployment of Israeli troops away from the population areas must be a central part of that process. I welcome the fact that the Minister of State made that argument in the House on 1 February 1995, and it was made again much more recently by the European Parliament.

Political legitimacy requires democracy. For democracy to thrive, the participants in it must be confident. It is very difficult for the people of the west bank and Gaza to have that confidence if they feel that their elections are being supervised by what they still regard as an occupying power.

I refer briefly, and secondly, to the settlements, which are central to the success or otherwise of the peace process. I welcome the fact that the Minister recently acknowledged in the House that the settlements in the west bank and Gaza are unlawful—under international law and under article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention. There was a time when the former Government of Israel seemed to think that it was open season for building settlements. I am pleased that the present Government do not see them in those terms and have declared a settlement freeze. If that settlement freeze is to be meaningful it has to be consistent, and seen to be so by the Palestinians living in the west bank and the Gaza strip.

I accept what the hon. Member for Hertsmere said about the issue of Jerusalem being left to future negotiations, but they must include all aspects of Jerusalem. The future status of Jerusalem should not be pre-empted by continued settlement building on the borders of east Jerusalem—which is what is happening. On 23 January this year The Guardian described the Israeli Housing Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, as having

"backed further expansion of the arc of burgeoning dormitory suburbs around mostly Arab East Jerusalem. He told Israel radio: 'I will continue to do my best to convince my colleagues in the government that the only thing we have to do is to continue to reinforce the defences of the capital of Israel."'

Faced with that, it is hardly surprising that Palestinians will see the so-called freeze on settlement building as not all that it is cracked up to be.

When I was in the middle east about 18 months ago, what was going on around the outskirts of east Jerusalem was obvious: an arc of settlements being built around Arab east Jerusalem. Those settlements are not only a barrier to peace, but they have an impact on the Arab quarter that is psychologically dangerous. That too serves to underline the inequity in the negotiations.

The settlements are a major obstacle to Palestinian confidence in the peace process. Should hon. Members wonder why that is so, let us remember, for instance, what was said by the Israeli military commander responsible for the west bank area when he testified before the Shamgar commission, set up to investigate the Hebron massacre:

"You have to understand the basic situation. A Jew has a weapon to defend himself. An Arab who is carrying a weapon is a terrorist. A Jew with a weapon is defending himself and he is allowed to shoot. We forbid soldiers in the IDF to open fire at them."

We need to get away from this sort of attitude and to state clearly that peace is indivisible: it must be respected on both sides. As we rightly condemn attacks made by Islamic fundamentalists and others on Israelis, so too we expect the Israeli Government and Israelis in general to respect the basic rights of the Palestinians. They have to recognise the role that the settlements play. They must also recognise the force of what Hanan Ashrawi said some time ago. It spoke volumes about the settlements which, she said,

"cause friction, are a blatant injustice to Palestinians, fragment Palestinian land and prevent the emergence of a geographically contiguous Palestinian entity. Leaving the settlements untouched is like putting a flame next to a powder keg and saying: co-exist."

There are many difficult issues to be faced. The Oslo accords and the peace agreement signed on the White house lawn were but the start, not the end, of a difficult process. We have the chance now of a real and lasting peace in the middle east; but if it is to be meaningful, it must be based on equality. To be equal, it has to be legitimate and democratic. Two necessary prerequisites for that would seem to be early Palestinian elections preceded by an early redeployment of Israeli troops away from populated areas. There must also be a proper freeze on settlement building, to include the outskirts of Jerusalem as well as other parts of the west bank and Gaza.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on initiating the debate, which comes at a timely moment.

The middle east peace process always seems to proceed in fits and starts. Temporarily we appear to be in the doldrums again, but middle east instability remains, as it always has been, an immense danger to the west. Apart from our long historical connection with the area, it surely remains in the British national interest that we should play a positive role in the middle east.

As this is a short debate I want to make just three brief points. First, I applaud the fact that Mr. Rabin's Government in Israel have taken risks for peace and have some considerable diplomatic triumphs to their credit—especially the agreement with Jordan. Like my hon. Friend, I give credit to the part played in that by King Hussein and his Government. Inevitably, the problem of the settlements in the west bank and Jerusalem is making further progress in the talks between the PLO and Israel extremely difficult.

When Mr. Rabin's Government came to power in 1992 they said that they would freeze settlements. Settlements policy is bound to be hotly contested when Israel holds general elections next year, but of course it will not be the only issue that the Israeli electorate will have to consider. It would surely help the peace process along if the Israeli Government announced an immediate and stronger freeze on the settlements, not least because that would deny the extremists who want to wreck the peace process easy propaganda to use against the Government of Israel, who are striving on all fronts to achieve a peace agreement.

The peace process is certainly dangerously incomplete without the positive involvement of Syria. It is important to remember that the dispute between Israel and Syria did not start in 1967. There was constant trouble and warfare on the armistice lines between 1949 and 1967, and everyone who takes an interest in the subject must realise the extreme Israeli sensitivity about future security on the Golan heights.

This year, 1995, is surely the year in which progress on this dispute can be made. First, there is Syria's need for more economic aid, now that the Soviet Union no longer exists to back it up. Israel does not have elections this year and so has time to prepare a package to put before the electorate in 1996. President Clinton does not have elections this year either; without big American involvement, I do not believe an agreement to be possible.

There will surely have to be a step-by-step approach to the problem. Initial territorial compromise will be needed before a complete solution is achieved. I do not believe that a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria will be adequate, but America will need to give as strong a guarantee for the security and stability of the Golan heights as she gave to west Berlin at the time of the cold war.

It is impossible to overemphasise the fact that a poor middle east is a dangerous middle east. Enormous improvements in living standards could be made if only these countries would reduce the amount that they spend on arms. Wild talk of an Islamic nuclear bomb and the dangerous unpredictability of Iran, to say nothing of the situation in Algeria, make it all the more important that we make progress in 1995; and that peaceful co-existence, with all the advantages that it would bring to Israel and her neighbours, becomes a reality, not a dream.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on securing the debate and making an excellent speech. I thought that some of my hon. Friends' observations assumed an influence for this country that we simply do not have—and have not had for a long time. The Foreign Office does not enjoy the influence in the middle east that it thinks it should have. It has forfeited that and has not made a particularly good job of affairs in the middle east. I am even handed about that. That has been the position since Ernest Bevin. I absolve the Minister of State. He enjoys a good reputation in the House and a growing international reputation on the issue. I do not blame him for the lack of influence that the Foreign Office appears to have in the middle east.

The hon. Member for Hertsmere mentioned a number of points which should be pursued. He mentioned Europe, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross). It is true that Israel was among the first non-European states to recognise the importance of the Common Market and it signed an economic accord with the trading bloc in 1975. Today, after all that time, Israel's trade deficit with the European Union amounts to about £7 billion per annum. The British Government should do something about recognising that. They have failed actively to encourage our European partners to support Israel's trade agreement and they should do more in that regard.

The key issue involving Israel today is the peace process and what is going on in the nations that surround Israel. The biggest worry of all is Syria and the Syrians' failure to take a much more positive attitude to the peace process. Syria's main interest focuses on the return of the Golan heights to Syria and no one can underestimate their strategic and military importance. But Mr. Rabin's Labour Government have made it clear that they are prepared to withdraw on the Golan heights for a full and comprehensive peace with Syria.

Unfortunately, our Government are not positive enough in pursuing that. We should take a far stronger line with Syria on the question of Hizbollah and other terrorist groupings, to which the hon. Member for Hertsmere referred, and the fact that they find a safe haven in Syria from which to conduct attacks on the state of Israel. The British Government should be much clearer in what they are saying to the Syrian Government about that and be much more demanding that they desist in order that the peace process may be progressed.

Likewise, the British Government, despite our long friendship with King Hussein and the people of Jordan, are not positive enough about Jordan. Jordan has acted with great courage in the peace process. King Hussein and his Government are to be warmly congratulated on what they have done. But, again, there is a trade deficit between Jordan and the United Kingdom and, despite promises, the United Kingdom has agreed to write off only approximately 10 per cent. of Jordan's debt. I hope that the Minister will say something about that.

The hon. Member for Hertsmere also referred to the £75 million available to the Palestine National Authority. He made a good point about that, but so far only £10 million has reached the Palestinians. That is not a good record. I accept that circumstances have not been as conducive to the delivery of aid as we had hoped, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about that in order to assure us that the money that has been earmarked for the Palestine National Authority will reach it as a matter of urgency.

On Europe we have not done enough; on Syria we have not done enough: on Jordan we have not done enough: on the Palestinian question we have not done enough. Those questions must be addressed by the Government. When they are addressed, then and only then will the Government be able to say that they are making a positive contribution to the peace process.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on his success in securing the debate. I do so with some feeling because he and I applied for a one-and-a-half-hour debate on peace in the middle east: he was successful and I was not.

Peace in the middle east will come only when there is mutual trust. That mutual trust would be helped if the people of Israel could be told of the fate of the Israeli hostages, if those who are alive could be returned to their families in Israel and if the remains of those whose death has been confirmed could be sent back to their families.

We must remember that John McCarthy and Terry Waite live in freedom because Israel kickstarted the release of hostages in the middle east by releasing a large number of prisoners. That decision meant that the west owed Israel a debt of honour. Israel had a right to expect that she would receive something in return. In fact, all she received in return were the bones of a dead Druze soldier.

The parents of Zachary Baumel still do not know his fate 12 years after he was captured; Joseph Fink's parents have been told that he is dead, but they have still not been able to give him a burial; but much worse is the case of Ron Arad. On 31 December, when the people of England were celebrating new year, Ron Arad was celebrating his 3,000th night in captivity.

Ron Arad was shot down on 16 October 1986. It is known that he was captured by the Amal and it admitted that it was holding him. In the first year of his captivity, he was allowed to write three letters to his wife, Tami, who also received two photographs from him, but since 1987 there has been a ghastly silence from that poor man. His relatives have not received a message and he has not been allowed to receive any messages from them.

In 1988, he was removed from the care of Amal and transferred to the care of the Resistance of Believers. In 1989, he was transferred to that benevolent organisation, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Until recently, we have had only rumour to go by, but this weekend an Iranian appeared on Israeli television to say that he had seen Ron Arad alive in 1994. Mr. Manucher Matumer—I apologise to the gentleman if I have mispronounced his name—appearing on Israel television on 25 February this year, said: "I have a message both for the wife and the mother of Ron Arad. The message is: your husband is alive; your son is alive."

It is surely a scandal that, some eight and a half years after that man was captured in Lebanon, he is being kept in solitary confinement, against all the rules of the Geneva convention, and that his mother, his wife and his young daughter have not heard from him. Surely if we are to have peace in the middle east, Ron Arad should be allowed to return to his family rather than being kept in solitary confinement in Iran. His continued incarceration is an act of sheer barbarism.

There is always a risk that a new peace process will create a crisis of rising expectations. We know that Camp David did not yield the immediate dividend that everyone expected. There was not the anticipated increase in tourism and trade from Egypt to Israel. One of the tragedies of the middle east is that the bus that used to go from Tel Aviv to Cairo was full of Israelis, but the bus from Cairo to Tel Aviv was only infrequently full of Egyptians.

I believe that the peace between Jordan and Israel will be a very warm peace. I pay tribute to the courage of King Hussein, who must always have been reminded of the fate of his grandfather. Anyone who has stood on Allenby bridge knows that people and goods have moved between Israel and Jordan for a very long time. One of the risks involved in the peace must be that the people of Jordan may feel that their economy is not expanding quickly enough. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when he visits the middle east later this month, will be able to give them economic hope.

When the people of Israel signed the Oslo agreement, they hoped that they were getting security. We have seen in Argentina, London and Israel how Hamas is determined to try to defeat peace in the middle east. The people of Israel deserve our understanding when they have to act to try to ensure security and peace for their own people, because if they do not succeed in doing that peace in the middle east will be very much at risk.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on securing the debate and on choosing this topic. I particularly commend his use of the phrase "warm peace", which, perhaps, has guided the whole tone of the debate. That is to be welcomed.

I say respectfully to the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) that these debates are an opportunity for us to go further than simply rehearse and exchange old grievances, no matter how deep and legitimate the hurt that lies behind them.

I share the anxiety of the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South-West (Sir D. Madel), who expressed concern that the middle east peace process should not stall, but let us begin by recognising the unique place in the history of democratic government that the present Government of Israel will have. The endeavour on which they have set out is one of the boldest, bravest and most testing endeavours that any democratic Government in the history of democratic Governments have ever attempted. It is a matter of pride for me that the party that lies at the core of that Government bears the name of my own party and shares many of our hopes and traditions, and that we can say truthfully, sincerely and with great respect that they are our brothers and sisters. All my hon. Friends who have spoken have done so in that sense and with respect for the great endeavour that is being undertaken.

I recognise some of the points that the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South-West made about settlements, but the present Government of Israel face not one set of extremists but two, and the courage of the measures that the Israeli Government have already taken on settlements gives some hope for the future.

Time is short and I want to allow the Minister adequate time to reply. At the heart of the matter is a rapid construction of the strength, legitimacy and success of the Palestine National Authority. Without that, the peace process will stall. The strength and legitimacy of the Palestine National Authority will depend, as my hon. Friends the Members for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) and for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden) pointed out, on its ability to legitimise its own place in the life of the Palestinian people through election processes.

But it does not end there. This is a battle for hearts and minds that will be won as much on kitchen tables as ballot boxes. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) made a telling intervention on precisely that point. When the Prime Minister visits Israel and Gaza—he will take all our hearts with him when he does so—I hope that this will lie at the core of his visit. Something must be done quickly to improve the water, sewerage, electricity, homes and jobs of the people for whom the Palestine National Authority currently bears responsibility. I hope that that is the framework in which we can start to discuss the matter and move it forward. Skilful diplomacy and tough and plain speaking are certainly important, but let us not forget the part that chicken and vegetables will play in resolving the matter.

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that the Prime Minister will not go to Israel and Gaza with empty hands, and that we have, ready to be delivered quickly, while it is still important and while it can win the hearts of people, positive proposals to put young men back to work, to give them a place in their own community and to give them some sense of their own power and place in society, because that is as important in Gaza as it is in many other parts of the world.

May I begin, like all other hon. Members, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on having secured this debate? It has been an extremely good debate and it has reinforced the wisdom of the House in creating opportunities on a Wednesday morning for such debates. The number of participants demonstrates the importance that hon. Members attach to promoting the peace possess within the middle east.

The starting point for every speech has been a very strong welcome for the peace process. Hon. Members have recognised the very considerable courage that has been shown by Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat. It is right that we should all recognise—as did the hon. Members for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross), and for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bedfordshire, South-West (Sir D. Madel) and for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall)—the contribution that His Majesty the King of Jordan has made.

I agree that, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden) said, the momentum of the peace process must be maintained. It cannot stand still, because if it does it will fall.

The agenda for the debate was set by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere. I agree with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, who apologised to the House for not being able to stay for the closing speech, about the comprehensive framework that my hon. Friend set for our discussion. My hon. Friend touched on all the major issues. Therefore, in the course of my response, I will base what I have to say on the framework that he established.

My hon. Friend concentrated substantially on security. He is entirely right when he says that security has overshadowed the middle east peace process, most notably in recent months. Israel clearly has a right to look to Chairman Arafat and other neighbours to combat terrorism, but another proposition needs to be advanced. Terrorism in the middle east and the threat to the security of Israel cannot be checked or contained exclusively by military or police action. That is true whether it be military action by the Israelis, the Palestinians or anyone else.

Advances in political rights and increasing prosperity are an essential element in promoting the security of Israel. That point was made by the hon. Member for Dundee, West, and I wholly agree with him. It follows, therefore, that Israel should not make unattainable requirements of, for example, the Palestine National Authority, as a condition of further negotiations within the peace process.

As it is clear that security is at the base of so many of the difficulties in relation to the peace process, why have the British Government changed their attitude towards Syria? What is offered in exchange for the considerable support that they have given Syria in their change of attitude?

I shall deal with Syria shortly, but first I must emphasise that security is best promoted by the development and eventual achievement of a comprehensive peace process.

There has been a good deal of discussion about the importance of Syria in that peace process. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury)—I was glad to hear him break a 13-year silence—focused on that subject. I wholly agreed with his view that face-to-face negotiations between Syria and Israel are essential if there is to be agreement between the parties; solicitors are not an adequate channel, even if they are as good as Secretary Christopher. That, I think, is the point that my right hon. Friend was making.

I hope that face-to-face talks will take place. Indeed, discussions of that kind have already taken place in Washington, at ambassadorial level. Such talks, however, will not lead to an agreement unless it is based on the two propositions that have been advanced: total withdrawal from the Golan on Israel's part, and a full, comprehensive and—I would say—warm peace with Israel on Syria's part. Those are the two essential elements.

Hon. Members have pointed out that Prime Minister Rabin has committed Israel to full withdrawal, and—although at times the language has been a little equivocal—I think that he has. To the extent that he has, his commitment is welcome. I hope that Syria will now feel able to spell out in detail what is meant by "total peace": that, along with agreement with Syria, is essential to Israel's achievement of a comprehensive and sustainable agreement in the middle east involving all her neighbours.

The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) mentioned terrorism. All of us should do all that we can to persuade Syria that any endorsement of terrorism, either in southern Lebanon or in Israel itself, is wholly wrong and destructive of the peace process, and should be stopped. The British Government take every possible opportunity to make that plain.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere mentioned Jerusalem. He is entirely right to say that a way must be found to enable the various parties to the negotiations to reconcile their legitimate interests in Jerusalem, but that will be extraordinarily difficult. It will require generosity from all parties. I am convinced that that issue should be left until last.

I also agree with what I took to be the general message from the House about the importance of not taking steps designed to shape or pre-empt the ultimate agreement. Specific reference has been made to settlements: it was made very strongly by the hon. Member for Northfield but also by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South-West. In so far as we can stop the process, we must not allow settlements to be so constructed as to pre-empt that ultimate agreement. Indeed, I say categorically that the construction of settlements is an obstacle to peace, and I very much hope that the Israeli Government will desist from it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere rightly pointed out that bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Israel have never been better. Perhaps unconsciously, he was echoing a point made by Prime Minister Rabin when he visited the United Kingdom last year, and his view is strongly shared by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere welcomes my right hon. Friend's visit to Israel in two weeks' time, on which he will be accompanied by a substantial number of UK business men. Much of the preliminary work was done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove, who has contributed substantially to the promotion of Anglo-Israeli relations, which are very important.

The fact that so many business men are going to Israel with my right hon. Friend demonstrates the extent to which the boycott has fallen away. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South-West that a poor middle east is a dangerous middle east: that is a true statement, which influences our thinking.

We welcome the fact that business men are to go to Israel, but if business is to be done money must be invested. It is essential to use that money to return people to work.

Money is certainly important. In fact, the European Union is the largest contributor to the Palestinian cause in financial terms. As the hon. Gentleman will know, 500 mecu is promised over five years. But he is wrong: 100 mecu has been disbursed up to the end of February, and the British Government's contribution is £75 million over three years. We shall try to find other ways of enforcing our commitment, but the hon. Gentleman must allow my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to deal his cards as he thinks best.

The question of elections was raised by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Dundee, West and for Northfield. I agree that elections are terribly important: they underpin and reinforce the legitimacy of the Palestine National Authority. I also agree that it is extremely important for the Israelis to feel able to redeploy troops away from residential areas. Let me say to the Palestinians, however, that the Israelis have legitimate security interests. I hope that the Palestinians will themselves feel able to exercise flexibility in their calls for redeployment, taking account of the security requirements that Israel certainly has.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South raised the question of hostages, most notably the case of Ron Arad. I associate myself with what he said. As Ron Arad is still alive—we believe that he is, but we have no certain knowledge—the fact that he has been detained for so long is, as my hon. Friend said, a crying scandal. We say to any Government with influence—the Iranians, for instance, may have some influence—that it is indeed a crying scandal, and that Ron Arad should be released.

I also say to the Israelis in this context—although I am not establishing any kind of linkage—that we welcome what has been done recently with regard to Khiam prison. I recall that the hon. Member for Dundee, West raised the matter when we last discussed this issue. Two important steps have been taken. I welcome the Israeli Government's decision to allow families access to the prison; I also welcome the decision to release some 32 prisoners. As I have said, no link is involved, but I welcome what Israel has done and feel that her action should be applauded. Nevertheless, I again emphasise the importance of securing the release of Ron Arad, whose detention has been a scandal.

A number of important points have been made, but I am afraid that I have not been able to deal with all of them in 14 minutes. I mean no discourtesy to the House. This has been an important and interesting debate in the sense that to a considerable extent hon. Members have spoken with one voice. We are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere for making that possible.

My reason for requesting the debate is that Greater Glasgow health board has issued a consultation paper which proposes, among other things, the closure of Rutherglen maternity hospital. The debate is a direct response to that proposal. I have the support of my hon. Friends the Members for East Kilbride (Mr. Ingram), for Glasgow, Shettleston (Mr. Marshall), for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson), for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) and for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson).

The hospital was officially opened in May 1979 and has clearly established a first-class record for providing service to the area. The proposal is to close the hospital and to direct the people in its catchment area to Southern general hospital. The catchment area consists basically of Cambuslang, Halfway, Rutherglen, Toryglen and East Kilbride, in which a third of the mothers attending the hospital live, and it includes a swathe of south Glasgow. That is a big area containing 250,000 people. In contrast to many areas and to proposals for hospital closures, this catchment area is expanding, especially in East Kilbride.

The board's only justification for the closure is the "stand-alone" principle, with which I shall deal later. I am bitterly disappointed that, in a 20-page document, the future of the hospital is dealt with in six lines, within which the hospital and its ethos and service are dismissed by the board. It is disgraceful that the hospital is felt to be so unimportant that it is dealt with in such a short space.

By the end of the year, the hospital will have delivered almost 50,000 babies. It has an excellent record not only for the service that it was started to provide but for the various services that the hospital has developed since it opened. It provides a day-care unit, a parenthood education department, a community midwifery base, physiotherapy and speech therapy units, and two pre and post-natal wards with 50 beds. The ground floors house an antenatal clinic, ultrasound facilities, an X-ray department, a dietician, social workers, a pharmacy, biochemistry and an in-service training department.

I do not intend any criticism of any hospital anywhere in the Greater Glasgow health board area when I say that I cannot think of a more modern and up-to-date maternity facility in that area. As befits a centre of excellence, it continues to expand its services. Recent developments include a pre-pregnancy clinic which provides consultant assessment and counselling on a one-to-one basis. The hospital has an Ultramark 9 scanner, which is one of the most up-to-date available. It has a day-care unit for the monitoring and assessment of maternal and foetal well-being and it provides a comfortable environment. I shall deal with that later in my speech. It has a host of special facilities which it has developed over the years, and that justifies my view that it is a first-class centre of excellence.

Over the years, two wards have been closed on the top floor. The board made a special case on that to the Minister, but they were closed as a result of the shorter time that women now stay in hospital after having their babies—it has dropped from over a week in some cases to just a couple of days. In the spirit and attitude of the Rutherglen maternity hospital, those wards have been put to positive use and now contain the X-ray service and physiotherapists and speech therapists. One indication of the work that has been put in by the hospital staff is community support. Fund-raising events have been held frequently to ensure that the hospital is one of the best equipped in the city of Glasgow or the surrounding area. There was such an input from people that it has become a vital care in the community asset in which most of the younger people have a firm stake. The hospital has an excellent record in clinical safety, and I shall expand on that when dealing with the stand-alone argument.

In addition to the services which I have mentioned, the hospital has a first-class training department. It is part of the Victoria infirmary NHS trust and is committed to the pursuit of excellence through clinical training, audit and research. It provides higher professional training for senior registrars, and participates in an extensive range of clinical audit and research projects, which include a leading UK role in fish oil trials in pregnancy. There has been a systematic review of clinical practice in labour suites and it has locally co-ordinated the Scottish joint breast feeding initiative. It uses the Cochrane database which provides information on clinical trials in obstetrics. Those and other continuing developments in clinical practice clearly show that it is not just a maternity hospital but a centre of excellence.

My hon. Friend's views are strongly expressed in my community. Some 900 births a year—two thirds of all the births in East Kilbride—occur in that hospital. Its closure will have a major impact on the delivery of hospital, maternity and obstetric services in that important part of Lanarkshire. I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising these issues and wish him well in his campaign, which has the full support of my constituents.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. East Kilbride is a key part of the area that is covered by Rutherglen maternity hospital. That is shown by the fact that the East Kilbride community, led by Joe Quigg, was the first of the communities served by the hospital to initiate a campaign of opposition to the proposed closure. That group was, of course, supported by my hon. Friend.

One of the key points which even the Government seem to accept in the provision of services in the NHS is women's choice. If Rutherglen maternity hospital is removed as a choice, the women in the population of 250,000 people in the catchment area will have their choice removed at a stroke. That is unacceptable and it will be challenged.

As I have said, the stand-alone principle was the reason given by the board for closing the hospital. It takes the view that a maternity hospital should not stand alone from acute hospital services in case anything happens to a mother or baby during birth. The fact that the board dealt with that in only six lines shows that it does not have a large base on which to justify the stand-alone theory. If throughout the medical world there were a proven and accepted clinical reason for stand-alone maternity hospitals being regarded as unsafe and bad practice, I would not argue against it. If the clinical world said that such a system was not good for pregnant mothers, I would accept it. But the board's reasoning is disputed not just by lay people but by medical people and by the Victoria infirmary NHS trust board. The proposal should be reconsidered.

I would like to see the look on the faces of Scottish Office Ministers if the policy to abolish stand-alone maternity hospitals was implemented throughout Scotland, because they would then be responsible for trying to finance the building of replacement new hospitals. The policy has ramifications for Scotland, if not for the United Kingdom.

Let us consider the practical opposition to the stand-alone hospitals. Since Rutherglen was built, no mother has died either during or after transfer to the Victoria infirmary because of complications. The maternity hospital has a good track record. Greater Glasgow health board, to its credit, has not sought to cite any occasion when lives have been lost because of the stand-alone policy. I accept that the board must consider all aspects of health care, but it does not seek to fulfil the aim of providing optimum services in all health services. It does not station ambulances on motorways because of the bad risk of accidents taking place there. I do not see why we should accept its argument that, by abandoning the stand-alone maternity unit, it will provide optimum services to mothers in the catchment area.

The board's decision comes down to an unseen reason—cost. Mothers in the catchment area will be expected to travel to Southern general hospital in Govan, a journey which will take an extra 15 minutes. Who is say that that extra travelling time for those from Blantyre, East Kilbride or Halfway will not cause problems for mothers and babies and the people looking after them? The board has taken no account of the complications that could arise in that 15 minutes.

I make no criticism of any other hospital, but the board has tried to suggest that the acute and maternity services at Southern general are side by side. I have been reliably informed by people in the health service that should a mother develop complications in the maternity unit at that hospital, she would have to be transferred to the acute hospital services site by ambulance, because there is no direct route. That shoots down the argument that Rutherglen should be closed because of the delays experienced when mothers have to be transferred, because of complications, from that maternity hospital to the Victoria infirmary. The same argument applies to the Southern general, so where is the safety gain?

I pay tribute to a number of people who have campaigned for Rutherglen maternity hospital. They include members of the Victoria infirmary NHS trust board, who support the retention of Rutherglen. The campaign has received excellent support and backing from the chief executive of that trust, Barry Small, and one of the managers at Rutherglen maternity hospital, Jim Bretherton. One of the key people to challenge the stand-alone theory is Mrs. Kim Margey, of Rutherglen, who is a member of the National Childbirth Trust. Those people are part of the community campaign against the closure of Rutherglen.

The strength of local feeling was revealed when I organised a meeting of delegates from local community groups in the catchment area, when more than 400 people turned out. I remember the atmosphere in the hall when Dr. Neil McDougall illustrated the efforts of the staff to provide good services to the public. He came across extremely well and had the support of the audience. A host of other people and organisations are behind Rutherglen maternity hospital, for example, the Womens Royal Voluntary Service, which has supported the hospital for many years. That hospital and the services which it provides are valued in our community. I cannot vouch for those services, but my wife has certainly been a consumer of them. My younger son, Brian, is a true-born Ruglonian, because he was born at that maternity hospital, within the borders of Rutherglen town council and borough.

The hospital is rooted in the heart of the community. The chairman of Greater Glasgow health board, Sir Robert Calderwood, whom I respect, has said:

"In drawing up these proposals, the Board has sought to emphasise the importance of the involving of local communities in the provision of health care. "

The community served by the Rutherglen maternity hospital want it to remain open and it will continue to make that case. If Sir Robert is true to his word and the board listens to the community served by the hospital, the closure proposal will be withdrawn. The hospital and its staff will then be allowed to get on with providing their first-class service.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) warmly on securing a debate on this important subject, which I know is of great interest to him and to his constituents.

I should like to set out the current position on the future of Rutherglen hospital. Greater Glasgow health board has issued for public consultation a document setting out its purchasing intentions for acute and maternity services to the year 2001. That document sets out, among other matters, proposals for the reorganisation of maternity services for the Greater Glasgow health board area. The proposals suggest that Rutherglen hospital should close as part of the reorganisation and creation of new maternity services for the area.

Greater Glasgow health board is, of course, aware of the impact that its proposals will have outwith Glasgow. For example, over recent years the board has been in discussion with Lanarkshire health board. Its views have been sought as part of the current consultation exercise. The board will consider all responses lodged with it by the consultation deadline of 30 April. Any subsequent proposal by it to close the hospital would be subject to the consent of the Secretary of State for Scotland. He would have to he satisfied that better services would be put in place before he would agree to any such proposal.

May I reassure the hon. Member and the House that the current debate in Glasgow on how best to provide maternity care should not be taken to reflect on the staff and standard of care provided at Rutherglen hospital; but the board believes that continual improvement in care and services is vital. With that in mind, the board is merely seeking better ways of doing what it already does well.

The proposals in the Glasgow consultation document reflect a concern on the part of the board that, wherever practicable, maternity units should have the availability and back-up of the full range of clinical support services of a major acute hospital. As the hon. Member will know, the document sets out an argument against the Glasgow area retaining stand-alone maternity facilities. The health board aims to provide expert maternity services with full back-up facilities on site.

For the benefit of those present, Greater Glasgow has four NHS trusts which manage maternity services. Those services are currently organised from the Southern general hospital, the Queen Mother's hospital at Yorkhill, the Glasgow Royal maternity hospital and Rutherglen. In all, some 313 maternity beds are available. The consultation document, in proposing a reduction in bed numbers to 244, was arrived at following full discussions with local clinicians and general practitioners.

As its consultation document points out, 244 beds by the year 2001 is considered by the health board to be appropriate to estimated need and appropriate for the provision of a safe complement of beds for the city. That level of provision also takes account of the needs of women who may decide to come to Glasgow for their deliveries and maternity care in preference to their local health board services.

I have mentioned safety in terms of the board's views on future bed numbers. Safety is also a key consideration, of course, in the organisation of all health care—no less so for maternity services. Again, for the benefit of those hon. Members present, it is worth noting the consideration that lies behind the Greater Glasgow board's wish to have on-site full acute facilities to back up its maternity services.

In cases where mothers experience difficulties and complications after giving birth, it is obviously desirable and safer for all concerned that the full range of clinical support facilities of a major acute hospital be available on site. This is clearly set out in the board's consultation document.

There is another equally important consideration that has informed the Greater Glasgow board's thinking in this matter. As in most spheres of medicine, new techniques are also being developed by obstetricians, which allow the antenatal diagnosis of congenital disorders as part of the specialty of perinatal medicine. Where neonatal surgery and complex neonatal paediatric care are required, that can now be diagnosed before delivery. The board is of the view that there are clear safety benefits to be gained were babies in this category to be delivered and cared for on the site of the main neonatal surgical and medical paediatric unit—Yorkhill hospital, of course—and continuing services from the Queen Mother's hospital at the Yorkhill site is consistent with the board's view on back-up and the availability of specialist care.

Although I take on board some of the Minister's arguments, I agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) about the views expressed by doctors at Rutherglen maternity hospital which, in a sense, tend to contradict some of the Minister's remarks. It is worth bearing in mind that there are about six maternal deaths per 1,000 in the United Kingdom but that there has not been one maternal death at Rutherglen maternity hospital since it was opened. The proportion of perinatal deaths throughout the United Kingdom is nine per 1,000 but only five per 1,000 at Rutherglen maternity. Those figures tend to cancel the safety worries about the hospital as a stand-alone facility.

The hon. Gentleman's point will be taken into account in the consultation. The hoard is sympathetic to the views of those who support Rutherglen and will take those views into account before reaching a final decision. As I said, the Secretary of State's consent is required for any proposal to close Rutherglen.

As a dedicated sick children's hospital with associated academic units, Yorkhill is unique in the United Kingdom. As the board points out, this facility offers particular advantages in the care and treatment of sick newborn babies.

It is worth taking a step back for a moment and reminding ourselves of the great strides that have been made in developing maternity care in Scotland. Over the past few years, there have been steady improvements in maternal and infant health. Outcomes in childbirth in Scotland as a whole compare favourably with levels anywhere in the developed world. Since 1980, the rates of perinatal, neonatal and infant mortality have fallen by more than one third and the rates of maternal mortality are now so low that the fear of dying in childbirth has all but been eradicated. We should never take this achievement for granted, and it is worth reflecting how real a danger maternal mortality was until comparatively recently. We should never be complacent about these achievements—as ever, there is still further progress to be made.

Rutherglen does not have the advantage of being attached on site to the full range of back-up clinical support facilities—most critically, blood transfusion services—routinely found in a large acute hospital. That is why the board, having decided on the best course for the organisation and provision of modern services, is recommending the closure of Rutherglen.

As hon. Members will know, Rutherglen is a stand-alone maternity hospital. It has a proud history; it is held in high regard by the many mothers whose babies were delivered there and it is viewed with fondness, I am sure, by those born there. There will always be genuinely held strong feelings and attachments to local facilities, and the views offered in the consultation process and in this debate will further inform the health board's consideration of the proposals. Rutherglen hospital was opened in 1978 and currently has 56 beds, 15 special care cots and two intensive care cots. The hospital dealt with some 3,036 deliveries last year.

I mentioned that the Greater Glasgow board is in touch with neighbouring health boards on the proposals. Hon. Members may wish to know that, although it will be for individual mothers and their GPs to determine where individual births would occur, if Rutherglen were not available there would be sufficient capacity within existing facilities in Lanarkshire—principally at Bellshill hospital but also at Law hospital—to accommodate the current and anticipated levels of deliveries for Lanarkshire without any adverse effect on the quality of care.

I am grateful to the Minister, who has been very generous in giving way; that is much appreciated. I refer again to the heart of the problem, which is the stand-alone theory. Would he care to comment on the fact that the latest report states that only two patients in 3,000 in the past year were transferred from Rutherglen maternity hospital?

That is a telling point, which will inevitably be considered in the consultation. I have no axe to grind. Clearly, the hon. Gentleman wants the very best services that he can get for his constituents. Were Rutherglen to be closed, current anticipated Lanarkshire birth levels could be accommodated at Bellshill and Law hospitals without quality being compromised. The key point is that the Secretary of State has to be satisfied that there will be an improvement in services before he consents to any proposal from the board.

In the board's view, the forecast number of deliveries for the year 2001 could be met satisfactorily in the three proposed maternity units. Local access will, of course, be given full consideration, and geographical circumstances, which have been mentioned, will also be taken into account by the Secretary of State in his consideration of all closure proposals.

The Secretary of State will need to study the proposals carefully in the light of Government policy on the provision of maternity services. I shall briefly spell out that policy. I have outlined already some of the significant improvements that have been made over the years in maternity care. In particular, there has, of course, been a move to develop more sensitive, flexible and safe systems of care.

The Scottish Office has been keen to promote those developments. Last year, its policy review on the provision of maternity services in Scotland set the framework for action by health boards. It affirmed the importance of delivering maternity care which is sensitive and effective and which offers the best value for money. It asked health boards to examine their existing services with a view to further improving choices in maternity care—a matter that the hon. Gentleman stressed—to promoting DOMINO and other community-based schemes and to achieving a shift from specialised to less specialised forms of care.

Meanwhile, the CRAG/SCOTMEG group—the Clinical Research and Audit Group and the Scottish Management Efficiency Group—on maternity services has been looking in more detail at particular aspects of maternity care, with a remit to develop strategies for raising standards and improving training. The Government attach the highest importance to making certain that while these improvements take place, we continue to maintain the high standards of safety that have been achieved.

The benefits of easy access to services have to be considered alongside the need for sufficient concentration of staffing and resources to allow the delivery units to offer first-rate medical care, including the sophisticated technology of special baby care and neonatal intensive care units.

Delivery facilities need to handle enough births to ensure that clinical staff can keep up and improve their skills and experience in dealing with the more difficult cases and with emergencies. Proper arrangements need to be on hand to ensure 24-hour emergency medical cover and access to sophisticated clinical back-up. In short, the key is to work out for each local area, and in a way that is sensitive to local circumstances, the proper balance between the concentration and dispersal of resources for maternity services.

In reaching its planned configuration for bed numbers and locations, the Greater Glasgow health board has, quite properly at this stage, not announced what the final distribution of maternity beds will be between the three proposed sites. That remains a matter for discussion with clinicians. The location of neonatal intensive care cots will also be subject to clinical input before decisions are made. However, I know that, whatever the outcome, the board and NHS trusts will arrive at a flexible arrangement that can respond to future changes in need.

I am not in a position to anticipate the final outcome of the consultation exercise or the Secretary of State's decision, but the points made by the hon. Members for Rutherglen and for East Kilbride (Mr. Ingram) will be fully taken into account. There is no hidden agenda in the board's consideration of the organisation of maternity care provided for Glasgow. The current proposals have arisen from a genuine review of how best to match maternity care to need and how best to provide that care for the Greater Glasgow health board area. This strategy review is not driven by any artificial target on bed numbers. No target exists. The board's actions are confirmation of the board's continuing commitment to the policy of putting patients' needs first. We look forward to receiving its proposals following the conclusion of its consultations on 30 April.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen on raising the important matter. The fact that so many of his hon. Friends—the hon. Members for East Kilbride and for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood)—are—

Order.

I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to open an Adjournment debate on education in Kent, for it gives me the opportunity to comment on change—desirable and undesirable—in the structure, motivation, direction and philosophy in maintaining provision through the agency of Kent county council.

My right hon. and hon. Friends who represent Kent and I wish to place on record our unswerving and total support for the many hundreds of schools—local education authority-maintained and grant-maintained—in the county. We recognise fully the dedication of teachers, governors and parents who service the range and variety of schools in Kent, thus giving local parents a range of choice second to none in England and, therefore, giving Kent's children the opportunity of a first-rate education: the best start in life possible.

I am pleased to see my hon. Friends the Members for Medway (Dame P. Fenner), for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman), for Graveshan-i (Mr. Arnold) and for Dover (Mr. Shaw) supporting me today. Those of us who represent Kentish constituencies have wasted no opportunity at any time to praise Kent schools, not as a matter of form, but for genuine reasons of pride and admiration.

Until recently, there was a symmetry of interests between the local education authority, schools and parents. 'That symmetry of interests and working together to improve standards in Kent has been ruthlessly destroyed by the advent of the Lib-Lab pact at county hall. It is to that regime in Maidstone that I want to direct my charges. I charge it with wilful politicisation of the education bureaucracy, a total and cynical disregard of pledged commitments made while in opposition about open government and the need for transparency and accountability, a manifestation of complete hostility to the range of national policies, which allow Kent to enjoy the variety of schools and to permit the greater involvement of parents in the running of their children's school, and financial incompetence. The Lib-Lab pact in Maidstone is trying every which way to avoid owning up to financial irresponsibility of the like never before seen in Kent at county level.

The final straw for us in Kent since the loss of control by the Conservative party in May 1993 was that, a few weeks ago, the director of education services issued under his name a leaflet paid for by the council tax payers of Kent, which contained nothing more than a political, anti-Government message. The leaflet was issued at a cost of several thousand pounds to each local education authority-maintained school in Kent. No consultation was allowed with the governing bodies of those schools, although it is said that some governors, at some meetings, asked for some information about the future budget.

Copies of the leaflet simply arrived one afternoon at local schools and the teachers, staff and heads were told to distribute them. Many chairmen of governors, not only Conservatives, have expressed great concern over the use of teaching staff to pass on to parents in our communities a clearly political message. I am glad that a number of head teachers in north-west Kent refused to send out the leaflet because they felt that it was a political message and not part of their duty and responsibility.

Does my hon. Friend accept from me as a chartered accountant that the figures quoted in that leaflet were highly selective and designed solely for a political purpose? We must question the basis and the appropriateness of a director of education issuing such a leaflet under his name and whether he is able to continue to be an independent director of education, or whether he should get out of his bureaucrat's office and admit that he wants to play politics and become a politician.

The director of education in Kent has made known on several public occasions his hostilities to the policies of this Government. I am sure that he will read with interest the comments of my hon. Friend.

With regard to the leaflet, none of us in this Chamber objects to the political masters and mistresses of lire county of Kent issuing a message if they wish to do so. What is unparalleled in my 16 years in the House is the use of the director of education for the purposes of party political activities. That is wrong. What is more interesting about that particular unfolding of events is that I was told by the chief executive of Kent county council—a professional man indeed—that he did not see the leaflet in draft form until it had gone out. That is a significant development. What is going on between the different arms of the county bureaucracy?

I am fully aware that that development is not new. All of us—I welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to the debate—remember that, in the county council election campaign in April and May of 1993, neither the Labour or Liberal parties, nor any of my local Labour or Liberal Democrat candidates, made any reference whatever to their opposition to GM schools, although there was a reference to it in their manifesto kept in Maidstone. Many of them have since refused to back their local schools in ballots to become grant-maintained.

Kent council is bypassing the governing bodies, has made a commitment since 1993 to do nothing to assist in the forward movement of Government policies and, of course, as we know, last week descended into the sort of anarchy that we used to associate with central London Labour-controlled boroughs, by refusing on a number of occasions to allow members of the Conservative group on the county council to speak on important issues. That led to a walk-out by the Conservative group, which, of course, has the full support of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

What was significant about the budget debate the other day was that there was no publication of staffing levels for the years ahead. Over the past two years of Lib-Lab control, central staff numbers in Kent county council have risen from 14,694 to 15,556 persons. Thus, we are concerned about the reduction in KCC's commitments, while the level of bureaucracy has risen.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the most shameful result of that swelling bureaucracy, as the council increased numbers of central staff, was that at the same time it was hacking savagely at three particular areas of education: discretionary grants for those over 16 years old who complete their A-levels and foundation courses at colleges of further education, travel expenses for the over-16s and the adult education service, much prized in Kent?

My hon. Friend is right in his interpretation of those matters. Of course, there are other examples of waste, not least conferences, the Kent partnership programme, leaflets being issued, and attempts to force schools on local communities that do not want them. All hon. Members can find examples of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money being spent in Kent for quite the wrong purposes. It is the nature of the beast at county hall to want to cut high-profile services in the way that my hon. Friend mentioned.

The matter must be set against the background of half our secondary school pupils now in grant-maintained schools, for which Kent county council will have no budget at all, of no funding for further education, which is now the responsibility of the Further Education Funding Council, and of no careers service, and yet there is an increase in staff, and of the educational core staff in Maidstone. That is set against the background of a much declining role in education budgeting.

My hon. Friend is right. I shall quote the comments of the leader of the Conservative group, Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, who, on 23 February 1995, said:

"The KCC has lost much of its responsibility and role; 50 per cent. of our secondary school children are in Grant Maintained schools out of KCC control; we have lost Further Education and now Careers and Police. Despite this loss KCC has not reduced its central administration accordingly".

It is Conservative Members' duty to make every school, every grant-maintained school, every grammar school, every high school and every city technology college aware of the hostility of the Lib-Lab pact on KCC. KCC is not serving the people; it is frightening the people.

Surely one of the most shocking figures concerns the pay rises that the administrative staff have been awarded. They have totalled 7.1 per cent. over the past two years, which is 1.5 per cent. more than the teachers are receiving. Were not our Conservative colleagues on the county council right to oppose that increase?

The Conservative group on KCC put forward its own budget proposals, which could have funded the teachers' pay increase, restored the cuts that the Lib-Lab pact has made, and given Kent the familiar robust financial competence that had existed for more than 100 years. If it is a matter of the people or of Kent county council, it is our job, duty and pleasure to back the people every time.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) on raising this important subject. I can do no better than deal with the ill-informed comments of the signatories to early-day motion 708, which was tabled last night by six hon. Members, none of whose constituency is within 100 miles of Kent. Indeed, most are in the north of England. I shall deal with their specific points.

First, the signatories claim that 1 per cent. had been provided by the Lib-Lab pact for the teachers' pay increase in Kent. What they fail to state is that, simultaneously in the education budget papers, the Lib-Lab pact cut 1 per cent. from schools' delegated budgets, thereby taking them back to zero—in other words, no increase. Only last week, the Lib-Lab pact took a leaf out of the Conservative budget proposals to fund a 1 per cent. increase by drawing down from the over-provided GM schools common formula provision.

Secondly, in my speech on 7 February, I thanked the Government for a 2 per cent. increase in Kent's external funding—that is, revenue support grant and the business rate allocation—from £754 million to £770 million for KCC and Kent police combined. The Lib-Lab pact has claimed a £5.5 million cut. It does that by bringing in other specific grants, and including one year's figures but not the next, to produce the cut that it wishes to allege. That is quite bogus.

One can do anything if one is prepared to massage figures. In fact, I could create a massive funding increase for Kent county council by adding in the windfall of £20 million that KCC has saved from lower interest rates and £10 million from land sales, £30 million of which, incidentally, it has already blown.

Thirdly, I refer to conferences. The early-day motion mentions the Great Danes conference at a four-star hotel, which cost £30,000. The signatories are very coy about the other KCC conferences, which cost the Kent council tax payer 10 times as much. The Great Danes conference was addressed by, among others, Roy Pryke, the most effective politician of the left-wing troika running Kent education, the others being the Lib-Lab co-chairs, who have been notably hiding behind Roy Pryke's skirts as the flak has rightly flown of late. Another speaker was Professor Ted Wragg, a consistent opponent of Government education policies. He has said:

"The free market plans in curriculum and testing will restore and extend the stigma of premature failure."

Professor Wragg has also said:

"As the league table philosophy begins to predominate the less able will increasingly be seen as cripples."

He further said:

"Statethink was unknown in this country until 1988. It will be the norm in future."

I cannot help but think that that party political stuff, if repeated at the conference, was no help at all. It was a Lib-Lab political fun day, but it wasted vast sums of council tax payers' money.

Fourthly, the signatories to the early-day motion speak of cuts in the county council administration due to the departure of further education colleges. How do they know? As we have heard, the Lib-Lab pact has mysteriously left staffing numbers out of the budget book for the first time ever in Kent. All that we have to go on are the gross staffing numbers of the central organisation, which have risen from 14,694, when the Lib-Labs came in, to 15,556 today, an increase of 862.

In fact, as has been mentioned, with the departure of further education colleges, 88 GM schools and the careers service and with contracting out, administration costs and staff numbers should have fallen sharply. In practice, they have not. The county auditor, Price Waterhouse, has reported that

"This will not be sustainable."

I contend that millions of pounds, which are tied up, could have gone to our school budgets.

Fifthly, the signatories to the early-day motion claim that there are £1.8 million savings in central management costs. I have looked at the details. The Lib-Lab pact claims that £600,000 will come from income generation proposals, but no details of that are revealed, and that a further £416,000 is saved from cutting contingency funding. In other words, £1 million of savings is bogus. I could even further reduce the original savings figure of £800,000.

So much for the early-day motion. My hon. Friends from Kent, in early-day motion 710, were right: the Lib-Lab Members' arguments are as remote to Kent as they are to their own constituencies.

On the point that there were no staffing numbers included in the budgets that were put before Kent county council, is my hon. Friend aware that the council's accounts since the Lib-Labs have taken over have not been signed off by the auditors and that a number of people have raised questions about those accounts? Is he further aware that the accounts contain no information about directors' remuneration or the chief executive's remuneration? We live in an age of openness, supposedly, and the Labour party is trying to encourage openness, but much information about the levels of staffing and bureaucracy in Kent is not available.

May I finally put to my hon. Friend the point that grant-maintained—

Order. That intervention was quite long enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) seems to make the point that the Lib-Lab pact councillors do not have a clue about how to run a vast organisation. We are talking about our children's education and an organisation that has a turnover of more than £1 billion a year.

The debate has the elements of a tragedy. The Lib-Lab pact has underfunded our schools, slashed adult education, and hit discretionary grants, school transport and the youth service. It is all so unnecessary. I cannot make up my mind whether it is due to the breathtaking incompetence of the Lib-Lab pact or political malice to incite ill-informed Government-bashing. It is probably both.

In a cavalier fashion, the Lib-Labs first tried to gag the Conservative KCC alternative budget, then they voted it down. That budget would have fully funded teachers' pay, protected the schools budget, and reversed cuts in adult education and the other services that I mentioned. Why can Conservatives on the county council do that? It is because they, the Conservative county councillors, have years of experience in managing that vast organisation. They have produced a realistic budget with the front line as the priority. It is a tragedy, because education in Kent has been making so much progress. In 88 schools, parents and governors have already opted to become grant-maintained, and I shall cite three rapid examples.

St. George's comprehensive school in my constituency has a chairman of governors, Joe King, who is a Labour party supporter. But in his enthusiasm for grant-maintained status, he said:

"GM schools are so much cleaner and tidier looking".

He has also said that extra money is available because schools do not have to support central services and can buy what they need, and that the culture is not dependency based, but results from the self-confidence that comes from recruiting a good team and enabling it to seek the best for the school in its central task of teaching and learning.

The Northfleet school for boys is in the strongest Labour ward in Kent, yet John Hassett, its headmaster, has said:

"The freedom from KCC petty interference, and its politicians in Maidstone, who have far less awareness of local needs and of our pupils, has allowed this school to set its own local strategy—we are now a real community school".

The results for that high school have improved so that 20 per cent., rather than the previous proportion of 10 per cent., achieve five grade Cs and above.

Lastly, in Southfields school, a high school with a difficult catchment area, the redeployment of resources has improved its performance so that, whereas before it became grant-maintained 1 per cent. of its pupils achieved five GCSEs and more, 8 per cent. achieved that goal last year, and the school expects the percentage to double this year.

Those educational advances are what the debate in Kent should be about. Either the Lib-Lab pact on Kent county council could not run a whelk stall or it is using the children of Kent as a party political battering ram. Which is it?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), who has done a service not only for his constituents but For everyone living in Kent, in drawing the attention of the House to the problems that he has identified within that county. He was eloquently backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), who rightly took the opportunity to demolish just about every word in early-day motion 708, and also by the presence of and the interventions by my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Mr. Shaw), for Medway (Dame P. Fenner) and for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). [Interruption.] And, of course, by the presence of several more of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman).

I hope and trust that the wise words uttered by my hon. Friends will be widely read after the debate and will be digested by their constituents. Understandably, by taking a significant amount of time, my hon. Friends have left rather less time at my disposal, but I do not complain on that score because the quality of their contributions merited full and frank exposure.

I shall begin by commenting on the general issue uppermost in the minds of many parents and teachers—the education budget. The first aspect of education expenditure about which everyone in the House must be clear is that Kent county council, like every other local authority, is responsible for setting its own budget and for deciding its own priorities between and within services. It is the council that has the final say on how much is spent on education and how much on other services.

It has been alleged elsewhere that Kent has been forced to cut millions of pounds from its education budget for the forthcoming financial year. But there is no reason why that should happen. Kent's education standard spending assessment will increase, and under the capping rules it will be able to spend more in 1995–96 than it is spending in 1994–95. In total, Kent will be able to spend more than £955 million—nearly £1 billion—on all its services.

So where does the talk about cuts come from? The county council is not cutting what it is actually spending; it is drawing up a shopping list of additional spending, then cutting what it would ideally like to spend if it could buy all the items on the list.

I know that Kent schools, like schools in other areas, will be concerned about the teachers' pay award. The Government have accepted that award, subject to consultation, on the recommendation of the independent schoolteachers review body. The review body acknowledges the fact that financial provision has been set on the basis that pay increases should be offset or more than offset by efficiency gains and increased productivity.

Of course I acknowledge that the award will place local authority budgets under pressure. Ministers have made that clear in recent weeks, and I reiterate it from the Dispatch Box today. But local authorities are large, financially complex organisations, and they have a variety of means at their disposal to realise the efficiency gains needed.

To draw a fairly obvious parallel, the Government expect the Further Education Funding Council to make efficiency gains of 5 per cent. over the coming year. That will be tough but we are confident that the council will make it, and we are entitled to look to local authorities to examine their budgets in a similar way and to learn to live within them, prioritising appropriately.

Schools and parents will want to ask the county council other important questions. How much of its total budget does the county intend to spend on education? What proportion of its schools budget will it delegate to schools? I shall not bandy comparative figures about, because that would be tantamount to telling the council exactly what it should do. But I can say that it has some way to go to catch up with what many local education authorities are already doing on both those fronts. Governors are entitled to look to local authorities to give priority to front-line services such as schools, and I hope and trust that Kent county council will do that.

My hon. Friends, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham, moved on to the general question of grant-maintained schools. As he is well aware, devolving power to institutions is one of the central themes of our education reforms. Our commitment to devolution is not the product of ideology or of some esoteric theory but is based on the commonsense principle that giving more power to managers who are closer to the customers is likely to produce a better service.

While he is talking about the devolution of power, and the way that that can happen with grant-maintained schools, will my hon. Friend congratulate St. Edmund's school in Dover, which opted out of Kent county council control, became grant-maintained and has now increased the number of its teaching assistant staff by six to provide more teachers in the classroom? It needed no additional resources to do that.

My hon. Friend has graphically, in one sentence, explained precisely the sort of reason why grant-maintained schools are so popular. Of course I join him in congratulating that school and many other grant-maintained schools, especially in Kent, where the concept of self-government has taken off so strongly. As has already been said, half the secondary schools in Kent are now self-governing.

The aims of our policy on grant-maintained schools are clear. They are to raise education standards in GM schools—

What about all the rest?

I hear what the Opposition education spokesman, who has just joined us, says—but another of our aims is to encourage LEAs to be more responsive to the needs of the schools that they continue to control. For both those aims, the signs are promising.

It is clear that the grant-maintained option, combined with local management, has prompted LEAs to switch from a control to a support mode. There is also clear evidence that GM schools are achieving better results than their LEA counterparts and, not surprisingly, that they are popular with parents.

Sadly, ever since the change of control in Kent county council, the LEA has made it clear that it does not support the policy of encouraging grant-maintained schools, selective schools or city technology colleges. I understand that Kent has decided to freeze building maintenance, other than essential health and safety work, for schools that are balloting parents on GM status. If that is so, it is unjust. GM status is aimed at extending choice for parents and allowing them to decide on the way in which their schools should be managed. It is morally wrong that when they are offered that choice, their school is discriminated against, especially when it is the pupils who suffer.

Perhaps there is some confusion in the minds of the members of the Lib-Lab pact in Kent. Two weeks ago, the Daily Express reported that the leader of the Labour party was studying plans to allow all state schools to opt out of council control. I have news for the leader of the Labour party, which I am willing to give today, free of charge. That plan is unnecessary—the opportunity already exists. If the Labour party could, in the words of Lord Wilson, "take their tanks" off the lawns of schools up and down the country whose only crime is wanting to run themselves, there would be a large increase in the number of grant-maintained schools. That would be popular with parents and with teachers. It would also be popular with a growing number of Labour and Liberal Democrat activists, including Members of Parliament. My hon. Friend made a passing reference—

Order.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise a problem that has existed for some time, but which is raising its head a little more. That problem is stythe coming from old mine workings in Northumberland. I might add that Northumberland is one of the oldest coalfields in Britain, and there are thousands of miles of underground roadways in Northumberland, and also in Durham, where mining has taken place.

Stythe is a common oxide which eats up the oxygen in air. It is not methane, which is a poisonous gas which kills quickly. When I worked in the mines, we called stythe blackdamp, and it is very dangerous. The problem occurs throughout Northumberland, not just in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) are in the Chamber, and I am sure that they have stories to tell as well.

The problem arose in a big way in 1985 due to the closure of the last remaining colliery on our side of Blyth, and began when the pumping of the water at the colliery stopped. All the people concerned with stythe in mines have buried their heads in the sand, and nobody has wanted to take the responsibility. My local council had to take British Coal to court to try to get it to do something about stythe. It did—as a matter of good will—but then said that it had no responsibility, because the areas concerned were not its responsibility.

Perhaps the Minister can answer this question. Who is responsible for the old mine workings? It seems that the pits below the old mine workings where some of us worked are now filling up with water for the first time in years, and that is pushing the stythe up into the workings near the surface. The enormous pressure of the water coming in slowly over a period is pushing up the stythe.

I received a letter this morning from Mr. R. Robertson, who was a ventilation engineer with the National Coal Board and with British Coal. He wrote to say that he had seen me on television making a statement, and that I was right. Mr. Robertson is now retired. He said that the situation will get worse due to the rising water coming into the workings where the pumps have been switched off. He was an engineer who began working on the problem in 1988. He mentioned the Pegswood site, where he was involved in an advisory capacity.

Is my hon. Friend aware that there is evidence that stythe is under some houses in Pegswood? The problem arises because of the good neighbourly attitude adopted by British Coal, and now by the Coal Authority. I have just spoken to Castle Morpeth council, and I was told that any costs incurred in surveying the problem in the borough will fall on the shoulders of the local authority. Would my hon. Friend like some funding to be made available to deal with the problem by carrying out research and by providing a monitoring system throughout the county?

I could not agree more. Mr. Robertson's letter goes on to say that stythe is a serious matter, and it is getting more serious as time goes by. He has raised his concerns with me, and I am pleased to be able to put them to the Minister today.

As I have said, the rising water is pushing stythe up the old workings. Where the strata is loose, the stythe could find a path anywhere.

The hon. Gentleman will know of the tragic death only a few weeks ago of Donald Tollett, who was overcome by gas fumes at Widdrington station in my constituency. He had gone there with a young child to prepare feed for a horse. The gas escaped from mine workings through an old drift. The hon. Gentleman will know, as I do, that there are old drifts and drift entrances all over the county. Does he agree that they must be carefully monitored if we are not to have a repeat of that terrible and tragic incident?

I knew about that tragic death, and it is a shame that a life had to be lost because somebody somewhere has not taken responsibility. That is my argument. Who is taking the responsibility? The Coal Authority has now said that the problem is not its responsibility, but it must be someone's responsibility.

We need a survey to be carried out, because the position is getting worse. Where pits have been closed and pumping has stopped, the water is rising underneath and is pushing the gas up. It could come through anywhere. We do not know where, as some of the old workings are 100 years old and are not on any charts or maps.

In my constituency we have 12 mines, and Seaham Harbour is a town founded on three mines with perhaps nine pit shafts. My village of Murton was founded upon Murton colliery, which has three large pit shafts, and that area is due to be reclaimed for a housing development. Does my hon. Friend have information that the Government now no longer agree with the "polluter must pay" principle? Does he think that mining communities which have suffered from dirt, filth and noise for 150 years must now stand the cost on their council tax to carry out surveys of what remains of redundant coal sites?

That is the thrust of my argument. British Coal said before that it would do that as a matter of good will. It said that it would put a fan in where it was needed, and possibly do some grouting here and there. But it would not accept responsibility.

I want to refer to what happened in Cramlington at the same time as the man died in Widdrington in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. The incident was serious enough for the police, mines rescue and environmental health people to be called out. What appears to have happened—it has happened once before—is that the fan did not pull in the gas. There is another argument there, because we discovered following the incident that the fan there had been contracted out from one mining company to another mining company. We do not know who has got the contract. We know that British Coal has given the contract as a matter of good will, but it still will not accept responsibility.

Has the contract been maintained properly? There was a high level of gas in houses in the area on that day, as atmospheric pressure was light and allowed it to come out of the ground and into the houses. At the environmental health meeting, it was said to be a fairly serious gas leak.

We have found out that the nearest seam was only 15 m below the surface where the houses were built. There is only 2 ft of clay, which is a good barrier to gas. Stythe will not get through clay, but below that is porous sandstone, which the gas will get through—as an ex-miner, I am well aware of that. We found that some of the sewerage and waste disposal pipes were dug into the sandstone and that there was a crevice under the pipe—a path along which the stythe could travel to the manhole cover, up the pipe and into the house.

People experienced great difficulties because they could not strike a match in the house or light the gas if the pilot light went out. They had no central heating. Hon. Members will understand the enormity of the problem. It has happened before, but it is happening more often because the water level is rising in the old mine workings, where we worked many years ago, and is pushing the gas up. As the workings are only 15 m below the houses, we can grasp the seriousness of the problem.

The more the pressure builds up in parts of Northumberland, the more the gas will leak and the more we will want an early warning system. I am not an engineer, only a politician, and I do not know what can be done. I initiated this debate because the problem needs to be aired. Too many people are burying their heads in the sand. There has already been one death and I am sure that the Minister will agree that we do not want any more.

If it is true that the problem is getting worse, the Minister has a responsibility to issue some sort of statement and to say whether the Government are trying to get some action or to have the areas of Northumberland where there are problems surveyed. I am afraid that it is our legacy. Unfortunately, Northumberland is one of the oldest coalfields in the country. The problem is there and it will not go away, so we need to tackle it. We need advice and we need mining engineers. I am sorry, but if it is going to cost money, the Coal Authority will have to take responsibility. Mine workings do not belong to anyone but that authority—I do not know about 100-year-old workings, but I think that the authority took over responsibility for old mine workings, so it is still up to the authority. That responsibility does not belong elsewhere.

Environmental health officers have told me that since 1987 we have had 29 gas warnings in Blyth Valley. I do not know about Castle Morpeth, Berwick or other areas. We have had 29 scares in our area and the number is increasing all the time. Usually, it happens in spring or autumn, when the atmosphere is light and allows the gas to come out of the ground. That is okay if it happens in the middle of a field, but unfortunately, if there are houses or an industrial site, the stythe can find its way in and obviously it can kill. The symptoms are easy to overlook. One feels fluey, tired and nauseous and wants to lie down and sleep. One lady did fall asleep on the couch. She was lucky to be awakened by one of her family. She was lying on a low couch and the stythe was well above the average and reached couch level. Perhaps she would not be here if she had not been woken. That just about sums up the seriousness of the problem and I hope that the Minister can come up with some answers.

I thank the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) for setting out thoroughly the problems facing parts of Northumberland, which arise from stythe gas emissions predominantly from old coal mine workings. He has shown the particular concern that we all feel, not only for the plight of his constituents but for those in other areas who may be affected. We also heard a little about them.

I join the hon. Gentleman in offering my condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Donald Tollett whose death he mentioned. Unfortunately, he lost his life in February as a result of stythe gas emission.

Blackdamp, as stythe is also called, is a mixture of oxygen-deficient mine gas—predominantly carbon dioxide. As the hon. Gentleman explained, it is known as stythe in Northumberland. Blackdamp and firedamp, or methane, have long been a concern in coal mines. There have been a number of disasters in coalfields throughout Britain and elsewhere in the world as a result of those gases. Much effort has been spent by mine operators and the regulatory authorities to reduce the risk to miners, but that research effort has been focused primarily on improving the safety and efficiency of underground coal mining operations. More generally, much of the attention has been focused on methane, because it is explosive, rather than on carbon dioxide.

As the hon. Gentleman knows and has explained, carbon dioxide is an insidious source of danger. It is colourless and odourless, but is an asphyxiant and is toxic. Breathing becomes difficult in air containing 3 per cent. of carbon dioxide and slight headaches may be experienced. At 10 per cent. by volume, headache, palpitations and breathing difficulties occur and can lead to unconsciousness after about one minute of exposure. In addition, carbon dioxide has a greater density than air and, as he said, that means that it can accumulate readily in confined, poorly ventilated places, forming a layer at floor level into which the unwary may stray without warning. Since it is not generally obvious why the initial victim has become unconscious, rescuers are often put at risk, and it was fortunate that the recent event in Northumberland did not claim more than one life.

Problems of mine gas emissions are by no means restricted to Northumberland. Indeed, mine gas incidents have been recorded in all the major coalfield areas. Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained the Government's general approach to considering them.

A "Review of the significance of natural contamination to planning and development" was carried out for my Department by the British Geological Survey. One of a series of reports which are to be published shortly by the BGS is entitled "Natural methane, carbon dioxide and oil contamination: relevance to planning and development". It deals with the relevance of natural strata and mine gas emissions in the overall context of surface gaseous hazards and concludes that the most significant actual and potential occurrences of surface methane and carbon dioxide emissions from mines are in areas of shallow coal mining.

The report also concludes that the relatively small number of recorded mine gas emission incidents suggests that the hazard is relatively minor and of local significance compared, for example, with the extensive problems associated with mining-related subsidence or the gas problems associated with landfill sites. Individual instances can cause severe and sometimes expensive or life-threatening problems, however. The report recommends further studies of the importance and surface impact of gas emissions from abandoned coal mines.

Further to the BGS recommendation, research is under way on "The planning response to methane and other gases from disused coal mines". That research is being undertaken for my Department by Wardell Armstrong and aims to establish the role of the planning system in reducing hazards due to gas emissions from disused coal mines and to prepare a detailed framework of advice for planners, developers, land and property owners, insurers and others. The research is due to be completed later this year.

The research by Wardell Armstrong has included 'a technical review of mine gas sources, migration pathways and emissions. A study of a specific area, involving the gathering of all available data relating to the occurrence of mine gases and the mining, geological, and hydrogeological setting, has been undertaken at Gateshead.

If the survey to which the Minister referred shows that extraction devices should be fitted to some of the mine shafts currently in my constituency, for example, is he telling the House that his Department is prepared to put up the money to have those devices fitted?

The hon. Gentleman must recognise that the cause of the problem must be found before we look to the source of the solution. It would be appropriate for us to wait for the results of the research, which are expected later this year.

Will the Minister make it crystal clear whether the Government still subscribe to the policy that the polluter must pay, whether it be for surveys or the installation of fans or other associated equipment necessary to drain polluted areas of toxic gases?

We have made it clear that the polluter must pay, but in this case we must also work out the cause. Part of the survey will give some indication of that.

Current research and guidance will be reviewed to assess its relevance to mine gas emissions and key legal and planning issues will be examined. The hon. Gentleman has jumped the gun. Although that research is not yet complete, much of the basic data have been gathered and are currently subject to analysis and reporting. Some interesting results are becoming evident.

There may be little problem if the gas stays within an abandoned mine unless people enter that mine. In some cases, however, factors cause the gas to migrate from one place to another. Thus every mine gas incident requires three basic ingredients: obviously, an accumulation of gas within the mine; a migration pathway to the surface; and a triggering event.

The Minister was present when I said earlier that monitoring equipment is being installed in the village of Pegswood in my constituency because of an incident in December 1993. That equipment was provided by the local authority with some help by the Coal Authority on a good neighbourly basis. Does he recognise that, while all those useful surveys and research are going on, we cannot stick pieces of paper on the ground to prevent the stythe from coming up? What we can do is monitor the problem and, if an alarm goes off because oxygen levels have fallen to below 80 per cent., we can at least warn people. We need help in monitoring now.

The hon. Gentleman may agree that the problem is so widespread, even though it occurs in isolated areas, that we need to understand it and find out where it is likely to occur before we move in that direction. That is the most constructive thing that we can do.

First, it is worth pointing out that carbon dioxide occurs naturally in soil and rocks and is generated by the oxidation of coal. The formation of stythe in old mines is a relatively slow process, but the gas is likely to be present in any unventilated or abandoned mine workings. Secondly, the processes and physical factors that may influence gas migration are varied. Those may include displacement of gas as water levels rise due to seasonal rainfall variations or the cessation of mine de-watering. Conversely, de-watering of a mine may allow gas to accumulate. The density differs between mine gas mixtures and air influence movements, as do variations in barometric pressure. Thirdly, the extent to which the mine voids are sealed off from the surface, for instance where mine openings have been capped or plugged, or if fissures in the rock are beneath a cover of homogenous clay, has an important influence.

While any, or all, of these factors may be involved in a mine gas incident, a po006Frly ventilated space within which the gas may accumulate and which is entered by people is central to the existence of a hazard. However, it is by no means easy to define all the factors that lead to a mine gas incident because of the complexity of mined ground, which may contain numerous old workings at different levels. Some may have collapsed but others remain open. Mines may have broken through into neighbouring workings to aid ventilation or water control during working. Different levels are connected by numerous shafts and adits. Many old shallow workings and mine openings are unrecorded, as the statutory duty for mine owners to keep mine plans was not introduced until 1850 and the requirement to register abandonment plans was not introduced until 1872. For those reasons, it is also difficult to predict where mine gas incidents may occur, except in a general manner.

I have listened carefully to the Minister, who has given details of the gases and so on. But he has not touched on the nub of the problem, which is the possible loss of life. I explained the dangerous position in Blyth Valley. We must try to eliminate that, but the Minister has not yet dealt with the matter. He must give assurances to my constituents and those of my hon. Friends that nobody else will die as a result of those gases and that someone will come to our constituencies and put the matter right.

I am trying to explain the difficulties and why we need the research. I realise the urgency, which is demonstrated by the fact that, although the research is not yet complete, we are already working on the details that have come in. The full research is expected some time this year.

The researchers, Wardell Armstrong, have collected details of mine gas incidents at 77 sites throughout the coalfield areas of Great Britain. About 25 of those related to carbon dioxide emissions, compared with about 72 per cent. which related to methane. As the effects of carbon dioxide emissions are less easily detected than those of methane, it is possible that more emissions occur than we recognise. Some 50 per cent. of the incidents were found to be linked, or probably linked, to emissions from abandoned mine entries. Another important means of passage of mine gas to the surface is through cracks in hard layers of bedrock.

Most mine gas incidents have been detected because of chance events. While there has been an increasing incidence of reports over the past decade, our preliminary analysis suggests that that may well be due to an increasing awareness of gas hazards and to monitoring of landfill gas, rather than a real increase in the occurrences of emissions from abandoned mines.

We must examine what may be done about hazards due to mine gas emissions. It is the responsibility of the developer to determine the suitability of land for a particular purpose. In particular, the responsibility and subsequent liability for safe development and secure occupancy rests with the developer and/or landowner. The local planning authority may treat the possibility of mine gas emissions as a material planning consideration and refer to that in development plans. In addition, the authority may wish to satisfy itself whether any land allocated for specific purposes in such a plan may be subject to mine gas problems. However, it remains for the developer to make adequate investigations including, for example, monitoring gas levels in boreholes or mine voids that may exist beneath a development site.

The building regulations require precautions to be taken to avoid danger to health and safety caused by substances found within the ground to be covered by a building. While those mechanisms control new development and changes to the use of land, there is also the issue of existing development, which may be subject to problems.

The Occupiers' Liability Acts place responsibilities on the occupier of land for the safety of employees, legitimate visitors and trespassers on their land or premises. In addition, health and safety at work legislation places responsibilities on employers for the safety of their employees. The same legislation also places on employers a responsibility for maintaining a safe place of work at working mines, including the protection of the public.

The Environmental Protection Act 1990 gives local authorities the means to abate a statutory nuisance and to recover the costs from the landowner. This could include escapes of gas which may affect surface properties. A major constraint on early action is, however, the limited extent to which it is possible to predict where and when the gas may escape.

Since the Coal Authority came into being, a single reporting procedure has been implemented irrespective of—[Interruption.] I am trying to answer the hon. Gentleman. Since the Coal Authority came into being, a single reporting procedure has been implemented irrespective of where the responsibility ultimately lies. International Mining Consultants Ltd. has been appointed by the Coal Authority to deal with reported surface hazards. IMCL will investigate reported incidents thoroughly and will liaise with local authorities and emergency services as necessary.

Where the possibility of a problem is recognised, it is possible to take action in several ways. Mine openings may be treated so that gas is vented away from any existing or proposed structure. Precautions can be taken to prevent the ingress of gas into buildings by ensuring that confined spaces are ventilated adequately.

Caution needs to be exercised when carrying out new activities that may provide routes for gas to the surface, such as the drilling of boreholes. The Health and Safety Commission recently issued a consultative document in respect of minimum requirements for the health and safety of drilling operatives in the mineral extractive industries.

I ask the Minister again, who initially has responsibility for the old mine workings? Whose responsibility is it—the local authority, the Minister, or the Coal Authority?

As I am trying to say, it is a mixture. I shall write to explain to the hon. Gentleman, if he has not picked it up. The hon. Gentleman must recognise that many of the sources of the gas date from the middle of last century, and there is the additional difficulty of predictability.

The Health and Safety Commission recently issued a consultative document in respect of minimum requirements for health and safety of drilling operatives. Account needs to be taken, where appropriate, of mine gas emissions in proposals for new development and changes of use.

Many of the general issues of which I have spoken apply to Northumberland. It would not be proper to comment on the sad event at Widdrington station, as the circumstances are still—