To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to ban single-hulled oil tankers from British waters. [17992]

The Government have participated fully in amendments to international regulations, which will phase out the use of conventional single-hulled tankers over the next 30 years.

Why does the Secretary of State not start work now, through the International Maritime Organisation, to change the requirements for 30-year changes to tanker design? We need the world's tanker fleet to become safe as soon as possible. Thirty years is surely unacceptable.

No country has banned the use of single-hulled tankers, but the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that we have started with increased inspection of older ships. One must bear in mind the fact that 93 per cent. of the fleet have single hulls, so obviously there are constraints on the speed with which one can move to alternative use.

In view of the enormous damage to wildlife and the immense cost that the recent Milford Haven upset has caused—I am thinking of the coasts of Cornwall and Devon as well as that of Wales—what urgent measures can my right hon. Friend pursue in the meantime, especially with regard to improving the training of tanker crews as there is some suggestion that badly trained crews have caused some of the mishaps?

As my hon. Friend knows, the marine accident investigation branch is conducting an inquiry into the accident at Milford Haven. It will consider issues such as those that my hon. Friend rightly mentioned. It will be able to publish interim reports if lessons need to be learnt urgently, and one such special bulletin was published last week. The inquiry will cover the question of crew training.

In respect of the single-hulled Sea Empress, will the Minister ensure that the MAIB inquiry considers not only the advice given to Ministers about the incident but the responsibility that those Ministers must bear for having accepted in its entirety advice that was wholly and wildly optimistic?

The Minister failed to learn the lessons of the Braer disaster and the Brora disaster. Will he ensure that he learns the lessons of the Sea Empress disaster and that a tug is stationed in the western approaches at the earliest possible moment, and not in a year's time when the inquiry reports? Is there a tug in place in the western approaches today to prevent the possibility of a recurrence tonight of what happened to the Sea Empress?

On the first point, the MAIB is independent of the Department of Transport. It has published reports which have criticised the Department and I have no doubt that it will criticise the Department in the future if it finds grounds so to do.

On the second point, lessons have been learnt from the Braer. There was a similar inquiry into that incident and then there was the Donaldson report, 86 recommendations of which have already been accepted.

Finally, as regards tugs, we accepted Lord Donaldson's recommendations that priority should be given to the Minches and the Dover straits. Tugs were stationed in those places straight away.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he next plans to meet European Transport Commissioner Kinnock to discuss the regulation of civil air transport in Europe. [17993]

I met Mr. Kinnock on 5 February and discussed a number of matters, including civil air transport. No further meetings are planned at present.

Given the evident inability of Commissioner Kinnock to regulate fair competition within the European Union, as evidenced by his accession to the Spanish Government's request to pump an extra £600 million or so into Iberia in addition to the large sum that they pumped in about five years ago, thus taking the figure well over £1 billion, will the Secretary of State go straight to Luxembourg and lodge an action with the European Court in view of the clear breach of article 92 of the treaty of Rome, which purports to ensure fair competition within the European Union?

I agree with my hon. Friend that it was a disappointing decision which allowed Spain to subsidise Iberia to the tune of £566 million. It will distort competition and it is unfair to the United Kingdom airlines, which compete without subsidies. It is the second huge payment to Iberia in four years. We shall study the decision closely and consider carefully what options are available to us to take the matter further.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what change in the level of use of public transport his Department forecasts for the next five years; and if he will make a statement. [17994]

The Government do not make forecasts of that sort.

Does the Minister recognise that his answer is not helpful? Obviously, if there is to be an increase in the use of public transport, there needs to be major public investment. Does the Minister recognise the need to meet the requirements of the disabled who need to be able to get on and off public transport if they are to be able to use it? Investment is needed as soon as possible.

The hon. Gentleman is right: my answer was not very helpful. His supplementary question, however, was based on at least two fallacies. It is not inevitable that large improvements in public transport need to depend on public subsidies; the case that he mentioned is evidence of that. Low-floored buses, which allow the disabled to gain access on the same basis as other people, are also useful to mothers with buggies or children, people with lots of shopping and those who do not walk or get about particularly well. Operators are finding that those buses pay for themselves. Private sector operators are happy to make that sort of investment.

Is my hon. Friend aware that buses are now reaching parts of my constituency of Chipping Barnet that it was never dreamt they could reach 10 years ago? Although I understand that 90 per cent. of passenger and freight traffic goes by road, does my hon. Friend agree that it is right that 75 per cent. of his Department's budget for London should be spent, as it is, on public transport services in our capital city?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is right about the proportion of the Department's budget that is spent on public transport in the capital city. My hon. Friend is also right to state that buses provide the key to improving the public transport quality in an area such as the one that he represents. That is why my bus working group—which brings together operators, local authorities and officials from the Department—has been looking at ways to enhance the quality of bus services. In so doing, it has been able to achieve a remarkable degree of unanimity; there is agreement across the board that we need to make buses more attractive to more people so that they are used for more journeys.

Will the Minister explain why the Government attempted to keep hidden their own forecasts of road congestion, which the Royal Automobile Club describes as a

"nightmare vision of the future"?

Will he confirm that the maps predict chronic congestion and gridlock on increasingly large sections of the road network in the near future? Does he agree that the only way forward for the country is increased use of public transport, which will not come about with our deregulated and declining bus services with passenger miles decreasing and our fragmented rail services, which have resulted from privatisation and in which there has been underinvestment?

I appreciate that not many hon. Members visit the Library, but I would hardly call placing a document in the Library keeping it secret. The plans on congestion are straightforward: they show the congestion that will arise if the growth in transport is entirely unaffected by any Government action and if no more roadworks are carried out. The question is one for the hon. Lady, whose party is in a dreadful mess over the road-building programme. As that forecast is the inevitable and logical consequence of doing nothing to our road system, when will she and her party come off the fence and make it clear that we need a generous and vigorous road programme and that the Labour party's talk of cancelling or abandoning the road programme is utter nonsense?

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement about progress in the supply of new trains for the Northern line. [17995]

The first of the trains will be delivered during 1996, and will come into service at the beginning of 1997.

I thank my hon. Friend for his progress report on the £1 billion investment in the Northern line, which constitutes the largest single private finance initiative project. He said that the first train would come into service early in 1997; can he and I agree to celebrate a happy new year on that first train on 1 January 1997?

Not necessarily on 1 January—I applaud my hon. Friend's enthusiasm, but I hope that he will not mind if I temper it slightly. I have every confidence that the new fleet of trains—delivered, as my hon. Friend pointed out, under the private finance initiative—will massively enhance the service offered to Northern line travellers; 50 per cent. of the current down time on the line is due to train faults, a problem that will be eliminated immediately by the introduction of this excellent new stock.

How confident is the Minister that the new trains will have a track worthy of their newness, given that large sections of the Northern line are having to be closed so that necessary repairs can be carried out? The need for those repairs is a direct result of the Government's failure to invest adequately in London Transport over the past 16 years.

I am very confident. It is extraordinary that the Labour party should wail about lack of investment, given that it invested only about a quarter of the amount that the Government are now investing. Now that we have launched a massive programme of investment to improve the Northern line, Labour Members have the sheer cheek to complain about the disruption that may be caused. Passengers see with their own eyes the improvements that are being made and they wholly reject the hon. Lady's thesis.

Is my hon. Friend aware that many of my constituents travel on the Northern line from Edgware and Colindale stations? When the new trains start to run at the end of the year, will he ensure that their introduction is accompanied by improvements in infrastructure and electronic arrangements on the line as there have been many mistakes, failures and disappointments so far?

My hon. Friend is right: as well as introducing new trains, we need to give thought to signalling, power supply and track quality. We are already undertaking an extensive programme of refurbishment and improvement at stations so that we can improve the overall quality of the service offered to my hon. Friend's constituents. We are also looking for ways in which we can further harness private finance to make improvements at a rate that would not be possible if we relied solely on the taxpayer for funds. That is the key. We have the prospect of delivering £1 billion-worth of improvements to the Northern line, and the private sector can provide the vast majority of the money.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much was spent on safety improvements on the west coast main line in 1995. [17996]

Railtrack's expenditure on renewal and maintenance of the west coast main line in 1994–95 totalled £129 million. Expenditure on safety cannot be identified separately. Expenditure by Railtrack and train operators provides a mixture of safety and other benefits.

Given events at the weekend—especially the smash in Staffordshire—does the Minister not think it about time that safety expenditure was separately identified, so that hon. Members could scrutinise it?

Is the Minister aware that there are frequent breakdowns on the Euston to Birmingham line? Last month there were delays of up to an hour and a half. Many passengers were stranded and had to get on the next train, where they found that there were no seats and became involved in rows with conductors about using first-class accommodation. Does the Minister consider that satisfactory?

Nearly all expenditure on improving and maintaining infrastructure has some safety benefits. That is why it is not possible to make the false distinction suggested by the hon. Gentleman. As for the west coast main line generally, the hon. Gentleman will know that Railtrack has a large investment plan, the first stage of which will be the letting of a contract to develop a new signalling system later this month.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the scene which resulted from the horrendous accident in my constituency of Stafford at the weekend was absolutely deplorable, that it was a miracle that lives were not lost on a substantial scale and that the proposal for an internal inquiry is wholly inappropriate? Does he agree that there should be a full and complete public inquiry to deal with all aspects of the accident, including not only safety issues but rail track, maintenance and planning considerations? Houses were immediately adjacent to a railway embankment and were therefore at very considerable risk.

First, I should like to extend my sympathy to my hon. Friend's constituents, particularly to the relatives of the postal worker who died in the crash. I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured to know that my right hon. Friend Secretary of State has asked the Health and Safety Commission to ask the Health and Safety Executive to carry out an independent investigation, to prepare a special report and for the report to be made public as soon as possible. In the meantime, Railtrack, the train operator and Her Majesty's railway inspectorate are carrying out technical investigations to see whether there are any immediate lessons to be learnt.

Does the Minister recall the derailment outside Euston station on 14 December last year, which led to widespread disruption and delay to train services? Will he tell the House why, despite earlier warnings from contractors about dangerous conditions on the track, Railtrack failed to take any action to prevent that accident, bearing it in mind that such negligent inaction by British Rail would have led automatically to dismissal of the staff concerned?

Railtrack already had plans for work on the track in the vicinity of Euston. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Health and Safety Executive issued an improvement notice—not a prohibition or closure notice—giving Railtrack a year to bring the track up to standard. There is no question that safety will be compromised.

Will the Minister give the House further details of the new investment in signalling equipment? Is not that investment very important and long overdue, and how long will it take to come into effect?

It is difficult to be precise about how long development of the new signalling system will take. The contract will be let later this month, which will add significantly to the line's capacity and provide inbuilt automatic train protection. In parallel with that development work, Railtrack will undertake a large investment programme in track and power supplies.

The Minister knows that less than a fortnight ago the Health and Safety Executive issued a notice in relation to that particular area of the west coast main line, making it very clear that urgent and necessary work was required. It is a miracle that more Post Office workers did not lose their lives. Is it not clear from Railtrack's immediate response, which sought to give an instant diagnosis of the problem, that privatisation has fragmented companies and that, instead of improving safety for passengers, we have argument, disputation and real dangers to everyone using the system?

With regard to fragmentation, the hon. Lady knows that there will be a single rail network in the ownership and operation of Railtrack. I think that she and other hon. Members would be unwise to speculate on the causes of the accident.

Railtrack did.

The preliminary information from Railtrack's investigation team is that there is not yet any evidence of track defect, vandalism or signalling irregularity. The hon. Lady should be willing, as I am, to await the outcome of the independent investigation that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has asked the Health and Safety Executive to carry out.

I am sure that the Minister would not mean to mislead the House. Does he agree that the improvement notice issued by the Health and Safety Executive to Railtrack about the incident at Euston is unprecedented and that an order of that kind was never necessary to make British Rail comply with safety conditions? Will the Minister confirm that the recent health and safety report on Railtrack was very critical indeed? Is he not concerned that Railtrack is so incompetent that it cannot give safety certificates for £450 million-worth of rolling stock that has already been bought but which is lying idle? Does he agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) that it is disgraceful that Railtrack should seek to absolve itself of responsibility for the terrible accident at Stafford before there has been an inquiry? Given all of that, does the Minister agree that it would be absolutely wrong to allow Railtrack to be floated before its safety standards have been sorted out?

No. The picture that the hon. Lady tries to paint is completely false. The HSE said that there is no decline in overall health and safety standards. Indeed, in terms of significant train accidents on the network, there was a fall of eight last year—to 110, with 32 fatalities, excluding trespassers and suicides, which is the lowest level ever. The true picture is quite different from that which the hon. Lady tries misleadingly to paint whenever she appears on television.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he has received about the speed with which motorway repairs are undertaken. [17997]

My right hon. Friend receives representations from a range of individuals and organisations about the speed with which motorway repairs are undertaken.

Is my hon. Friend satisfied that motorway repairs are undertaken in the minimum possible time? Does he agree that hold-ups caused by motorway repairs are very costly to industry? Has he any proposals to speed things up?

My hon. Friend is right in that we can never be satisfied with the performance. The lane rental system has been introduced for virtually all major maintenance contracts and lane rental contracts are completed on average 30 per cent. faster than conventional contracts. As for the cost of delays, the use of lane rental has so far saved more than 5,000 days of disruption at an estimated saving of £120 million in road user costs since it was introduced in 1984.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement about progress to clear up oil deposits. [17998]

I share the concern of people along the coast about the oil spilt when the tanker Sea Empress grounded at the entrance to Milford Haven. I am anxious that the beautiful and environmentally sensitive coastline should be quickly restored. Very good progress is being made with the clean-up. At sea, recovery of oil is effectively completed, and I expect that the work on the shoreline will be substantially completed by Easter.

We must not allow the public spotlight to move away from what looks like being perhaps the worst ecological disaster since the Torrey Canyon—[Interruption.] I think that "Tory" Canyon was the right pronunciation. Someone needs to swing for the current disaster. It cannot be acceptable for everyone to say, "It was nobody's fault." We want someone's head on a plate—or at least I do. Will the Secretary of State assure us that sufficient resources are still being made available for the clean-up operations and that the compensation fund is not likely to be exhausted? Can he give us any up-to-date figure for the extent of sea bird mortality in the area and also the number of sea mammals to have suffered as a result of the Sea Empress disaster?

The Torrey Canyon disaster took place under a Labour Government, and the then Prime Minister ordered that the ship be bombed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we have made considerable progress in dealing with such accidents since then.

With regard to the recent accident, the hon. Gentleman will know that I have established no fewer than three inquiries to find out exactly what went wrong. The inquiries will be independent and their findings will be published. There has been no shortage of resources for the clean-up process. I pay tribute to all the people involved in that process, both at sea and on the beaches, many of whom worked long hours in darkness doing a messy and uncomfortable task. I understand that the funds available will be more than adequate to meet compensation claims.

On the hon. Gentleman's last question, more than 2,500 dead birds have been recovered. More than 3,000 live birds have been recovered and are being cleaned up before release. A count of mammals conducted on Skomer Island 10 days ago showed about 80 oiled seals—three to five badly oiled, 40 moderately oiled and the rest lightly oiled.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that oil deposits are constantly being caused around our coastline—including the North Yorkshire coast, where the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has one of its best sanctuaries, at Bempton cliffs in my constituency—by tankers and other ships sluicing out oil into the North sea and other waters, and that there is evidence that the practice has been increasing in recent months? What plans does my right hon. Friend have to ensure that that disgusting practice is stopped?

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that, day in and day out, an unacceptable amount of damage is caused by ships cleaning out their tanks. I assure him that my Department devotes substantial resources to detecting, where possible, the offenders and prosecuting them. We shall soon be publishing a draft Bill implementing a number of the Donaldson recommendations which require legislation. Some of those will deal with port waste facilities.

Throughout Question Time today, the Secretary of State has referred to his inquiry as independent, but that is not the view taken in my constituency, in the rest of Wales and by many people throughout this country. Will he confirm that the terms of reference that he has given his so-called independent inquiry, to be undertaken by the marine accident investigation branch, makes no mention of the availability of salvage tugs, of the Donaldson inquiry recommendations, of the issue of single hulls versus double hulls, of the safety of port operations generally in and around Milford Haven, or of the need to examine current salvage law? As the MAIB inquiry is not comprehensive and its two-page interim report published only last Thursday contained five factual mistakes, does he now accept that much more information has emerged since his last statement to the House on this matter and that we need a full and independent inquiry, ideally under Lord Donaldson? As a major ecological disaster has taken place, will the Minister explain why we had an independent inquiry into the Braer and not into the Sea Empress?

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The MAIB inquiry into the Braer accident was exactly the same as the one that we have established into this one. The Donaldson report was not an inquiry into the Braer accident, but a wide-ranging look at a range of issues dealing with marine pollution and safety at sea.

I made it absolutely clear in my recent statement to the House that the inquiry will cover a number of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised in the first part of his question. For example, it will cover whether enough tugs were available. It will also cover whether it would have made any difference if the Sea Empress had been a double-hulled rather than a single-hulled vessel. He should not therefore imply that the MAIB is not independent or that it will not consider certain specific issues when I have made it absolutely clear to the House that it will. Nor should he undermine the MAIB's independent status as it publishes its reports without fear or favour and has criticised my Department in the past.

Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the penalties to deal with those who jettison oil upon the seas are sufficiently strong, and is such behaviour being policed enough?

My hon. Friend is right to again draw attention to that matter. It is often quite difficult, having discovered the oil, to trace the vessel responsible for depositing it. Where possible, we shall track it down and take people to court. Substantial penalties are available against those who offend in this anti-social way.

In his answers about Milford Haven, the Secretary of State has been most complacent. I might save him some time in the context of the forthcoming inquiry by telling him that the Coastguard Agency advised that a heavy-duty salvage tug was available in west Wales for two days in December and for one day in January. The disaster happened in February and, to the best of my knowledge, a tug was not available. Is not it about time that the Government, if they really do learn from reports, implemented their recommendations?

Of course if we establish inquiries we should take note of recommendations. I have announced that, of the 103 Donaldson recommendations, we have accepted 86. Since I made that announcement we have accepted a further five. Some of those that we are not taking forward immediately require international agreement and we have to reach that through the International Maritime Organisation. Others require legislation, and I shall soon publish a draft Bill that will take forward some recommendations that require legislation.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to review the rules covering compensation following railway, underground and other public transport works. [17999]

We have no plans to review part I of the Land Compensation Act 1973, under which compensation is payable upon completion of public works.

That is the answer that I feared. May I try to persuade the Minister to look again at two issues which colleagues have raised in relation to the channel tunnel rail link? My concerns relate to the Jubilee line and its consequences. First, if a business is adversely affected and the property is taken or partly taken, could we guarantee that the owner is put back into no worse a position than he would have been in if the works had not taken place? Secondly, in relation to public legislation or public works—railways or an underground system—the rules state that if a building is physically touched, compensation is payable. However, if the building is not touched, although there may be a huge hole a yard from the front door so that for years no one can find the door, let alone use it, compensation is not payable. Will the Minister look at the illogicality of the division between a building being physically affected and the clear effect on work, profit and viability of all the other consequences of the works?

The hon. Gentleman is being assiduous in prosecuting the interests of his constituents, particularly those in Borough High street, which I know, in relation to the Jubilee line extension. I hope that in all fairness he will understand when I say that I would prefer not to be drawn into negotiations on compensation claims that affect a number of his constituents. On his second point, he is aware that there are substantial provisions to allow for compensation and purchase of affected property where the property is not required for the scheme but is clearly blighted by it. New rules in relation to that were recently published by my Department following the Owen case.

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman has among his constituents some shopkeepers and property owners who are finding it difficult to establish a link between the loss that they suffer and the statutory compensation that is available. I stress that that will always be a difficult area. Limitless compensation for blight or perceived blight in relation to any public sector works would put most of them beyond the purse or reach of the taxpayer or of the Government.

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a link between planning delays and the lack of compensation or levels of compensation? If the Government relaxed their rules and looked at the French system of compensation, they might get much more public sympathy for public investment in infrastructure.

My hon. Friend, whose constituency contains the north circular road, knows that the average time between a good idea and that idea being rolled out as a piece of tarmac is 13 and a half years, of which 11 and a half are spent in the planning and public inquiry process. I have heard it suggested that we should adopt more generous compensation methods to truncate those inquiries. I hope that he will appreciate that that is a potentially extremely expensive course of action. In general, our compensation scheme attempts to put people who are affected in the same position as they would have been had the scheme not taken place. That involves negotiation, and on occasions, leads to delay. My hon. Friend's alternative, seductive as it may be in its simplicity, would in practice be a very expensive option.

In view of the length of time that the rules of compensation have been in effect, does the Minister not think that it is time for a review, especially with regard to motorway and highway planning, for which the full information on pollution emissions is not being made available? If we are to have a proper and fair system of compensation, all information should be made available and the rules on compensation for blight should be updated through a review.

Following recent action in the Court of Appeal, we issued new guidelines on compensation precisely to try to relate more sympathetically to the position of property owners, especially with regard to discretionary purchase. As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), this is a very difficult area. Inevitably, if one considers all the cases where there may be some blight, a line has to be drawn and some people who are affected by schemes fall outside it. If the hon. Gentleman has any particular cases in mind, I would of course be very happy to look at them.

Is it not totally unsatisfactory that claimants against Stansted airport in my constituency are having to wait about four years, if not longer, before a settlement figure is reached? Is it not totally indefensible that the British Airports Authority should take upwards of four months after a settlement has been agreed to pay compensation? Does my hon. Friend accept that we need to look at the matter?

My hon. Friend has been extremely assiduous on behalf of his constituents who have been affected by noise at Stansted. He has made his own point in his own way. I am sure that the BAA will want to reflect on what he has said.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he will next meet his European Union counterparts to discuss trans-European transport networks. [18000]

My noble Friend the Minister for Aviation and Shipping is deputising for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at a meeting of the Council of Ministers today, at which the transport networks will be discussed.

I thank the Minister for that reply. As part of his brief, is he putting forward proposals for a technical study on the electrification of the trans-European network railway line between London and south Wales that goes on to Ireland? If that is so, will further funding be made available for the electrification of that line?

The railway line from London to south Wales is already a high-speed line. As part of our TEN bid for the coming year, we are bidding for funding for a feasibility study on the upgrading of the Great Western lines to the south-west.

Will my hon. Friend take a trip round the motorways of France to see how empty they are simply because of high tolls? Does he agree that the most environmentally friendly method of moving traffic is along free motorways?

The free movement of traffic on motorways is certainly convenient for road users and can greatly reduce the pollution caused by the same traffic moving slowly on congested and less suitable roads.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the ability of Government agencies to respond to marine pollution incidents. [18001]

The Coastguard Agency's marine pollution control unit is the Government's lead body for responding to pollution incidents. The MPCU is a long-established and internationally respected unit with specific responsibilities for operations to deal with pollution at sea from ships. The unit maintains the national contingency plan, which co-ordinates the response of the other central and local government bodies involved. It has stockpiles of equipment and is ready to initiate immediate response operations anywhere around the United Kingdom coast in the event of a spill.

Does the Minister agree that the accident to the Sea Empress caused 250 tonnes of oil to spill into the sea, but the salvage operation over the next week caused 70,000 tonnes of oil to be spilled? Will he respond to the letter that he recently received from the National Trust, which listed 33 other organisations that are calling for an independent public inquiry into the accident? Will he listen to those demands, or have the Government something to hide?

The Government have nothing to hide, which is why we have set up an independent inquiry. Of course I shall respond to the National Trust. The hon. Gentleman referred to requests for a full public inquiry, but that would involve legal representation of parties and lengthy adversarial public hearings and it would be extremely time-consuming. My priority is to find out, as quickly as possible, what went wrong, to establish the cause of the accident and to learn any relevant lessons. That is best done by an expert, independent investigation following the usual procedures set up by Parliament.

To ask the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, representing the House of Commons Commission, what was the cost of the staff child care voucher scheme in the current financial year to date. [18022]

The expenditure on the child care voucher scheme since its inception on 1 April 1995 to date is £45,109.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. Does he concede that while it must be of some assistance to people to use the voucher scheme to put their children in nurseries near to their homes, is not it time that the Commission examined the likely cost and feasibility of running a proper nursery in this building, so that the children of staff and Members can be looked after in a place of safety within the building—thus bringing us up to date with the 20th century before it has passed us by? Any other large institution would have workplace child care facilities, such as a nursery. This building has absolutely nothing.

The Commission has examined that possibility and the House has debated it. I take it that since the last time that the hon. Gentleman asked me a question on that matter, he has not persuaded the Administration and Accommodation Committees, from which the Commission takes advice, that progress can be made on such a scheme.

Is not it the case that hon. Members may issue child care vouchers to their own staff, to be debited against their office cost allowance? Bearing in mind the enthusiasm of a number of hon. Members on this issue, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many do so?

Hon. Members may do what the hon. Gentleman suggests, but establishing how many do so would require a question of the Leader of the House.

To ask the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, representing the House of Commons Commission, if he will make a statement on the cost of implementing the Jopling reforms. [18023]

There have been both direct costs and direct savings for the House's votes arising from the implementation of the Jopling reforms. There have been extra reporting and security costs because total sitting hours have actually increased, but with fewer sittings of the House continuing after 10.30 pm there have been savings in overtime, night allowances and late-night transport. The net effect so far has been an estimated reduction in costs of some £80,000.

Have the staff responded happily to the more social hours that they are now enjoying? Does the right hon. Gentleman think that any more could be done to implement the Jopling reforms with a view to making life more acceptable to lady Members as well as gentlemen Members, in the way demanded in discussions outside the House?

As an individual Member, I should like more of the Jopling reforms to be carried out. However, the Commission's job is to make provision for the decisions that the House has made. As far as I am aware, the staff continue to work well and effectively in support of the arrangements, although the Commission has not canvassed opinion on whether they prefer them to the previous arrangements.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that against the financial savings must be weighed the very real fact that the increase in hours is entirely in debates where votes cannot be taken? Back-Bench Members have actually lost an advantage that they had previously, namely, that votes could be taken on Fridays—which is not now possible on the Adjournment debates. Although there is undoubtedly some positive benefit from the reforms, it is important that the House does not lose sight of the reason why we are here, which—saving the right hon. Gentleman's grace—is not to save money for his Commission, but to do a job for our constituents.

All those points were raised in the debates on the reforms. As far as I am aware, the reforms were not influenced by considerations of whether they would save money or not save money. The relatively complex balance I have just described indicates that it would be hard to argue for the reforms on that basis.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the role of the salvors in the Sea Empress accident. [18002]

As I announced in my recent statement, the marine accident investigation branch will examine the detail of the salvage operation as well as the causes of the original accident.

Can a system possibly be right in which the sole aim of the salvor is to save the ship?

The system would not be right if that were the way in which it was structured; it is not structured like that. The reward due to the salvor is based on the value of the ship and the cargo that is salved. However, the contract also provides for an additional reward if, by his efforts, the salvor prevents or minimises environmental damage. In that way, the contract encourages the salvor to minimise environmental damage.

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that it is not yet at all certain that the accident and the disaster would have been averted or lessened if the ship had been double-hulled? Can he confirm that the inquiry will address that question?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is by no means certain that if the ship had been double-hulled, the disaster might have been avoided. He will be interested to learn that during the inquiry, we will simulate the accident to see whether a double hull would have made any difference.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many of the recommendations contained in "Safer Ships and Cleaner Seas" have been accepted by his Department; and how many of these are now in practice. [18003]

The Government accepted 86 of the 103 recommendations in the report when they published their response a year ago. They have since accepted a further five, and are considering another eight; only four have been rejected. Of the accepted recommendations, half have been implemented and action is being taken on all the others.

Has the Secretary of State made a definite timetable for the implementation of the recommendations on marine environmental high-risk areas? If he has such a timetable, will he outline the measures that would be taken in such areas to minimise the risk of accidents? He will not be surprised to hear me say that I think that the first such area should be the Minches.

The hon. Gentleman asks about recommendation 59 of the Donaldson report that so-called MEHRAs—marine environmental high-risk areas—should be established. We first need to establish whether the existing voluntary arrangements for routing are working. Our survey suggests that they are, but we will consult on the results. We also need to discuss with the EC the proposals for environmentally sensitive areas because international agreement will be needed on the definition of such areas before they can be implemented.

When can we expect to see appropriate tugs in all the appropriate places?

My hon. Friend will be interested to hear that we propose shortly to publish the so-called Belton report, which carried forward the Donaldson recommendations on the priorities for the location of tugs. We have implemented, as my hon. Friend knows, the priority recommendation that tugs should be situated at the Minches and at Dover. The Belton report will shed further light on the succeeding priorities.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the franchising of rail services. [18005]

The franchising programme is making good progress. Fourteen of the 25 train operating companies, representing 61 per cent. of passenger revenue in the financial year 1994–95, have either been franchised or are in the process of being sold.

Do the Government still subscribe to the view that rail privatisation will bring increased competition? if so, do they regard it as a failure of policy that Wisconsin Transportation now owns all four freight companies? Is it true that the previous Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), went to the United States to encourage Wisconsin Transportation to bid for all four companies? What plans do the Government have to prevent private rail operators from taking over one another and creating massive private rail monopolies?

Train freight companies are not franchised, which was the point of the hon. Gentleman's original question, but sold. With his wide knowledge of transport, the hon. Gentleman will recognise that Railfreight has plenty of competitors, notably from the road haulage industry, and it was the verdict of the market that Railfreight would be stronger with the three companies in common ownership, because that view was reflected in all of the bids.

Is my hon. Friend aware of the widespread concern in my constituency that the public service obligations required of bidders for the Chiltern franchise are not compatible with the proposed freight service sought by Central Railways Ltd.? Will he therefore issue clear guidance so that bidders for the Chiltern franchise and the customers who value the Chiltern passenger service know exactly where they stand?

No subsequent proposal can pose any threat to the continuation of passenger services, which are protected and guaranteed for the first time by passenger service requirements.

To ask the Lord President of the Council what procedural measures he proposes to increase the accountability of Ministers to the House. [18024]

The Government will contribute to the Public Service Committee's examination of ministerial accountability in the light of the Scott report. Sir Richard made no specific recommendations about the procedural arrangements of the House, but I am always ready to consider suggestions on procedural matters from hon. Members or from the Procedure Committee.

In response to the Scott report, the Government claimed, ad nauseam, that Ministers had not knowingly misled Parliament, but the word "knowingly" was added to "Questions of Procedure for Ministers" only in July last year. Was it simply added to provide an alibi for the Government in the knowledge that the Scott report was coming? Will the Leader of the House consider removing the word from "Questions of Procedure for Ministers" so that Ministers who transgress must do what Lord Carrington more honourably did after the outbreak of hostilities in the south Atlantic, and resign?

The hon. Gentleman seems to be attempting to rerun a substantial debate that we have already had. If the Public Service Committee wishes to raise such points, no doubt they will be considered, but I find it a bit difficult to see why something that is done unknowingly should incur the wrath that the hon. Gentleman would like to bestow on it.

Will my right hon. Friend look again at Friday sittings? Non-sitting Fridays deny Back-Bench Members of Parliament a valuable opportunity to table a private notice question. They also deny Ministers what can be a valuable opportunity to make a ministerial statement at 11 am on a matter quite unforeseen and of great national importance.

My general view is that the House collectively feels that the changes that were made following the Jopling report have been working rather well—including those that come up in a later question—and have given considerably increased opportunities to Back-Bench Members. I have no plans for a change at present.

Would not the accountability of Ministers be improved if the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks)—in a later question on the Order Paper—for a Question Time on European Union matters were adopted? Would it not also be entirely compatible with protocol 13 of the treaty of Maastricht? Would not the Government be in a stronger position in respect of their colleagues in the European Union if they adopted the proposal of my hon. Friend and reverted to the practice before 1979?

The question whether there should be a dedicated Question Time on European matters has been looked at once or twice in the past and has not seemed to be a good idea. The Scrutiny Committee, which is currently conducting a further inquiry into the operation of scrutiny arrangements, might wish to make such a suggestion, although I am not aware at present that it is looking at that.

To ask the Lord President of the Council how many subjects have been raised in Adjournment debates since the change in Sessional Orders became effective in January 1995. [18025]

I assume that my hon. Friend is interested in private Members' Adjournment debates. There have been 190 daily and 188 Wednesday morning Adjournment debates since the change in Sessional Orders became effective. I should add for the sake of completeness that there have also been 41 Government debates on the Adjournment.

May I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer and for the success of his reforms, which have confounded the sceptics, increased the amount of time available to private Members and enabled many more topics to be raised than were raised under the previous system?

My hon. Friend may utter those kind words. I shall receive them with the pleasure that they deserve.

To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will bring forward proposals for a specific Question Time for European Union matters. [18029]

I have no plans to do so, in case that was not clear from my earlier answer.

May I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the question asked earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)? He said that the practice of allocating a specific time to Common Market questions was scrapped. I believe that that was in 1979, after the election. Why was it scrapped? Surely it is wrong that we should have to rely on the luck of the draw in order to raise European Union issues when clearly Europe is one of the most significant matters, if not the most significant matter that the House is currently discussing. Why cannot we have a change? Is it because the Conservative Government are too embarrassed about answering questions from their own Back Benchers on the European Union?

I have some information about the history. I understand that the European Community slot was abolished in 1985, following pressure from some hon. Members and discussions through the usual channels. The matter was then looked at again in 1989, when my predecessor, the official Opposition and the Clerk of the House expressed scepticism about the reinstatement of such a slot.

I am grateful for the opportunity for this debate, for which we thank the Liaison Committee and partly also the Department, whose supplementary estimate is such that it will allow hon. Members to speak on any aspect of its work and remain in order. I spent some time trying to think of an aspect of the Department's work that would be out of order, but I could not think of one. Perhaps other hon. Members will be more effective than me in that respect.

In opening the debate, I shall concentrate on one topic to which we gave some prominence in our fifth report on the work of the Department and its agencies and which we debated in the House last week, debated in Committee and have another opportunity to debate today—fraud. I wish to take the debate on and suggest some changes in its nuances that I believe are important not only for the House but for the taxpayers—those who are in work and who contribute £15 every day from their pay towards underwriting the social security budget.

First, I emphasise the importance of housing benefit fraud committed by landlords rather than that committed by claimants. Those who have heard me speak before know that I think fraud is wrong full stop, but as any Administration will have limited resources to combat fraud, it is sensible to deploy the resources in those areas where it is most prevalent. I fear that there may have been a difference in emphasis between the Select Committee on Social Security and the Secretary of State on that. When we questioned him on that aspect on Wednesday, we talked about evidence of landlord fraud and he said to the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes), "Not evidence—assertions".

I was referring to the evidence that the London borough of Haringey has put together. It has carried out a survey of landlords who have more than 30 claims paid direct to them every week. On the first 15 cases, the borough has carried out 1,300 visits so far—that is one borough, for a survey that is, so far, incomplete. That contrasts vividly with the Government's survey of housing benefit fraud, which they carried out throughout the country and which covered 4,500 claims. I am talking not about 4,500 investigations, but about 4,500 claimants, who were asked about their claims. If they could remember accurately what they had said when they first claimed benefit, no further investigations were undertaken.

Although the Government publicised that as a fraud survey, it was slightly misleading to the House and to those outside to do so because they were testing people's memories. I have a bad memory and would probably have failed to answer the questions correctly. I would not be able to remember what I said when I originally made a claim, which might have spurred the Government into further action by suggesting that there was fraud. The Government undertook, not a fraud inquiry, but a test of memory.

Let us consider the Haringey inquiry about which the Secretary of State was somewhat dismissive in the Select Committee. It was not carrying out a memory test. It has called at properties to question landlords and claimants where a landlord has more than 30 housing benefit claims paid directly to him in any one week. The council checked the national insurance number of each claimant and asked for further evidence from utility bills. It also checked in other boroughs whether double claims were being made and studied council tax payments.

For this debate, I asked Haringey to give us information on the first 15 landlords on which it called. I emphasise that those were landlords who had more than 30 housing benefit claims paid directly to them each week. I asked Haringey what the fraud rate was. Obviously, I will not read out the names of the landlords concerned or their agents as that would be unfair. I will refer to them by number.

The first landlord called on as part of the survey had 112 housing benefit claims paid direct to him each week—more than £13,000 was paid direct to that landlord in housing benefit—and 25 per cent. were shown by the Haringey anti-fraud inquiry to be fraudulent. The second landlord had 111 direct claims for housing benefit paid to him each week, totalling more than £13,000 of public money, and the fraud rate was 23 per cent. The third landlord had only 39 direct claims for housing benefit paid to him each week, totalling almost £3,000 a week of public money, and the fraud rate was 67 per cent.

The fourth landlord had 46 direct payments made to him every week, totalling some £4,000, and 26 per cent. were found to be fraudulent. The fifth landlord had 111 claims directly paid to him or her every week, totalling some £11,000, and 16 per cent. were shown to be fraudulent. The sixth landlord had 121 direct payments made to him every week, totalling almost £8,000 from public funds, and 15 per cent. were shown to be fraudulently claimed. The seventh landlord had 141 claims paid directly to him or her every week, totalling almost £9,000 from public funds, and 11 per cent. were fraudulently claimed.

The eighth landlord had 42 claims paid directly, totalling almost £8,000 a week, and 33 per cent. were shown to be fraudulent. The ninth landlord had 112 claims paid directly, totalling almost £11,000 a week, and 59 per cent. were shown to be fraudulent. The 10th landlord had 69 claims paid directly each week, totalling more than £6,000 of public funds, and 29 per cent. were found to be fraudulent. The 11 th landlord had 58 claims paid directly to him or her a week, totalling more than £7,000, and 15 per cent. were shown to be fraudulent.

The 12th landlord had 100 direct housing payments paid to him each week, totalling almost £17,000, and 10 per cent. were found to be fraudulent. The 13th landlord had 192 housing benefit claims paid directly to him a week, totalling £19,000, and 14 per cent. were shown to be fraudulent. The 14th landlord had 46 direct payments paid each week, totalling £4,000, and the fraud rate was 42 per cent. The 15th landlord had 62 direct claims paid each week, totalling more than £9,000 of public funds, and the fraud rate was more than 16 per cent.

I have put those cases on the record, without naming the landlords or their agents, because I want to support the hon. Member for Harrow, West, who is also a member of the Select Committee on Social Security. When he raised this question with the Secretary of State for Social Security, he was slightly terse with him and said that it was not evidence but assertions. The survey was conducted in Haringey—which happens to be a Labour authority, but would be matched by Westminster. Westminster is equally effective against fraud and it is carrying out a survey of all landlords who have more than 30 claims in housing benefits paid directly to them each week.

For the record, my remark about assertions did not relate to the Haringey survey—which sounds extremely interesting. My only remark about the survey was that it involved 15 landlords and, obviously, we will investigate it and study the findings. We have absolutely no vested interest in understating the level of fraud. We are simply here to detect fraud, and to prevent and to deter it in the future. As such, we are at one with the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security.

I have no wish to score points, to be accused by hon. Friends who serve on the Committee of being vicious in the debate or even to be welcomed as crossing the Floor by my own side, as happened in our previous debate. I merely wish to place the evidence on record.

The Secretary of State made a very important contribution to our Select Committee hearing. He said that anti-fraud officers see fraud everywhere—I wish that that were true of all anti-fraud officers, but let us take that statement as being true—and that the important implication of that is that those people should be in the driving seat when we design programmes to combat fraud. He said that they know more about the subject than us and even some officers in the Department, because they are up against it every day. I shall return to that.

It is correct that I have cited only 15 of the 16 cases of which the Secretary of State has heard, and Haringey's survey will be a total survey of all those larger landlords in Haringey, but 1,300 visits have already been made in that borough. That contrasts with a national survey of only 4,500 inquiries by the Department.

I emphasised that in the Haringey survey, national insurance records, utility bills and council tax payment records have been checked and checks have been made with other boroughs, to verify whether claimants exist or are a creation of the landlord. That is a very different exercise from the memory test, which is what I suggest that the Secretary of State was undertaking when he inquired into housing benefit fraud.

I do not oppose memory tests. I merely suggest—I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), will consider this argument when he replies, or at least convey it to the Department—that the type of inquiry that Haringey has conducted needs to be done throughout the country, so that we do not test claimants' memories but examine what landlords are doing.

Some landlords draw very substantial sums from public funds. They are in a unique position, because they receive a large benefit now, which, even if it is not paid directly into their bank account, goes into their bank account. Every other benefit that the Secretary of State for Social Security pays on the taxpayer's behalf goes to claimants for them to spend. This is a direct transfer payment to a specific group, so it is a very special group. Therefore, a survey similar to the work that Haringey has done should be conducted for the entire country.

Had Westminster, not Haringey, been mentioned in the Select Committee, I would have telephoned Westminster city council and asked for equivalent information to that which Haringey has given us. Both authorities are outstanding in London in combating fraud.

On the basis of the sample that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, will he estimate housing benefit fraud throughout the country? Is that fraud perpetrated only by the landlord, or is there a conspiracy between landlord and tenant?

I am doubly grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention because it gives me the opportunity to make it clear that I am not suggesting that fraud is a one-way traffic, undertaken only by landlords. I am saying that it is important that the limited resources that at any one time the Treasury will allow the Department to have to counter fraud are deployed as effectively as possible and that, if we are interested in reducing the social security budget, especially the part boosted by fraud, our efforts should primarily go into areas where the gains will be quickest and biggest; and I am suggesting that the biggest gains would be from landlords. It is difficult for claimants to run a housing benefit fraud racket for any length of time. That is not to say that some of us do not have clever constituents who manage to do that, but it is difficult to do so without the landlord's help. Haringey is finding that many of the tenants whom it checks up on do not exist: they are fictitious tenants created by the landlord or previous tenants who have been recycled by the landlord.

That issue takes me neatly on to my second point. I gained a mere inference from what the Secretary of State said during our discussions last Wednesday that concerned me. I questioned the extent of child benefit fraud.

Before my hon. Friend leaves the subject of housing benefit, I wish to make a further point. He will recall that during the interview that we had with the Secretary of State last Wednesday, I asked a question about the public spending consequences of the deregulation of rents. Typically, a former council-owned property could be rented for £150 a week in London, whereas the council rent would be about £50 a week, both of which rents might well be paid with housing benefit. The Secretary of State seemed unconcerned by that and unwilling to examine the public spending consequences of rent deregulation. Would it not be appropriate for the Secretary of State seriously to consider that issue? The public purse seems to be creating a large number of millionaire landlords through a process of rent deregulation and the open-ended payment of benefit for whatever rent the landlords choose to set in areas of great poverty and high levels of housing benefit.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making his point again in today's debate. I look forward to the Secretary of State rising at the Dispatch Box and shall be happy to give way to him. I also noticed that, when the Secretary of State was replying to my hon. Friend, he raised the important consideration of whether there could be any meaningful market rents in areas where the amount of rented housing stock was still so dependent on one landlord—the public sector. The public owner—the public landlord—could fix the market rate in the area and, by so doing, could determine the extent to which taxpayers would have to foot an increasingly large part of that bill.

Both my hon. Friend's question and the Secretary of State's response to it were intriguing. We did not receive an answer to that question in the Select Committee and have not yet done so today—perhaps the Secretary of State will respond to that question later. If the monopoly landlord is allowed to set the market rent in his area, the Government, and therefore taxpayers, seem to be over a barrel because we taxpayers have to foot the bill.

If what my hon. Friend has said is true—all the evidence sent to him shows that a number of landlords are doing their best to swindle money out of the public purse—what confidence can we have that landlords in the private sector will not swindle their tenants? Does that not demonstrate how right many of us are when we say that people should not be subjected to private landlords when they have no choice? When people cannot buy and cannot obtain local authority accommodation, they are forced to become tenants of landlords such as those whom my hon. Friend has described.

It is intolerable for our constituents to be in a market where they have no choice because there is only a limited supply of private rented accommodation. If the market was working well, the choice would be greater and the pressures of the market would be applied against the landlords. As my hon. Friend says, our constituents often face Hobson's choice and the more vulnerable they are, the more likely they are to be subjected to that form of aggression by landlords.

I suspect that many hon. Members read the survey in The Sunday Times of housing benefit millionaires—landlords who are in such profitable areas that they draw more than £1 million a year in housing benefit. The survey showed that the treatment of many tenants who existed was undesirable, while other tenants for whom claims had been made did not exist. When pressed to identify the accommodation to which certain claims related, landlords specified, for example, the space under a sink and part of a garage. We should have no illusions about landlords who, up to now, have been able to make easy pickings from the public purse.

As the Select Committee has pointed out, if we are to deal with fraud, we should do so where the gains will be easiest. I do not suggest that fraud of other kinds does not take place—indeed, we may have time to discuss some aspects today—but, for the moment, I wish to concentrate on landlord fraud.

Before that bevy of interventions, I was saying that more child benefit fraud may take place than the Department would like to think. I asked Haringey council whether it had carried out any surveys in relation to fictitious children. As the council is not responsible for the administration of such matters, it had conducted no surveys on child benefit fraud as such, but it checked whether landlords whom it was investigating had included children in their claims for housing benefit. Where children were included, it investigated whether they attended schools and had health records, and whether child benefit was being claimed.

The results of that investigation were staggering. More than 50 per cent. of the children for whom one landlord was claiming housing benefit were found not to exist, and a substantial number of such children in general did not exist. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) is concerned about women from other European Community countries who come here in the late stages of pregnancy, register the birth of their children here, disappear back to their own countries and then claim child benefit for the next 18 years. That may happen more than the Secretary of State thinks, and it may involve people from outside the European Community as well. We should concentrate anti-fraud campaigns on where fraud is greatest.

After listening to the Secretary of State's speech, I feared that the Department might be rather more interested in the photo-opportunities provided by the local spot checks of which he spoke than in any other aspect, and that the whole campaign might be merely a lead-up to the general election. It would be advantageous for one party to concentrate on claimants, and for the other to concentrate on landlords. I hope that we shall achieve a proper balance in future surveys, and will pay most attention to how we can retrieve the most money for taxpayers when wrongful claims are made.

I have managed to cover quite a few of the topics with which I wanted to deal, but my contribution would not be complete if I did not refer to national insurance numbers. Up to now, the emphasis in debates in the Chamber and in Committee has been on whether the right number of national insurance numbers are being issued. I do not for one moment disagree with the need to make the system secure, but I should like to suggest to the Government a rather different tack on how to accomplish it. My comments are based on events that occurred last Friday: the first happened in my surgery, and the second is from the experience of an anti-fraud officer in London. Neither event relates to whether there are 3 million or 10 million extra numbers floating around the system, but each emphasises how easy it is for national insurance numbers to be used by people other than those to whom they were allocated in the first place.

The anti-fraud officer, while looking for other information on a computer file, found a person's surname with two addresses listed for it, and the two addresses showed two national insurance numbers for the same name. The date of birth was the same for each of the names. The anti-fraud officer came across that information by accident, which suggests—leaving aside the issue of how many spare numbers are floating around the system—that the Government have yet to perform a data-matching exercise on the information that they have. If they had performed such an exercise, that piece of information would have been spat out and made available immediately.

The other example concerns a person who came to my surgery on Friday. He was not my constituent, but the constituent of my right hon. Friend—I rightly call him that—the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt). The constituent had been in employment all his life. He had one short period of self-employment because he lost his job, although he is now again working for an employer. He phoned the Contributions Agency in Newcastle because he wanted to pay, I believe, his class V contributions, which are made by self-employed people. He was asked to hold while his file was pulled up. He was then told, "You don't owe any money; you're in prison." He said, "I'm not in prison. I want to pay. I've been self-employed."

The man clearly did not realise the significance of the information he was giving me. It suggested that his national insurance number had been used—for how long we do not know—by someone else who had then been imprisoned. His national insurance contribution had been credited while the other person was in prison so that, when he called wishing to make his contributions to the fund for the period in which he was self-employed, he found that his contribution was complete.

A number of people, particularly anti-fraud officers, have suggested that "piggybacking" is much more substantial than we think. The Government, therefore, have a dual task. The first task will be to achieve a secure national system, which will take longer and will be very difficult because of the state of the numbers game, if I can call it that. In such a system, social security numbers should relate only to real people, and numbers that are spare because people die or stop making contributions should be held securely.

The stage beyond that is to decide how we make sure that people do not misuse the system, even if we could secure the safety of the current system of numbers. I previously suggested to the Secretary of State that, just as we are now going to receive notification of our pension contributions each year—what we have paid and what the charges are if we have a personal pension—should not we also be thinking about issuing a national insurance statement each year, showing what we have paid and what benefits we have received?

If we had such a statement, every incident of piggybacking would be reported to the genuine national insurance number holder, and the constituent whom I met on Friday would have received a statement informing him that he was registered as being in prison. It would have been clear that his number had been misused. We hope that his number is not still being used by the person in prison, but we do not know whether the prisoner's family is putting the number to good use.

A simple check would ensure that everyone knew whether his number was being used safely. If statements were issued randomly—not at the end of the financial year—someone involved in piggybacking would not necessarily know when a number's true holder was receiving his statement. We should therefore increase the chances of those misusing other people's numbers being caught.

The purpose of my contribution to today's debate—I am grateful to you, Madam Speaker, for calling me—is to try to change once again the emphasis of the Government's campaign against fraud. I am pleased that the Government have pushed the issue up the agenda and would like to think that the Select Committee has played a small part in concentrating the Department's mind on the importance of the problem. I hope that today's debate might also play a small part in changing the emphasis of the Government's follow-up to the initiative that they announced to the House last week.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security, and all the members of the Committee on their work. In many ways, the Select Committee on Social Security is a model Select Committee. It oversees the Department of Social Security's work thoroughly and conscientiously. I have read the Committee's fifth report, entitled "The Work of the Department of Social Security and its Agencies", and believe that it is an excellent report.

I was interested in what the hon. Member for Birkenhead had to say about housing benefit fraud. If one grosses up the percentages that he mentioned—the examples of fraud that he cited varied from 15 per cent. to 67 per cent.—it would appear that the average fraud is around 30 per cent. If the level of housing benefit fraud is anywhere near that figure, there are substantial gains to be made from devoting resources to dealing with that aspect of fraud.

I agree that it is right to devote a finite amount of resources to aspects of social security likely to produce the greatest rewards. Clearly, we should consider landlords claiming large sums every week. The hon. Gentleman cited the case of one landlord who was receiving £19,000 a week in housing benefit, or £1 million a year. That is a substantial sum of taxpayers' money, by any measure. Such cases should be investigated as a matter of urgency. The House debated benefit fraud last week, and there is no doubt that the extra resources that the Department is rightly devoting to it have yielded substantial results. I believe that extra resources would produce further successes.

I was also interested in the hon. Gentleman's idea for an annual statement of contributions for everyone who contributes to the national insurance fund. Last year we improved considerably the rights of members of private occupational pension schemes. As we are talking about millions of people, a substantial cost would be attached to such a statement, but there must be a case for providing regular information to national insurance contributors. An annual statement could usefully include someone's total contributions in a year, the total benefits that people had drawn in that time if they had had the misfortune to be unemployed or sick, and their prospective benefits, about which people start to worry as they approach retirement. They want to be sure that they have the maximum credits and that they will be able to draw a full pension. They want to know what their entitlement to the state earnings-related pension scheme will be. A statement on total prospective benefits would also be useful. People would welcome it.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Birkenhead is right that the total cost of the statement might easily be offset by the gains that would be made through exposing fraud. Obviously, that is impossible to measure, but the amount saved could easily cover the statement's cost. It could be a profitable exercise for taxpayers.

I was struck by one item of information revealed by the Select Committee when it investigated the Child Support Agency, as it has on a number of occasions. I think that I am right in saying that, after the first letter was sent to mothers or fathers on income support and they were asked to respond within eight weeks, many of them went off benefit immediately. That was one of the largest gains from the exercise. There has been much debate about the CSA's costs and benefits, but that substantial benefit to the taxpayer was a by-product of the system. It suggests that, if we communicate with beneficiaries regularly and ask them one or two awkward questions, they may quickly disappear off the map.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, but the question of fraud is even more serious than he suggests. The enormous sums that taxpayers have got back as a result of that first envelope going out are merely the tip of the iceberg, because that does not cover people who are slightly more streetwise and know that the agency's administration is not as we would wish it to be and that, if they merely ignore the letter, the agency probably will not follow it up. I know that the agency would not want to use this language, but it has given an amnesty to parents who, in effect, put two fingers up to taxpayers by not replying to its letters. Those people are slightly more streetwise and know that the agency will never be able to get round to them.

In the first, I think, 18 months, £360 million-worth of books were returned—a substantial sum—but that is a small sum compared with what could be gained if we could only get the agency working effectively, if the amnesty for parents who are refusing to answer questions were withdrawn and if the agency could tackle those people effectively. The gains to taxpayers would be massive.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) is here. She piles in questions, the answers to which all put question marks over how well the agency works. The one sector where we never thought the agency would be a success, where it has turned out to be a major success, but where it could be an even bigger success, is in countering fraud.

That suggests that, if additional resources were available to the agency and it was able to follow up some of the people who did not reply to its letters, further huge gains could be made. Some people do not receive letters in the first place. Admittedly, they are nothing to do with the CSA, but the implication must be that, if they were written to from time to time, they too might not claim. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Obviously, it is hard, by definition, to measure fraud, but the taxpayer would probably gain greatly if more resources were devoted to it.

In its fifth report, the Committee looked at the operation of the executive agencies of the Department of Social Security. The DSS is unusual in that almost all its work is carried out through agencies, which means that almost all the money that it spends is spent through agencies. It is a useful case study, and the Department covers the largest agency, the Benefits Agency. I was interested in a comment on that issue by Sir Michael Partridge, who retired recently from the post of permanent secretary at the DSS.

It has always seemed to me that one of the principal advantages of establishing the executive agency system was that for the first time there would be a clear distinction within the civil service between policy advice and policy execution. In that context, what Sir Michael Partridge told the Committee was interesting. He said:

"In the past I used to sit there with these enormous piles of paper … This was a tremendous waste of time. I now have virtually no paper. So my role has changed much more to thinking about the future, getting my staff to run the Department in a proper way and to be much more accountable to me, much more quickly, and to Ministers, for their performance. I feel I have much more handle on what is happening in the Department and what is going wrong, than I did from trying to spend hours and hours looking at minutiae."

Of course, the permanent secretary in any Department, most of whose service delivery is carried out through the agencies, is able to concentrate on policy advice to Ministers, because other people—the chief executives of the agencies, who are also accounting officers—can be held to account by the House and are regularly summoned by Select Committees. That has been a great success, because it has started to change the culture of the civil service.

At one time, those who wanted to get on in the civil service had to be good at advising Ministers—the key was policy advice—and although most of the Department's money was spent on services, delivering them took second place. That has changed a great deal.

In paragraph 75, the Committee reported:

"A kind of transfer league is developing in Chief Executives."

That is good, because some people are coming in from outside. An example is Michael Bichard who, I think, was chief executive of Gloucester city council. He is now the permanent secretary in the Department and he got there by first becoming chief executive of the Benefits Agency. At present, there is as much emphasis on policy execution and on being good at making sure that the Government's customers get a good service as there used to be on policy advice. That is a great improvement, and the DSS has led the field in that respect.

Has the hon. Gentleman ever thought of the irony of a market developing in highly paid chief executives of these agencies, who force market testing down the throats of low-paid employees in their Departments, make large numbers redundant and try to worsen their working conditions? Apparently, incentives are required for chief executives, but sticks are needed for low-paid people, many of whom have given a lifetime of service to the civil service. They feel outraged and alienated because of the way in which they have been treated.

Those people do not need to be upset because chief executives are well paid. If good people are wanted, one must pay a reasonable price and compare it with the price paid in the private sector. I agree that a better performance will not be had from an employee by reducing his remuneration or worsening his working conditions. Better performance can be had by adopting the opposite approach—by offering incentives, measuring performance and improving job satisfaction. That is the right way to do it, and to that extent I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The agencies have been a success. For example, a three-year evaluation in the Contributions Agency

"concluded that in each year efficiency savings had been exceeded and the milestone targets had been achieved and that 'Agency status has therefore clearly resulted in improved performance. accountability and value for money"'.

That refers to the Contributions Agency, but I would say the same about the Benefits Agency.

The concept of customer service did not operate in the administration of social security benefits in local offices, say, 10 years ago, before the Benefits Agency was established. My local office in High Wycombe, which provides a service to my constituents, has been transformed over that time. A huge effort is made to help and advise people, some of whom are the most vulnerable in our society. It tries to provide a decent service. The system is complex and there is a range of benefits, but the service has improved.

Some people might say that the improvement is only superficial, but I do not agree. The area that people visit has greatly improved. At one time, people who visited the front office were treated almost as if they were not human beings. They were made to wait for very long periods in appalling conditions.

The whole set-up has become much more customer friendly. That is because—this relates to my point about job satisfaction—there is much more staff training at the Benefits Agency, which is good for staff and customers. As a consequence of staff training, customers are receiving a much better service.

Although most of us have seen the transformation of our local offices under the agency agreement—provided that we do not represent a London constituency and have found that offices have moved out of the area—does the hon. Gentleman think that the improvement will be such that in the next year or two, the Comptroller and Auditor General will be able to sign the agency's accounts, given that he has refused them an unqualified audit since income support was introduced?

It is a most unsatisfactory matter. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I can certainly say that the Committee is not complacent about it in the slightest. The necessity for the Comptroller and Auditor General to qualify the audit of any Government Department or executive agency is a matter for concern. It suggests that the agency's record keeping is still unsatisfactory and that there is still room for improvement, which I believe is the case.

Although I was focusing particularly on the way in which the agency deals with its customers, I acknowledge the need for improvement. When the National Audit Office carried out a sample check on the payment of income support, it found an unacceptably high error rate. That suggests that, although there has been much staff training, there is a need for more. There must be better quality outputs. That is what it is all about—measuring output and getting better performance, which at the moment is not good enough. Errors impact both ways—some beneficiaries lose out and some gain. The error rate of the Inland Revenue is not nearly as high as that of the Benefits Agency. The Benefits Agency has scope for further improvement and will have to work over the next few months and years to improve its performance.

One point in the report that interested me was the very important concept of a one-stop shop. When claimants go to a local benefits office, it is normally possible for them to see one officer, who is able to deal with the whole range of benefits. The Committee makes the point that very often such officers will have to deal not only with social security. In fact, that would be rather unusual. Somebody on income support would almost certainly be claiming housing benefit and council tax benefit, and even be dealing with the Inland Revenue—certainly if he had become unemployed in the previous 12 months. He would therefore have to deal with another Government agency.

The idea of trying to bring all those claims together at one advice point is obviously very ambitious. We are talking principally about co-operation between local benefits offices and local councils. Two different council departments would be involved—one dealing with housing benefit and one with council tax benefit. That is something which the Committee should pursue with the Government, to see what further progress can be made.

We all know, from dealing with individual constituents, that there is a bewildering maze of different benefits. To have reached the point where someone can see just one officer in a benefits office is obviously a tremendous step forward. If we could take that further, so that someone could talk to just one person about the whole range of benefits, possibly including even his income tax position, that would be a tremendous step towards helping people with a very complicated matter. Indeed, some of the benefit forms are even more complicated than income tax returns. Of course, no one gives a high priority to completing an income tax return; nor do people enthuse over doing so. The Inland Revenue says that it may be easier when we have self-assessment, but I doubt it. Claiming social security benefits is a difficult process and we should do everything we can to support people in doing so.

This is almost a re-run of our debate in the Chamber last week on benefit fraud. Before dealing with some of the issues in the Social Security Select Committee report, I want to refer to the total amount of social security expenditure. It is fashionable for the media and hon. Members to say that social security is unaffordable. I do not doubt that spending on social security is high. Indeed, the Government estimate that it will be £90 billion for the year 1995–96, which will cost every working person £15 a day. What I want to ask all hon. Members is whether there is a cheaper alternative. Quite honestly, I do not believe that there is.

Any alternative must pass two tests—first, is it cheaper for the Department of Social Security and the Government as a whole, and secondly, is it cheaper for the people of this country? If it does not pass those tests, we shall be passing the buck, because the bill to the family will rise, even though the taxpayer might find things easier. At the end of the week, month or year, the person concerned will have to pay more.

There is a frequently expressed fear about a demographic time bomb, with the country being overrun by senior citizens in a couple of decades. In reality, the growth has already started. A DSS publication says that in 1990, 15 per cent. of the population were over 65. It predicted a slight fall to 14 per cent. in the year 2000 and then a rise to 16 per cent. in 2020. Of course, we must take account of the importance of the number of retired people in society compared with the number of people who are actually working, but even on those figures, the position will not be as bad as some of the predictions suggest. For example, the proportion of pensioners to people of working age in 1990 was 23 per cent. It is predicted that the figure will rise to 26 per cent. in 2020. That is better than the figures for 12 other European Union countries, where the proportion was 21 per cent. in 1990, rising to 29 per cent. in 2020. In other words, the figure for the EU will rise by 8 per cent. compared with a UK rise of 3 per cent.

Although I do not doubt that there are grounds for concern, I do not believe that there are grounds for alarm. Some people in the media are sounding the alarm bells, but before we start slashing spending on social security and disentitling many more people, we must look at the consequences. We must consider whether private provision is any cheaper. It certainly is not cheaper for sickness, for disability or for unemployment. The basic principle of insurance is spreading the risk; no system can spread the risk more widely than the national insurance system.

We must also examine the costs of any cuts in social security benefit to the Government and to the nation. Cuts in housing benefit and income support, for example, may save the Department of Social Security money, but what are the costs to other Departments? There may be costs to the Home Office from increasing crime, and the taxpayers' bill may go up because of homelessness. We should consider the number of homeless people with tuberculosis—200 times more than the national average. If homeless people fall ill, the cost to the national health service is greater. All Departments, especially the Department of Social Security, must look at the knock-on effects on other Departments and at the overall bill for the Government.

I now come to the Select Committee report. If there is a back-to-work strategy for unemployed and lone parents, they must be given advice about their financial position and entitlements. I welcome that, but I believe that we must also help people back into work. The payment of child care costs is a wise investment for the future. Apart from that, we need far bolder measures, and I do not believe that that point is being addressed.

The Select Committee recommended that, on a trial basis, calls to the War Pensions Agency helpline should be charged at the local rate, and I sincerely hope that the Government will accept that. I know that they have said that they will look at the suggestion and that they will consider the cost to the Department of Social Security, but I wish that they would just accept it. The recent reforms of war pensions are not going smoothly—we all know that. War pensioners and war widows need the helpline service, and they need their calls to be charged at the local rate. It is well known that I have never been a great supporter of the Child Support Agency and that I would like it to be scrapped. However, if the CSA can provide that service—anyone who telephones the CSA is charged at the local rate—I do not see why the War Pensions Agency cannot do the same.

I shall not go into detail about benefit fraud and the take-up of benefits, because we had a discussion about that last week. I welcome the Select Committee's recommendations. But anti-fraud activities have to go hand in hand with promoting the take-up of benefits, especially pensions. Some pensioners do not take up their entitlement to income support, which means that they miss the cold weather payments as well. Some 305 pensioners had hypothermia listed on their death certificate in 1994. How many of those pensioners did not get the income support and the cold weather payments to which they were entitled? The situation could get even worse if we do not promote the take-up of income support by pensioners who are supposed to get it.

Ten days ago, it was reported in The Guardian that there would be short-term savings by the Department of Social Security. It was suggested that the Department would remove services that encouraged people to obtain the £2 billion of unclaimed benefits and that there would be cuts in the telephone advice lines. It was also suggested that the Department would end the extension of benefit office opening hours and that it would stop the benefit buses—the buses that go to outlying areas, so that people's queries can be answered in their locality. Will the Minister confirm or deny that those cuts will really take place? If he confirms that they will take place, will he explain the reasoning behind the decision?

Social security spending must be closely monitored. We must fight waste, whether from fraud or from overpayment. As I have said many times, £546 million was overpaid in income support last year, mainly through official error. That must also be addressed when we talk about waste.

I welcome what the Government are doing on benefit fraud, but when it comes to the growth of expenditure on social security, we must keep things in proportion. Social security spending, as I said earlier, is high, but there is probably no cheaper alternative for families' bills at the end of the week or month. It is certainly not right simply to pass the buck to other Departments, charities or the population as a whole.

It is nice to have an early opportunity to enter the debate, even though it is earlier than I, in my naivety, had expected.

We are discussing not only the recent work of the Select Committee but supplementary estimates. Indeed, we are formally asked to approve an extra £19 million to the cash limit for the running costs of the Department of Social Security. Often, the House takes scrutiny of public spending too lightly. but it should be no light matter that we are asked to approve a further £19 million. As, according to my arithmetic, much of the money is for the running costs of the Child Support Agency, I shall focus later on the work of the CSA. I hope that the Minister will be encouraged to update us on its work and present a progress report, because we need progress on the implementation of child support.

I am a recently retired member of the Social Security Committee. It is appropriate that its esteemed Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), opened the debate. It was a privilege to serve on it under his chairmanship for one parliamentary Session. I welcome the opportunity that I had to work with him and, indeed, Conservative colleagues. I had the honour of contributing in a small way to the report that we are discussing today.

We should put the supplementary estimate in the context of the increase in public expenditure on social security. In 1989–90, we spent some £50 billion on social security. That figure is now £90 billion in cash terms, which is a considerable increase. It is easily the largest of our public expenditure programmes. Indeed, it represents a staggering one third of total public expenditure.

Before my hon. Friend leaves this point, I hope that he will find time to talk about the change in the nature of poverty. Whereas we talked of it primarily in economic terms and causes, we now—as I think my hon. Friend is hinting at—talk of it as being much more socially based.

Indeed. The Chairman of my former Committee anticipates some of my remarks and hits on a very important point about family insecurity. I shall say something about that, but we should dwell on the sheer size of the social security budget, which now represents one third of total public spending. Although it would be rash, I suspect, to argue the possibility of bringing that total down, I feel instinctively that it is consuming too large a proportion of public spending and, given the other demands on the welfare state and the Government, we should look critically at it.

I ask the House to distinguish between the term social security—not in the sense of rather dry terminology for a set of benefits—and state benefits. I put it to the House that what makes social security, in the proper usage of that term, is not just state benefits. Many other factors contribute to social security. Indeed, many of the other factors are often more important than the contribution to security that comes from state benefits. I also argue that, on state benefits. we need to be vigorous and rigorous about defining objectives and to look critically at the public expenditure total to see to what extent some public spending relates directly to the objectives and to true social security, and to what extent public spending is perhaps more a symptom of social insecurity and of the fact that other parts of society, the economy and public policy are not working as well as they should. I shall give one example.

I do not think that any of the great figures who have set out social security objectives have ever said that it is an objective of social security policy to enable men in their 50s or early 60s to draw benefits—whether invalidity benefits or income support—as a stop-gap measure between an early period of unemployment or redundancy and when they are able to draw their state retirement pension, yet the data on economic inactivity, or what is essentially unemployment, show that a large proportion of men who are not so old are economically inactive. They are out of the labour market.

I sometimes think that the House has a strange custom of discussing the retirement age, not least in relation to European directives towards gender equality and whether to equalise at 65, 60 or 63. We have had that debate. It is all based on an assumption that men retire at 65. Some do. Some of us may hope to retire later.

The hon. Gentleman is being optimistic.

The hon. Gentleman—my pair—is worried about my employment security. I can tell him that I am rather more confident about it at the moment than he has any right to be about his.

Men aged 55 to 59 can hardly be considered old. One would expect some 90 per cent. of them to be in employment, but the reality is that one in three is out of work. In the slightly older group—those aged 60 to 64, who are in the period just before retirement—just over four out of 10 are in work. The amount of economic inactivity among middle-aged to older men is massive. That was never meant to be. William Beveridge, Labour Governments and Conservative Governments never said that we should support that group, through social security, income support or invalidity benefits of one kind or another to be on benefit and not in work, but it has come to be.

I was following the remarks of the hon. Member for Rotherham—

Rochdale.

It was certainly somewhere beginning with an R. I apologise to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) and the good people of—

Rotherham.

Rochdale.

My ungallant Friend said Rotherham, but, being more gallant, I meant Rochdale. The hon. Lady argued that we should be able to afford that sum of money. I am inclined to agree with her at one level, but only if we are convinced that we are spending it properly. I am not convinced that we are doing so at present. Let us have a debate about social security objectives and ensure that public money is spent appropriately on them.

Before my hon. Friend develops that theme, may I take him back one step? He rightly emphasises that many people now feel insecure and that social security payments support that insecurity. Is it not also true that a large number of men are inactive in the age group to which he refers because they have been able to draw down their occupational pension early, so we now get the success of the company pension scheme impacting on the social security budget?

In my area—some distance from Croydon, but not that far from Rochdale—two former public utilities are merging and there will be large-scale lay-offs. We are also affected by the Mobil-BP merger, which will result in lay-offs. Does my hon. Friend think that we ought to consider whether it is necessary to issue social security impact statements when firms propose merging and, to use the euphemistic expression, downsizing their labour forces? Much of the cost of the two mergers in my area will be borne by taxpayers in general, who will have to pick up the social security costs of people who would otherwise be in work but will become unemployed, and soon unemployable, as a result of those changes.

That is an interesting observation and recommendation, to which we shall certainly want to give more thought. If it seems to be a good idea, given that the Department of Social Security plans so radically to cut its running costs and, presumably, its labour force, perhaps it should make the first social security impact statement. The Minister might want to announce that later if he intends to proceed along those lines.

Given the importance of spending our social security money effectively, the theme of fraud, which my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead introduced, is obviously important. I shall not add to his remarks, but we agree with the emphasis he put on the need to combat fraud. We welcome the recent increased determination of the Government, but we would want to go rather further. It would be worth calculating at some stage how much money has been squandered these past 16 years because the Government have made only lame attempts to combat fraud. It must become a key social security objective to ensure the promotion of the honest social security pound; to ensure that every pound of taxpayers' money is spent as honestly as possible.

In my advice surgery in Croydon, North-West, when I sometimes have to explain to people who are hard pressed that they will not receive more benefit, despite their old age or disability, it makes me furious to think that we are being defrauded of hundreds of thousands, millions or perhaps billions of pounds that could be used for people in genuine need. It is a very human matter.

We need to distinguish between the public policies that would make for social security and the role within them of state benefits. My theme is that the two are rather different. They are not necessarily the same. We need to use the phrase "social security" in the proper sense in the English language. What makes for social security in that wider sense? I suppose that most fundamental is the economy and employment, and enabling more of our citizens to find a secure place in the job market. That is obvious. It was well understood by William Beveridge, but we need a renewed determination to enable more of our citizens to get into employment.

Therefore, Opposition Members were in despair when we heard the proposals of the Deputy Prime Minister to deregulate the employment market for those in small businesses. If there was one thing that we did not need at this precise time, it was a suggestion that a Deputy Prime Minister could be seriously contemplating making more of our citizens economically insecure and therefore insecure about their social life, their housing and the rest of it. This is precisely the time when enhancing and developing security should be one of the major and first responsibilities of government.

If economic security and employment security are important, we need to work hard at changing our social security system. I remember very well one particular constituent who came to my advice surgery in Thornton Heath about a housing problem. We talked more generally about her situation. She was on income support. She was drawing housing benefit. In some respects, she was totally dependent on the state. She was a prime example of the state of dependency that has been created these past 15 or so years, a state that we have to change in the coming five years.

When I asked my constituent how she saw her future, her eyes started to shine and she said, "I want a job." I asked her what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a traffic warden. Not only did she have determination, but she was brave, given the circumstances of Croydon traffic, and had an ambition which should have been fostered. I asked whether she ever talked of her ambition when she went to the DSS office and talked to various officials. She said that no one had ever asked her if she wanted a job. No one had ever sat down with her to talk about her ambition and how it might be realised.

Under the current social security regime, a lone mother is entitled to draw income support until her youngest child is 16. We have to start to change the culture. I am talking not about compulsion but about sensitivity. I am talking about a social security office where, in liaison with an employment office, someone would sit down with that young woman and say, "This is great news. You have a good ambition. We are going to help you. We are going to talk about your training and building any confidence that you might need,"—although this young woman did not need confidence; she had plenty of it—"We are going to talk about child care implications and the jobs that are available. We will certainly fix you up with the traffic warden people, but we will talk to other people. We can take some months on this." Was that happening? No, it was not.

The future social security system has to be in the business of helping young women such as my constituent who have no ambition to remain dependent or to draw social security for ever, but have an ambition to be independent. How we move from dependency to independence is the key theme of social security policy in the late 1990s.

I have talked about employment security. Let me also talk about family security and insecurity—the theme that my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead tempted me to discuss and one that I want to discuss. Family security is as important as economic security in enabling us to live our lives in a satisfactory way, not only in terms of cash, although that it important, but more generally. Family breakdown and related family change are now a major cause of poverty, disadvantage and new forms of inequality that are opening up in our society. If we need evidence of that, it comes in part from the Select Committee report on low income statistics that was published in February 1995. The report includes a table that shows that family breakdown and the rise of the lone-parent family is probably a more important cause of poverty and disadvantage than are the traditional causes of unemployment and low wages.

Data for 1992 show that 3.6 million—almost 3.7 million—children in Great Britain are dependent on income support or in families that have net resources below the income support level because of low wages. That is a shocking indicator of child poverty in a supposedly affluent society. Of those children, 1.8 million are in lone-parent families. Unemployment contributes a huge 1 million children, but the number of children in lone-parent families is much greater. William Beveridge would not have recognised that phenomenon. In 1942, when he and Parliament examined the causes of social insecurity that needed to be tackled by social insurance and the national assistance scheme, that factor was not uppermost in their minds. We need to work hard at addressing that considerable problem.

I want to consider how the power and pace of family change contribute to social insecurity and new forms of child poverty. First, more children are born out of wedlock. I make no moral judgments on that—it is not the subject of the debate—but the statistics relate to our theme of child poverty and social insecurity. Back in 1960, only 5 per cent. of children were born out of wedlock. Today, the proportion is a massive 32 per cent. Nearly one in three children are born outside marriage. Half of them are born to cohabiting couples; the other half to single unmarried mothers. We know that 85 per cent. of single unmarried mothers draw income support. It is a demographic trend of direct relevance to the estimates and public spending.

While cohabitation comes in all shapes and sizes and can include some of the most well-to-do and affluent couples, there is a general association between cohabitation and disadvantage. Although demographers are not clear about it, my reading of the research suggests that cohabiting parents are more likely to suffer a breakdown of their relationship than are married couple parents. That is a contributory factor to insecurity. I have mentioned the change since 1960, but over the past decade alone, the number of children born outside marriage has almost doubled. That is a rapid change with major consequences for our debates on social security and social insecurity.

There is also the question of divorce, which is exercising our minds and those of modern Governments more and more. It is no coincidence that the House will soon receive a Bill on divorce law reform from the other place. The key question is how to obtain a modern divorce law that puts children first. Pension splitting and the social security implications of divorce are related themes. The Child Support Agency is another consequence of divorce and has become a powerful theme. The bad news is that it will become even more important in the future.

I recently asked a parliamentary question to update some data with which I had been familiar when I worked at the Family Policy Studies Centre. I asked Government statisticians, who are the best in the country for such forecasting, what percentage of marriages are likely to end in divorce. The answer was 41 per cent.—more than four out of 10. That forecast is not wild, but a sober estimate by sensible demographers and scientists. The issues surrounding that, which relate to child maintenance, are crucial to our social security. I shall come to them later. If we do not get that right, we are in deep trouble in respect of insecurities among families and of state spending on benefits.

Every year, there are 160,000 children under 16 in Great Britain whose parents divorce. It is interesting that the children involved are becoming younger. Divorces occur more quickly than they did 10 or 15 years ago. The figures for 1993 for England and Wales show that there were 55,000 children under five who had mums and dads who divorced—25 per cent. more than in 1983. Not only are many children affected by the phenomenon but they are wearing an even younger face than they used to. More children spend some or all of their childhoods in one-parent families.

The picture is further complicated by remarriage and, to use a slightly ugly expression, repartnering. The Minister winces because he is a sensitive man. I use the word because cohabitation is more common after the break-up of first marriages than as a substitute for first marriages. We have to invent a term for that. One in three marriages this weekend will involve someone marrying for the second time.

The phenomenon of the step-family, which is well known in literature and fairy tales, is becoming more important. It is estimated that 1 million or more children under 16 live in step-families. Of them, 770,000—the majority—are stepchildren but 280,000 are children of new relationships. Any attempt by society through state and government to consider the social policy implications of those trends, not least in relation to child maintenance, deals with complex territory. The complexity of the child support formula needs to be addressed. There is a legitimate debate about whether it should be yet more complex—more sensitive to particular circumstances—or whether we should have a simpler formula and rougher justice. I believe that the Select Committee will consider that issue in this Session.

The complexity is caused by the family circumstances and human relationships becoming more complex. Politicians, the Government and Parliament have been slow to address those issues because they feel uncomfortable about tackling some of the most difficult, complex and sensitive matters in society. The politician treads into the blood and thunder of human relationships and their breakdown at his or her peril. Even the best imaginable system, which I am bound to say we do not have at the moment, will run into difficulties because of that. That is relevant because the Government are asking us to approve supplementary estimates that include another £16 million for the running of the Child Support Agency.

The hon. Gentleman has given us an interesting description of recent social trends and many of the aspects that he describes are deeply worrying. Is he suggesting that the social security system has been the cause of those trends? I wonder what he thinks we should do about them, if anything. How should the social security system respond to them? He said that we are spending too much on social security, so what changes do we need to make?

I shall deal with the Child Support Agency and how we can create more effectiveness and fairness later. In direct response to the hon. Gentleman's thoughtful question, however, I do not believe that our social security arrangements contribute to family breakdown, although I recognise that there is an interesting debate to be had on that point.

At the moment, we seem to spend an awful lot of energy, time, legislation and public money on the consequences of family breakdown. The House of Commons Library gave me some figures, which show that the public costs of divorce are about £4 billion every year. Most of that is made up of social security—income support and so forth—but some is legal aid and the impact on the health service. How much money are we spending trying to save marriages and support family relationships? We spend money on Relate and other marriage guidance services.

I want a shift of emphasis towards trying to support and help relationships in trouble, rather than spending all our energy and public resources on breakdown when it occurs. As a long-standing advocate of a family policy strategy, I would certainly say that we have not got the balance right.

I am arguing that the social revolution of family change that we are in the midst of has not been without victims. It has not been a bloodless revolution—there are very few such revolutions. Victims come in all shapes and sizes and, of course, include many men, not least those who find that they are unable to continue a relationship with their children.

In financial terms, the main victims have always been, and remain, the women and children. It has been a case of women and children last in that aspect of family politics. We see that in the poverty statistics and in the fact that, in the main—of course, there are exceptions—it is women and children who have to depend on the state and on income support. One million one-parent families are drawing income support.

Whatever our criticism of the operation of the CSA—being a passionate believer in the principle of parental responsibility, I am among the foremost critics of the workings of that agency in practice—we must remember that the old system simply did not work. Anyone who advocates turning back the clock to a court-based system has to confront the data and the evidence that show that it was a failure. It delivered maintenance to only about one third of children.

I agree that the old system of the liable relatives unit, in particular, was a failure. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in terms of cost, there is not much to choose between the CSA and the old system? Some figures that I have obtained even suggest that the old liable relatives unit was far most cost-effective in saving the taxpayer money. Although I would not want a return to that unit—I would like a unified family court system, in which every case was assessed individually—I want us to get away from the formula system.

I understand the hon. Lady's argument, but I do not support it. We cannot return to that sort of court system, although I know that the hon. Lady denies it. We need to think hard about ways of bringing greater sensitivity and justice into the system. I shall deal with that briefly later, if there is time.

It is a pity that we do not know more about the workings of the old maintenance system. I do not think that it was researched thoroughly and I have never seen a proper report on it. Our public debates on its pros and cons would be advanced if we had more information.

I have already hinted at the argument that, given the complexity of human and family relationships, developing an effective child support or maintenance policy was always going to be difficult. Although those of us who had the opportunity to study the Australian and New Zealand systems of child support recently were impressed by aspects of those systems—certainly by the Australian system—even in those societies the systems have been immensely controversial and the subject of the majority of contributions to parliamentarians' postbags, as in this country.

I do not think that I say this merely with the benefit of hindsight—the case was argued at the time—but the Child Support Agency should have been introduced in a far more sensitive way. Ideally—in the politics of Thatcherism it was never going to happen—the emphasis should have been placed on child support as social policy, not on the mean-minded morality that it quickly became when it was introduced by the former Prime Minister, then Mrs. Thatcher. After all, it is called child support; it should have been genuine child support. I am becoming increasingly concerned about the matter because, in a sense, we have missed an historic opportunity for a proper public debate about child support and the obligations of parents to their children.

I can think of two questions that should have been central to that debate—there are probably others. First, how, in the great majority of cases, do we enable both parents to share in the care and maintenance of their children in turbulent family times? There will always be exceptions when men are violent and so forth.

I have reviewed briefly some of the demographics, but my argument is that, sadly, turbulent family times will not go away in the next 10 years. If—this may now be true—only about 50 per cent. of children will spend all their childhood in what we once would have called the traditional family and are born to parents who are married to one another and stay married until the children become adult, these issues do not merely concern a minority of our people and our children, but are central. Despite divorce and the phenomenon of children being born outside wedlock, how do we enable both parents to share in the care and maintenance of their children? That is a central question. Hon. Members will notice that I said care and maintenance. It is about not merely money and cash, but parental responsibility in a wider sense.

Secondly, how do we avoid the trends becoming forces for child poverty and disadvantage? Instead of having that sensible debate, we had Thatcherite mean-mindedness posing as morality. It was led by the then Prime Minister. I well remember her speech to the National Children's Home. That speech and her emphasis on parental responsibility, which she tackled in her own particular way, was as much a surprise to Social Security Ministers as to the rest of us. They did not see the policy coming—they saw it as a hand grenade rolling towards them, with the pin half pulled out. The Treasury then seized the opportunity—it saw the policy as a major way of raising revenue—and thwarted the Department of Social Security when, I suspect, it was arguing that there should be a disregard, as we call it in technical language, to enable mothers on income support at least to get some child support so that their net incomes and the welfare of their children could be enhanced.

The combination of the then Prime Minister's policy and the Treasury seizing the opportunity led to the bad start to child maintenance from which we have not recovered thus far, and from which it will be difficult to recover. I refer to the quite extraordinary catastrophe that the Child Support Agency quickly became. It takes months to make assessments, it has a huge error rate and it is insensitive to those who are trying to communicate with it. I do not have the opportunity today to discuss the Child Support Agency in great detail, but it is appropriate—not least because £16 million of the supplementary estimate that we are being asked to approve today is for running the Child Support Agency—to ask some questions of the Under-Secretary of State.

Will the Minister give hon. Members an up-to-date report on, and the accuracy of, the time taken to undertake the assessments and enforcement within the agency? I believe that such an update would be most helpful. Will the Minister also tell hon. Members how much child support is now being collected and the projections for the coming financial year? In addition, how much of that money will go to the Exchequer and how much of it will go to the parent with care—normally, but not always, the mother?

Does the Minister have anything to say about improving, or developing the human face of, the Child Support Agency, given its reputation for insensitivity? Are there ways in which the people dealing with the agency—whether they are the mothers, usually the parents with care, or the fathers, the so-called absent parents—can be made to feel that someone at the end of the telephone line understands their case and can discuss it with them in a human way?

Many hon. Members are interested in and impressed by the so-called CAST system being pioneered at the Hastings centre. Some months ago, I had the opportunity to visit the centre and I talked to the staff about the system. It is an attempt to deal with people in the round. It would be useful to know how it is progressing. Does the Minister have any plans to expand the system across the country?

Traditionally, complaints about the workings of the Child Support Agency have come from men—the so-called absent parents. I have received many letters about the way in which many men, quite understandably, feel resentful about being called "absent parents". We are still grappling with the terminology on this issue. Given that being a parent is not just about paying maintenance, but is about providing care to children—as so many fathers do in difficult family circumstances—we need better terminology. The term "absent parent" is an insult.

Will my father—will my hon. Friend give way? The Select Committee on Social Security has suggested that we use the word "father".

I am glad that my hon. Friend confirmed that I am not his father—if I were, I would struggle to pay maintenance on him. As nine out of 10 parents with care are mothers—and, therefore, nine out of 10 absent parents are fathers—we could often use the term "father". However, we must allow for the reverse situation.

I suggest that the term "liable parent" could be used instead of the terms "absent parent" or "father". Some liable parents—only a few—are mothers.

I take that important point.

Many of the fathers who write to me or to other hon. Members about grievances to do with child support are often doing their best to pay the child maintenance. However, they find that, when there_ is a change in their circumstances—for example, a postman may have a higher rate of pay over Christmas but then wants to tell the Child Support Agency that his wages have decreased—it is enormously difficult to communicate with the agency. For example, they can never find one person at the end of the telephone line who will take their point, put it into the system and report back to them in a decent way to say that their assessment has been varied.

We all have the right to expect that kind of obvious sensitivity when we are dealing with a bank or with a building society—I am not saying that we always get it from those institutions—and we want to bring it into the workings of the Child Support Agency. Many men feel aggrieved—and justifiably so—and we need to allow for that in any reforms of the agency.

Many mothers—the parents with care—also have grievances about the way in which the Child Support Agency has not delivered. I shall quote a letter—with care as I want to protect the identity of the woman—from a mother who has recently come to see me at the House of Commons about her situation. She is a young mother with a son, and she was on income support at one stage and contacted the Child Support Agency. She has since found a full-time job in London at a reasonable, but not generous, level of pay. She lives in the home counties. For the past two or three years she has been trying to get the Child Support Agency to find the father of her child so that he will contribute some maintenance. In many ways, she illustrates the kind of benefit-to-work strategy of which we are all in favour. She has a tough life. Her letter states:

"As a working mother, my day starts at 7.40 am when I leave for work; I don't get home until 7.30, when I collect my son from the childminder's. I then return home and have to do all the household chores. This is not a situation I deliberately created—I was forced to leave my son's father because he is a very violent man and I feared for our safety. I even had to have a non-molestation order served against him."

She has told me that she has not received any maintenance payments from the man since she left him. She also told me that this man has four other children, by two other relationships, and that he pays maintenance towards none of the children—a fact that he openly laughs about.

I shall not go into too much detail about the mother and her situation, except to say that, for two or three years, she has been trying to get the Child Support Agency to act. She told me in our meeting that she thought that the Child Support Agency was there to help her and her son, and that she cannot understand why it has not delivered. I was appalled when I looked at some of the correspondence on this issue between the Child Support Agency and another hon. Member. That woman knew where the man was, knew that he was in employment and believed that he earned about £400 a week. She gave the Child Support Agency the man's address and the agency wrote to the address. The man or his new girlfriend scribbled on the back of the envelope, "Not known at this address" and the Child Support Agency told the woman, "I am sorry; he is not known at that address." If that is the sophistication of the Child Support Agency, we are in deep trouble.

The woman rang up the Child Support Agency one day to say, "I can tell you that he is in employment, because I have heard that he is." The agency staff said, "We shall try to trace the employer," but later told her, "I am sorry; we cannot trace the employer." The woman said, "Hold on a moment, I shall call you back." She made a few telephone calls and found out where the man was working—on a highway, doing construction work. She told the Child Support Agency all about it, but still there was no action.

That story lasted several years. Eventually, the Child Support Agency managed to track down the man and produced an interim maintenance assessment, but made a procedural mistake and had to withdraw it. Two or three years later, the man has paid no maintenance towards that little boy or any of his four other children.

When the woman first approached the agency, she was told by the man from the agency on the telephone, "It will be difficult; he is self-employed. If I were you, I wouldn't bother." The Child Support Act 1991, passed by Parliament with much support on both sides of the House, is not delivering to that woman and her child.

Generalisations are unfair; I know that the agency has tracked down some such men, but suspicion remains that the agency regards as a soft touch men in secure employment in a major private company or in the public sector—teachers, police officers and so on—and pursues them to obtain more money from them, but that many men in difficult cases continue to get away with it. Some fathers are laughing at Parliament, at the agency and at the mothers and their children, saying, "I won't pay anything. I would rather go to prison than pay anything. They will never catch me," and continue to get away with it. That is not what Parliament intended. It has brought the Child Support Agency into grave disrepute because people do not regard it as effective social policy or effective child support.

As part of Labour's general review of social security, we have been reconsidering the operation of the child support system. We reaffirm easily and clearly our principled support for the important principle of parental responsibility, but we are angry and worried that that decent principle—indeed, a guiding principle in the turbulent family times in which we find ourselves—is brought into disrepute by the continuing thoroughly bad practice of the Child Support Agency.

We reaffirm our commitment to the principle of introducing a disregard so that mothers who are on income support, every penny of whose child maintenance is currently taken away from their income support, obtain some net income and net benefit from it. We are not in a position to say when the disregard might be introduced or the amount because, obviously, that depends on total commitments and other spending priorities, but we reaffirm that important principle. If the public and some fathers—some of the so-called "absent parents"—could be sure that a certain fraction of their child maintenance went directly into the pockets of mothers and benefited their own children, we would start to turn the position around and bring what is at the moment a mean-minded piece of policy into the true province of social policy. That is the challenge.

In considering in more detail the workings of the Child Support Agency, Opposition Members have two major objectives—fairness and efficiency.

A disregard would be an important step forward in fairness. People would regard that as fair to the taxpayer, because the taxpayer would continue to benefit from most of the extra revenue coming in. We have no quarrel with that; the taxpayer has a major interest. The taxpayer is not an anonymous person but often a mother or father, struggling to bring up children and resenting having to contribute too much to other people's children. We acknowledge that the taxpayer has a legitimate interest, but we need to strike a fairer balance between the interests of taxpayers and the interests of mothers and their children. We shall strike that balance.

We need to review the operations of the Child Support Agency to seek a way to introduce a greater sense of independence and fairness into the system. At the moment, people feel that they are dealing with a monolithic agency—a grey, bureaucratic agency—that can never deal with them in the round. It would be a step in the right direction to find a way to allow people who feel a sense of grievance that they are not being treated properly or whose family position is so complex that they do not believe that the formula can deal with them properly, an independent review or adjudication. We are investigating that in detail.

Greater efficiency is needed. It is nonsensical that it takes months to process assessments and that, in the case that I described of the young mother struggling to do her best for her child, the system is so ineffective that, despite being given all the clues, all the details and all the addresses by that woman, the agency cannot yet find that man and make him pay maintenance. We need greater effectiveness.

Yes, we support the principle of parental responsibility—I could not have made that clearer—but we need to consider the workings of the agency, so that we shall be able to say one day that it is as effective as possible and fairer than it ever has been.

The major challenge for the House in turbulent family times is to ensure that parental responsibility works, because all our children deserve to be brought up, wherever possible, by both their parents. We need care and responsibility. Saving the decent principle of parental responsibility from bad practice is a key challenge for future social policy.

This afternoon, we have listened to four very interesting speeches by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) and by Opposition Members. This has been a shortish debate, which may reflect the fact that, in the past three weeks, we have had three major debates on social security. Opposition Members—and indeed Conservative Members—may he suffering from social security fatigue.

Coming relatively fresh to estimates debates, I am struck by how much has changed in the way in which these matters are discussed in the three years since my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State delivered his Mais lecture. A copy of the lecture is indispensable to any discussion of social security in much the same way as the thoughts and writings of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who opened today's debate, whose speeches are also indispensable to any junior Minister trying to work his way through the maze of social security.

Three years ago, politicians tended to boast about the increase in welfare spending. I remember that a leading Labour academic wrote a paper called "The Future of Welfare: A Guide to the Debate", in which he advocated that an extra 5 per cent. of gross domestic product on social security spending would do the trick.

The hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks) made kind remarks about Government statisticians, which I shall pass on, and said that he wanted to consider appropriate objectives for social security. Conservative Members have little doubt what the appropriate objectives are. In recent years there has been a reduction in the underlying growth in social security, not only because it is a burden to the taxpayer, but because of the growth in the dependency culture, which is wrong. Many of those changes were enshrined in last year's heavy social security legislative programme. We are now enabling the country to meet genuine need without outstripping the country's ability to pay.

I fear that we remain in considerable doubt about the Labour party's views; it is not at all clear where it is heading. All will be revealed on 8 May when the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West and his hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench announce the result of their six-month review—they have been instructed by their leader to think the unthinkable. We are all waiting with bated breath to hear what emerges from that important process.

If we consider the international comparisons overseas, we see just how far ahead of the field the Government are on the issue of social security. In Germany, there is widespread discussion of the problem of non-wage labour costs and the burdens that they impose on an economy that is struggling to reach the Maastricht criteria. Unemployment in Germany is higher than at any time since the last war, and reached 4.3 million in February.

The position in France is no less severe. France is also suffering high social costs, as we know from the vivid media reports of the recent unrest in Paris and other big cities. In the face of widespread strikes by public sector workers in November, Jacques Barrot, the Social Affairs Minster, said: "There is no alternative" to welfare reform. The strikers were protesting against the social security reforms announced by the Prime Minister.

In a television interview in October, President Chirac called on France to follow the

"courageous example of the UK"

in reducing public expenditure. He spoke of the urgent need to reduce the public deficit, especially that of the social security budget. He said that France had lived beyond its means for too long. But in the face of continued strikes and protests, the French Government have had to backtrack on some of their planned reforms: they have given way over public sector pensions and postponed the proposed taxation of family benefits.

I gave those international comparisons as they show not only the extent to which the Labour party is still wallowing about and trying to work out where to go, but how far ahead of the international game the British Government are in tackling those difficult problems.

My hon. Friend is right: there is no doubt that the United Kingdom Government are far ahead of the game in dealing with the burgeoning cost of social security spending. Does he agree that it is striking that the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks) said that he wanted to cut the total amount of social security spending—he said that it was too high at one third of the total—but every time that the Secretary of State makes relatively minor reductions in spending, the Labour party opposes them?

My hon. Friend is right, which is why he must make a note in his diary for 8 May, the date on which the Opposition will advise the House of their programmes and plans after their six-month review. I see from what my hon. Friend said that he is looking forward to that day as much as I am.

The Government—faced with rocketing social security spending because of the economic recession and a lack of decent social policy—have made benefit claimants suffer by cutting and withdrawing their benefits. But the proper strategy, which new Labour will adopt, is to get people off benefit; there are simply too many people on income support. We shall have a proper benefit-to-work strategy that will get people off benefit. The difference between the Conservatives and the Labour party is that, under the last Labour Government, there were not so many people on income support or supplementary benefit.

The hon. Gentleman will have to do better than that if he is to convince the House on 8 May that his party has a serious social security strategy, and I look forward to what he has to say on that day.

In his important contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield talked about the work of the agencies and the success that they have achieved. He mentioned the fact that the work of the Department and its agencies is tagged, in an attachment to the Select Committee's report, on today's Order Paper. The report confirms the agencies' success and the improvements that they have brought about.

The agencies' benefits include improved clarification of roles and responsibilities in framework documents, and greater public accountability through the publication of business plans and annual reports and accounts. Responsibility for decision making is devolved to the lowest suitable level closest to the point of delivery, allowing real improvements in customer service and efficiency to be made.

The improvements derived from agency status can also easily be seen by the agencies' customers in the service that they now receive. Better customer service has been achieved because the agencies have allowed improvements in management through greater coherence in control and planning, and through service-level agreements that protect the services that customers can expect to receive. As agencies focus on specific areas of business, it has also been possible to consider ways of achieving further efficiencies, and each agency is required to identify and deliver a challenging efficiency programme each year.

The agencies are a success—that is easily demonstrated by a range of published figures. But there is still room for further improvements in efficiency, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced the Department's change programme. Under that programme. a key step in our long-term review of social security, we are taking a fundamental look at what we deliver and how we deliver it over the next three years.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) asked me to comment on a leak in The Guardian. I do not normally comment on leaks of material, but the article refers to an early document relating to the Department's running costs review. and no decisions have been taken on the subjects mentioned.

The elimination of fraud—which was comprehensively covered in last week's debate and by the hon. Member for Birkenhead today—is not an afterthought. Reducing administrative costs will not be done at the expense of safeguarding benefit money. Our objective is to deliver the right money to the right people at the right time, whereas fraud involves money going to the wrong person. The extra funds secured for the security programme are ring-fenced for use on specific security and control activity, and cannot be diverted. We are committed to reducing the level of fraud by 70 per cent. over the security strategy period and the target will be unaffected by proposals in the change programme.

The hon. Member for Croydon, North-West spoke about the dangers and disasters of family breakdown. He spoke about security, particularly job security. I am sure that he would want to pay credit to the Government's in-work programme and their family credit programme, which make an important contribution at one level to the points that he raised. But at another level the hon. Gentleman spoke of the vital necessity of the Child Support Agency. I want to address a number of points that he raised on that subject.

I have today laid regulations before the House that pave the way for the trial of an important change in the way that child support liability is calculated. The new provisions will introduce an element of discretion that will allow the Child Support Agency to take account of certain special expenses and other commitments that the standard assessment formula is unable to accommodate.

The new provisions will deal with a number of specific issues. At present, the calculation of liability is governed by the assessment formula. That formula is necessarily detailed as it attempts to deal with the wide variety of circumstances that may be present in any particular case. However, despite the formula's detailed nature, it is impossible for such a system to meet every eventuality.

The new provisions will introduce the flexibility required to allow greater recognition of special expenses and other commitments that are not covered by the formula. It will also enable the agency to crack down on absent parents, principally fathers, who seek to reduce their child support liabilities by diverting income elsewhere.

It will be possible for a parent to apply for a departure direction under three broad categories: where there is a special expense; where there has been a property or capital transfer—a so-called clean-break case; or in other specified circumstances. We shall pilot the measure in the south-east of England, where it will be based on the Hastings Child Support Agency centre. Subject to evaluation and the pilot scheme's success, I hope to introduce it throughout the nation in December of this year.

These changes to the policy go hand in hand with a determined drive to improve the efficiency of the Child Support Agency—the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West spoke of the importance of doing so. The signs of recovery are now there for all to see and the agency's performance is improving in all areas of its work. While improvements may not have been dramatic, they have been steady and continuous. That is not to say that I am satisfied with the present state of affairs; there is certainly no room for complacency. We are constantly looking for ways in which to improve administration and streamline procedures in order to boost performance. Indeed, I expect to lay further regulations before the House in June. They will introduce more administrative improvements—for example, simplifying the way in which housing costs are calculated, and streamlining the procedures relating to reduced benefit directions. As many hon. Members will know, the calculation of housing costs has been lengthy, administratively complex and prone to inaccuracy; some simple changes should lead to worthwhile improvement.

My hon. Friend may say that I have only just entered the Chamber. Thanks to the wonders of information technology, however, I have been watching both him and the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks)—who made a thoughtful speech—on the box in my office.

Will the housing costs to which my hon. Friend referred include mortgage costs? We hear endless stories of one partner claiming that the mortgage is now higher, while the other—the former spouse—retorts that the aim in taking out such a large mortgage is merely to twist him or her, and diddle the children.

The point made by my hon. Friend—with which I am very familiar, as he has brought two of his constituents to discuss it with me—is dealt with in the departures that I mentioned a moment ago, which we are piloting from today.

Achieving major improvements in a large organisation that is performing a complicated task in difficult circumstances is not easy; but, although I realise that improvements will take time, no one should doubt my determination to ensure that the CSA achieves the standards that its customers have the right to expect. We are setting challenging targets for further progress, and I am determined to ensure that they are met.

The hon. Member for Croydon, North-West asked about a number of those challenges. First, he asked about accuracy. That has improved significantly. Accuracy within 1p—that is the way in which we measure it—was set a 75 per cent. target this year; in the last month, 77 per cent. was achieved. A target of 85 per cent. will be set for next year. As the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead will realise, that is a significant improvement in comparison with accuracy in regard to income support.

The hon. Member for Croydon, North-West also asked about collections. The agency hopes to reach its target for the current financial year of £300 million collected and arranged—a steep increase on last year's figure—and will set a target of between £380 million and £400 million for next year. Substantial progress has already been made, and I expect more to be made next year.

The hon. Gentleman spoke of the public face of the CSA. Far more emphasis has been placed on the training of staff, to ensure that they respond to a number of criticisms made by clients. In particular, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the CAST system. Following a change in CSA policy, clients who used to negotiate with people who specialised in only one function will be able to deal with a "table" of people who are fully conversant with all aspects of their case.

The hon. Gentleman paid tribute to the system that is now up and running in Hastings. Over the next year, it will spread to all six child support assessment centres. He also spoke of the importance of seeing a friendly face. The fact that assessments are now increasingly dealt with in the field rather than at one of the six centres will help tremendously in achieving that.

These changes, along with the continuing improvements in the administration of the scheme, will speed the process of public acceptance of the principles behind the Child Support Act 1991. The changes introduced by the regulations are part of the process of civilising the scheme that we began last year. We have already ensured that maintenance should not exceed 30 per cent. of an absent parent's income, and the new arrangements will give us the flexibility that we need to provide further help for parents on whom the formula bears hardest.

A point was made about the description "absent parent" or "parent with care": I await a letter promised to me by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey), who wishes to advance specific ideas of behalf of the Select Committee. We shall give serious consideration to what she says.

In a most interesting speech, the hon. Member for Birkenhead took us to task for the extent to which we have borne down on fraud. I am sorry if I am misquoting him; I think that he wanted to ensure that our work in countering fraudulent activity was up to the mark. We pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who is almost alone among Opposition Members in taking a serious interest in the subject, and we shall take careful note of what he said.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned landlord fraud. Let me point out that about a third of rents are reduced—in respect of the eligibility rent level—as a result of examination. We are opposed to all fraud. I suspect that landlord fraud is impossible without a real or imagined claimant, but we take the hon. Gentleman's points seriously, and will examine them all in detail.

I believe that today's debate and, indeed, our last two major debates on social security show that the Government are succeeding in containing the growth of social security spending, while ensuring that we have a system that helps those who need it. Long-term control has not, however, been achieved at the expense of the most needy. We shall maintain the value of benefits this year by uprating in line with inflation, at a cost of more than £2.5 billion.

A number of the changes that have been announced will enable people to become more self-reliant—easing the transition from benefit dependency to independence, allowing those people to return to work and encouraging them to stay there. Reforms are making people think about providing for their own future, and encouraging them to join insurance schemes to cater for contingencies such as unemployment, illness and retirement. At the same time, the state will always provide a safety net for those who cannot afford to help themselves.

Social security spending has been declining as a proportion of gross domestic product, a downward trend that is set to continue. We are the envy of our European neighbours in that regard. Controlling growth is important for both the taxpayer and the economy, and, as a result of the reforms, a reduction of £8 billion in expenditure is expected by the end of the century—the equivalent of around 3p on the basic rate of income tax.

It is clear that the whole debate on social security has changed. It is the Government who are defining that debate, and setting the agenda for the future. We wait patiently to hear something coherent and sensible from the Opposition, but so far we have waited in vain.

By leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall reply to the debate.

Although our debate has been marred by the Trappist vows embraced by—largely—Conservative Members, it has featured some undoubted pleasures. I do not think that this is the first time that the Minister has spoken at the Dispatch Box, but it is the first time that I have faced him, and I hope that he will not take it amiss if I say that his confidence was matched by his enthusiasm: his ministerial career will clearly be limited by the date of the general election rather than by the extent of his ability.

It was a particular pleasure to listen to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks). I come from a shipbuilding town, where we still talk about launches. My hon. Friend's shadow ministerial career was launched today, and no one who heard his speech will be in any doubt about how fine that liner is.

I want to comment on three aspects of the debate. In an important speech, the Conservative non-Trappist, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith), spoke of one of the gains from agency status—the higher status that it will give individual workers. I hope that that is something to which the Treasury Bench will pay attention.

When I first visited the Child Support Agency building in Birkenhead, I was informed by staff—not the management—that more than half of the new clerical assistants were graduates and that their pay was £6,900 a year. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West spoke about supporting the family. I imagine that it is difficult to support a family successfully if one of the breadwinners, or the only breadwinner, is earning £6,900 a year. We need to think about family wages. Status is not something just to be talked about: it must be reflected in the workplace and in wages. I hope that the agency will bear that in mind.

The Minister showed his skill in talking up the Government's record in cutting down the social security budget. If one did not pay too much attention to what the Government said, one might almost think that they were successful in this respect. If we took ourselves back to 1979 and asked an unsuspecting public whether a Government who were spending what is now being spent on social security, and who had a record of increases such as that which we have witnessed since 1979, were Labour or Tory, they would say that the Government must be Labour because only Labour would spend so much money on social security. This is not the time to argue about how the money has been spent and how it has been skewed towards means testing; I simply want to leave the Minister with one message to take back to the Secretary of State.

We constantly hear from the Treasury Bench about the Government's success in controlling the social security budget. That is nonsense. The Secretary of State for Social Security is a tough Minister, but if we examine every one of the four years of his stewardship of the Department, we find that the Treasury increased the amount that it thought it was going to allow for social security expenditure and that the Secretary of State bust the total. The following year, the Secretary of State again bust the increased level. It has happened in all of the years that he has been Secretary of State for Social Security—the increased budget that was negotiated has been burst by at least £1 billion.

The Secretary of State is controlling the social security budget and bringing it below the increased growth rate of the economy—only if we believe his words, not if we examine his record. If his record this year is like his record for each of the past four years, the social security budget will rise faster than the underlying growth rate of the economy.

Would the hon. Gentleman mind if I put that in my election address?

I should be happy for the hon. Gentleman to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West talked about the need for us to bring the debate up to date. That is similar to the debate raised by Eleanor Rathbone, in the House and elsewhere, on the distribution of income. During the rise of new Liberalism, prior to new Labourism, she said that the emphasis in the debate on the condition of the people was on which social class got what share of the national income. The debate was primarily about which men in which jobs attracted what sort of wages. She said that it was as important, if not more important, to examine the distribution of income between families with children and families without children. The depth charge that she threw into the debate still has to be dealt with.

My hon. Friend picked up on a similar aspect of the debate when he gently reprimanded us for talking about poverty in old-fashioned terms and saying that poverty is primarily determined by economic forces. We approach the subject by asking, "Are we old and therefore out of the labour market? Are we sick or unemployed and therefore out of the labour market?" My hon. Friend drew attention to the fact that, if poverty is measured by eligibility for income support, more children are poor because they live in households with only one parent than are poor because both parents are unemployed or because one parent is unemployed.

In Birkenhead on Saturday there was a "Church action on poverty" hearing. We were invited to listen to people who are poor. The first presentations illustrated exactly what my hon. Friend said about poverty and family break-up, and one of my friends at the meeting—a Liberal councillor—wondered whether we were talking about something new. Everyone became defensive because we were hearing that family break-up was a cause of poverty.

As the debate unfolded in the afternoon, a number of people got to their feet and said that they felt that they were under attack and that we were somehow blaming them for being poor. The debate that my hon. Friend has started today must be approached with enormous sensitivity because we are saying something new which might be misinterpreted but also because people can be hurt by what we say. The responsibility for some of the trends mentioned by my hon. Friend rests with the House, in that the way in which we have spoken has made it easier for people to assume positions that they would not previously have assumed.

In speaking about means testing, I have mentioned people working the system rather than working to get off benefit. I have primarily tried to blame the House for that, not my constituents whose limited opportunities may lead them to work the system.

The same applies to family break-ups. If we pilot through the House divorce reforms that allow people to break the marriage contract after a period only half the length of an average hire purchase agreement, we are sending a powerful message—we think that a HP agreement is more important than a marriage contract. That is not to say that people will not work hard at their marriages; marriages may still fail at the end of the day. I am not pointing the finger, but if we defend HP agreements more strongly than we defend the marriage contract, we are sending a dynamic message to the country. If citizens then respond in a certain way to what we are saying, we should be the last people to reprehend them. We should examine the impact of our actions on the world outside.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West said that we have to get away from blaming poverty on economic causes and must consider more personal reasons such as family break-up, but I hope that we do not fall into the syndrome of blaming victims from the past. We should conduct the debate sensitively along the lines that he followed and look to the future rather than trying to get out of our responsibility for the circumstances that we are now, unhappily, debating.

Despite the Trappist monks who populate the Treasury Bench, this has been an important debate. There have been two good firsts—I was able to hear the Minister speak for the first time and to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West begin his shadow, but soon—no doubt—ministerial, career. We also heard some important suggestions from the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, which I hope the Ministers will note carefully and act on later today when they get back to their desks.

I beg to move,

That, at this day's sitting—

(1) the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr. Tony Newton relating to Welsh Business not later than Ten o'clock, and such Questions shall include the Questions on any amendments to the said Motion which she may have selected and which may then be moved; and

(2) Standing Order No. 52 (Consideration of estimates) shall apply with the insertion in line 41, after the words 'At Ten o'clock', of the words 'or immediately after the previous business has been disposed of, whichever is the later'.

The motion is intended simply to provide for the tidy organisation of our business tonight and for a substantial opportunity to debate the Standing Orders relating to Wales—more substantial, dare I say, than the time devoted to the debate on the Scottish Grand Committee, but it may be unwise to make that point.

Paragraph (2) of the business motion deals with voting on the estimates, which is intended to take place at the end of tonight's proceedings. I commend the motion to the House.

I welcome the fact that the Government have decided that a debate on the Standing Orders to change the Welsh Grand Committee's workings should continue until 10 o'clock this evening. Had the attitude of certain other Conservative Members been different, such a long debate might not have been necessary and the Leader of the House's comparison with the changes that we made to the Scottish Grand Committee would have been more valid. May I give hon. Members a little background to what has happened on this occasion? It might help the Leader of the House understand why we are in the position where we may debate the Standing Orders for four hours.

The Leader of the House and the Secretary of State for Wales will be aware that Labour Members have long been pressing for changes to the Standing Orders on the Welsh Grand Committee. They have made it clear that the required changes should be meaningful and should properly improve the way in which the Welsh Grand Committee works. They have argued that any such changes should be implemented after discussion and by agreement among all the people involved in the Committee.

I am sure that such an approach would commend itself to the Leader of the House because, whenever he has proposed changes, he has proceeded by way of consultation. Some 18 months ago, after considerable discussion with the Opposition parties, with my predecessor and me and with hon. Members from the minority parties, he recommended changes to proceedings in the House of Commons based on the Jopling Committee's recommendations. Although we want to go further in some matters, the changes have been made on the basis of consensus, discussion and consultation.

It is important for the Leader of the House to recognise that his approach of introducing change after consultation has not been the Secretary of State's approach on this occasion. Therefore, responsibility for the problems that the House faces in having a longer debate on these Standing Orders than on those on the Scottish Grand Committee lies clearly at the door of the Secretary of State. It is not the Leader of the House's fault that we are in this position.

The problem of negotiating changes to the Welsh Grand Committee need not have resulted in a stalemate between the Secretary of State and Welsh Members. Labour and other members of the Committee have attempted to discuss in good faith changes that would be most appropriate. I do not know whether the Secretary of State understands how strong feeling is among Labour Members. Many overtures have been made to him and to his predecessor. Had any of those offers been taken up, there could have been a more constructive discussion on how the Welsh Grand Committee discussed affairs relevant to Wales.

The approaches that have been made to Ministers go back almost a year—certainly to April 1995. The Secretary of State was not in his position then, but discussions were proposed to his predecessor. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) suggested to a Government Whip that changes would be appropriate and that more constructive use could be made of the time available to the Welsh Grand Committee. It took some time for the Welsh Office Minister to reply to my hon. Friend. In July, the Minister said that it was up to the Committee to determine when and where it met and that such things were arranged through the usual channels.

My hon. Friends tried to use the usual channels to arrive at some consensus. Their approaches to Ministers were rejected on all occasions—so much so that, by November last year, when the Secretary of State had been in office for four or five months, my Welsh colleagues decided that it would be appropriate to make their own proposals on the workings of the Welsh Grand Committee.

Shortly afterwards, the Secretary of State came up with some ideas and made a statement on the Welsh Grand Committee, suggesting improvements and changes in its business. Even after that statement, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central again tried to enter into negotiations to ensure that there was agreement on what changes were necessary to the Standing Orders and that best use was made of the time.

My hon. Friends have suggested that progress could have been made had those proposed changes been discussed in the Welsh Grand Committee by Welsh Members of all parties who are most affected by them. I would have thought that that was a reasonable proposition. I cannot understand why the Secretary of State has been adamant that that procedure is not appropriate.

I understand from my hon. Friends that the Secretary of State still has not said why that was not possible. Had we had such a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee and, in particular, had Ministers listened to the constructive suggestions that would have been made by my hon. Friends, we could have had a far shorter debate this evening. We could have had a motion that was the subject of agreement and discussion and that was amended when proper ideas and suggestions were proposed.

The Leader of the House's approach on all these occasions—of trying to work with the people who will be affected by change—has not been followed by the Secretary of State for Wales. If he believed that his suggestions were valid and would work, it would have been reasonable to agree to Welsh Members' request to discuss them in the Welsh Grand Committee. Had that happened, we might not have needed such a lengthy debate this evening. The reason why the House's time is being taken up on these matters is that the Secretary of State has been obstinate and has decided to make decisions rather than enter into genuine consultation.

I want not only to support the points that have been made by the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) but to add some of my own. The procedure for tabling the motion, the details of which we will discuss later, is unsatisfactory.

For those of us who were able only on Friday to submit amendments, the workings of the Table Office again turned out to be unsatisfactory because, for reasons that I do not understand but perhaps you can look into, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it refused to accept amendments that had been tabled and signed by hon. Members because they were not present in person. I understand that that is the drill to which we work on oral questions, but early-day motions and amendments to them and amendments to legislation are put down in writing. To have them refused on this occasion means that it is impossible for us to have on the Order Paper the amendments that we wanted to debate. That is because the motion appeared late on Thursday, amendments had to be tabled by Friday and the Table Office was unwilling to act.

I should like to lodge a protest on behalf of my staff about the way in which people on my staff were treated by the Table Office when they tried to negotiate on the matter. The attitude was far from satisfactory and the lack of courtesy was matched only by the lack of courtesy in not giving us proper notification of what was to come to the House.

This should be an important debate, but the opportunity for it to be constructive rather than a polarised party debate has been thrown out by the Secretary of State because, within half an hour of meeting the Welsh parliamentary party, the group containing all Welsh Members, he announced to the press that he intended to carry on regardless with the motion. He did not follow the representations that were properly and reasonably discussed by Members at the all-party meeting with the Secretary of State in the Norman Shaw building. The meeting seemed promising because it showed the way forward. It showed that we could discuss issues and move to a constructive way of handling such matters.

We spent an hour discussing the matter in detail and making constructive proposals about the orders, but the door was quickly shut on the overwhelming majority view of Welsh Members. That has inevitably led to polarisation and the issue will be fought line by line in the House. I regret not only that our amendments cannot be debated but that more have not been selected, because there is room to debate many of the amendments on the Order Paper. Presumably, the House does not have time for that.

If the Welsh Grand Committee is to be meaningful, Welsh Members from all parties will have to support the changes; but the Government's attitude has shown that that is highly unlikely and that we will enter a period of entrenched warfare over the Committee rather than proceed on a basis of co-operation between parties. Weak as it is, that is the way in which the Committee should discuss Welsh matters. I am unhappy with the business motion and I hope that the House will divide on it.

Although I confess that I cannot and do not intend to cultivate anger on this issue, it is regrettable that the debate, which of course it is procedurally right should take place on these matters, is not taking place after a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee. Much trouble would have been avoided if the Welsh Grand Committee had had the opportunity to discuss the amendments and make recommendations, even if only on an advisory basis. That might have resulted in less contention.

The issue that will concern many hon. Members is whether there will be any significant improvement in the government of Wales as a consequence of the business motion. I do not think that there will be. However, I think that there will be some, albeit limited, improvements in the way in which the Welsh Grand Committee will operate.

I ask the Government, even at this late hour, to consider whether it would be wise to postpone the debate on Welsh business and allow the Welsh Grand Committee, in clear support of the opinions expressed to the Secretary of State at the meeting of the Welsh parliamentary party, to have its say so that we may have a seemly rather than an unseemly debate in the House.

There would have been no need for the debate to take this form had the Secretary of State effectively continued in the spirit of the Welsh parliamentary party and submitted the whole issue to the Welsh Grand Committee. If that had been done, all Welsh Members would have been able to get to grips with the detail and express their views. Having used the Welsh Grand Committee as an effective sounding board, the Secretary of State could then have formulated his proposals on a basis of consensus.

The Government have contrived to have a debate that could run for nearly four hours. Does that mean that they have virtually run out of business for the remainder of the Session and need to fill it with a debate under entirely unsatisfactory circumstances and against a background of deep opposition by virtually all Welsh Members, who feel that the Government are railroading these proposals through without proper consent?

Instead of allowing Welsh Members to discuss the matter properly, the Government simply want a long drawn-out skirmish in the House rather than having to table other business, because they do not have much other business. The Secretary of State had an opportunity to arrive at a consensus, initially through the Welsh parliamentary party and then through the Welsh Grand Committee. That would have concertinaed the process and would have led to a much shorter, crisper debate and could, perhaps, have resolved any outstanding issues. Instead, as will become evident when the matters are discussed, the Secretary of State has unilaterally proceeded against the wishes of the vast majority of Welsh Opposition Members—if not all—who comprise by far the greatest number of Welsh Members. He is proceeding against our wishes in a way that challenges the democratic relationship between the House and the people of Wales.

As my hon. Friend says, the Secretary of State is proceeding against our wishes. Perversely, when the Secretary of State met the members of the parliamentary group, he showed that he had much sympathy with the vast majority of our proposals. Is it not even more surprising that he should choose to ignore that opportunity to reach a consensus and instead proceed in a dictatorial fashion?

My hon. Friend makes a valid point and it will be interesting to hear the Secretary of State's answer, or that of the Leader of the House if he intends to reply. The Secretary of State approached that meeting in a conciliatory and informal fashion and listened to all the views expressed at it. There was understanding and a fair consensus, and we thought that on that basis we could get the new arrangements up and running; but the Secretary of State has almost entirely ignored the spirit of the meeting and, using his majority in the Chamber, he seeks to impose these arrangements on us.

If the Secretary of State had chosen the Welsh Grand Committee route, not only would it have shortened the proceedings—that would be an advantage to everyone except perhaps the Government business managers, because it would have made a hole in their day—but it would have allowed us to establish arrangements for the Welsh Grand Committee that would have stood the test of time because they would have been based on consensus.

The suspicion must be that the Secretary of State is imposing these arrangements on us because he wants to dodge not just the will of the Welsh Grand Committee and Welsh Members but the will of the people of Wales. Welsh people do not want a half-baked, jazzed-up Welsh Grand Committee: they want a Welsh Assembly. They want to have the ability to express their views through an elected assembly so that their voices can be heard in a way that the Government have consistently denied them for the past 17 years. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards), shakes his head, but he more than any other Conservative Member consistently flouts the wishes of the Welsh people in his behaviour as a Minister and in the way in which he conducts himself in the Chamber in proceeding with the business for which he is responsible.

The Government's action will leave a sour taste in the mouths not only of Welsh Members, other than the one or two Welsh Conservative Back Benchers who are not even in the Chamber—where are they?—but of the people of Wales as a whole. Once again, the Government, who take no interest in their wishes, are flouting those wishes and riding roughshod over them by imposing arrangements that do not have the support of Welsh Members of Parliament.

I should like to follow and take up the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain). We should ask ourselves whether the proposed changes—if and when we debate them—will improve the standard of decision making in the Principality. I believe that they will not. More paper will be used, more words will be printed and more words will be spoken, but the proposed changes will not make one iota of difference to the quality of decisions. The final arbiter of that will remain the English Tory party in the House of Commons.

My hon. Friend the Member for Neath was right. Just six Government Members are present, of whom just one represents a Welsh constituency. The Conservative party has other Welsh Members—

Not for much longer.

Where are the Conservative party's other five Welsh Members, even if, as my hon. Friend says, it will probably not have them for much longer? Are even they against the Government's proposed changes? Are they treating the debate with disdain by being absent? What is the explanation for their absence? At the moment, the matter is completely beyond me. Of course Conservative Members know that there is a desire in the Principality for more decisions to be taken there instead of foreign politics and foreign decisions being inflicted on us by people who have no interest whatever in the Principality.

I met the Secretary of State and he knew nothing much about Wales. He has at least taken an interest in it, but only of course during the past six or nine months. That is no substitute for living in the place and knowing it. If one knows a place, one is likely to make better decisions as a result.

Will the changes allow any decisions to be made by the Welsh Grand Committee that it would not have been able to make before? The answer is, of course, no. We know that the Welsh Grand Committee cannot make any decisions.

It is a talking shop.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Committee is a talking shop, and if the Secretary of State's proposals go through, it will still be a talking shop. The changes will not make any difference.

Although I would like to catch your eye in the main debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to make it clear that I am profoundly disappointed in this short debate on the business motion. I am not surprised by it, however, because the Tory party does not represent the people of Wales and does not have much regard for them. The motion is merely some cosmetic tissue through which the Government hope they will hoodwink people.

I am sure that not only the Labour party but the Liberal Democrats and the Welsh nationalists will ensure that any such deception is uncovered quickly and that the people of Wales will vote for the party that will return decision making—certainly on local matters, if not on others—to where it rightfully belongs at the next election. There should be subsidiarity down as far as possible—in this case, to the people of Wales, the Principality, the regions and local authorities.

The Leader of the House should explain, especially to the Opposition, what happened after the Welsh parliamentary party meeting. The Welsh parliamentary party is a very curious animal. It is defunct for years at a time. It very rarely meets, but is suddenly activated—we activate it. I have been tracing the history of its meetings.

The Welsh parliamentary party met in the mid-1930s when there was an economic crisis, to try to gain some degree of consensus and present a united voice on the economic plight in south Wales to Whitehall and Westminster. It came up with some very interesting and unanimous suggestions. It again met during the war, in 1944, to recommend to the War Cabinet the appointment of a Secretary of State for Wales to promote the reconstruction of post-war Wales. It also met once or twice in the 1950s and 1960s to bring to the attention of Ministers the consensual approach to various political activities. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"] The right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts), who has just walked into the Chamber, is a living embodiment of consensual politics.

rose—

I should like to continue making my point.

The Welsh parliamentary party has therefore just occasionally played a functional role in presenting a case to Ministers. At its recent meeting, a virtually unanimous opinion emerged that we should debate matters first in the Welsh Grand Committee. Given that consensus and the curious function that the parliamentary party plays every once in a while in Welsh-Westminster politics, it is extraordinary that its view should have been not just disregarded but, given the Secretary of State's statement to the media, disregarded within half an hour.

Although we will soon have a chance to debate the orders, I should tell the Secretary of State that we all remember his original statement. I certainly got the impression from it that he was generally open-minded about the shape, character and nature of the revamped Welsh Grand Committee. He invited consultation, and that was the whole tenor of the statement. When some of us wrote to him suggesting variations—I will not raise my suggestion because I have tabled an amendment on it—we received appalling answers. It was quite clear from the two-line replies that the Government had no intention of taking on board interesting variations on the original theme. Indeed, the motions on the Order Paper are exactly the ones that the Government first thought of.

It makes matters worse when one considers that Whitehall and the Government agreed to do something about the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees. There has not been any real consultation on the proposals. There is not a shred of evidence that any meaningful point made by any Back Bencher—in an individual, not a partisan, fashion—has been incorporated in the measures.

The Leader of the House must realise the extent of the resentment felt and why the business timetable motion must be opposed. He should tell us what happened after the Welsh parliamentary party meeting and why no meaningful alterations have been made to the orders as a result of hon. Members' representations.

I was also at the Welsh parliamentary party meeting, and at its conclusion I thought that the Secretary of State had taken on board some of the points that were made. He left the room saying that the meeting had been helpful, useful and businesslike. That was the kind of language that he used. Within half an hour he had obviously gone back on everything that he had said, including, "I shall consider further the points that you have made to me."

For all his faults—and they are legion—the Secretary of State's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), would have at least said straight away whether he was with or against us. The Secretary of State handled the meeting with rather unclever deceit. We are not children; we know what is going on in politics, and we are rather taken aback at his attitude. The people of Wales will not be treated like children.

All of a sudden there is an indecent haste to try to do something about the Welsh Grand Committee, which has taken the same form for a long time. Many of us have argued about its form over the years. Apparently, nothing was to happen to it. Then, suddenly, experiments in Scotland were put in train.

There has been a mobile press conference in Scotland, attended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Prime Minister and others. I hope that the Secretary of State does not think that by rushing the motion through with almost indecent haste and not even allowing a modicum of proper, reasoned discussion—such discussion was evident at the Welsh parliamentary party meeting—he can steamroller us into a similar format to Scotland. That will not do. I understand why the Government want it. They are not very welcome in Wales at present and there is no other way of getting the Prime Minister and other Ministers into various parts of Wales without this particular platform.

I must make it clear to the Secretary of State that we are serious about the purposes of the Welsh Grand Committee. We are here to represent the people of Wales; he is not. He made plain his disdain for the people of Wales in the manner that he insulted those representing them.

There are two fundamental points that should be included in the Standing Orders, but I shall confine myself to one of them—the question of dealing with specifically Welsh legislation. Over the past couple of years, on at least two occasions I have had the bitter experience of being in Standing Committee with hon. Members from the other side of the border who have voted down our amendments. I have respect for each and every one of them, but they knew nothing about the argument; they simply signed their correspondence and voted against every amendment. I had the bitter experience of losing one amendment on the casting vote of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton). I found it rather galling that the people of Wales should be deprived of the right to Welsh jury trials by the vote of a Member representing a Cheshire constituency. It is not good enough.

Today, we have an appropriate vehicle to amend the Standing Orders and bring them up to current standards. The Government's proposals will do nothing other than exacerbate an already bad position.

I worry greatly about the motion. I genuinely want to know from the Leader of the House why there is such undue haste to discuss the matter. I have several reasons for wanting to know that. First—and this is not meant to be a party political point—the Conservative party in Wales starts from a position of fundamental weakness; it has just six Members of Parliament. The last time my local authority went to the polls, only three Conservatives were elected. The Conservative party does not have the support of the people of Wales for the policies that it is carrying out in Wales.

We can argue until the cows come home about the benefits of the United Kingdom Parliament and the position of English Members of Parliament voting on Welsh issues and vice versa. The point is that the Conservative party in Wales does not have the moral authority to impose its policies on the people of Wales. Whenever it has gone to the polls, it has been beaten—in general elections, Euro-elections and local elections. Therefore, it is incumbent on the Government, when they consider the development of the Welsh Grand Committee, to take with them those who represent Welsh constituencies. I say that not because of some ethereal, far-distant notion, but because we represent the people of Wales. We have been sent to this House to argue the case for the people of Wales and we have a majority in doing so. Whatever the Government think, at the end of the day they do not have a majority of Welsh votes or seats at local, national or European level. Therefore, our majority and moral authority are important and appropriate consultation is important.

It would have been appropriate for the Welsh Grand Committee to discuss these issues prior to their coming before the House. Any amendments tabled by my hon. Friends and others will be voted on and defeated, possibly by the votes of Members of Parliament representing seats in England and Scotland. It is important that there is consultation if we are to have a Welsh Grand Committee that is meaningful, that challenges the Executive, that can discuss and reflect Welsh opinion and that actually has an important role, irrespective of our wish in the long term for an Assembly or, in some cases, a Parliament.

I am worried because the Government do not seem able even to let the Welsh Grand Committee discuss its own future and establishment—so what use will it be in discussing the big issues that affect our constituents, such as value added tax, local government spending, democracy, quangos, trusts and housing, education and national health service policies? If the Government will not even let it decide how it is set up and how it arranges its discussions, what is the point of hon. Members going to the Committee to argue matters? We shall know that ultimately the Government are not interested in what the Committee says and does.

It is important that the Leader of the House and the Secretary of State reconsider the motion and whether to proceed with it. The Government should take Opposition Members with them on the motion. That is important for democracy and for moral authority. It is also important for ensuring that the Welsh Grand Committee works and is effective. The trust will be broken if the Government force through the motion tonight without further discussion.

You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will have gathered from the flavour of this brief debate the strength of feeling on the Opposition Benches.

I welcome the speech of the Leader of the House, which I thought was conciliatory. As I am sure my hon. Friends will have noted, his approach contrasts sharply with that of the Secretary of State for Wales.

It is clear that all the parties are unhappy with the way in which the business motion has been brought before the House. Even at this late stage, I ask either the Secretary of State or the Leader of the House to say whether the Government are prepared to allow the Welsh Grand Committee to consider the Standing Orders that will govern its own proceedings. That is hardly a revolutionary request. All we are asking is that the Committee be allowed to consider the Standing Orders that will apply to its own proceedings. Will either of the right hon. Gentlemen respond to that point now?

I had intended to respond when the hon. Gentleman had concluded his remarks. Indeed, I have one or two other things to say. In view of what I believe to be the desirability of the changes and the fairly lengthy period during which there was a good deal of consultation, I think that it is right to expect the House to proceed with this business tonight and put the changes in place. While I accept that hon. Members want to go further, the changes are an improvement in the Welsh Grand Committee and will offer opportunities and advantages to the people of Wales and those who represent them.

In effect, the right hon. Gentleman is saying that he will not allow the Welsh Grand Committee to consider its own Standing Orders. I hope that he will reflect on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), that there are 38 Welsh Members of Parliament, 32 of whom want the opportunity to discuss the Standing Orders in the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman is refusing to allow us to do that.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in allowing me to intervene again briefly. One important point that is relevant to this line of argument is that these are not the Standing Orders of the Welsh Grand Committee; they are the Standing Orders of the House governing the arrangements for the Welsh Grand Committee. That is why the matter must necessarily be decided by the House and why it is appropriate that it should be debated by the House.

The right hon. Gentleman has repeated the error made by the Secretary of State when I wrote to him on the matter some time ago. I fully understand, as do all my hon. Friends, that the Government are not prepared to allow the Welsh Grand Committee to resolve these matters. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, these are Standing Orders of the House. What we want is the opportunity to debate them in the Welsh Grand Committee. Obviously, at the end of the day they have to be approved by the House, but why on earth are the Government so set in their determination to prevent us from even discussing those matters in the Welsh Grand Committee? That is the question that I put to the Secretary of State and to the Leader of the House, but I have not yet had a satisfactory answer.

The business motion restricts our opportunity to have a proper examination of the proposed amendments to the Standing Orders. Will the Leader of the House tell us why he is so anxious to restrict debate and to prevent us from even discussing the Standing Orders in the Welsh Grand Committee? Will he answer that specific question? Why cannot we even discuss the proposed changes in the Welsh Grand Committee?

Rather than allowing the debate to become a question-and-answer session, it would be more appropriate for me to make further remarks in my winding-up speech in a moment or two.