I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Some get-rich-quick schemes operate on the same basis as chain letters, with each member recruiting further members. Members pay out large sums in the expectation of a high return. Those payments are nearly always based on unrealistic forecasts of earnings from recruitment. The forecasts are derived from what I described during an earlier stage of the Bill's consideration as the principle of geometric progression, leading to theoretical levels of recruitment reward which, in reality, are impossible to achieve.

The House will recall from Second Reading that the intention behind the Bill is to deal with a weakness in the legislation that controls trading schemes. On Second Reading and in Committee there was almost universal support for the principles set out in the Bill.

I acknowledge that, in essence, this is an enabling Bill. The guts of the proposed legislation will appear in regulations that will be introduced by the Department of Trade and Industry in due course if the Bill passes through all stages of consideration in both Houses.

The regulations will be the most important feature of the proposed legislation and will be designed to deal with the weakness that I have identified. It is that weakness that has made it possible for the unscrupulous to mislead vulnerable members of the public into believing that substantial incomes can be derived from doing no more than making payments into a scheme and then doing their best to encourage others to do the same.

The Fair Trading Act 1973 makes it an offence to receive or solicit payments for trading schemes, but the offence applies only to schemes with certain characteristics. In recent years, the unscrupulous have had little, if any, difficulty in devising schemes that do not come within the scope of the 1973 Act.

My understanding—I have been approached by a number of people on the matter—is that thousands of people have lost millions of pounds through trading schemes that are not subject to the controls set out in the 1973 Act. To repeat a point that I made on Second Reading, perhaps one of the worst features of the existing weakness is that many victims were tricked into investing, they thought profitably, to secure their future, using money that they had received as redundancy payments when their previous careers had come to an end. A number of people have been in touch with me, telling me that they had been caught out in that way.

My Bill is designed to widen the coverage of the existing controls so that they apply to any trading scheme. The existing controls under the 1973 Act introduce offences relating to recruitment and the regulation of promotional material and contracts. The Bill does not change those offences but makes it possible for the controls to apply to all trading schemes whose members recruit others.

I am grateful to the House for the welcome that it gave the Bill on Second Reading and for its swift passage through Committee. I am also grateful for the support that I have received outside the House, particularly from the Direct Selling Association, which represents the best aspects of direct selling schemes and firms that are involved in them.

As entrepreneurs, of course, members of trading schemes, like other entrepreneurs, take risks, and some may have taken unwise risks with substantial redundancy payments, which they thought that they were investing wisely at the time. Too many people who got themselves into that position did not have a background in business, or experience of working in an entrepreneurial business, which might have alerted them to the dangers inherent in many such schemes.

The Fair Trading Act provides some of those people with protection from the greatest risks in investing in trading schemes. Having come fairly fresh to the issue, I believe that there is no doubt that the greatest risk comes with the expectation of riches from recruiting others into the scheme. The expectation is created and inflated to persuade people to put money into what, in shorthand terms, are pyramid scams. It is an offence, however, under the Act to persuade somebody to make a payment by promising rewards from others joining the scheme. The Act also provides for regulation of the promotional material that is used to recruit new members to such schemes. In addition, it provides for regulations to ensure that every member of a trading scheme has a fair contract with the scheme's promoters. I acknowledge that the Act's protection is necessary and soundly based.

The Direct Selling Association, which has vast experience, knowledge and expertise in this area, endorses the need for such protection. The association represents many companies that are subject to these controls. I hope that my Bill will deal with limitations in the existing legislation, largely through fresh regulations in due course. The existing protection is not currently available to members and potential members of all trading schemes; only a limited number are covered. Those who are not protected include many who, through naivety, ignorance or gullibility, are at the greatest risk of losing their investment. The Bill will ensure that protection is provided to members and potential members of all trading schemes.

After the Bill had passed its Committee stage, I was approached by representatives of the British Franchise Association Ltd., who expressed grave concern to me that the Bill might affect the operations of its members. I shall quote from a report from Mr. David Bigmore and Mr. Martin Mendelsohn, both of whom are solicitors, who have as one of their specialities the franchising business. Their note on these matters was copied to officials in the

Department of Trade and Industry. I hope that Ministers concerned with the matter will be prepared to look carefully at the points made by those who represent the franchise industry.

Franchising is an important part of what in the broadest terms I shall call the retail sector in this country. In the United States, it already accounts for about half of all retailing businesses, and it is growing in this country. If we are to legislate in this area, I hope that account might be taken of the existence of problems that arise in the franchising business.

My right hon. Friend is right that it is terribly important not to embroil the franchising industry in the Bill by, as it were, inadvertence. One of the elements in the anxiety of the franchise industry is that there is still a considerable difference in the way in which different countries in the European Union define and handle franchising, and clearly anything that affects franchising in the United Kingdom will be taken by other European countries as some kind of precedent on which to build.

This approach to franchising developed on the other side of the Atlantic and, like so many other trends, favourable or unfavourable, it came to this country first—perhaps because of the commonality of language. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the approach is likely to spread, and perhaps it has already spread, to the retailing sector in many other EU countries. Perhaps a Union-wide approach will be necessary to tackle the matter.

The Bill will provide powers to exclude from its provisions such schemes as may be provided by order, and that mechanism could be used to exclude various types of franchise schemes. The Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs has said that the Government intend to use that power to exclude franchise schemes in which only one UK participant can benefit from the activities of others. Therefore, the Bill will result in a lightening of control of UK franchise schemes with only a single tier. I am advised that most multi-layer franchise schemes are already subject to the controls, but that is being contested by Mr. Bigmore and Mr. Mendelsohn and will not be affected by the legislation.

I appreciate that some multi-layer schemes such as those in which franchisees do not sell goods or services provided by the franchiser and those in which most of the sales are made on premises where the franchiser or franchisee carries on other business are outside the present controls.

As I said earlier, my familiarity with the franchising industry is somewhat limited, but it would be anomalous if we did not seek to control multi-layer schemes. The need to protect members of franchise schemes and others is important, but how that is provided, whether through regulations or by other arrangements, is not for me to say. However, we would be lacking in sensitivity if we did not have regard to the needs of a large and growing sector of our economy, and we must carefully consider the representations of those who take a specialised interest in those matters. If those in franchising continue to be concerned, I hope that they will be carefully consulted about any regulations that flow from the Bill.

I hope that the House will give the Bill its wholehearted support. The Government support its principles and I have been assured that they do not intend to introduce any unreasonable regulations or restraints for trading schemes that are entirely legitimate and beyond criticism. Direct selling and franchising are large and fast-growing sectors of our economy. The House has a duty to ensure that the legislation properly reflects the need to ensure that those who are responsible for carrying on such businesses are not unduly hampered, but that people will be protected from those who use holes in existing legislation to run what are undoubtedly scams and tricks, to persuade people to part with their hard-earned money or redundancy payments.

I know that the Government support the principle of the Bill and I am grateful for their backing. The Bill was also supported in other parts of the House during its earlier stages.

I start by declaring an interest. The only outside interest for which I receive any remuneration whatever is that I am an adviser to Amway UK, which is one of the biggest direct selling companies in Britain. I assure the House that I spent much time thinking about it before I agreed to assist the company, because a connection with pyramid selling in even the most legitimate direct selling companies would cause any hon. Member to pause. I looked at how a reputable direct selling company operates before I agreed to be an adviser. I am glad that I did that, because I have learned a great deal about a field of endeavour about which I knew little before I took on the role.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) said, this is a rapidly growing method of selling, but scams have caused huge distress to a substantial number of people who invested redundancy money or pensions and received nothing. One of the most common scams is that there is nothing whatever to sell, and that is absurd. When all the glamour and glitz of the west end hotel foyer or banqueting room were stripped away, people found that they were being asked to pay a substantial sum up front, in the hope that they could then con others into joining a scheme that had nothing whatever to sell. Sadly, the most vulnerable people are often the most desperate and they are easily persuaded that there is a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Amway has tens of thousands of distributors throughout the land. Some of them work all the hours that God sends, and many husband-and-wife partnerships have managed to build substantial businesses. There are millionaires working for companies such as Amway, but the vast majority of workers are people who are trying to augment their incomes. Some vicars' spouses are augmenting the stipends of their husbands by toiling in a small way for the company, as such people do for many other direct selling organisations. Many of them are students who seek to augment their student loans.

Many people who get sucked into such an activity quickly find that they are temperamentally hopeless at it. One of the Bill's great advantages is that it will make it much harder for confidence tricksters and others to load such people up front with a huge stock of material that they are temperamentally unable or do not have the skill or assiduity to sell. In some instances, the stuff begins to depreciate or deteriorate the moment they take delivery of it. There has been little enforcement of any suggestion that the supplier should take it all back. Such behaviour has brought the entire direct selling operation into disrepute.

A similar difficulty may arise—indeed, it has arisen in Amway UK. Training materials are made available by companies within the Amway chain, and people who are not good at selling and who are temperamentally of the belief that, if they tried only a bit harder or seized on to the latest gimmick, their fortunes would be transformed, feel obliged regularly to buy the latest video, booklet or whatever and can easily build a substantial outlay for little return. Reputable companies in the Direct Selling Association, of which there are a substantial and growing number, are keen to ensure that people have a real opportunity to give back the materials that they purchased in good faith, but ill-advisedly, without losing large sums of money. My right hon. Friend's Bill will make such an improvement in standards even easier.

The Bill takes the best practice in what is an innovative and growing form of selling and is determined both to generalise that good practice and to outlaw bad practice. The bad practice varies from downright fraud to careless overselling to people who are incapable of determining whether they are in a good position. One can never entirely protect gullible people by legislation or any other means, but one can ensure that the damage to those people is limited as far as possible and that they do not get sucked into things which, on any examination, are regarded as totally crooked.

Therefore, my right hon. Friend has done the country a considerable benefit by introducing the Bill. I am delighted that the Government recognise the value of trying to tighten the whole system and that they have, by endorsing the Bill, clearly recognised that direct selling is here to stay and that it is one of the many new ways of getting goods to the customer which the retailing revolution is bringing about.

Many people would, for all sorts of reasons, prefer to buy from someone they know products that they have grown used to in their home. That is an admirable feature. It is also a way of doing business which, for the distributor, fits in extraordinarily well with the growing instability of the employment market. People who expect to go in and out of work during their lifetime may find it a great anchor to have, as part of their family income, the amounts of money that come in from providing a relatively small number of customers with a steady supply of products. That is an admirable way of trying to iron out the peaks and troughs of an employment record which, in the modern technological world, is unlikely to be the flat line, or the climbing graph, which most of my generation expected to enjoy when we left school or university.

For all those reasons, I commend my right hon. Friend for introducing his admirable Bill.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) has said, this is an important issue. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the measure. I just slightly regret that there does not seem to be much interest from the Opposition Benches. I know that the Opposition support it, but it is a pity—[Interruption.] I welcome the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown). I hope we shall hear from the Opposition of their support for the Bill, but the empty Opposition Benches sit ill with the slogans that we hear about supporting business.

The hon. Gentleman might realise that the reason for the empty Opposition Benches is that the Bill is entirely non-controversial and that it is not expected that any Member will speak against it. For that reason, Members hope that it will have a swift passage through the House this morning to allow hon. Members to consider in detail and come to a decision on other important Bills that are before us this morning.

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman has his own issue in the Bull Bars (Prohibition) Bill, which I believe is coming up later and which I also commend to the House. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman will find much objection, certainly not from me anyway, to his measure. At 10 o'clock this morning, he has plenty of time to look forward to that.

The Trading Schemes Bill deals with an important issue. Although I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) will leave many lasting memorials to his time in this place, this Bill will certainly be one, perhaps not the greatest—

He is not dead yet.

One may leave one's memorials long before one passes on, and I know that my right hon. Friend will be back after the next election, as will we all, God willing, but this Bill may be one of the small memorials that he leaves the House and it might improve the lot of many people who might otherwise have become victims or dupes of bogus promoters of the dubious financial schemes that he has mentioned.

It is said that a fool and his money are easily parted, but this issue is much more complicated than that. There are many sad cases. I suspect that most Members have, as I have, met sad constituents who have explained how they have lost money in one scam or another and who have wondered what could be done about it. The sadness is that we discover that, often, little can be done.

What we might describe as an innocent abroad, perhaps a man in his 40s or 50s who has recently been made redundant and who is unable to get a job in the declining industry in which he was working before, may be enticed by advertisements into putting his redundancy money into a scam. Often, those people have no experience or knowledge of the world into which they are venturing—or think they are venturing—be it insurance, financial investment or selling of some sort and they see an opportunity. We should beware of criticising those people because they are being enterprising and trying to raise themselves from an unfortunate position.

I agree with my hon. Friend. Does he agree that, when some people suggest that the Bill's purpose is to protect gullible people, although that may be true, it goes much further than that and many of the people who are caught by the sort of schemes that the Bill attempts to extinguish are not gullible? They have been seduced by deceptive literature, advertising and schemes.

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Before coming to this place, I was in the Army for many years and having left the Army, I was surprised, as I looked through the opportunities in the newspapers—the House of Commons was not there: I had to find that one for myself—that there were many enticing advertisements explaining how I could make money with my enormous skills, which, of course, were flattered by those seductive advertisements. When I replied to one, however, I discovered that it looked rather fishy.

That is the nub of the matter. Everything is about getting rich quick and, of course, getting rich quick is rare, apart from the lottery or tomorrow's Grand National. Incidentally, as we discuss the Grand National tomorrow and the Bill, I would appropriately recommend to the House Young Hustler, which at 7–1 must be a favourite.

Order. The hon. Gentleman may want to offer such advice, but not here and not now.

I am not offering advice. I am just commenting that Young Hustler at 7–1 is running tomorrow. I take no responsibility for anyone who backs it.

Order. The hon. Gentleman must, however, take responsibility for the relevance of his remarks to the Bill.

We are talking about get-rich-quick scams, but I shall move on from the Grand National and the lottery.

There are few ways in which one can get rich quick, or, indeed, get rich, apart from by working hard. Getting rich quick usually involves crime. I was going to comment on those of us who are backing a horse at Aintree tomorrow, but never mind. Those of us who are buying a lottery ticket tomorrow know in our hearts that we are unlikely to be able to spend Easter in the Bahamas as a result. Sadly, some people who are conned by pyramid selling and similar trading schemes, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea has mentioned, have lost so much that not only the Bahamas but even the most excellent resort of Blackpool is an unlikely destination.

When I was a child, I was occasionally privy at school to receiving what were known as chain letters. They were rather fun and said that one must not break the chain or one would get bad luck. I personally never returned one such letter, so I suppose I broke the chain. The letters usually originated in Minnesota or Uruguay, from some holy man or sadhu in the Himalayas, or perhaps some child in Sweden. Maths was never my strongest point at school, but I could understand quite easily that to keep such chain letters going, an enormous number of people needed to be involved.

More recently, and more seriously, about ten years ago, when I was working in London, the same sort of letters began to appear, but they demanded money. It was not a great deal of money—£10 or so. They also warned that the chain must not be broken, but they were curiously mystical. Examples were given of people who had received £20,000 and of some who had had bad luck and lost a great deal of money. Such letters also all began in the deepest south of America or the mountains of Asia, but rather than coming from a holy man they were usually from a very clever mathematician.

I recall that in the space of about two months I received about three or four such letters, which always included lists of names. One had to send £10 to the top name, strike it out, and send on the letter to six more people.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will the hon. Gentleman refer to the clause that would stop letters coming from Ukraine and south America?

That is not a point of order for the Chair. I thought that the hon. Member wanted to intervene.

It might have been an intervention, but I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted to get on to his Bill. Surely the point is that exactly the same sort of scam is run by businesses. If the hon. Gentleman would like to study previous discussions and the Second Reading debate, he will find that particular comments relate to Romania and Russia, which tie in quite closely with what I am talking about.

By examining the lists of names on those chain letters that required £10, I saw that there was at least one general and several people who may since have become generals—I was in the Army at the time—who were not dupes or fools but quite sensible, responsible and educated. When I received three letters, I began to smell a rat. I worked out that by sending six letters, I could receive 46,656 letters by the sixth stage, which, at £10 a head, would have amassed almost £500,000. If I was not at the beginning but already at the sixth stage, more than 2 billion people would have needed to have been involved in the chain for me to have received the same amount of money. If I was at only the fifth stage, the whole population of the United Kingdom—every man, woman and child—would have to have sent letters for me to be have received the same amount of money. I have lost money in some ventures, but I have never been quite as foolish as to engage in that.

Although that was not a particularly important scam, the issue that it raises is nevertheless serious and directly relates to the Bill, notwithstanding what the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), who has just left, said. I was often told that such a practice was illegal, and perhaps my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea or my hon. Friend the Minister can confirm that. It should be illegal. Although the generation of such money is perhaps trivial, it is nevertheless worrying.

The same principle was applied by such companies as Global Pioneers Ltd. and Alchemy UK plc, as I understand it. Such companies were getting rich quick by putting money up front in order to get other people to give them money. Of course that is all too easy, and involves amounts much more than £10. Some people's losses have been great. Perhaps the promises of selling, financial work and insurance were given, and always the income was guaranteed—except that it never came. The parallel is clear.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea has been in touch with the Direct Selling Association, as he mentioned, and I am delighted that it supports the Bill. As my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Rowe) have mentioned, our retail habits and unemployment in the retail sector have changed over recent years. If we look to America, we see that it is likely to change even further. Many busy people choose to buy items from catalogues or from agents of direct selling companies. There is nothing wrong with that and I am delighted that the Bill will not harm it. It is important that bureaucratic regulation does not build up and stifle perfectly proper enterprise. The franchise sector has been mentioned and there are technical issues in it that need to be considered by the DTI in years to come—not necessarily by special investigation. Since the Bill concentrates on providing a framework and does not deal with detailed regulations, it is a great asset in that area.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea will know that I wanted to debate an amendment on Report, which, despite being accepted when I tabled it was declared defective. I am not sure why. It was not in any sense a wrecking amendment. It was to investigate the difference that was raised by consultees between directly inviting or asking people to participate, as opposed to informing or giving information designed to lead people into such participation. The consultees raised that as a matter of importance and my amendment would have altered the Bill so that section 119(1) of the Fair Trading Act 1973 would read:

"Regulations made by the Secretary of State by statutory instrument may make provision with respect to the issue, circulation or distribution of any form of advertisements, prospectuses, circulars or notices, which

(a) contain any invitation to persons to become participants in a trading scheme to which this part of the Act applies, or

(b) contain any information calculated to lead directly or indirectly to persons becoming participants in such a trading scheme".

It is quite a technical point, and we have moved on without debate. It is important, however, that in the interpretation of law such factors are understood and dealt with. It should probably be dealt with in regulations drawn up by the DTI. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea mentioned weaknesses in current legislation. I have been in the House for only four years but I have noticed that sometimes legislation is not perfect and we need to make certain that, when passing such legislation, even on a fairly empty Friday morning, it is absolutely correct.

I welcome the opportunity to support the Bill. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea would comment on one or two of the issues that I have raised. I congratulate him on his success in this small monument, and look forward to many further monuments to his diligence and industry during his time in the House.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea on bringing the Bill forward. I was delighted to hear both him and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) say that it is very important that when passing such legislation one does not throw out the baby with the bath water. In this instance, the baby is very significant, robust, healthy and perfectly legitimate. I have noted, for instance, that the direct selling or franchising industry of the kind that we are attempting to regulate has a turnover nationally of about £300 million. Not only does it provide additional income entirely innocently and helpfully for a large variety of people, whether they be students, wives—we ought to say spouses—or vicars, it provides a training ground for many people to develop gradually their entrepreneurial skills with minimum overhead and maximum back-up.

That is why the Direct Selling Association supports the Bill's principle but does not want it to become the trojan horse of a huge amount of regulation, which would become bureaucratic and stifling. That is one of my concerns about legislation that opens up new areas of activity to regulation. I am sure that although all of us present in the Chamber consider that the regulation would be helpful and not unduly constricting, and at the same time would protect vulnerable people, it might in other cases, in particular locations with particular trading standards officers, be highly oppressive in a way that I am sure none of us would want.

In nine years in the House, I have received but one complaint about direct selling organisations. People who are duped or feel that they have been wronged by such organisations may not be the type of people who want to admit it and go to their Member of Parliament to draw attention to what they regard as an unfortunate episode in their life. We should nevertheless take account of the lack of complaints and say that, although there may be a problem, that money circulation schemes may have to be better regulated and some people may well have lost money, the benefit of franchising and direct selling far outweighs the problems against which we hope to regulate today.

I have always believed that we should consider any type of regulation from two angles. We should protect vulnerable and innocent people. The trouble is that a person who complains that a trading scheme has gone wrong will always present themselves to the authorities as vulnerable, exploited and innocent. despite the fact that many people who enter such schemes are not innocent or gullible but greedy and seeking a quick return as much as the guy who set up the scheme. That may not be the easiest thing to admit in political terms, but in practice it is often the case.

I agree with my hon. Friend, but are not the advertisements very seductive nevertheless? Greed is a factor, but so is need, in whatever work we do, because we wish to make money for our industry. Perhaps some people are greedy, but I have cases of people who believed that they had found a good way to make money but were duped.

Of course that happens, which is why we are considering the Bill, but I am saying that any scheme of regulation should be considered against that proviso.

The deregulatory aspects are the other side of the argument about regulation. It is highly ironic that the document "Pyramid Selling and Similar Trading Schemes", produced on 16 March 1995, is—at least according to the Library brief—part of the Government's deregulation initiative. I should have thought that it was the major complaint of the majority of my constituents, including small companies and many people involved in business on a larger scale, that far from deregulation being the order of the day, despite many of the prognostications and pronouncements of Ministers, insidiously, gradually, their businesses are more and more overwhelmed with regulation, whether from Europe or from over-zealous civil servants locally or nationally. It should be our major preoccupation to reduce regulation and to produce regulations that are unlikely to be perverted in the way that I described earlier.

Significantly, in the past 15 years the United States of America has produced about 20 million jobs, mainly in the private sector, whereas in Europe the regulation effort may have reached its nemesis—about 8 million have been created, none of which has been in the private sector.

It may be worth pointing out to my hon. Friend that a substantial proportion of the direct selling companies that have found it useful to their business to enforce very much stricter controls are American.

I take that point. We would all welcome necessary regulation for properly run, sensible companies, but we should bear it in mind that one man's necessary regulation may be someone else's unnecessary interference in the way they go about their business.

I am in favour of the Bill and of extending the number and type of schemes it encompasses and the type of advertisements it oversees, because naturally I want to protect people who are genuinely vulnerable in a way that is in the public interest.

I shall now discuss pyramid selling schemes. Inner Sanctum, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) may have mentioned earlier, was a scheme that, through an unauthorised Swiss bank Swiss Investment Bankers AEG, offered people wildly unrealistic deposit rates on their money. The bank was registered in a place called Melchizedek, which was purported to be a rock off the coast of south America, but in fact Melchizedek is an Old Testament priest or king of Canaan.

Obviously, it was a scam from the start and people needed to be protected against it. Although it claimed 7,000 members, no one got their money back. It was eventually wound up by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Bank of England, and so say all of us. That is the type of scam against which people should be protected.

The Bill widens the scope of existing regulation. It is important to ensure that those regulations are appropriate for overseeing the franchise and direct selling industry.

The consultation document issued by the Department of Trade and Industry, "Pyramid Selling and Similar Trading Schemes", suggested ways in which regulations and controls might be updated to protect investors. These included the requirement for information to be revealed to new participants in schemes so that they go in with their eyes open; information such as details of the promoter, his registered address, the assumptions on which advertised profit levels were based, information on the role of participants and their obligations, the terms under which contracts originally entered into could be cancelled without penalty, the length of cooling-off periods and the penalties that would apply to participants if a promoter terminated their contract unilaterally.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent said, it is extremely important that people who put a lot of money into schemes, whether it be in trading or in advance orders for goods and so on, should be protected by buy-back provisions. I believe that that was suggested in the consultation document. Equally important, at least for the first two weeks of someone's participation in a scheme, maximum levels of achievable turnover should be quoted. Otherwise people would be swept away with promises of massive future riches and make investments that were unsustainable for them and which could not be relied on in the future.

I want the Minister to reassure me that, in addition to extending the Bill's scope, he will consider the suggestions in the consultation document, which would result in such industries being better policed—better, not more oppressively—in a way that is likely to be accurate and relevant.

I shall briefly mention money circulation schemes. In the 1920s, one Charles Ponzi, an American "entrepreneur"—probably the wrong way to describe him—set up a money circulation scheme; a scam in which millions of people lost millions of pounds. A few years ago the Caritas scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby mentioned—based mainly in Romania and Russia—was wound up and 4 million people lost no less than £630 million.

There are also money circulation schemes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby mentioned, which involve three levels and which give a return only when one person recruits six, and those six recruit another six. Before people make any money at all, they have to recruit 216 people. Before those people make any money, 1,296 have to be recruited and before those people make any money, 279,936 people have to be recruited. Before those people make any money, 60 million need to be involved in the scheme—the population of the United Kingdom. Such schemes are scandalous and unrealistic. It is rather like riding a bicycle. One has to ride faster and faster and faster, otherwise one will fall off. People need to be protected from such schemes.

I am not sure, however, that we can make the same point about all money circulation schemes. One of my concerns is that there may be money circulation schemes into which people go fully aware of the kind of scheme they are entering and which are regarded as a club in which everyone understands the potential downside. People may get a great deal of entertainment and pleasure from such schemes because they are almost a social club. Such schemes should be allowed to persist because they are private ventures in which everyone is a member, and willingly so. Those schemes should be regulated in a constructive and rigorous but sensitive and sensible way.

The biggest money circulation scheme in the country is the national lottery. It is not easy to say that, but it is effectively a money circulation scheme. The only basis on which it works is that the vast majority of people go into it knowing that their chances of winning or getting any return at all are minuscule. The vast majority of people go in knowing that they will lose their money, but society has taken the view that in terms of good causes and in terms of the innocent pleasure it gives to millions of people, it is worth while.

Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the major differences between the national lottery and the schemes he has described is that people do not spend their entire redundancy payment on the national lottery?

I take that point. I was defending only money circulation schemes in which people are made aware, through the regulations we have talked about, of the potential downside and in which they take part on virtually a social basis, knowing full well the risks that they take.

We all agree that the national lottery, although a money circulation scheme of rare proportions, is worth while. That suggests that one should not throw the baby out with the bath water, not only in terms of direct selling and franchising operations, but in terms of money circulation schemes.

I intervene on the narrow point that the national lottery gives even odds to everybody whereas the schemes that my hon. Friend is describing, which are right scams, have differentiated odds as one goes further down the chain. That is the essential difference.

I agree that it depends on the kind of schemes. The odds depend on the rules that apply to individual schemes. My point is that whether we are talking about direct selling, franchising or money circulation, the regulatory regime should be not only rigorous and all-embracing, as proposed in the Bill, but sensible. On that basis, I support the Bill.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) on introducing this important Bill; the whole House is grateful to him for promoting it. The Bill has not caught the public headlines, but the wider public—the vulnerable, commercially innocent people who have been caught up in scams—will undoubtedly have great cause to be grateful for it.

I can describe the perpetrators of the scams only as sharp sharks and swindlers. It is hard to find an attractive adjective for them because, to be perfectly honest, they have gone out of their way to prey on people's vulnerability. I have seen the way in which they have approached people who have recently been declared redundant, people whose businesses have gone bankrupt and people who have left the armed services, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) pointed out. People in the armed services seem to be more innocent than others when it comes to commercial transactions.

I myself was pressured by someone who had left the Navy and who thought he was on to a winner. It was rather embarrassing to watch the way in which he and his wife put me under tremendous sales pressure to try to get me to join their recruitment drive. In the end, I had a feeling that it would all end in tears, as it surely did.

We are talking about get-rich-quick schemes which have mushroomed over the years. It was absolutely appropriate that we should overhaul legislation that seemed appropriate 20 years ago, but which had become rather toothless. It is significant that no one has been prosecuted despite a number of well-documented scams.

The Bill will have an effect on the way in which pyramid selling schemes are promoted. We have to bear in mind the fact that they are sometimes promoted through rather innocent and harmless methods, such as hand bills or a little notice in a newsagent's window which suggests that one can easily earn £1,000 a week for just two or three hours of effort. It is only too easy to be taken in.

It is salutary to look at one or two examples. In the autumn of 1991, the television star Danny Baker made a promotional video for a firm called Entertainment Xpress. The company promised to supply cut-price CDs and videos to members who signed up at £29.95 a year. Any regular music buyer could save a few pounds a year, but the real money came from recruiting others into the scheme. The Baker video promised earnings of up to £29,000 and even as much as £207,000 a year, depending where one was placed in the pyramid. All that people had to do was to recruit new members; it was too easy. Those members brought in two more members who went out and found two more. Once people were at the top, having gone through five layers on the way and having recruited at least 16 members, they earned only a paltry £ 1. If one controlled a pyramid of more than 8,000, one could earn £29,000.

The trading standards officers calculated that the method would require the recruitment of virtually every regular music-buying family in a city the size of Aberdeen. The very top level would have required cities the size of Birmingham, Glasgow or Edinburgh. The good news is that Mr. Baker withdrew his endorsement of the video when the scam was properly explained to him and Entertainment Xpress went bust in 1992. Other examples of schemes that depended on recycling members include Alchemy Foundation, which was wound up by the Department of Trade and Industry in 1994, and successor companies such as Powertag and Headlogic, which were also shut down.

Lest anyone should believe that all methods of pyramid selling are bogus, it is important to recognise that there are some reputable schemes, such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) has described. Amway and Cabouchon jewellery operate reputable schemes which can provide a useful source of income for people such as housewives who want to earn pin money to supplement their regular income. I have heard only praise from people who have operated with Cabouchon. They sell a product for which they get a direct return. It is quite different from the schemes dealt with by the Bill, which sell only recruitment, for which there is no return.

This is a valuable Bill and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea on it. It will be a blessing to all genuine traders involved in pyramid selling because it will legitimise their work by outlawing scams.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) on seeking to update the legislation on such activities, which is 20 years old and seriously out of date.

Franchising organisations should not fear their activities coming under this legislation. They should welcome it. I emphasise the need for very light regulations which do not cramp an ever-increasing source of income for all sorts of entrepreneurs who, through no fault of their own, have lost their main employment and want to create job opportunities for themselves.

The Government should perhaps produce guidelines or a code of practice rather than regulations. I am anxious to ensure that people are not taken advantage of through their lack of experience or gullibility. If the Government were to put out guidelines, it would help people and ensure that the practices that we are discussing are engaged in responsibly and are effective, efficient and profitable for those taking part. I am impressed by the number of hon. Members present to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea. I wish him well in the passage of the measure into legislation.

I am also impressed by the number of people who go into such activity. Amway UK Ltd. has said that the term "pyramid selling" should be more distinctly defined and perhaps related only to crooked activities. I would welcome the removal of that term because it has bad overtones throughout the industry. We are talking about selling in its widest aspect. That is a very good activity. All business organisations work on a pyramid basis, although there is currently much de-layering in industry across the board. We should ensure that the Bill deals with crooked activities and not with valid and important business activities.

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak on Second Reading and in the brief Committee stage of the Bill. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Third Reading.

I have strongly supported my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) and his Bill and I do so now in the almost certain knowledge that it will shortly pass into law. It is an unusual example of regulation that should both simplify the law and save public expenditure. Both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor), the Minister who dealt with the earlier stages of the Bill, said that in their best judgment the changes would save public money, principally because the regulations would simplify the environment.

Trading standards officers will be able to enforce this legislation against the schemes that we have been discussing much more easily than they could enforce the previous legislation. That is why there should be a net saving in public expenditure. It will be simpler for trading standards officers to take action, simpler for the public, whom the legislation is designed to protect, and simpler for industry as well. That is why the good side of the industry—which is, of course, the majority—strongly supports the Bill. Amway has been mentioned and is an example of an excellent company which operates in this way and has long pressed for reform, as does the Direct Selling Association, which represents the bulk of the industry.

The people who will suffer are the minority of had, exploitative, almost criminal, parts of the industry which exist by operating scams and using loopholes in the law—the chain letter and pure cash-generation schemes, sometimes referred to as snowball schemes, which is an appropriate description as they gather size and then melt away. Such schemes cannot work because they exist on ultimately impossible assumptions—a constant increase in the size of support and constant generation of more money. As many good examples have already been given, I shall not give any more. The examples have shown that it is easy to sell such schemes but that they can never realise their ambitions. They are false premises based on false prospectuses.

I recall the notorious case of Hudson the railway king in the last century, who used a similar scam based on shares. He was for a while able to satisfy new shareholders with promises of huge returns by paying them out of the new shares that he sold. Ultimately, the scheme collapsed because he could not forever continue to sell new shares and thus satisfy the original shareholders. Such schemes will be ended by the changes in the Bill and the regulations that will stem from them.

I wish briefly to consider the victims of the schemes, partly because on Second Reading I mentioned a constituent of mine who lost all his redundancy money after many years of work by falling prey to the sort of misleading advertising connected with such scurrilous schemes. As I said in my intervention, the Bill will protect the gullible people who will fall for such schemes, but the problem goes much further than that.

Many of the people involved are basically sensible, well intentioned and well balanced. The trouble is that they are often inexperienced in business. More to the point, they fall prey to the glitzy advertising attached to the schemes and believe that they are entering a genuine business based on enterprise. It is often not immediately apparent that that is not the case. They suddenly find that they have lost all their investment, which may be their life savings or their redundancy settlements.

This Bill will close the loophole which has enabled many such schemes to operate in defiance of the Fair Trading Act 1973, which was largely a reaction to some glaringly bad examples of pyramid selling in the previous decade. Things have moved on since then. People with devious intentions always manage after a while to find loopholes in legislation. That is precisely what has happened. As the world and trading have changed, minds have set to work and ways have been found around the restrictions that that the 1973 Act brought to bear. Those who have wished to exploit have been able to do so. This is a timely means of setting right those problems.

I am glad that the Bill makes specific reference to advertising. As one who worked in the advertising industry for a while, I am in many senses partial to it, but for the industry to operate correctly and be seen to be above criticism it is sometimes necessary to have strict regulation. It cannot always be self-regulation. I am glad, therefore, that the Bill includes statutory control on advertising, pyramid selling and other trading schemes. I welcome that, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend included them in the Bill.

For all those reasons, I strongly support the Bill. I believe that it will bring benefit to the public, to honest traders and to the direct selling industry in general. I hope that it will reach the statute book swiftly.

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make a brief contribution. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) on introducing the Bill in an extremely sensible way, and on putting his case this morning cogently and persuasively.

Over the past 20 years, direct selling—whether it be pyramid selling, multi-level marketing, network marketing or whatever other term is used—has flourished. It is a real phenomenon of our times, and it is estimated that the market is now worth about £200 million. With that truly enormous increase over the past 20 years, many individuals have been brought into direct selling, dealing with kitchen goods, jewellery and other products, many of which are sold from people's homes. Collectively, all those schemes have come to be known as trading schemes.

A market worth £200 million is very big business indeed. The human spirit being what it is, where such sums are involved the market will inevitably attract people who are open to fraud and abuses of the law. Having seen the evolution of the business over 20 years, it is appropriate now to consider the legislative framework under which it all operates, to bring that up to date to cope with the size and complexity of the market and to make it relevant to the marketplace as it is, with all the mushrooming of activity that is involved.

The blunt truth is that the Fair Trading Act 1973 is no longer appropriate. Such a multiplicity of trading schemes operate in the United Kingdom that only some of them are subject to the Act's controls. The Bill will protect vulnerable people from loss by ensuring that all trading schemes whose members recruit others are subject to proper control.

A long catalogue of financial tragedy has been mentioned by my hon. Friends, especially my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who talked about it most poignantly.

Given the changes that we have seen in marketing and consumer activity, the opportunity has arisen for many people to become budding small entrepreneurs. That is why I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Energy here to reply to the debate. Entrepreneurial activity at this level often encourages people to set up small businesses.

In this country there has been an explosion of entrepreneurial activity, especially at the small business level, often involving people who have taken redundancy payments or have retired early and decided to go into business, perhaps after some marketing or selling experience. Tragically, some—albeit a minority—have lost their money in crooked schemes. Nevertheless, I believe that the seed-corn of our success as an economy depends on such entrepreneurial and small business activity.

The Government have sought to help small businesses by increasing the value added tax threshold, cutting corporation taxes and removing much of the burden of inheritance tax. That has all led to the dramatic decline in unemployment in the United Kingdom, compared with the contrasting situation in so many of our European competitor nations. That has happened because we have fostered and encouraged the entrepreneurial initiative.

At the heart of the Bill is the idea of giving protection to people who in their own different ways, sometimes even part time, are mini-entrepreneurs. I strongly support that, because it will bring the legislative position to a state relevant to our situation as we approach the millennium. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea once again on bringing the Bill through to its Third Reading.

I welcome the Bill, and I have listened with great interest to Conservative Members revealing their detailed knowledge of the scams, swindles, schemes and shadowy chancers operating in the market. There appears to be great expertise on the Government side of the Chamber.

Despite all that knowledge of pyramid selling, network selling and multi-level marketing, however, there have been years of inaction in terms of clamping down on the scams about which we have heard in graphic detail. There have been several promises of action by the Government. Sadly, however, those promises have been broken and it has been left to a private Member, the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott), to promote the Bill because the Government have found neither the will nor the way to do anything about the problem.

When I asked the then Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), on 31 March 1993 whether he would take action on the matter, he declined to do so.

More time went by and in 1994, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) specifically pressed the then Minister responsible, the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin), to

"bring forward legislation to outlaw any business scheme of pyramid selling requiring payments purely for the benefit of registration"

and highlighted the sort of problems which existed. The then Minister replied:

"I have, at present, no plans to amend the Fair Trading Act 1973".—[Official Report, 27 April 1994; Vol. 242, c. 167.]

In the same year, on 20 July, the Department of Trade and Industry had to go to the High Court to wind up Alchemy UK Ltd., a company which had preyed on people who had received redundancy payments or had a spare bit of cash, because thousands of people had lost thousands of pounds each.

The Direct Selling Association made fairly urgent representations to the Department—Amway, which we have already heard about, was also involved—and the then Minister said, also in July 1994, that at long last the Government were prepared to legislate. Sadly, however, no legislation followed, despite the fact that James Erlichman—then of The Guardian, now of the BBC—revealed that in that year almost 17,000 people in Britain had lost £10 million in such schemes.

Earl Ferrers, the Minister at the time, said that he was powerless to stop such schemes getting off the ground. We were aware of that fact: that is why we were asking for legislation. In March 1995, the DTI promised us a draft law, and in a boastful press release said that it intended to amend the Fair Trading Act 1973 and to clamp down on such abuses. Yet again, however, Ministers did nothing.

The latest money-for-nothing scam appears to be Titan Marketing, which offers invitations to join a business club. Tony Hetherington, of the Financial Mail on Sunday has exposed the hard sell, the threats of violence and the secrecy surrounding that German-based scheme. It has operated in Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Lancashire, where the trading standards officers have done their best to try to catch up with the crooks, and is similar to Alchemy UK, which the DTI had to wind up, FPW and Inner Sanctum.

My concern is that it has taken so long to get legislation on trading schemes on to the statute book. This legislation—which Labour has supported throughout its passage—was introduced not by the Government but by a private Member, and I am concerned that it was not passed by the House today in 10 minutes. A parliamentary on-line information system check on parliamentary contributions shows that in this debate we have heard from a group of hon. Members who have previously asked no questions and made no contribution—with the exception, of course, of the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who has shown a long-term interest in this issue and who represents Amway as a Member of Parliament and as a paid consultant, and the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant), who spoke in the debate on the Bill's Second Reading.

I am disappointed in what the hon. Gentleman has said. I happen to be vice-chairman of the Small Business Bureau and chairman of the parliamentary advisory group of the Small Business Bureau. Every Conservative Member is dedicated to ensuring that small businesses are allowed to operate successfully in this country. That is precisely what this measure is about, directly and indirectly. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will therefore understand why there is considerable interest in it: it is because, unlike the Labour party, Conservative Members have a real interest in creating jobs.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths) for cutting across his speech, but 11 am is usually the time for statements in the House. Have you had any request from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to make a statement on the discussions in Brussels? I ask that question because of the very considerable urgency for the farming fraternity to have news of developments there. If no request for a statement has so far been made, can you tell the House whether you would be prepared to consider a request for a statement at 2.30 pm on this matter? Every day counts for farmers and ancillary businesses, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I am sure you know.

I have had no request for such a statement to be made. It is not for me or for any occupant of the Chair to tell the Government what statements they should make; but a Minister is in the Chamber, and no doubt that information can be passed through.

Madam Deputy Speaker. I should like fully to associate the Labour party with the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley), which was, of course, well made.

It is very interesting that the profound interest in this issue declared by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring)—which he says that Labour Members do not have—was not manifested in a contribution on the Second Reading. Nor has the hon. Gentleman found time to table any questions on the subject or to take part in previous debates on direct selling—in contrast with the questions tabled, not particularly by me but by a great many of my colleagues, on this matter. We are concerned that people have lost their redundancy payments and that others who have worked and saved hard have been swindled out of their savings because of Government inaction.

I made that point because this measure should have gone through very quickly—on the nod, as we say—because it has had our full co-operation and support. If, as I believe, there is currently an attempt to talk out the Bull Bars (Prohibition) Bill, as there was with disabled rights legislation, the House will be particularly annoyed and the victims of bull bars will vent their anger on Conservative Members. I end my speech with that statement.

I join all my hon. Friends in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for r Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) on this legislation. It gives me great pleasure to support the Third Reading of his Bill. I was interested to read his comments in the debate on Second Reading, about promoting a Bill for the first time without the comfort of the Dispatch Box. I know exactly what he means.

Before offering to support the measure, the Government considered long and hard the considerable postbag that we had on the subject, including responses that we received to consultations on proposals to change the legislation controlling pyramid selling and similar trading schemes. It might help the House if I were to set out briefly some of the background.

Trading schemes are widely used by companies that do not employ a sales force. Their sales forces are self-employed individuals earning commission on their sales. There are literally hundreds of thousands of individuals who are members of such trading schemes. Some of them supplement their income by selling consumer goods to their friends and neighbours. That point has been made by my hon. Friends. Those people sell all manner of things: cosmetics, jewellery, gold necklaces, flashy cufflinks, books, toys, household goods and—shock, horror—even sex aids. There is probably hardly a home in the country that has not, at one time or another, bought from a member of a trading scheme.

In some trading schemes, members may also earn commission on sales by other members of the scheme whom they have recruited. In that way, it is possible for some people to earn substantial sums through membership of a scheme.

Franchise schemes in which franchisees acquire the right to use a trade name or design owned by franchisers are also trading schemes. Those franchises include many household names, selling burgers and all types of takeaway meals, and services such as photocopying, drain cleaning, picture framing and printing. At the other end of the spectrum, of course, many chain letters are also trading schemes.

Trading schemes include many reputable organisations that make a significant contribution to Great Britain Ltd.—how great a contribution, it is impossible to say. On one definition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) said, it is several hundred million pounds. On another definition, it could be said that annual sales probably exceed £1 billion. I can say that with some confidence because, in 1994, retail sales of members of the Direct Selling Association were estimated to be £948 million. As the House has already been informed, the Direct Selling Association is the trade association for companies selling consumer goods in the home through independent self-employed sales people.

Members of trading schemes include the smallest of firms. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds touched on the role of small businesses. As the Minister for Small Firms, Industry and Energy, I am very tempted to launch into a spiel about the importance of small businesses to the country. That would take up time, which I do not wish to do today, but I should underline the point that he made about the importance of small business to the UK.

We do not want to burden those people with unnecessary regulation. On the other hand, we want to ensure that entrepreneurs are not exploited by the promoters of the schemes in which they participate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) reminded the house of the pyramid scandals of the 1960s. In those scams, members bought a vast quantity of products, so that garages, attics and garden sheds were literally stuffed full of such items as shampoos or cleaning products that were virtually unsaleable.

Those unfortunate victims had few rights. Some of them had no contracts, and others had contracts that made it impossible for them to return the stock in which they had invested. Other people had contracts with onerous termination conditions. The unfortunate members trapped in those schemes, unable to sell any of their stock, concentrated their efforts on recruiting others; and so the number of victims grew and grew.

Not every scheme supplied unsaleable goods. But even when it was not possible for members to sell the goods, in some cases, they bore virtually all the scheme's commercial risks. The company promoting such a scheme carried virtually little or no risk, making profits whether the goods were sold or not. There is no doubt that such schemes caused immense hardship to thousands of people.

Those were problems that part XI of the Fair Trading Act 1973 was intended to remedy. The legislation provides essential protection for sales people who belong to a trading scheme, so that they are not unfairly treated. The Act provides power to regulate contracts between promoters and members of a trading scheme. It also provides power to regulate promotional material aimed at recruiting new members to a trading scheme. The most important protection was the creation of an offence relating to recruitment, which prevents payments for others being recruited into the scheme and their being the main attraction of such a scheme.

These controls apply to schemes in which: goods and/or services are provided by the scheme's "promoter"; such goods and/or services are supplied to others by the scheme's members; most of the sales do not take place on premises where either the promoter or the member carries on some other business; and in which members expect benefits related to the activities of other members, activities such as the recruitment of other members, the supply of goods, training or other services to other members and commission on sales by other members.

Many trading schemes with a pyramid recruitment structure do not have all those characteristics, but at present, only schemes with all four of those characteristics are subject to the controls of the Fair Trading Act 1973. The Bill widens the coverage of the controls under that Act. I assure the House that the Government would not favour any measure that widened regulatory control if it were not absolutely necessary.

As has been said, the Bill has become necessary because unscrupulous people have found ways of avoiding the present controls, by devising schemes that do not have all the characteristics specified in the Act. That point was made by my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). Last year alone, 17,000 people lost £10 million in three such schemes. One poor individual lost £78,000.

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) was trying to illustrate the need for the Bill by giving a dodgy tip for the Grand National, but my advice to him is to stick to politics and not get into any form of the horse tipster business.

I cite a typical real-life example of the type of scheme with which we are dealing. It was run by One Life Ltd. and its recruitment material shows how insidious and clever such material can be. It states:

"The Facts of One Life … started in November 1974 with just 7 people. It is constantly expanding and now there are hundreds of people involved. There is no other company like it in the UK.

In their first few weeks most people earn between five hundred pounds and two thousand pounds per week. In subsequent weeks people are disappointed if this hasn't doubled (or even trebled!). It is a part-time job that fits comfortably in with most people's full-time work."

Once members had been suckered in, they were given guidance on how to recruit. The recruitment material continues:

"You have a good business opportunity to offer, show enthusiasm for it! If you appear apathetic you will put off your guests.

When making the first moves, it is vital that you do not beg and plead with them to come to the seminars, show them that you are offering them something they need and make them desperate for more information …

Create an air of importance around you, remember, few people are interested in a tramp. How you dress and what you say will influence people's attitude towards you …

Provide hints in the form of magazines and car brochures so that the other person is interested in your finances. By them asking questions on expensive purchases, you are creating a window of opportunity. Let them make the first step. Try and find out if there is something that she or he desires. Use this as a carrot to entice them to attend the seminar."

Eventually it says:

"Keep them guessing as to the nature of the business. If you start giving out more information than you should, it may be provided in the wrong way and at the wrong time. Remember, each person is worth thousands of pounds to you. Is it worth losing that potential investment".

I believe that that technique persuaded more than 1,600 people across the country to pay an initial up-front membership fee of £2,000 each to One Life. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby, who has now vanished, is not very good at mathematics, I shall help him—it amounts to some £3.2 million.

As I have already explained, One Life is an example of the sort of scheme that avoids the present controls under part XI of the Fair Trading Act. I am sure that the House will be relieved to hear that, last November, we successfully petitioned the High Court to wind up One Life Ltd. following an investigation under section 447 of the Companies Act 1985. The petition was under the Insolvency Act 1986, which enables the Secretary of State to petition for the winding-up of a company where it appears to him expedient to the public interest to do so.

We have taken similar action against other companies operating such schemes, but the powers currently available for protecting the public against such scams are cumbersome and limited in their application. We can wind up only companies with a UK presence and, unfortunately, it is possible for the people behind such schemes to set up new companies and do the same time and again.

For example, last July, we successfully petitioned the courts to wind up a company called Goldmark Inc., which was trading as Lifeline (UK). That company's managers had previously been involved with Tsar Computer Projects Ltd., which operated a scheme called Peace of Mind. That company was wound up in August 1994—the month before Lifeline started to operate.

Last August, the High Court wound up a company called Alchemy (UK), which ran a scheme promising members more than £30,000 in return for 24 monthly payments of some £75. I am sure we all agree that that would be a fairly healthy rate of return. Within a mere 48 hours of the winding-up, two successor companies were incorporated and took over Alchemy's assets and membership. That reinforces the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea.

Is there anything that we can do to stop such practice, or is it totally impossible under present legislation? So many companies fail and then resurrect themselves within a day or two; that is not in the interests of our constituents.

My hon. Friend is straying from the Bill and moving to general legislation. Under general legislation, we have the power to disqualify directors if they are found to be operating companies fraudulently, but the Bill will, in particular circumstances, be able to deal with the situation that my hon. Friend describes.

The Bill is needed so that it is possible for action to be taken against those who exploit people who may be financially naive—those who persuade others to part with considerable sums of money by promising them riches if they can persuade others to do the same.

I have not been out to place a bet on Young Hustler, although I recommend it.

My hon. Friend is explaining how penalties can be invoked. Will he confirm that someone who contravenes the Bill's provisions could go to gaol? In view of that, does he think that just over one hour on Second Reading and less than two hours on Third Reading is too long, which is what the Opposition seem to think? Curiously, they believe that even to discuss the matter is unreasonable.

I shall resist my hon. Friend's invitation to get involved in a party political controversy, but I confirm that someone could go to prison if he contravened the Act. In view of the misery that some people cause by their activities, that is perfectly justifiable.

As I was saying, the Bill does not seek to move responsibility for enforcing the controls under part XI of the Fair Trading Act. That will remain the burden and responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry. The Bill will not place extra work on trading standards departments. In fact, as has already been intimated, we expect the cost of taking action under the Fair Trading Act to be less than the cost of using the existing, less appropriate powers.

Enforcement of the Bill is expected to cost £200,000 a year at today's prices. That is nearly 25 per cent. less than the current annual cost of investigations, under the Companies Acts, of unscrupulous promoters and the submission of petitions to wind up these companies under the Insolvency Act. We also expect a reduction in the cost of handling inquiries from the public on whether particular schemes are subject to the provisions. I hope that that is of encouragement to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent.

The Bill is prudent. It seeks to widen the coverage of the existing controls under the Fair Trading Act only so far as necessary to protect the public from the risks associated with trading schemes.

In pyramid scams, very little may be provided other than money. The Bill provides for a wider definition of "goods" so that, for example, it covers money. It also lists the ways in which members of trading schemes may earn income and it then applies the controls to schemes in which members expect to earn income in one of the listed ways, and in which goods—as defined by the Bill—or services are provided by the promoter, whether to members or to others introduced by members.

Furthermore, the Bill provides power to widen further the coverage of the controls by disapplying altogether the qualifying criteria relating to goods and services. If in the event it were to prove necessary, we would not hesitate to use that power if the criteria relating to goods and services would otherwise protect pernicious schemes from prosecution.

The Bill also provides powers to exclude prescribed schemes from all the controls under part XI of the Fair Trading Act. That makes it possible to take out from those controls any type of scheme for which the Secretary of State is convinced that the controls are not required for the essential protection of the members of those schemes. I hope that that is of some comfort to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea. The Bill provides powers that will address all the concerns expressed by the British Franchise Association Ltd. The greatest danger to the public is from schemes to which they are lured by promises of riches from the recruitment of others.

From our consultation, we have concluded that franchisees do not need the protection of the Act if their expected income comes entirely from their sales to third parties. We therefore intend to use the power to exclude prescribed schemes by excluding franchise schemes with only one person benefiting from the recruitment of others to the scheme.

The franchise schemes that we intend to exclude from those controls are at present subject only to the recruitment offences. That is because the existing powers provide for the regulations to apply differently to different types of trading scheme. The power is used at present to exempt two types of scheme from all the regulations. The exempt types of scheme are those in which only one participant in the UK can benefit from the activities of others, and those in which the financial benefits are no more than £30 in respect of the introduction of other participants.

Some hon. Members have mentioned chain letters, and harked back to their schooldays. We also intend to exclude simple chain letters from the controls under part XI of the Fair Trading Act. No doubt hon. Members have come across chain letters at various times. Some involve sending books, postcards, and other items to those higher on the list; others involve sending money; and others bring promises of bad luck to those who break the chain. The latter types may involve offences under the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976 or the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

Under the Bill, many chain letters will become subject to control under part XI of the Fair Trading Act. It is clear that the most basic examples are not detrimental to the public. We therefore intend to use the power to exclude prescribed schemes, to exclude simple chain letters. The controls will apply to any chain if anyone can benefit from it throughout its existence. For example, the controls—including the recruitment offence—will apply to any chain in which new members send money to a central organiser who takes a cut before passing the money down the rest of the chain.

The Bill also seeks to widen the controls over the promotional material used to recruit new members. It would make it possible for the regulations to apply to all forms of promotional material. Videos, recorded messages, the Internet and so on are now commonly used to attract potential members, but at present the controls apply only to documents.

The Government welcome the extension of the regulation-making powers to include other media. It is right to look ahead and it is right that all promotional materials should be treated equally under the regulations and that those considering joining a scheme are provided with the protection that we consider necessary, regardless of the form of the promotional material.

On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham asked whether the control over promotional material is best achieved by statute or through the Advertising Standards Authority. The Government prefer self-regulation where it is effective. The present Pyramid Selling Schemes Regulations therefore do not apply to advertisements that form part of a newspaper or magazine, and we intend to continue that exclusion in the trading schemes regulations. However, much of the promotional material for trading schemes is privately produced and distributed. Regulation is needed to ensure that promotional material does not deceive, whether by including misleading information or by excluding essential details.

In deciding to support the Bill, we have been greatly influenced by the consultation that we held last year over the legislation controlling pyramid selling and similar trading schemes. Widening the coverage of the controls under the Fair Trading Act was only one of the proposals in that consultation. A summary of the results is in the Library of the House.

We sent out more than a thousand consultation documents. Some 256 responses were received, of which 40 were from promoters and their representatives, and 173 were from consumer organisations and members or ex-members of trading schemes, including those who belonged to schemes operated by companies that the Department had wound up.

I shall not go through all the comments that we received from the organisations, but they gave encouraging endorsement to the proposals in the Bill. Comments received included:

"To allow these schemes to continue is to condone trickery."

"I was promised large tax free earnings. All I had to do was bring in as many as possible friends, relations, business associates."

"It is about time 'money games' were outlawed because they are `scams' and give our industry a bad name."

The list of complaints and the support for the Bill are there for all to see.

The consultation not only addressed the coverage of the controls. It also proposed trading schemes regulations to replace the Pyramid Selling Schemes Regulations 1989 and the Pyramid Selling Schemes (Amendment) Regulations 1990. Those regulations relate to the promotional material aimed at potential recruits to trading schemes and to the contracts between a scheme's promoter and its members.

The present regulations are not ideal, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover) pointed out. In some respects, the apparent protection to members of requirements that are costly to promoters is considerably greater than the actual protection provided. In the light of our consultation, we intend to overhaul the regulations so that they provide more effective protection to members and potential members of schemes at no greater cost to schemes' promoters.

It would be unfair to promoters to replace the present regulations so soon after extending their coverage. Therefore, if the Bill is approved—and I believe it will be—we shall lay new regulations on a timetable that will enable them to come into force at the same time as the Trading Schemes Act. There will, of course, be transitional provisions to minimise the costs for schemes that already meet the requirements of the regulations.

It gives me great pleasure to repeat that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea has done a service for the country in introducing the measure. I commend the Bill to the House.

With the leave of the House, I shall speak briefly. First, I wish to apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who has left the Chamber briefly to respond to a green card that has been delivered to him. Secondly, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who have played a part in the progress of the legislation to this stage. I am grateful for that unanimous support, because we are tackling an important issue.

I know that the House is rightly wary of the excessive use of secondary legislation instead of primary legislation, but on this matter secondary legislation is essential. Indeed, if there are further developments and scams of one sort or another and gaps are found, it should be possible speedily to plug them with further secondary legislation.

I repeat my gratitude to the House for the support that I have had and ask it to give the Bill a Third Reading.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The greatest advance in road safety in recent years is the escape from the attitude towards driving of the early part of this century, which was characterised by Toad of Toad Hall figures, who delighted in the speed and power of motor vehicles. We have changed to defensive driving and now drive our vehicles in a good-mannered way, seeking to avoid problems to other users, particularly injuries and death. I am sad to say that bull bars have reversed that trend.

The case made for bull bars started in Australia, where they were designed as `roo bars—short for kangaroo—to prevent kangaroos from being scooped up by the sloping bonnets of vehicles on impact and going into the passenger's space. They are now unpopular in Australia; they have been banned and replaced by a clever device that is based on high frequency sound, which is designed to shoo away kangaroos. A similar problem is being dealt with in a similar way in Sweden, which has the highest number of accidents involving impact with animals.

Now bull bars are being sold in this country in the belief that they prevent disabling and trivial damage to the fronts of vehicles. They are also being sold because they are aggressive in appearance and will intimidate other road users with the message, "This vehicle is tougher, harder and stronger than you. Keep out of my way." They have also become a declaration of the life style of the country person and the generation who had Tonka cars when they were young—cars with chunky, large wheels. They have a tendency to fall for bull bars in the pursuit of a fashion image.

The case against bull bars is proved and cannot be questioned. Every safety organisation and group of independent scientists, particularly in this country, Germany and Australia, has said that the rigid metal structure concentrates and multiplies the force of impact at the level of a child's head and vital organs.

Hon. Members will be familiar with the stiletto heel syndrome with which we were familiar in the 1950s when seven stone young women were wrecking the floors of dance halls that had survived for a century because, as they pirouetted on the tiny heel, their weight was changed from that of a young woman to that of a fully grown elephant and they bored sixpence-sized holes in the floor. Exactly the same physics is at work when a bull bar hits the head of a child. Not only does the bar, which might weigh about 100 lb, hit the child but it has the force of the vehicle behind it, all concentrated in a tiny area on the circumference of the bar's rim. Research proves that the bars change trivial accidents into serious accidents and serious accidents into fatal accidents. In Australia, the Madymo simulation proved that the bars changed the direction of the fall of pedestrians who were hit and consequently increased the danger of deadly head injuries.

The campaign against bull bars on four-by-fours has had some success. A firm on the borders of my constituency, which employs some of my constituents, manufactures bull bars. Nearly a year ago, it said that it had lost 50 per cent. of its sales. I told the company that sales should go down because there would be fewer deaths and injuries, but that I would like it to diversify into other, safety areas—there is a great market in safety. I take no joy in the fact that there might be a threat to the jobs of my constituents, but the lives of young children are far more important.

Manufacturing companies have altered the bars' image by changing the name from the aggressive bull or nudge bar to the protector bar. They are now concentrating on selling them to owners of vans, with some degree of success. The term protector bar is deceptive. Research proves it to be entirely inappropriate, but some van drivers feel that they are under threat because they have no engine but only a thin layer of metal between them and the rest of the road traffic. Manufacturers adamantly deny that there is any truth in the belief that those vans are inherently dangerous. Even if it were true, it would be unforgivable for people to make themselves safer by greatly magnifying the risk to other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists.

All the research has proved that bull bars fitted on four-by-fours or vans increase the severity of injuries and multiply the number of deaths not only for the people who are hit but for the passengers and drivers of the vehicles on which they are fitted, for reasons that we all understand. Bull bars stiffen the fronts of vehicles and destroy the vital controlled shock absorption that is designed into vehicle fronts. The forces of the crash are transferred from the vehicle and the impact hits the bodies of those inside, increasing their injuries.

Bull bars also interfere with the operation of air bags because the sensors are put out. The bags can inflate unnecessarily, but may well not be activated when they are required in a smash. By wrecking the aerodynamic profile—they alter what are known as the laminar boundary layers—the weight and the drag of the vehicle are increased, thus adding greatly to fuel costs, air pollution, tyre wear and making handling more difficult.

Few studies have been carried out on the extra injuries caused to passengers in vans, but studies in Australia showed that no extra safety is to be gained by the use of bull bars. In detailed studies in Australia it was found that injuries were likely to increase as the force was concentrated into a smaller area. In one accident examined, the bull bar changed shape and inflicted injuries to the top part of the body of many people in the van.

Virtually everyone is in favour of the Bill, except those who want to use bull bars—a declining group—and those who have a vested interest in profiting from them. The organisations that support the Bill include the Royal Automobile Club, Automobile Association, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Pedestrians Association, Headway—an organisation for head injuries—the Cyclists Public Affairs Group, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety.

Does it not seem strange that insurers are the one group missing from that list? Would it not seem sensible for them to take into account the fact that third-party costs that may arise out of insurance policies could be increased, as could personal damage risks? I should have expected insurers to be penalising rather than encouraging the use of bull bars.

I have good news on that front as I wrote 18 months ago to every insurance firm in the country and although I received a fairly negative response at that time, since then one insurance organisation, CGA Direct, has said that it will not insure any vehicles fitted with bull bars and Norwich Union, Eagle Star, Cornhill and others have taken action to waive the policies. That has become a major issue among insurance companies.

There is good news also on the newspaper front. Vigorous campaigns have been conducted by Wales on Sunday, the Northern Ireland Sunday Life, the Nottingham Herald and Post, the Evening Chronicle and the Daily Express—the Express is not a newspaper that I have praised before, but it has printed a splendid series of articles inviting its readers to nominate uses for dead bull bars. It received more than 100 entries. Most prominent of all have been The Independent and The Independent on Sunday and Christian Woolmar's long campaign.

There are distinguished supporters of the campaign to ban bull bars. Anneka Rice, Roger Cook and a lady who I cannot mention by name but who has some influence in the royal parks have all removed bull bars from their vehicles. They have responded to my letters. There has been a response also by many hon. Members, some of whom are in the Chamber. Some of them have views that would lead others to think that they would not necessarily support proposals related to defensive driving. For many weeks I have not seen a bull bar in the car park, where 27 were once assembled.

The Bill is straightforward. The intention behind it is that no person shall use on a road a motor car to which a bull bar is attached. It sets out suggested sentences—prison sentences and a maximum fine at the appropriate level. There is a similar Bill in the other place and there is activity in the European Parliament.

A letter was sent to the Minister on 24 May 1995, and it is of some significance. It was written by an EU Commissioner, who suggested three approaches, which might be the subject of detailed discussion today. There is a view that was supported by The Mail on Sunday in a headline that declared that Britain had won an EU ban on bull bars. Sadly that is not true. There is a dispute over who should be responsible for introducing such a ban.

The Commissioner stated that there were three ways in which the Government could ban bull bars. He said that if they were not fitted as part of the original European type approval, owners could be compelled to remove them because they would be breaking the law. Secondly, there is the safeguard clause within the framework directive for European type approval. It allows member states to introduce a temporary ban on registration if bull bars are considered to be a serious risk to road safety. I believe that a temporary ban would become inevitably a permanent ban. The third approach is to prohibit bull bars on vehicles that cross borders from one member state to another, under articles 30 and 36. That would be a powerful weapon in reducing the number of bull bars on vehicles.

It has been suggested that the Commission no longer takes seriously the three approaches to which I have referred. Accordingly, I ask for confirmation that it does take them seriously. By coincidence, the RAC met the Commission on Monday. In a letter to me, it reports that it is adamant that the three courses of action are accurate and can be adopted unilaterally by the United Kingdom. That view has been supported by the Commission and made known to two Select Committees that visited the Commission in the past six weeks, the Select Committees on Transport and on European Legislation.

One reason that the Government are advancing for taking no action is that they are waiting for the results of research undertaken in 1994. If the Minister has examined the findings of that research, I hope that he will agree that a report has been much delayed and that it may be better if a report is never produced as it would not be worth the paper on which it was written. Disastrously unscientific methodology was employed. It constitutes a voluntary and amateurish exercise. Accidents were reported haphazardly and chaotically.

The Minister seems to be taking an interest in this part of my speech, for which I am grateful. I wrote to all the police authorities. Some had taken part in the research and others had not. Any conclusions drawn from it would be meaningless and possibly dangerously misleading. Only 29 of the 50 authorities took any part in the research. It was not treated seriously by many of them. According to the chief superintendent of Northumberland, participation was voluntary, which suggested that there was no attempt to ensure that the police forces taking part were a representative sample. The Northumbria police authority did not take part. Yet I have evidence from my mailbag of fatal accidents in that area.

The replies from the police to my letters show that the numbers of accidents vary greatly from county to county.

It would seem that the hon. Gentleman has encountered research the results of which he does not like. It is extraordinary how the findings of research are denigrated in those circumstances. It was never the intention that all the police authorities should be included in the survey. The hon. Gentleman refers to "only 29" as if that implies that the others had declined to take part in it. In fact, the 29 constituted the survey group that we selected. We did so deliberately.

I raised the matter in anticipation of the Minister using the findings to be drawn from the survey.

I want to reach an intelligent conclusion on the value of the figures that the research produced. I have studied them, as have others, and other parties have reached conclusions. I shall refer to the conclusions of those groups.

The Hertfordshire police authority took the issue extremely seriously. It has an interest in it. Until recently, some police authorities were using bull bars on their vehicles. Their attitude has, regrettably, come through in the results obtained. The Hertfordshire authority reported that in one year total casualties involving bull bar accidents were 143, in 91 accidents. A nearby county reported no such casualties or accidents. That is not plausible. In Dyfed, Powys and Gwynedd there were no injuries caused by bull bars throughout the period in question. Any respectable statistician would come to the conclusion that the counties that took part in the exercise were not entirely representative. I find it strange that the Metropolitan police were not involved and tiny Scottish counties were.

An analysis was undertaken by an independent body of the results of the survey. It has reached a judgment that is based on the accidents of which we are aware. I should say that in my office there are figures that did not appear in the report. They were not reported by the police. In some areas the police are blind to the involvement of bull bars in accidents.

The independent body to which I have referred puts its considerable reputation behind the conclusion that 70 people were killed in accidents involving bull bars and that 400 were seriously injured. Those findings are based on the independent body's interpretation of the figures. It is a body for which we all have a great deal of respect because of its campaigning activities.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the total number of vehicles that are fitted with bull bars? Is he aware also of the percentage of vehicles that have them and of any geographical spread?

Half a million has been quoted for some time. Many people, however, have now removed them from their vehicles. There has also been a trend to fit bull bars on to vans. There is no reliable, accurate figure.

In a debate last April and in an interview that the Minister gave to the Daily Express, he expressed similar views. He takes the view that it is not possible for us, the United Kingdom, to take independent measures to ban bull bars. He takes the view also that there must be an appropriate directive from Brussels. He has said that he will keep up pressure on the EU, adding that the Government have not thrown up their hands. I hope that he will not do so today.

The Minister gave an interview to The Mail on Sunday on 19 November last year. It appeared under the heading that Britain had won an EU ban on bull bars. It told us that the EU had caved in to pressure to change a Euro directive so that controversial steel cages would be outlawed on new vehicles. Apparently the promise was given to the Minister after he had lobbied the Commissioner with responsibilities for transport, Mr. Kinnock.

Is there really reform coming from Brussels? In a letter written on 21 March, the Director General of the Transport Commission says:

"The Commission has drafted an amendment to a Directive"—

a well-known directive, with which the Minister will be familiar—

"to include a bull bar as an item that should not be too hard or sharp so as to cause an unacceptable risk of injury. This draft amendment has been discussed with member states and they hope that it will be accepted within the next few weeks. It will take a while for it to pass into law and then for it to be adopted by member states."

Sadly, the effects of the directive will he far more limited than the Bill, which seeks to ban the use of bull bars on all vehicles. It is certainly no substitute for the Bill, although it will, I believe, make it easier for the Government to accept it because action will be taken European wide and not just in this country.

The letter continues:

"The legislation will relate to new cars, and not vans"—

as I have already said, vans are becoming the main problem

"and equipment sold as 'separate technical units'."

Again, that covers a huge range of bull bars, because many are sold by companies as accessories and are not fitted when they are new.

"The legislation is not retrospective in that it cannot encompass vehicles that are already on the roads."

We will have a ban from Europe that cannot cover more than 20 per cent. at the most of existing vehicles. There is no cavalry galloping over the horizon from Europe to rescue the Minister. The Euro ban will not cover vans, which must be about 50 per cent. of the vehicles involved, or bars that are sold as accessories.

I shall be as brief as I can, as many of these points have been made many times. I am reluctant to go through the long, bleak litany of names of those who have been killed by bull bars, but there have been many deaths: ranging from infants and toddlers to the elderly—one woman involved in an accident was in her 90s—and they happen in every part of the country.

I shall bring one case to the attention of the House. I know the family well, and the mother has been to the House recently. It is a case that must bear down on all of us as Members of Parliament, because this death followed last year's debate. As the child's mother rightly said, the House can act very swiftly when it wants to; when there is a major accident or major event, it concentrates all our attention. We had the debate a year ago, and other debates stretch back over two years. The child, Helen Baggs, whose picture I keep with my family pictures on my desk, died on the last day of the summer term last year. Rushing home excitedly from school with her sister, she ran into the path of a slow-moving Landrover with a ball bar attached. She was hit by the bar itself—the bracket on the bar broke in the impact. She lived for about seven days after, suggesting that her injuries were not instantly lethal. As the coroner said, Helen Baggs would almost certainly be alive now if it was not for that bull bar. We must all take it on our consciences that if we had acted swiftly last year we would have saved her life and, probably, if RAC figures are right, the other 70 unnecessary and avoidable deaths that have since occurred.

Any hon. Member today who wishes to see action taken speedily must ensure that the Bill is passed. If we do not pass it, we, as Members of Parliament, will be as responsible for future deaths, which will certainly occur, as a drunken driver at the wheel who had slain a child after taking a lethal gamble. We cannot do that. We must pass the Bill today. It is the only chance that this country has of a comprehensive ban that will save lives and avoid serious injuries. It is up to us now to reduce the crippling injuries and to save lives.

Bull bars reverse the life-saving culture of defensive driving and turn it into aggressive, lethal and offensive driving. Futile macho fashion accessories turn vehicles into child-killing machines. They intimidate and bully, and, tragically, they make trivial accidents serious ones and turn serious accidents into deaths. Fellow human beings are being sacrificed to what has become the foolish greed of the manufacturers and the vanity and macho feelings of irresponsible drivers.

I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

I unreservedly congratulate the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn). What he has sought to do in his campaign in the past few years is in the best traditions of Back Benchers. He has taken on board a cause which enjoys considerable public support—indeed, cross-party support—and has moved with it, and, I believe, has moved public opinion with him. I applaud him for what he has done and for his speech.

I am delighted to see present my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London, because nobody has done more to highlight the issues of road safety in this country in an imaginative way. I believe that, in spirit, he accepts the underlying theme behind the Bill—the acceptance that bull bars cause grave problems for road safety considerations. I am sure that he will address that in due course.

I wish to comment on remarks made in the previous debate by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths). He seemed to imply that Conservative Members of Parliament were not taking the issue of bull bars seriously. Yet the Opposition Benches are totally vacant. Only the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) is present. [Interruption.] I am sorry, I thought that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) was a Front Bencher. It is a disgrace that the campaign is so ill supported by the hon. Gentleman's fellow Labour Members of Parliament, and I am horrified that no Liberal Democrat is here for the debate. Labour Members certainly cannot be talking to their farmers, which is precisely what many Conservative Members will be doing in the next day or two.

We are adopting exactly the same position on this measure as we adopted on the earlier Bill. We want to give the Bill a fair wind, but there has been misleading information about reasons for not proceeding with the measure. The legislation is vital and the Bill is supported by many hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) gave a good account of why it should proceed, and we look forward to the Minister assuring us that business will conclude before 2 o'clock so that the Bill is passed.

The hon. Gentleman is clearly not aware of the fact that I am one of the Bill's sponsors. The hon. Member for Newport, West is enjoying no support from Opposition Back Benchers. They are not here, and that is a reflection of the attitude of Labour Members.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths) says that he wants hon. Members to be here to support Bills that should be unopposed. Opposition Members who say that they want the Bill to be rushed through are not present. The earlier Bill was presented on a Friday when many of us were in our constituencies, some of which are distant. How on earth can we be in our constituencies and here at the same time? Labour Members are saying one thing and doing another. They say that they want the Bill to be rushed through, but they are not here to support it.

I agree with my hon. Friend, as will all Conservative Members.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of any Labour Member who opposes the legislation? Does he agree that the Bill will be stopped only by extended speeches by Conservative Members and the Minister? It makes sense for Opposition Members not to take part in the debate because that facilitates the Bill's progress. I have been in the House for 32 years and I am fully aware of how Governments operate on Fridays. The hon. Gentleman would be silly to try make this issue party political. There is consensus on the Bill.

indicated dissent.

I gather that the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) is opposed to it. No doubt my hon. Friends will draw that to the attention of his constituents. Many parents in his constituency will want to know what the hon. Gentleman has to say on this matter.

rose—

Order. The purpose of Second Reading is to discuss the merits or otherwise of a Bill. It is not the occasion on which discuss who is here or who is not here.

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I shall be mindful of your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. The issue is whether a Bill of this sort should be debated and thoroughly examined and whether we should accept the proposition, which is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), who is one of the Bill's sponsors, to ban aggressive bull bars. It is ludicrous to suggest that although we all support banning such bars we should simply nod the Bill through without serious examination. It is entirely right that hon. Members should seek to speak in the debate so that we can examine not whether we want to legislate against aggressive bull bars, but whether the Bill is the right mechanism to do that.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You said that a Bill's principles are discussed on Second Reading. Is it not also true that the place for detailed nut and bolt examination is in Committee?

Yes, but there is no reason why some details should not be considered on Second Reading, especially those that affect the Bill's principles.

rose—

Further to that—

Order. We cannot have points of order one upon another.

Progress on the Bill has been delayed not by Conservative Members but by constant Opposition interventions. I do not know whether Labour Members universally support the measure, but it is a fantastic parliamentary principle to say that if a Bill is supported we should not debate it. That is absolutely ridiculous.

The Bill carries serious penalties of imprisonment or a level 5 fine, which is a considerable sum. It would be quite wrong for the House to nod through legislation that is incomplete and which would make people vulnerable to losing their freedom.

My hon. Friend is correct. In view of your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall move to the essence of my speech.

My intense feelings on the subject arise from a personal experience. In December 1992 I was parking my car, a Volvo estate, in Bury St. Edmunds. It was stationary and in the rear view mirror I saw a four-by-four vehicle coming towards me at about 35 mph. It hit the back of my estate car. I saw it coming and wondered what damage the impact would cause as my estate car is supposedly one of the safest in existence with a protected outer steel chassis. I was appalled to find that the impact buckled the chassis of my car. The car was a write-off. That was a deeply shocking experience. That is why—I think that the hon. Gentleman will confirm this—I have in principle, all the way through, supported what he is trying to do.

An article in the Financial Times on 9 December 1995 dealt with the issue. Written by Stuart Marshall, it graphically summed up his feelings in a similar vein. He says:

"It was morning school rush hour. Young mothers, many driving too fast, were arriving with their children. As I neared the school gates, a three-year-old slipped his mother's hand and started to run across the road. Because I was doing no more than 20mph … the Citroen Xantia pulled up almost instantly when I stamped on the brakes. Even so, the toddler was just touching the bonnet as I stopped.

He was unharmed, but I would not like to say whether he or his mother were the more terrified. My heart rate was above normal, too. The Xantia's bonnet, by design, is pedestrian friendly. But what if I had been driving a recreational 4 x 4 with steel-tube bull bars across the front? A little boy would at best have been concussed, at worst received a fractured skull."

That graphically sums up the position. He goes on to say:

"Interestingly, the Association of British Industry thought bull bars might increase the risk of a vehicle being stolen. A Range Rover or Mitsubishi Shogun with a hefty set of bull bars would, it reasons, be an even better car for ram raiding than one without them."

That is the sort of thinking of people who would steal a car for that purpose.

I can, therefore, genuinely say that I feel strongly about this subject. Bull bars are monstrosities, not fashion accessories. The hon. Member for Newport, West has said that they have been banned in Australia, where they originated. I am interested to hear that. I thought that it was only an urban ban.

May I help with this? The ban is in urban areas. Bull bars have also been banned in Jersey from last week and in Cyprus. But my Bill covers a ban on public roads only.

I understand that. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point.

In the United States of America, bull bars are known as moose bars. In this country we do not have large beasts such as moose or kangaroos. Bull bars have no place in a temperate climate and in the United Kingdom with its wildlife. It is not like the United States or Australia. Even the beast of Bodmin moor is not especially large by all accounts. Therefore what goes on in the United States and in Australia is not relevant to the UK.

The main point, however, as that journalist graphically pointed out, is that bull bars are at the same level as a child's head. It may be a fashion that has caught on. It has spread from motor cars to lorries, to delivery vans, to buses and even, appallingly, to ambulances.

May I draw a parallel from a different matter which remains persistently within the British safety regulations? The only people who can easily reach three-pronged sockets in domestic houses are toddlers, from whom we are supposed to keep three-pronged sockets away.

Exactly. The more we raise the level of consciousness about safety measures for children, the fewer fatalities we shall have in this country.

The Transport Research Laboratory has shown that a child may die as a result of a vehicle fitted with a bull bar travelling at only 12 mph, compared with a normal vehicle travelling at about 25 mph. As the hon. Gentleman said, the RAC recently said that it believed that the total number of fatalities as a result of bull bars was 70. Others, such as the Transport Research Laboratory, have argued that that number is too high and that the real figure is perhaps only half of that. The Association of Protection Bar Manufacturers has talked of only five deaths, but it would be bound to say that, would it not? And even if there were only five deaths, that would be five too many. Bull bars are a dangerous monstrosity.

If the hon. Gentleman goes into the House of Commons car park, especially when it is absolutely full, such as before a Division, he will see some vehicles fitted with bull bars. I am not saying that they belong to Members, because other people can park there, but should we not set an example by ensuring that no car can enter the Palace of Westminster if it is equipped with bull bars?

I take the hon. Gentleman's point. Largely as a result of the campaign of the hon. Member for Newport, West, I understand that there has been a substantial diminution in the number of vehicles in the House of Commons car park fitted with bull bars. I wish that there were none at all.

The two major road organisations, the RAC and the AA, have made very negative comments about bull bars. As I have said, the RAC released a report in February showing that the number of fatalities is twice what it was previously estimated to be. We have heard the oft-repeated and ghastly story of 12-year-old Victoria Moule, who was thrown no less than 30 ft up the road as a result of being hit by a Vauxhall Frontera, and a piece of her pelvic bone was broken.

The RAC has said that bull bars can cause injuries to drivers—this is the other significant point—by transferring the impact of a collision away from the car's crumple-zone panels so that the impact of the crash is felt around the car. Not only are bull bars dangerous externally when they hit people; they enhance the danger to passengers in and drivers of cars to which they are fitted. On both counts, they are extremely dangerous. Regardless of whether bull bars kill 70 people or one person per year, they are wrong. They are not a fashion accessory; they are a killing accessory. Tests in Germany suggest that the impact of a bull bar trebles the destructive impact on a human being. That is a terrifying statistic.

As I said earlier, I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is essentially sympathetic to what I am saying. I also know that there are difficulties in trying to integrate our procedures with European law. My hon. Friend will recall that he and I corresponded on the subject of fitting seat belts in minibuses carrying school children. Again, such provision could not be brought into British law unilaterally without European agreement, and I understand that in principle. I know that my hon. Friend is doing everything possible to persuade the Transport Commissioner, Mr. Kinnock, to speed up the process so that whatever blockages there are can be cleared and the legislation put in place.

The hon. Member for Newport, West mentioned—I am not clear about it—that Cyprus, and more recently Jersey, have banned bull bars. I understand that they may have a different relationship to the European Union than we have. Perhaps that is the point. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to comment on that in due course. I very much regret, however, that it would appear that we cannot take unilateral action, which would be very popular. I hope that my hon. Friend will explain exactly why. However, that is no reason why others—such as organisations—cannot act.

I am pleased to see that the number of bull bars in the House of Commons car park has reduced substantially. I wish that it were zero—perhaps it is already. I am gratified that police authorities such as the Lothian and Borders police have banned bull bars on their vehicles and that many delivery organisations have done likewise.

I was delighted to receive last night a letter from DHL, an enormously successful and widespread organisation. Knowing that I am a sponsor of the Bill, DHL wrote saying that it would like to express on behalf of DHL International (UK) Ltd. its support for the forthcoming Bill for the prohibition of bull bars and saying that, following the public concerns about the safety implications for pedestrians posed by bull bars fitted to vehicles, DHL had removed the bull bars from all its vehicles to which they were fitted.

DHL has a good safety record; none of its vehicles had been involved in an accident, so it is not as though it was reacting to pressure from that quarter. It began the process of removing bull bars in October 1995. It took about three weeks and 250 man hours and was not cheap. It cost the company £60,000, but DHL felt that it was the right thing to do, not simply to improve its public image but because of the possibility that one of its vehicles might be responsible for a fatality. I endorse that sentiment.

Bull bars were originally fitted to 300 of DHL's vehicles out of a total of 627, but by October 1995 the figure had increased to 500. I am therefore very encouraged by the fact that that organisation, so well known world wide, has taken the initiative. Other organisations, not only delivery organisations, should take that route.

If what my hon. Friend said earlier about the manifest increased risk to passengers is true, should not insurance companies consider that? Perhaps my hon. Friend was about to refer to that.

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Several insurance companies are preparing or have begun to go down that route. We are having this comprehensive debate to bring the issues to light on the Floor of the House of Commons, after which they will no doubt be widely reported, especially in specialist magazines. I hope, therefore, that insurance companies will pick up my hon. Friend's point.

With that matter in mind, on my own initiative I have written to several organisations in the county of Suffolk. Yesterday I wrote to the leaders of St. Edmundsbury borough council and the leader of Forest Heath district council, asking them to set a best practice example in my constituency by encouraging councillors attached to those authorities plus all employees to remove their bull bars.

Twice I have written to the chairman of the highways committee of Suffolk county council to ask him to do the same for the county council. I regret to say that the gentleman has a bull bar fitted to his own vehicle. I was on BBC Radio Suffolk this morning discussing the Bill when a quotation was broadcast in which he said that he believed that there was no reason for him to remove the bull bar because he had no convincing evidence that bull bars were unsafe. I do not wish to personalise this issue, but I believe that he is setting a poor example. I have asked him to consider disallowing reimbursement payments to any councillor or council employee attached to Suffolk county council who has fitted bull bars on their vehicle. I would very much like that action to be taken.

I talked about my car being severely damaged. I believe—I hope that I shall not be corrected—that Volvo is the one manufacturer to have banned bull bars from being fitted. However, other manufacturers are moving down the same route. The Land Rover Discovery, for example, has a foam plastic variant. Mitsubishi has introduced a polyurethane bar and I understand that other manufacturers are going down that route, very much driven on by public opinion and by the gathering feeling that bull bars are nothing other than very dangerous items. I wish that car manufacturers would remove bull bars now from the specified list of options; they are invariably options and are not fitted automatically. Let us make the United Kingdom, from a car point of view, a macho-free zone.

I now turn to the European dimension, an issue that my hon. Friend the Minister will wish to address. Frankly, I find the whole issue confusing. In September 1995, the European Parliament backed a motion to ban bull bars but nothing much seems to have flowed from that. The European Commission is somewhat inhibited from taking action because of the attitude of Finland and Sweden. I find that difficult to understand. If Finland and Sweden have a particular problem with reindeer accidents, why should not the principle of subsidiarity be invoked?

Moreover, most people in those two countries live in major urban areas such as Gothenburg, Stockholm and Helsinki, so it is not clear why they need to continue to have bull bars fitted to their vehicles. Even if they wish to have them, why cannot the principle of subsidiarity operate so that they can continue with bull bars while those of us who take a more sensible view are able to deal with the problem? That would be excellent.

There has also been talk, which I find rather disappointing, that an EC directive dealing comprehensively with the issue will not come through until October 1998. As the hon. Member for Newport, West said, the European Commission seemed to imply that the United Kingdom could take unilateral action, but only for a limited period of six months. It is not clear to me why that suggestion has not been taken up or why, as was hinted at the time by the European Commission, an extension could not be added. I understand that the British Government could ban non-approved bull bars, although I accept that that is a small number of cases.

Let us consider public opinion on the matter. Some 87 per cent. of readers of Auto Express, when canvassed, wished to have bull bars banned. The evidence is that with bull bars the crumple zone, far from protecting the vehicle and passengers, actually increases the danger to them. That is why the readership of Auto Express took that view. I understand that local authorities in Kent, Hampshire and Surrey have banned vehicles with bull bars from cross-country driving.

What is to be done? Lord Kinnoull sought recently to introduce the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill in another place. I was interested to find out exactly what their Lordships discussed. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will explain a little further what was meant by the following observation by Lord Goschen in reply to the debate:

"Preventing the use of bull bars on all vehicles would be difficult to achieve at the present time. Popular models with bull bars fitted as original equipment by the manufacturers are likely to have been granted European type approval in respect of external projections. The free circulation of such vehicles cannot be impeded. That point was taken up by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas … Such European considerations, and the fact that as yet there is no specific hard evidence as to the effect of bull bars on injuries to people, are partly why we have held back from proposing national action. We hope that when we have the results of the work that has been undertaken, we shall be in a much better position to judge the issues empirically."

I am nonplussed by all that, but I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with it. Lord Goschen further said:

"The other approach on the European basis, as agreed by Mr. Kinnock, is for the Commission to bring forward an amendment to the external projections directive. That is a separate measure from the general measure concerning softer car fronts. That could be achieved very much more quickly.

Why do we not take unilateral action? I have explained that in a field that is so heavily governed by European directives on type approval, we feel that we would be in a position where we could very well be challenged in the courts because of the considerable body of legislation on type approval. That, and for the reason that I have given of ongoing research, is why we consider that getting speedy European action is very much more satisfactory and legally defensible than taking the national action that is proposed."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 1996; Vol. 568, c. 691–93.]

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to comment on that.

Penultimately, I want to touch on the relationship of Jersey and Cyprus to the European Union. Recently, when Jersey decided to ban bull bars, the RAC spokesman, Edmund King, said:

"Jersey's rules are based on UK legislation and therefore the same interpretation of the rules could be made throughout Europe.

My hon. Friend the Minister should comment on that.

Finally, in correspondence with my hon. Friend the Minister in the autumn, I received a letter dated 23 October 1995 in which he said:

"With regard to the legal position of bull bars, it is not at all clear what we can actually do. Most bull bars, and probably all those fitted to new vehicles, comply with the technical requirements of Council Directive 74/483/EEC on 'External Projections'. The articles of this Directive say that no Member State may prohibit the use of a vehicle on grounds relating to external projections if the vehicle conforms to the requirements of the Directive. We are in communication with the European Commission to clarify what we could and could not enforce."

The European Commission seems to have suggested that we could, in limited circumstances, undertake unilateral action if it was on a temporary basis. Will my hon. Friend the Minister comment on that?

Will my hon. Friend, as a sponsor of the Bill, express a view on the value of our taking action clearly limited to a few months' duration, after which, assuming that there had been no legal challenge in the meantime, the provision would lapse? Is that the way in which the House should proceed on a matter of such importance?

My hon. Friend raises a valid point. The point of this debate is to give him more strength in his negotiations with the European Commission to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. The fact that the Bill enjoys cross-party support and the overwhelming backing of public opinion in the United Kingdom should send a message to him. Whatever can be done to resolve the problem permanently should be done. I am confident that my hon. Friend will be able to do that as speedily as possible.

Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear, as perhaps I did not in my speech, that the letter from Europe last May set out three methods for Britain to take unilateral action to ban bull bars? In connection with only one of those was a temporary ban mentioned. The other two methods suggested would have been permanent bans, and Europe has confirmed three times in the past six weeks that we can still choose any one of those three methods on our own.

With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister would care to address that point.

That intervention by the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) has produced a version of the correspondence greatly different from my understanding of it. No doubt the Commission may have suggested that there are three courses of action open to the United Kingdom Government, but the Commission has agreed with me, and the Commissioner has agreed with me personally face to face, that none of the three options presents a satisfactory long-term solution. That is the point that I was asking my hon. Friend to address, and I repeat it. I fear that the hon. Member for Newport, West is in danger of misleading the House if he suggests otherwise. I do not mean that he would knowingly wish to mislead; nevertheless what he said would be misleading.

I conclude by repeating that I support the Bill, I support the principle behind it, and I believe that the overwhelming majority of people in Britain also support it in principle. There is no reason why, while the negotiations between my hon. Friend the Minister and the European Commission are going on, there cannot be unilateral action by organisations throughout this country.

I hope that what comes out of the debate will strengthen my hon. Friend's authority in those negotiations. The message is loud and clear, and I know that he has already heard it, and will hear it again during the debate. It is that action should be taken as soon as possible. I have great pleasure in supporting everything that the hon. Member for Newport, West has done. I thank him for the dogged campaign that he has undertaken, and I commend the Bill to the House.

I shall now make what I hope will be the shortest speech on the Floor of the House in my career. I totally agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) has said, and also with the powerful case made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring).

I wish simply to underline what has been made clear in all the written communications from Europe. In the letter from Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock to the Minister dated May last year, the Commission outlined three specific measures that the United Kingdom could take. The director-general of the transport directorate within the Commission, in correspondence with an individual in this country dated March this year, stressed that the United Kingdom has the power to take unilateral action.

In a letter dated 27 March, not three days ago, the Royal Automobile Club reported a meeting of the European Commission with members of both the transport and the trade directorates, at which Commission officials were adamant that there were courses of action that the UK Government could take unilaterally.

It would therefore be wrong—indeed, bordering on the misleading—for the Minister to suggest that the Government do not have powers to adopt such measures.

I finish by urging Conservative Members—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I was just about to finish.

Just one quick query. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us the date of the letter from the Commissioner? The Minister may have met the Commissioner long after that date.

As I said, the letter was dated May last year. But since then there have been two written communications, one dated March 1996—we cannot get much more up to date than that—confirming what was set out in that letter. So if there is to be any obstruction, it will be on the part of the Government.

The hon. Gentleman used the word "misleading"; I have also used that word. It might be helpful to him, in considering which of us is right, if I quote from a letter that I received from Neil Kinnock on 7 November last year. He said:

"while I agree that the suggestions I made for action by the UK in my letter to you of 24 May do not constitute a long-term solution, they do nonetheless offer possibilities for action by the UK without waiting".

A key to this debate is that that was an opinion that he expressed, which is not shared by the people who advise me on such matters. Even if the situation were as the Commissioner suggests, he says in terms that the measures he proposes do not represent a long-term solution.

In the long term, we shall all be dead. In the meantime, can we at least protect some children from these wretched bull bars? Every written communication and every meeting between the Commissioner and the Transport Select Committee and the European Legislation Select Committee confirmed what he said last year, and what has been said as late as this month.

I appeal to Conservative Members, whether they are Back Benchers or Ministers, and after two excellent speeches on the issue from both sides of the House, not to talk out the Bill. If one child dies as a result of a bull bar injury because the Bill is not allowed to go into Committee, the consciences of those who talked out the Bill will rest heavy.

I do not want to bring a gritty tone into the debate, but I must say that I do not agree with the Bill. Perhaps one of the more unattractive features of private Members' days in the House, on Fridays, is that the majority of the Bills that we seek to introduce are those that seek to stop people doing something that they want to do. We must consider carefully before we do that, because the right to choose and to make one's own decisions in life is extremely precious.

The hon. Members for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) used an emotional arm-lock on us. They said that if one more child should die because of an accident, we would be to blame. If they want to save lives, they should introduce a Bill to ban young men under 25 driving high-performance cars. If we want to reduce the death rate on the roads, those are the people whom we shall have to stop. High-performance cars are no more and no less a fashion accessory than are bull bars.

I make it clear that I have no particular enthusiasm for bull bars. I do not have them on any of the cars that I own because I find no need for them. The hon. Member for Newport, West said that they are macho and unattractive, but the House's purpose is not to legislate on people's taste; the House's purpose is much more serious than that.

I may not like beards, for instance, and I may not like bow ties, but I do not say that the hon. Member for Newport, West should shave off his beard or that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, should not wear a bow tie. Those are purely matters of taste.

If one could demonstrate that bull bars, as they are currently designed, are without doubt dangerous, the situation would of course change; that is what we must debate carefully. In many respects, the Bill is defective. It proposes, of course, a gaol sentence of three months—

Maximum.

It proposes a maximum gaol sentence of three months—I take the point—for anyone who has a bull bar on his car, and a very heavy fine, up to level 5. So the Bill is a serious measure. The problem is that the data on which the hon. Gentleman bases his Bill are incomplete, and we do not yet have proof that bull bars are essentially dangerous. The proof is not yet at a stage at which we should be able to take away someone's right to do something that he wishes to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring)—with whom I hate to disagree, because we have agreed on virtually everything that we have come across in the House—said that bull bars are a fashion accessory. To some extent, they are not a fashion accessory. My constituency compromises much hill country in the north of England. We had a lot of snow this winter, and people need four-wheel-drive vehicles. Many use four-wheel-drive pick-up trucks for farm work in which vehicles can easily be damaged.

The Bill deals with the use of bull bars on roads, but there would be no problem with using demountable bull bars for farming purposes and on private roads.

With the greatest respect, the hon. Gentleman is making an entirely impractical suggestion. Bull bars are heavy and thus difficult to fix to vehicles. The idea of a demountable bar that can be removed as a vehicle crosses a road from one field to another and then replaced is utterly ludicrous.

There is a range of farm implements that are not allowed to be used on public roads. They have to be taken off when tractors use such roads.

I do not wish to continue this agricultural debate, but those who know about farm implements will understand that it takes a long time to remove such an implement from, for example, the back of a tractor. The hon. Gentleman's suggestion is impractical.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds said that there are no moose or reindeer in this country, but there are deer. One of the reasons why the Lothian and Borders police fitted bull bars to their four-wheel-drive vehicles was the danger of hitting deer. I have seen vehicles—no doubt my hon. Friend has, too—which have hit deer while travelling at 50 mph. In such circumstances, deer can cause a great deal of damage. In Scotland, the problem is caused by red deer.

With respect, my hon. Friend misses the point. Lothian and Borders police have in fact removed bull bars from their vehicles. My hon. Friend will know that my constituency contains Thetford forest, in which there are a considerable number of deer. Sometimes, they are, regrettably, involved in accidents but, as devoted as I am to the deer in Thetford forest, in the grand scheme of things, I would prefer any fatal collision to involve a deer rather than a child.

I understand that Lothian and Borders police have removed their bull bars, but the reason why they introduced them and why some people like having them on their vehicles is the damage caused by hitting deer. The point that I am trying to make is that bull bars are not exclusively macho accessories—for some people, they are a useful motoring accessory.

Bull bars represent an external danger when hitting, for example, a child, but we know that the crumple zone and the force of energy are such that, if the energy is absorbed by the steel bull bar, the effect is to reduce the safety of the driver and any passengers. Bull bars are not only externally dangerous, but do not preserve the life of the driver or passengers. In fact, the contrary is demonstrably true.

I do not want to dispute those particular points, but my point is that people have bull bars on their cars not only for the sake of fashion—although, if they do, that is their choice and taste—but because they need them on, for example, vehicles used regularly on farms, in areas such as the highlands of Scotland, the borders of England and Wales and, indeed, Suffolk, where there are large deer populations. Bull bars are more than fashion accessories to such people.

Before the Bill is passed on the nod, as has been suggested, we must determine the facts. There are two questions to be asked. Are bull bars genuinely a threat to life? I shall return to that in a moment. Secondly, can they be made safe? Can we ensure that, if people want to fit bull bars to their cars, the bull bars are not dangerous?

One of the difficulties with this issue, as with all safety and road safety issues, is that as soon as it is raised, a whole host of pressure groups come out of the woodwork to grind their axes to show their members that they are clever, pretty and enthusiastic, so that they can raise more funds by getting more members. Often in such circumstances, the pressure groups—sadly, in this case, including the RAC—make predictions and often the data, facts and truth get rather blurred. In this case, that is what has happened, because if we consider the available figures in detail, the forecasts of death and injury are extremely misleading.

I accept that the figures that I shall give to the House were produced by another pressure group. I am grateful to Off Road and 4 Wheel Drive magazine for supplying me with the figures.

rose—

rose—

Hon. Members may stand up all over the House, but I wish to finish my point. I am aware that the magazine is also a pressure group, but my point is that we must treat the data that we have at the moment with great suspicion.

Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that exactly the same argument was used in the 1970s about seat belt wearing? There were thousands of unnecessary deaths and tens of thousands of unnecessary injuries. The facts here are overwhelming.

The hon. Gentleman says that the facts are overwhelming, but in my view the facts are not overwhelming. We should forget the projections. We have had projections of 35 deaths a year from the Transport Research Laboratory, based on figures collected by some police forces in the sample area that my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London mentioned. We have had figures of up to 70 deaths from the RAC, but I am not entirely sure about the basis of those figures. But other figures, produced by the Association of Protection Bar Manufacturers—which, I accept, is a vested interest—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newport, West may laugh, but that organisation represents a £25-million-a-year business, and 1,000 employees. I accept that it is a pressure group, but it is no more and no less of a pressure group—and its evidence is no more and no less questionable—than the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents or any other organisation.

The hon. Gentleman obviously does not have a financial interest because he would have declared it, but he is speaking on behalf of a group that has an interest in making money out of selling bull bars. The other groups that we have quoted are safety groups, which are interested in road safety and in the well-being of pedestrians and people who drive cars. There are no authoritative figures from his organisation or any other, but the best we can do is to work on the imperfect figures we have. The independent bodies say that there will be 35 or 70 deaths a year.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for accepting that the figures are imperfect. That is exactly the point that I am trying to make, so we do not disagree on that. So we have a situation in which the hon. Gentleman is basing—by his own admission—the need for the Bill on imperfect figures. I do not believe that we should take away someone's liberty and ability to choose on figures that we all admit are imperfect.

A cynic may say that the Association of Protection Bar Manufacturers undoubtedly has a vested interest—the industry makes £25 million a year and employs 1,000 people—but so do the road safety pressure groups. Life in a pressure group today depends on one's success in increasing membership and obtaining funds. That is how people in pressure groups keep their jobs and that is how pressure groups earn the money to advertise for more members. Both sides are grinding axes and—not unreasonably—pushing for their vested interests.

We discovered that, in 1994, there were only six deaths of pedestrians who were killed by cars fitted with bull bars, and only four of those could be blamed in any way on the fact that the car was equipped with a bull bar. One famous case, which the hon. Member for Newport, West mentioned, involved a Mitsubishi Shogun, fitted with a bull bar, which was claimed to have killed a pedestrian. But when the coroner's inquest on the victim examined the evidence in detail, it discovered that he was under the influence of drink at the time, had walked into the side of the car and was thrown on to some railings at the edge of the pavement. That is how the coroner reported that, but it went down as an accident involving a car with a bull bar.

I am trying to point out that my hon. Friend the Minister should not proceed in any way with the legislation until the data are absolutely copper-bottomed and we are able to show that the right to choose should be taken away from people.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that, although we know from all independent expert opinion in the world that bull bars kill and will kill many more people, we have to wait until we are absolutely certain of that and take our action after the deaths? Is he happy to have those deaths on his conscience?

I am not happy to have any deaths on my conscience, but is the hon. Gentleman happy to have the deaths that will be caused by young drivers under the age of 25 driving high-performance cars on his? He is saying that we should outlaw everything that could cause any chance of a death, otherwise all hon. Members will have endlessly sleepless nights. It is a preposterous suggestion that we should be railroaded into passing bad legislation on the basis that, if we do not do so, we shall not sleep at night. That is not a way in which the House can continue.

On a more positive note, bull bars are being redesigned by responsible manufacturers that are members of the Association of Protection Bar Manufacturers. In Germany, they have already developed a bar that may well meet the high road safety standards required there.

The hon. Gentleman may have noticed that the Bill refers to bars made of metal, not the type that he may be about to describe. Can he tell the House—he has not answered this question—whether he is being paid for his contribution to the debate today?

I find that an insulting remark. If I were being paid in any way for doing this, I would have declared it. I had absolutely no knowledge of the Association of Protection Bar Manufacturers until yesterday. When I saw the Bill, I took the trouble to ring Mr. Scott, the editor of Off Road and 4 Wheel Drive magazine, to ask whether there were two sides to the story. He said, "Yes, there are." He told me that, if I wanted to hear the other side, I should ring up that organisation. That is my sole interest. In fact, I have not even communicated with the association. I simply received an extensive fax, stating its case. I assure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that no cheque was attached to the fax.

Manufacturers are studying ways to make bull bars more user friendly, by making the surface of impact much softer and making them from plastic, which will not be caught within the provisions of the hon. Gentleman's Bill. The bars should have energy-absorbing features and should not have any features likely to catch or entrap pedestrians or cyclists. They should also spread the load of impact over as large an area as possible and not block the headlights.

The hon. Member for Newport, West mentioned the problem with airbags and bull bars. The magazine states:

"Jeep, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi all crash-tested their airbag-equipped vehicles and found there was no chance … of malfunction"

if the vehicle was fitted with standard bull bars. Only Suzuki recommends that its vehicles should not be fitted with the bars.

The European aspects have been touched on. No doubt my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with what the European regulation is, but as I understand it—perhaps he will put me right—the European Community is working on a directive to make the bonnets of all cars user friendly. A European Union-designed car front is a slightly chilling thought. No doubt, we shall be seeing stories in the newspapers saying that the traditional Rolls-Royce lady will have to disappear. That will also have a considerable impact on vehicles such as Land Rovers, Range Rovers and the other four-wheel-drives, which are much heavier than ordinary cars.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds talked of Volvos and read out an illustration about a Citroen Xantia. By their nature, four-wheel-drives are heavier and bigger. Irrespective of whether it is fitted with a bull bar, there is always the likelihood that if a pedestrian is struck by a four-wheel-drive vehicle, he will suffer more injuries than if he is struck by a family saloon. That is probably inevitable. Similarly, if a pedestrian is struck by a heavy goods vehicle, his risk of injury will be vastly greater than if he is struck by a Ford Fiesta. That is one of the facts of life. Surely we do not propose to ban Range Rovers, Land Rovers and heavy goods vehicles.

I do not support the Bill. I would not wish to see its enactment. I shall have to live with my conscience. It is the absolute duty of the House to ensure that the legislation that passes through it is properly thought out and properly discussed, and does not gratuitously take away the right of the individual to make choices about his life style and to make decisions.

I am an agnostic in my attitude to the Bill, but I think that it goes over the top. Threats of possible victimisation of fellow colleagues do not go down well with me.

In many instances, bull bars are found not only on the front of vehicles. There is talk of offensive weapons on vehicles, but there are bars on the corners of vehicles to protect lights. They are to be found on lorries as well as on cars and four-by-four vehicles. They are also on the rear of vehicles. Others may not call those bars bull bars, but I do. They are bars that provide protection. Recently I have experienced two instances in which, unfortunately, my car lost its nearside front winkers and lights, both front and rear. I would have been delighted to have some sort of protection. The bill was virtually £100 for two small pieces of glasswork.

Bull bars are fashion accessories. There is a tremendous accessory market throughout the transport industry, and long may it last. Many jobs depend on it. I have no objection to vehicle owners using bull bars as fashion accessories. They make the vehicle look more appropriate to the circumstances in which they want to use it. They attract vehicle enthusiasts generally. The magazine industry that is based on the latest gadgetry and fashion is to be applauded. Computers, cars and vehicles generally are involved. I welcome the industries that have mushroomed over the past five or 10 years as a result of the interest in accessories.

The design of these appliances is all-important. We are talking about pedestrians being hurt by bull bars, but there is nothing to stop them being designed and produced using materials such as polyurethane. If we adopted that approach, damage would not be caused to pedestrians if they were hit. At the same time, vehicles would be protected along with their occupants. Such bull bars could be attractive. They could be produced in all colours. I see no reason why they should be considered as ferocious accessories. I accept that there are some mad people who want to assert their authority on the road, and we are aware of road rage, but many people look after their own vehicles and are proud of them.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the bars about which he is talking would be exempt under clause 2? The example that he has given is a bull bar that would be exempt from the Bill's provisions. Has he not read the Bill?

I do not want tight, restrictive legislation that could lead, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) said, to imprisonment. We should not be in the game of over-regulating car users. Vehicle users generally are going about their business, enjoying leisure activities or travelling to work. We do not want to put unnecessary restrictions on them. We want instead to ensure that they have vehicles that are fit for the purpose to which they want to put them, and that they can ride where they wish and how they wish.

It is important that, as well as protecting pedestrians or anyone else, bull bars protect vehicles and their occupants. Clearly, impact absorbtion is important also.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury for St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) mentioned children in minibuses. Minibuses, frankly, are open to impact, particularly by lorries, and I dread to think what might happen if a minibus with 20 or so children scrambling about inside without seat belts was hit by a lorry. In my book, there is nothing wrong in having protection back and front, ensuring that the reinforcement is there, in the interests of protecting the occupants, particularly those of a tender age.

I draw the attention of the House to a note from the Library on bull bars, which has been alluded to. It relates to personal injury road accidents in 1994. Twenty-nine police authorities listed in the briefing produced figures. I shall raise one particular point. Under the heading, "Accident distribution", the table lists the number of accidents that were fatal, serious or slight. The total population covered by the 29 police forces that reported bull bar accidents is approximately 29 million—well over half the population of the United Kingdom. The figures show clearly that the total number of accidents involving a vehicle fitted with a bull bar, or pedestrian accidents involving such a vehicle, amount to only 1 per cent. of the total accidents in those police authorities.

One might say, "That's irrelevant. So what?" The fact is that I asked the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) how many vehicles he thought had bull bars fitted. He said that the number was reducing, and that people were removing bull bars. Fine. He estimated that there were 500,000 such vehicles in this country. I think that at the most there are 25 million vehicles in this country. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister knows the exact number—

There are 24 million.

Half a million out of, say, 25 million—to make the arithmetic easy—is, I think, 2 per cent. In other words, the hon. Gentleman has said that 2 per cent. of vehicles are fitted with bull bars, yet in the police authorities only 1 per cent. of accidents involve such vehicles.

I do not want to mislead the hon. Gentleman. I said at some length that that survey is entirely discredited, from the evidence of the police themselves. There is no way to explain how one county force reported 129 casualties, and a neighbouring county reported none. The report is not plausible, because it was not treated with any seriousness by the people who took part. Those who have analysed the figures, from some of the police forces that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, who did take it seriously, have come to the conclusion that there were 70 deaths and 400 serious accidents. They are not pressure groups; they are independent bodies, such as the Transport Research Laboratory and the RAC.

I welcome that intervention. All that I am trying to point out is that the figure is statistically significant. Otherwise, surely those police forces would have made a nil return or just said, "Sorry, we don't have the detailed information." Perhaps some of the areas do not have many accidents, or have zero accidents involving bull bars. As we know, statistics can be twisted to show anything, but what I am saying is that approximately 2 per cent. of vehicles are fitted with bull bars, but only 1 per cent. of accidents involve such vehicles. One can give equal weighting to the figures, and the table from the police authorities is official. A new survey by the RAC shows that 70 deaths a year could—I emphasise the word "could"—be caused by bull bars. I would put that against the figures in the brief from the Library. The House of Commons Library has no axe to grind and provides us with wonderfully accurate and unbiased briefings.

We must be careful not to prejudge the issue on numbers alone. I am agnostic on the issue. People should be free to fit to their vehicles attachments that they think will protect them. If Parliament thinks that people are going over the top, it should introduce gentle regulations and guidelines advising that certain components should be modified or reduced in their effect. That is better than introducing a draconian measure that hints at victimisation, to which I take great exception.

I am not in favour of the Bill as drafted. More needs to be done, and I am delighted that the Minister has met his opposite number in the Commission and has had several constructive discussions. The correspondence between them has been made available to us. That is a responsible approach, and the way ahead should be to legislate lightly. We should reject this draconian Bill.

I am afraid that I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover). We are debating the serious matter of road safety and, in view of the potential danger of road vehicles and the real danger as shown by accident statistics, it is incumbent upon Parliament and the nation to ensure that steps are taken to require all motor vehicles to comply with the highest standards of safety. That should be a mandatory requirement. One cannot allow individuals to make decisions about fittings on their cars that are designed to protect their own safety when what might provide safety for them may be to the detriment of others. We require impartial, carefully calculated and scientific engineering design that will enable cars and other vehicles using our public roads to have the highest degree of inbuilt safety.

Like many hon. Members, my attention was first drawn to bull bars and the potential risk by constituents. I was vaguely aware of such additions to vehicles but I had not thought about the safety aspect. I had assumed that, in the 1990s, additions that sprouted on cars were subjected to exhaustive tests and complied with the highest safety standards. Perhaps that assumption is a damnation of the system.

When I received letters and phone calls from constituents I became very concerned, because the evidence suggested that these additions to vehicles gave rise to great risk and that people were being killed because of them. I listened carefully to the comments, many of which were not deeply scientific but were based on commonsense judgment. I was contacted by a local GP, Dr. Roger Wells, who was motivated purely by his own judgment and his medical knowledge of the damage that can be caused when a person is hit at certain levels of the body by a fast-moving piece of metal, which of course describes a bull bar.

I looked into the matter in more detail and was surprised to find that tests had not been carried out before bull bars becoming available. In my naivety, I always assumed that a vehicle had to meet safety regulations on car bumpers and the collapsible elements of a car's structure for it to receive type approval and to minimise the damage not only, of course, to the driver and passenger, but to pedestrians. I am disappointed, therefore, that, in a way, we seem to be going backwards: something has come in first and we are talking about the safety implications only now.

One point has been missed.

The hon. Gentleman makes a lucid case. Will he reflect on the fact that many of the libertarian arguments adduced today for opposing the Bill were the same type of arguments that were used to try to prevent the compulsory use of crash helmets? Now, everybody recognises that lives have been saved and people have not been turned into cabbages because they do not suffer the serious injuries that they otherwise would have suffered. Today, we are hearing almost a rerun of that pterodactyl case.

That is true in relation to crash helmets and safety belts. I am not a libertarian, but I have some libertarian tendencies in the sense that I do not like unnecessary state intervention or unnecessary regulation, but that is not to say that I reject regulation if it is necessary. When it conies to safety and, especially, individual safety on the road, an extremely dangerous place, regulation is justified.

I want to inject one word of caution. As far as I am aware, today's discussion has linked bull bars with the danger that they can cause in an accident, but there has not been much discussion of the other contributory causes. That is not, in any sense, a defence of bull bars—no one would think, from what I have said, that I am in that line of business—but we must bear it in mind that, for a bull bar to cause damage, there must be at least one additional contributory factor: speed, error by one of the parties involved and so on.

That is an important point, not just because it puts the whole thing in proper perspective. During research into the causes of accidents, apparent anomalies can emerge as the accident is probably multi-factorial: it could be ascribed to speed, to weather conditions or to a pedestrian's mistake. Statistics might not show that the bull bar played an important part in an accident. However, the reverse can be true. We can fall into the mistake of thinking that only the bull bar is to blame when other factors also contributed to causing the accident.

My hon. Friend's observation is especially acute bearing in mind the fact that, at 40 mph, more than 80 per cent. of people involved in a pedestrian accident are likely to die, whether the vehicle has a soft front or a bull bar. That is a regrettable fact that we should never forget. It is in that area that some of the analytical difficulties lie.

Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.

I reach two conclusions from this. First, important though it is to legislate on this matter, we must keep it in context and be cautious about the statistics, whatever they are and whenever they arise. Secondly, in legislating, we must bear it in mind that other action must be taken in the realms of road safety. Speed in particular is a major cause of accidents, but there are others too.

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will well remember this. I have spoken in the House many times on road safety matters, which are a particular concern of mine, and on previous Bills on the subject, some of which have passed into law. I have always been motivated by the general desire to achieve a reduction in accidents. The law has an important part to play in that, but it is mistake to think that any one measure alone will achieve everything that we want. Nevertheless, the issue of bull bars has been in the public domain for some time. Months, indeed years, have passed in which we have been able to identify a cause of serious damage to humans on roads without taking any real action. I greatly regret that.

Evidence from the RAC, the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety, road safety officers and RoSPA has mounted, and action has been taken by companies such as DHL, which has been mentioned, and insurance companies such as CGA Insurance, all of which I welcome, but none of which has yet taken us the necessary further step to legislative action. That seems largely to be because of confusion over the roles of the Government and the European Union. It seems that, all too often, the EU acts when it is not necessary and fails to act when it is necessary. There is no doubt that if the EU were determined enough, action could be taken at European level. I would, however, very much prefer that action were taken at national level, and it is regrettable that, under our treaty arrangements, and so on, that does not entirely seem possible.

We should be listening to the day-to-day experience in this country, and acting on it. I was in touch with Andrew Rogers of the Bromley road safety unit in my borough and quickly discovered that, based on their professional judgment, the head of the unit and the borough's director of engineering, Gordon Hayward, are totally opposed to bull bars, and say that the sooner that they are removed from all vehicles the better.

I rely heavily on such experience and judgment because such men have the full-time task of monitoring road safety at local level. They are not sitting behind a desk compiling statistics—valid though they may be—or talking about it, as we do in the House. They are out there at the sharp end, at street level, seeing what happens and judging where there is safety and where there is not. They do not make their judgment on the basis of statistics, as I understand that the Metropolitan police force is not among the forces conducting a statistical analysis.

It is important to look at the wider statistics on accidents. The 1995 accident figures for Bromley statistics showed a rise in the number of deaths from nine to 12 since the previous year. That occurred after many years of a declining trend in the number of fatal accidents. There has also been an increase in serious accidents from 115 to 129, and 275 accidents in the past year have affected people under the age of 18. Unfortunately, those figures are also matched nationally. Figures published yesterday showed an increase in road deaths nationally, which I very much regret. It follows great achievements in continuing reductions in the death rate on the roads over the past decade. We must therefore double our efforts in all directions to do everything that we can to reduce accidents, deaths and serious injuries. The Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) will play an important part in that process.

Has my hon. Friend any knowledge of the number of accidents involving vehicles with bull bars in or near his constituency? I would be most interested in the answer.

My hon. Friend must have missed my point. When I was reporting the views of road safety officials in Bromley, I said that they did not have those figures because the Met was not one of the forces collecting them. I sincerely hope that it will conduct such research and collect figures. I would very much welcome that. However, I felt that I could rely on the professional judgment of the road unit, based not on statistics but on the experience of men who have been in the business long enough to have a good feel. In a way, I would rather rely on that than simply on statistics that are capable of many interpretations.

Does my hon. Friend know of any newsworthy unfortunate accidents in his area? Has he been approached by many people—victims or drivers—about this issue?

Yes, I have been approached by many people; I said at the start of my speech that my interest had originally stemmed from that.

It is not up to me to analyse individual accidents. I would be in danger of using only hearsay evidence. I have heard of some, and I have read details of accidents outside my constituency in which bull bars clearly played an important part in inflicting injuries, but I hope that we would not need to base our judgment entirely on the evidence of fatalities that have occurred. I would hope, as I said when I was discussing safety measures on vehicles, that we could be forward-looking enough to work out where accidents would be at their worst and take steps to prevent them from happening.

Pertinently, the hon. Member for Newport, West mentioned the macho image of driving. Why do people want bull bars on their vehicles? In general, they are not put on for safety reasons. The signs are that they do not improve the safety even of the occupants of the car, and some studies say the reverse. No; people put bull bars on their vehicles because it is a fad—a trend. Unfortunately, motoring is very susceptible to trends. It should not be.

The object of getting in a vehicle is to travel and it should be to do so reasonably comfortably and, above all, as safely as possible. I deprecate fashion accessories that have nothing to do with safety or with the drive. Moreover, this fad is dubious because it panders to people's image of driving as an aggressive, macho power kick, and that is one of the most dangerous elements evident when someone is behind a wheel. I start from a position of considerable doubt, even if there were no evidence of danger, because of the psychological aspect.

Bull bars are a visual element. The definition of a bull bar in the Bill is a "protection system". There is evidence that in many cases it is not a protection system but a decorative, visual system. I hope that the hon. Member for Newport, West takes note of that.

I am worried about the reference to a "metal" bar because, although I have no evidence for saying so, common sense tells me that a bar might be made of other materials that might be equally dangerous. They might be equally tough—as are carbon fibre-based materials—or they might on impact do equally serious damage. A plastic bar might fracture, producing sharp edges that would drive into someone's side. The Bill's scope should be not narrowed but widened.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) mentioned a survey carried out by RoSPA and Auto Express, which showed that three quarters of those surveyed believed that the bars were fitted to vehicles only because they were fashionable and that 90 per cent. of the readers of Auto Express—people in driving for driving's sake—wanted bull bars banned. Eighty-nine per cent. believed that bull bars were dangerous. The public view is perceptive and should be taken into account when we examine such issues.

I made passing reference to PACTS. Its conclusions are interesting. Its members are experienced people who know what they are talking about and have considered the matter in detail. The council said in September 1995:

"Given widespread public concern, the government should introduce national legislation to prohibit aftermarket fitment"

which is probably permissible under European agreements

"and to discourage manufacturers who force purchasers to fit bull bars in order to be able to have optional extras such as spot or fog lights. PACTS also believes that exhortation and advice are not sufficient to cover the problem of aftermarket fitment."

That comes on top of conclusions that back up virtually everything that the hon. Member for Newport, West said and gives further credence to fatality and injury figures.

The council backs the Transport Research Laboratory's initial findings of 35 deaths and 350 serious injuries. The council's view is powerful evidence that needs to be taken into account. We cannot agree today with certainty on a specific figure for deaths, but that does not matter because in my book, one death is too many—indeed, one potential death is too many. I am sure that, however one reads the statistics, more than one death has resulted from bull bars. That requires us to act.

We could simply wait, but I believe that the evidence is strong enough and that commonsense signs are powerful enough for that to be a dangerous and rather irresponsible direction to take. Alternatively, we could explore the possibility of taking limited action in the knowledge that we are probably restricted from the overwhelming action that I would like to see because of European agreements.

If we can take limited action, there is a powerful argument for doing so. There is also a powerful argument even for temporary action. I understand the problems and limitations, and especially the upset that such action will cause tidy legal minds or tidy departmental minds. However, if we had a three or four-month period in which we introduced a total ban, we would probably succeed in delivering a death blow—perhaps I should not have used that phrase—or in making an impact on the industry and on consumer attitudes that would be so powerful that the fashion would never recover. In other words, the fashion would be wiped from people's minds.

Is it not far better to use persuasion? Already, the number of vehicles with bull bars fitted has declined and some bull bars have been taken off. Surely that means that the art of persuasion is working and that it is far more effective to ensure that people realise why bull bars are dangerous objects and why they should take some avoiding action.

I entirely agree that persuasion is important and I hope that this debate is part of the process of informing and persuading. Sadly, however, persuasion is normally not sufficient with human beings. Not everyone who is attracted by bull bars will be persuaded, and there will remain irresponsible individuals who will continue to use them. They will probably be the worst offenders because they will have bull bars for entirely the wrong reasons. They are exactly the people who may then, regrettably, be involved in fatal accidents. We are talking about people's lives and about the terrible mayhem that still occurs on Britain's roads, which would not be tolerated in any other part of our national life. Bearing that in mind, we cannot simply rely on persuasion, important though it is. We must take further steps and those steps must be legislative.

I mentioned two possibilities—doing nothing or taking limited action. There are two other possibilities. One is to press forward with greater vigour to try to achieve a European settlement on the matter. I have no objection to that being done, but I am sceptical—it is not the only sense in which I am sceptical about the European Union—about anything resulting from that in the near future.

I have worked on directives, or objections to directives, where it has been promised that one will be introduced next year, and then that it will be introduced the year after.

Four or five years on, one normally finds that it has not been finalised or agreed, or, if it has, it has been watered down. When it eventually comes, it is not properly applied across Europe. I have no objection to a directive, but we would be literally taking our lives into our hands if we sat back and waited for one.

I am increasingly drawn to the conclusion that the House should take definitive action. That is why I so much welcome the Bill. It may be that once it has been scrutinised, improved and brought into law, we would clash with the European Union over it. I for one would not find that especially unwelcome. Apart from anything else, it would put tremendous moral pressure on European institutions to act more quickly and responsibly. Even if, having passed the law, we were prevented from putting it into full effect, that law would shame the European Union into taking action. For all those reasons, I find the argument in favour of firm, swift and full action against bull bars overwhelming. I hope that some means will be found to bring into law in this country a measure that will not only enhance safety on British roads but save British lives.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on introducing the Bill. He may be surprised to hear that from me because on the previous occasion on which we met in a public debate, we were of different opinions. That does not mean that we must always be at odds with each other.

I support the Bill, its spirit and its determination. When I read it, I was especially pleased that it was so determined to hammer home the point about the harm that bull bars can do. It provides for a three-month gaol sentence for any person driving such vehicles, which are killing machines. There is no other term for them. The Bill's spirit is appropriate.

I do not believe that concern about violence on the roads—that is what we are dealing with—is restricted to the hon. Member for Newport, West and those who have been immediately involved with the sponsorship of the Bill. I am well aware that my hon. Friend the Minister has been following the issue for some time. He has been hitting the bureaucrats. I am sure that he will tell us about the results of that. If he is getting at the red tape and the dilatory thinkers, they will not stand a chance.

We are talking about `roo bars, crash bars or bull bars which originated in the Australian outback. It is a romantic notion to think of vehicles skidding across that wide open landscape trying to avoid damage from leaping kangaroos, which are much attracted by the headlights of cars. In the right environment, bull bars are valid. In the Australian outback, kangaroos are a hazard, as were cows when cowcatchers were fitted to trains in America in the last century.

Times have moved on. It is a curious paradox that Australia, where one might have thought that there was good reason to keep such bars, has now banned them. The news has travelled from down under back to the mother country and we are behind the Aussies. I love the Australians dearly for many reasons, but this time it is salutary that we should consider their experiences. In 1980, Australia's transport department began studies that showed that bull bars, and their increasing use in urban areas, were causing more accidents, injuries and fatalities and that pedestrians were particularly at risk.

In this country bull bars are legitimately used by farmers in their four-wheel drives. The RAC, and probably everyone now in the Chamber, would admit that in the right situation they are perfectly acceptable. However, the difficulty is that in the early 1990s vehicles with bull bars achieved a tremendous boom in popularity, and became a common sight on urban streets.

This morning, making a quarter of an hour's journey in my little Ford estate—which has no bull bars—while I was going round Trafalgar square, down into Parliament square and into the House of Commons, I spotted three jeeps with bull bars in that small area, although I am glad to say that I also spotted seven without.

It is good to arrive in the House of Commons car park and realise that we are now, by election, a bull bar-free zone, but we must still ask ourselves why on earth people put bull bars on vehicles. Much as we love to pretend that we live in the country, we do not have to brush cows and bulls from the motorways or from our streets. They are not even seen in the streets of my leafy constituency of Sutton. The majority of bull bars are fitted purely as a fashion accessory to vehicles that have never been driven off the highway and into the countryside—vehicles that have never crossed turf in a field and never will. Fashion has gone mad.

Macho, ego-boosting, fitted to vans and pick-up trucks, bull bars have now caused unacceptable damage. They are an extra hazard on the road, in addition to road rage and ram-raiding. Indeed, I suspect that much of the ram-raiding is carried out using such vehicles. So what are bull bars really for? It must be vanity. It is estimated that no less than 12 per cent. of the vehicle fleet in this country have had them fitted. As the hon. Member for Newport, West said, 500,000 vehicles are involved, and that is fashion design gone mad.

I do not believe that a bull bar is worth the sacrificing of a life. Three tragic cases, out of many more, come immediately to mind, such as that of 12-year-old Helen Baggs, hit full-square in the chest. I was deeply moved by the description by the hon. Member for Newport, West, because she was his constituent and he must know her family well. It is always deeply painful for a family to lose one of its loved ones, but to lose a child is even worse.

We also think of pensioner Ivy Harnett, and 13-year-old Victoria Moule, who was seriously injured. I pay tribute to Victoria's mother, Sharon Moule, who has worked tremendously hard to bring to public attention the awful and totally unnecessary suffering brought about by bull bars.

Surely vanity should not be allowed to cause 35 fatal accidents over the past year, and 350 serious injuries. And according to the RAC, the real figures could be twice as high, because it is difficult to obtain correct figures from the police. Of course the police force is not trying to be deliberately obstructive, but there is a genuine difficulty in analysing precisely what was the cause of an individual injury or death. One thing is for sure: whenever bull bars are attached to a vehicle involved in a serious accident, the injury will be infinitely greater. It is ironic that when more effort than ever before is being put into designing safer cars, we are still producing devices that are the antithesis of good practice and safety.

It is worth bearing in mind the new tests carried out by the BBC1 consumer programme "Watchdog", which are said to show just how dangerous bull bars are. Research showed that nine out of 10 children would survive if hit by a car travelling at 20 mph and without bull bars hut that all would most certainly be killed if knocked down by a vehicle with bull bars and travelling at only 12 mph. It is therefore hardly surprising that Sharon Moule should have been so determined to carry on her courageous work. She provides a salutary lesson because she has in her daughter a consistent reminder of what bull bars can do. Her daughter is still suffering from her injuries, has dizzy spells and has fallen behind at school, yet Mrs. Moule says:

"We are the lucky ones."

I hope that in future there will be no more cases like that involving Victoria Moule.

Most cars and vans and newer models of four-wheel-drive vehicles are now designed with what are known as pedestrian-friendly bonnets and fronts that crumple on impact, but bull bars transform the bonnet into a solid barrier. About 8 per cent. of pedestrian casualties of road accidents are children. The hard, narrow steel bull bars are set at a child's eye level and adults are likely to be hit in the chest, abdomen or pelvis, but adults and children alike will be hit in the legs by the reinforced bumper area of the crash bar. In some well publicised cases, surgeons, coroners and police officers have expressed the opinion that accidents would not have been fatal had bull bars not been fitted.

Research in Germany, New Zealand and Australia concludes that bull bars turn slight injury accidents into serious ones and serious accidents into fatalities. It is interesting that not one researcher has concluded that bull bars add anything to safety. Research in Germany found that a collision between a pedestrian and a car fitted with a steel bull bar can be fatal at only 16 mph. Because of the better energy absorption, the speed at which a fatality occurs when elastic, plastic devices are fitted is 37 mph. Further tests found that a vehicle equipped with a steel bull bar was six times more unsafe than one without.

In addition, the fitting of bull bars can provide a sense of invulnerability. Drivers believe that they are beyond harm and can hurtle along the roads, up and down back streets and in and out of traffic. We have all seen them sitting high up in their seats, holding a big wheel and hitting the accelerator, confident that the bull bar will protect them from everything. It might, but it certainly does not protect pedestrians. In fact, such drivers' safety is only illusory.

Research has shown that drivers of vehicles fitted with bull bars are at risk because their feeling of security is undoubtedly misplaced. Bull bars increase the risk of serious injuries to the occupants of a vehicle. A car fitted with bull bars will absorb the energy of any impact in such a way as to trigger the mechanism that brings into operation the safety bag or, indeed, delay it, as the case may be.

There has been some debate as to whether the Department of Transport has carried out sufficient research into the effects of bull bars. I draw the House's attention to a working paper that the Transport Research Laboratory at Crowthorne in Berkshire produced at the suggestion of the Department of Transport, because it makes interesting and useful reading. It certainly adds to the arguments in favour of the Bill. The document states:

"Crash bars fitted to vehicles used on the public roads are likely to increase the risk of serious injury to pedestrians in road accidents."

A detailed, six-page document follows, which anyone can examine and which leaves us in no doubt about how important it is to consider direct action and not just to leave regulation to wishful thinking, self-regulation and self-motivation. Those are not working.

Does the paper that my hon. Friend mentioned contain any information about the damage to the occupants of the vehicles? My hon. Friend said that she thought that there was danger to the occupants of vehicles and that those driving them were perhaps over-confident. I am not saying that she is wrong, but does that document include any evidence to that effect?

It so happens that that document does not consider occupants—I came across that information from other research—but it does state:

"A code of practice has certain limitations."

I am sure that the laboratory has done more work on the subject, and if it has not, perhaps it could be encouraged to do so.

I have said that I am not happy about whether self-regulation is working, but I should pay tribute to the manufacturers that are taking action. It would be churlish to ignore what they are doing. For example, Nissan was the first four-wheel-drive builder to drop the steel bull bars from its vehicles, including the Terrano II, the Patrol GR and its light commercial range. But Nissan has installed instead a mock substitute made from polyurethane. Mitsubishi is doing the same for the Shogun vehicles. I am not happy about that because I do not believe that the substitutes will minimise the impact that much. Indeed, the RAC also does not regard them as especially safe. They are illusory and cosmetic. They make the driver feel good, but they will not make the pedestrian feel any happier.

I am following what my hon. Friend says with interest and I applaud the remarks that she has made so far. On the question of polyurethane accessories, there is no doubt that those accessories—whether they are of value in protecting the vehicle—overcome the reluctance of hon. Members to allow the fitment of aggressive steel bull bars. The real issue is the aggressive steel bars fitted in front of a pedestrian-friendly front. I would not want my hon. Friend to discredit the polyurethane fitments because I believe that, in road safety terms at least, they are perfectly acceptable.

I hear what my hon. Friend the Minister says. I usually agree with him 100 per cent., but I hope that he will not think that I am being disrespectful if I say that it might be useful to do a little more research on what happens in an accident involving a polyurethane bull bar. I personally would not like to take that statement as read.

I am delighted by the hon. Lady's speech, but the point of putting the word "metal" into the Bill was to avoid this argument. It might well arise in Committee. The problem with the polyurethane bars is that they legitimise the metal bars, but research might show that the shape of the polyurethane bars—they are well designed in some cases—has the effect of reducing the impact.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those remarks. It is obviously useful to consider such factors.

Other organisations are already throwing away bull bars and we should take comfort from that. Nationwide delivery companies are throwing them out, ambulance services have removed them from their vehicles, which is interesting, and the Army probably never even considered them in the first place for its latest huge order of Land Rover Defenders. One would have thought that the Army would have been a natural customer for them.

Most four-wheel drives do not have bull bars fitted as standard equipment. They are generally an extra-cost option. Losing them will cause no problems for owners, although an exception may be made in any legislation for farmers, for whom they can be useful rather than part of an ego-boosting exercise.

It would be appropriate to remove bull bars from the manufacturers' catalogues. We should discourage their use. Indeed, we ought to encourage people who have bull bars on their vehicles to get rid of them. I understand that discarding them is not difficult; a few minutes' work with a spanner is enough. Massive though they may look, they are effectively free standing with no structural function. They will not be missed. Even I might be able to turn a spanner to taking one off, although I am not always that practical.

People in public life should take a lead. I welcome the fact that Members of Parliament are living up to their responsibilities, but that should also happen in local authorities. I accept that the council in Sutton has taken the hint as far as its vehicles are concerned—acting on the advice of motor insurers it has taken the bull bars from all its 65 Ford Transit vans. That was done on practicalfinancial—grounds because it was told that it would face heavier claims if a child were hit by a vehicle with bull bars.

I ask Liberal Democrat councillors in Sutton to go one stage further and to remove bull bars from their vehicles and get their colleagues to do the same. In that way, the public would begin to understand that that is a policy that should be followed and that the bars are not to be admired.

Interestingly, insurance companies are pushing people to think more clearly on the matter. I congratulate CGA Direct of Horsham in West Sussex, which became the first insurance company in Britain to refuse cover for any vehicle fitted with rigid steel bull bars. The marketing director said:

"The bars do more damage to other vehicles in collisions, so claims involving cars fitted with bull bars tend to be higher."

That is undoubtedly a lead and it is something that I support.

We can also encourage public support in different ways. During a survey by Auto Express and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, 87 per cent. of motorists questioned said that bull bars should be banned. The Automobile Association is also very supportive of that case.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Earl of Kinnoull for introducing the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill in the other place a few weeks ago, in January. Sadly, I fear that lack of parliamentary time might prevent it from progressing.

This is no new campaign, as the hon. Member for Newport, West is aware. It began about three years ago and we have to ask ourselves why on earth we have not taken action? What possible reason can there be for delay? I have become lost in the fudge and confusion, and the intricacies and bureaucracy, both at home and abroad. I do not want to throw too many sticks and stones, but it seems to have been a bit of a dance of the hokey cokey. Everyone agrees and says that the ban is obvious—we say it here in London and so do the Department of Transport, the European Union, and Commissioner Kinnock. What is the problem? Why are we so dilatory?

I have read the correspondence that has been passing between Commissioner Kinnock and the Minister. It does not make the issue any clearer. Each party seems to be saying that the other could do more. In the end, my hon. Friend will probably act on his own instincts, in which I have total confidence. I believe that he will say, if the Bill does not go through as planned, "Enough is enough. I am now going for it." I think that he will do that, and he should. He could quite easily justify that approach on the basis of subsidiarity. There are certain matters that should be dealt with at national level. In those instances, it is no one else's business what is going on. We should be allowed to get on with bull bars ourselves.

Let us make a plea for sanity. Drivers have the first responsibility. Let us say to drivers, "Take off your bull bars. You do not need them. You will cause a fatal injury, which will be on your conscience for ever." Let us say to manufacturers, "Don't push or encourage people to have bull bars." I say to the Government and to those in Europe, "Don't delay. Don't drag on. Don't fudge."

We have an important task to undertake. I have every confidence that in the end the Government will introduce effective legislation. In so doing, lives will be saved and we shall be eternally grateful.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on mounting a one-person campaign to persuade the Automobile Association, the Royal Automobile Club, the police force, the royal parks and even some insurance companies to have bull bars removed. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend has saved lives already by the action that he has taken. He is now giving the Government the chance to save even more lives.

I am grateful for support from my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane). I welcome the thoughtful comments by the hon. Members for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). The remarks of the hon. Members for Chorley (Mr. Dover) and for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) have produced a debate and allowed arguments to be aired.

It appears that there are three key objections. The first is that research is not valid and statistics do not count. The second is that the Commission is endorsing the Minister's view that he cannot do anything for the moment. The third is that bull bar owners are entitled to protect their vehicles.

It is clear that the research funded by the Department of Transport, which was published in its news bulletin in 1994, showed that an estimated 35 lives a year were being saved by action taken on bull bars. I recognise that there has been a growth in the use of bull bars since then.

The Minister cited his letter from the Commission in February. I received a letter on Wednesday from officials of the RAC, who met members of both Mr. Kinnock's and Mr. Bangemann's cabinet. The meeting took place on 25 March. They conclude in their letter:

"The Commission officials were also adamant that there are courses of action which the UK government can take unilaterally."

That is clear and we look forward to the Minister taking action.

The hon. Member for Chorley advanced the defence that car owners have the right to protect their vehicles. He told us that his car had lost its lights. Apparently that cost him £100. Helen Baggs lost her life, and that is what the debate is about.

The hon. Member for Hexham dismissed statistics. Previous predictions of fewer deaths were based on statistical information on seat belts, for example. The introduction of seat belt legislation has saved 1,000 lives and 5,000 serious injuries a year. Legislation was introduced on crash helmets. I am well aware of the excellent work that is done by the Astley Ainslie hospital in my constituency, which rehabilitates those with head injuries, and aware also of the beneficial effects of legislation bearing on crash helmets.

As regards the statistics on bull bars, I believe, as I am sure, does the whole House, that Helen Baggs was a person, not a statistic. People's lives have been destroyed. Ian Farnworth, 17, Nigel Sutcliffe and Susan Gardiner—all killed by vehicles that were armed, and I use that word advisedly, with these quite unnecessary bull bars.

One of the privileges of being a Member of Parliament is that we meet some remarkable people, people like Vicky Moule. I greatly admire her fighting spirit and her courage. She is a survivor. She has a great future. She had a lucky escape. Today, the House has an opportunity to replace luck with positive action for safety. There must be no delay. The Minister has 30 minutes to secure the passage of the Bill. Every week of delay could cost a child's life.

I congratulate hon. Members who have taken part in today's debate. There have been two sides to the debate: my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) did not support the principle of the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover) ably expressed his scepticism, whereas the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and the hon. Members for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) and for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) were supportive of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds, of course, is co-sponsor of the Bill.

In the light of what I am about to say, let me make it clear that I have the greatest respect for the effort that the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) has put into this serious issue and for the improvements and action that he has achieved as a result of his campaigning zeal. He does indeed deserve our congratulations, our thanks and much credit for what he has achieved. I hope that it will be plain, if I may say so gently to my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham and for Chorley, whose opinions on this issue I entirely respect, that I strongly support the principle behind the Bill.

Sadly, however, allied to the no doubt perfectly genuine concern that the hon. Member for Newport, West feels about this issue, which as the Minister with responsibility for road safety I also feel, is an element that perhaps might be interpreted as a veiled party political argument: that somehow Labour Members are keener than Conservative Members that action should be taken. One thing that the debate has amply demonstrated, in the excellent speeches from my hon. Friends, two of whom are co-sponsors of the Bill, is that there is equal concern on both sides of the House on what we all accept is a serious issue. A number of hon. Members mentioned individuals who, as a result of road accidents, are sadly no longer alive.

I am not thought of as one who takes some aspects of life particularly seriously. As in most matters, Brian Walden got it right when he said that the vast majority of things in this life do not matter very much and the rest do not matter at all. However, I take some matters extremely seriously and I shall never be flippant about them. The paramount one is my job as the Minister with responsibility for road safety.

I am proud of the fact that, during my time as a Minister, there have been fewer deaths in road accidents than in any year since records were first compiled in 1926. That is an extraordinary achievement to which my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham rightly referred in a recent debate on that very issue. He will know, as the House knows, that my great concern is that we should not take pride in that achievement but remember that every day in Britain, including Saturdays and Sundays, bank holidays, Christmas and new year, on average 10 people are killed on our roads. I make it clear to the hon. Member for Swansea, West that I am quite prepared to be unpopular with my own colleagues or with Opposition Members if I believe that a serious road safety issue is at stake.

I was recently criticised by some ill-informed observers about the serious measures that we wish to introduce to ensure that monocular drivers are not allowed to drive heavy, large, dangerous and long commercial vehicles and coaches. I was described in extraordinarily disparaging terms by a number of commentators for what was seen as nannyism, bending over backwards to EC pressure and so on. To those who are aware of the real issue, that criticism was totally misguided and ill-informed, but I hope that it underlines the fact that I am quite prepared to face such criticism if I believe that action is needed to save lives.I shall go on to describe why it is clear that this is not the Bill to do that.

The Minister is respected as a man of courage. On the issue he mentions, those hon. Members who are specialists on transport safety are entirely behind him. I am aware of the Minister's sincere support for the Bill's aims, if not for its detail. Will he give an undertaking that he will not talk it out but will allow it to be further discussed in Committee so that it may be improved?

No, I will not give that undertaking, and I shall say quite specifically why in my considered and serious view there is no purpose in allowing the Bill to go further. I shall explain why time spent in Committee would be totally nugatory. I know that the hon. Gentleman is kind enough to treat what I say seriously, and it gives me no pleasure whatever to say that the Bill should not proceed. It is my unfortunate responsibility to have to remind my hon. Friends who are equally enthusiastic supporters of the Bill of the reasons why I simply cannot allow it to proceed.

First, the Bill would

"Provide for the prohibition of the use on roads of motor vehicles fitted with bull bars; and for other related purposes."

Those purposes are perfectly laudable. Surprisingly, the Road Traffic Act 1988 has not been mentioned in the debate. I refer the House to part II, which is headed:

"Construction and Use of Vehicles and Equipment".

Clause 41 is headed:

"General regulation of construction, use etc."

Subsection (1) states:

"The Secretary of State may make regulations generally as to the use of motor vehicles and trailers on roads, their construction and equipment and the conditions under which they may be so used."

Subsection (2) states:

"In particular, the regulations may make provision with respect to any of the following matters—

(a) the width, height and length of motor vehicles and trailers and the load carried by them, the diameter of wheels, and the width, nature and condition of tyres

(b) the emission or consumption of smoke

(c) noise,

(d) the maximum weight

(e) the particulars to he marked

(f) the towing of — vehicles

(g) the number and nature of brakes

(h) lighting equipment"

and so on. I shall not detain the House further. In the 13 minutes left to me, it is no part of what I want to say to bother to insult the intelligence of hon. Members by reading any further, but the position is straightforward. Adequate legal power is already available to Parliament and to the Secretary of State for Transport to introduce a regulation to produce the Bill's effect, subject, of course, to the fact that the hon. Gentleman is generous enough to acknowledge: in this matter, we are not dealing with the competence solely of the United Kingdom Government.

What is crucial here is the extent to which this activity is governed by European directive. Let me make a direct point on that. There are many matters, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam alluded, in which the principle of subsidiarity, which the Prime Minister first seriously articulated at Maastricht and which is such a sensible and straightforward basis on which to frame the relationship between the Community and its individual member states, is involved. She is right to suggest that, under that doctrine of subsidiarity, much should be left to the nation state.

I remember the best of all definitions, which is that the European Commission should do only that which the nation state could not do better itself. One other principle of European Union membership is equally clear: it is a cardinal advantage to every person who manufactures in the UK and who seeks to sell not merely in the UK, but in other member states' markets throughout the European Union, to have an agreed framework of regulations that determines standards of manufacture and that therefore allows a manufacturer, once he has met those standards, to sell his product in any Community country. That is the reason why I—not necessarily noted for my massive enthusiasm for regulation from Brussels—am none the less content that, in this matter, it is proper to look to the European Community directives to establish an appropriate framework for construction and use.

Will the Minister give way?

Yes I will because, so far, I am grateful that the House has seen the wisdom of adopting precisely that approach.

I no longer want to intervene.

Will the Minister therefore give way to me?

indicated assent.

If the Minister is blaming Europe for this and saying that we look to Europe, will he explain why he is ignoring the advice not only of the European Commissioner for Transport last year, but advice that has been repeated this week by the industry directorate, led by Herr Bangemann, and the transport directorate, led by Neil Kinnock, who say that we can go ahead unilaterally in three different ways to introduce a ban on our own?

I will explain that, but I should like to preface those remarks with an important clarification. Because of the general background of the debate in this country about our relationship with the Community, some commentators tend to view every issue in terms of either Britain right, Europe wrong; Britain right, Commission wrong; or, on occasions, Commission right, Britain wrong, depending on how it suits their political argument. I do not doubt that Commissioner Kinnock shares my view on this issue, is serious about it and makes his suggestions as to how the UK Government might proceed in good faith.

When I hear the hon. Member for Newport, West saying that I am blaming the Commission, I fear that not only does he do our relations with the Community no good, he distorts the nature of the extremely constructive dialogue that I have had with the Commissioner. It is important to remember—I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, who said that I am not noted for allowing issues to become bogged down in red tape—that Mr. Kinnock cannot, on behalf of every member of the Community, enter into agreements that require other members' support. He has to work within a consensus framework. He and I have jointly sought to find that right framework.

First, the Minister has made it absolutely clear for the first time ever that he has the power.

indicated assent.

The Minister has made that clear, and he is not denying it even though he is able to do so. Secondly, he has also made it clear that he will not exercise that power because, basically, it would mean that our manufacturers would have to produce one thing for Britain and another for Europe. That is the essence of it; he is trying to hide behind a universal standard. Will he explain what is to stop British manufacturers, who can make left-hand-drive cars and right-hand-drive cars, being capable of making cars with and without devices such as bull bars?

Let us be clear what the debate is about. The right hon. Gentleman, for whom, as he knows, I have great respect, suggests that I am "trying to hide behind" the European argument. That would suggest that I have any interest personally in finding a convenient bulwark behind which to hide. For the umpteenth time, I confirm for him and the House that I have no such intention. I believe that the thrust of the Bill's intention is correct.

The hon. Member for Newport, West has been rather scathing about the recent research work done to add practical shape, in the form of statistical evidence, to a great deal of the desk exercises and foreign studies that have shown that bull bars are likely to increase the severity of accidents and lead to unnecessary deaths. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has been quite so scathing about perfectly respectable and serious work. I further reassure him by saying that I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham made the only proper and sensible point on the issue when he said that his conclusion may not be deeply scientific but is certain common sense. I share that view.

I associate myself unequivocally with the point that, regardless of whether the research is able to show beyond all reasonable doubt that 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70 deaths may have been caused by bull bars, all one's common sense and personal experience suggests that steel bars at the height of a child's head or a young person's pelvic or thoracic area cannot, against the background of our intention to produce softer-fronted vehicles, conceivably be an aid to road safety. I share the genuine frustration of the hon. Member for Newport, West at any argument that somehow we have to prove the point beyond all reasonable doubt. The research is useful, but I consider it corroborative and not necessarily a hurdle.

rose

Before I give way, I want to make quite clear the reasons why the three propositions advanced by Commissioner Kinnock are not in my view satisfactory. That having been said, I have great respect for my hon. Friend, and of course I give way to him.

The note from the Library this morning about bull bars, which I mentioned, says that the results of a report on the survey of accidents will be available in late March. I have just received a note today from the Library saying that the report, to be produced by the Transport Research Laboratory based on 1994 accident figures, is expected to be published in April. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is available as soon as possible because it provides fundamental background to the measure before us.

I shall do so. One of the reasons why the Transport Research Laboratory is still engaged in that work is that it wants to eradicate the type of anomaly that the hon. Member for Newport, West properly adduced from the existing accident statistics.

rose—

I must proceed.

It would be an irony, given that I have made no secret of my intention that the Bill should not proceed, if I were unable to make the argument that is fundamental to a serious debate on this issue. There is a serious debate on this issue, and it is not helped by wild assertions or by implying that every Conservative Member who chooses to block this unnecessary Bill will have blood on his hands. As someone who spends a great deal of his time every day of the week trying to ensure that we reduce loss of life on our roads, I resent even that implication. It is improper and ill-deserved.

rose—

I will not give way at the moment. I must make some progress because this point is directly related to the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. As the House knows—there have been many references to it—I have been in regular contact with the Commissioner for some time on the matter. He wrote, in the letter quoted by the hon. Gentleman, in May 1995 about three ways in which he believed that it was possible for the United Kingdom to act unilaterally in this respect.

The right hon. Member for Swansea, West suggested in an intervention that if I had the power, there was no need for the debate to go a moment further. The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House far too long, and has far too comprehensive a knowledge and experience of the relationships between nation states and the Commission, to imagine that the fact, in statute, that the power exists to effect certain actions in the United Kingdom overrides any Community obligation in that respect. It cannot do so. It is part of the sham, and the deep cynicism of some of those who have opportunistically suggested that this is a political debate, that they have so crudely misrepresented the relationship between any sovereign state in the European Union and the institutions of the Union.

The first of the Commissioner's proposals was to invoke a six-month ban on registration of vehicles fitted with approved-type bull bars, under a clause in the framework directive for European type approval. That applies where a member state considers there to be a serious safety risk.

In order for us to invoke such a power, it would be necessary to show that that safety risk was of a different order of magnitude to those safety risks considered by the Commission when it allowed the approval of bull bars fitted as part of whole-vehicle type approval to vehicles that are already legally approved under those terms. On that basis, we would be at least vulnerable to challenge.

Incidentally—it is important to place this on record—who would be the challenger? My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam says, as a mother and as a concerned parent, who could possibly object? That was the tone of this morning's debate. The answer is, first, the many people whose businesses manufacture bull bars—my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham referred to them—and, secondly, foreign vehicle manufacturers. The idea that we can just say, "Well, this is all jolly good stuff and nobody can object to it because it is all mum and apple pie. Let's get on with it," is an absurd and, frankly, rather facile notion which I am not prepared to entertain.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham raised a serious point amid all the rather cynical and bland assertions from Labour Members. My hon. Friend latched on to one of the few really good arguments for adopting a temporary ban. He said that, all other factors notwithstanding, the existence of a temporary ban would at least have—

Address the House.

The hon. Gentleman knows that my responsibility in the House is to address the occupant of the Chair, which is exactly what I do. The hon. Gentleman's contribution to the debate has been wholly unworthy of him and quite inconsequential. He would do better to be quiet and remain in his place.

Resign.

Indeed, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would do better to resign, as my hon. Friend so accurately says.

Will the Minister give way?

No, the Minister will not give way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham made the serious point that even though we knew that the ban would be temporary, unsound and open to challenge, we should impose it in the sense of declaratory legislation. In other words, if I understand his argument—I hope that he agrees that this is an accurate paraphrase—the purpose would be simply to illustrate how strongly Parliament felt. I understand that argument. However, you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as the custodian of the rights and traditions of this House, will know that it is not within the rights and traditions of the House to pass legislation that, almost at the time of its passing, becomes redundant and open to challenge. It is not within our rights and traditions to pass legislation simply to make a declaratory statement. I regard that as an extraordinary and unsound basis for legislation and the Government cannot treat such a proposition seriously.

The second proposal was to require the removal of after-market bull bars which had not been type approved. The problem with that course of action is that it would have to comply with articles 30 and 36 of the European Union treaty, which introduce broader difficulties. Article 30 prohibits restrictions on trade while article 36 provides powers to take action on safety grounds, but such action cannot be undertaken lightly for the reasons I have adduced. Any such action would have an extraordinarily limited effect and would be almost impossible to enforce as vehicle owners could simply switch to type-approved bull bars. As anyone who really understands the subject will know, it is practically impossible to tell a type-approved bull bar from a non-type-approved bull bar.

The third and last proposal related to a ban on the import of vehicles fitted with bull bars and first registered in another member state. The proposal would be subject to the application of article 30, as I previously suggested. I ask the House to consider this proposition. If we introduced that measure, we would be ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of vehicles that have these devices fitted are registered in this country and are not registered overseas before being brought into this country. Such a move would be extraordinarily ineffective. I would have welcomed a suggestion from the Commissioner that I felt met our requirements. However, I was, sadly, forced to conclude that the three suggestions did not present a practical solution in our eyes.

We hope, however, that we can take the matter forward, by agreement between me and the Commission, through making a change to the external projections directive. We may be able to make some progress in that way. The hon. Member for Newport, West referred to the fact that two directives are in play here. In view of the time allotted to me, I shall have to be very quick about this.

Ideally, we would need the pedestrian protection directive in place to provide a truly comprehensive solution. That directive is likely to be some time off. If we use the external projections directive and amend it by a procedure that is not as difficult, we may be able to obtain a solution which, while not perfect, is more adequate for our purpose than any of the options offered by Commissioner Kinnock that have been so enthusiastically supported—I believe utterly cynically—by Labour Members. If we were to go down the course that I have described, it would mean examining the proposal that we have received in the past week or so from the Commission and considering a form of words. I have told my officials that they should urgently examine that form of words. They know that my predilection is to ensure that we find an adequate form and take the proposal forward on that basis—

Not moved.

Everyone who knows anything about the middle east expects peace to come through a series of building blocks. The first was Camp David; the second was the widely acclaimed Oslo accords; and the third was the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. The tragedy is that a small unrepresentative group of Muslim fundamentalists is seeking to derail the peace process. Their hearts are so full of hatred that they cannot tolerate a programme of peaceful co-existence between neighbours in the middle east. They believe that they can bomb their way into heaven, and into derailing the peace process in the middle east. I hope, as I am sure the whole House does, that they will fail, as I suspect they will, on both counts.

The objectives of the various parties to the peace process are, of course, different. Israel has always craved recognition by her neighbours—neighbours who sought to suffocate her at birth and to snuff out her existence both in 1967 and in 1973, and who until recently have always denied her right to exist.

Israel has craved peace because so many of her citizens have been affected by the wars that she has had to fight to secure her independence, and because between those wars she has been under constant attack from her neighbours. For example, the people in the north would suffer mortar attacks from the Lebanon. Israel sought peace as a means of giving her people security because she had suffered infiltration by guerrillas, and mortars had been thrust down on her people from the Golan. Hezbollah guerrillas used to infiltrate from the Lebanon, and still seek to do so.

Israel also hoped that as part of the peace process, her people would be able to discover information about Israelis missing in action since the 1980s. For example, Zachary Baumel went missing in 1982, and Ron Arad was captured in 1986. Several times I have met Zachary Baumel's parents, who are still desperate to discover what happened to their son nearly 15 years ago.

Many hon. Members have met the mother, brothers and daughter of Ron Arad. In 1986, when he was captured, his daughter was very young. She is now much older, yet during all that time she has not known what happened to her father. What sort of people will prevent a father from knowing his daughter over a period of nearly 10 years, much longer than the duration of the last war?

We must remember that it was Israel that kick-started the release of middle east hostages in the early 1990s. Israel released a flood of prisoners, thereby securing the release of Terry Waite and John McCarthy, in the hope of receiving back her own missing people. But that has not happened.

Of course we must recognise that the objectives of Israel's neighbours were different from hers. The Jordanians sought from peace economic advantage, increased investment and joint infrastructure projects. They also wanted to use Israel's knowledge of tourism to benefit their own tourist industry. The Palestinians sought an improvement in their living standards as well as the ability to rule themselves.

The history of the middle east demonstrates that our peacemakers are always as vulnerable to the assassin's bullet as the general is to hostile fire. King Abdullah, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin all gave up their lives prematurely in the hope that their people would live in peace one with another. King Hussein has shown that he is luckier than a cat, because he has survived 11 assassination attempts.

Kamikaze guerrillas have now killed scores of Israelis in the hope of derailing the peace process by altering public opinion in Israel. That is why the conference was held at Sharm-el-Sheikh earlier this year. No more suitable place could have been found for such a conference, because it is in territory that Israel returned to Egypt as part of the peace process.

When we consider what happened at the conference we must congratulate the Prime Minister on attending it, and on the positive approach that he adopted. Of course, we must also condemn those who did not go to the conference. We should condemn Syria, in particular, for refusing to go to the conference. Syria has provided hospitality for many of those who reject peace in the middle east. Syria has helped many of those seeking to derail the peace process in the middle east. Syria invaded the Lebanon and keeps troops there, and it allows Hezbollah guerillas in the Lebanon to become a force that is anxious to derail peace and to fight the state of Israel.

Syria did not go to that conference because it is not interested in defeating terrorism; Syria is interested in sponsoring terrorism. How can Syria ever expect the Israelis to return the Golan heights when it refused to attend a conference designed to defeat terrorism? Of course every Israeli knows that, until 1967, the Golan was used for hostile action against Israel. Since 1967, it has been used for purely peaceful purposes.

Apart from condemning Syria for not attending the conference, we must condemn Iran and Libya, which are the paymasters of international terrorism. We must recognise the dangers that Iran presents to peace not only in the middle east but to peace in the world because, within the next decade, it is very likely that Iran will become a nuclear power. The world must squeeze Iran now so that there might yet be a change of Government in that unhappy country.

We must congratulate our Prime Minister because only he and the Prime Minister of Israel were willing to condemn Iran's reaction to the bombs in Israel and Iran's sponsorship of international terrorism. Let any apologists for the Iranian regime remember that Iran praised the bombings after they had taken place. Indeed, I have been told that the Federal Republic of Germany has put out an arrest warrant for an Iranian Minister. No one should enter into partnership with Iran, and people should follow our Government's lead in condemning the Iranian regime.

I am surprised that the President of France did not seek to condemn Iran; let us remember that Iranians went to Paris to kill Mr. Bakhtiar, a former Prime Minister of Iran.

We should listen to what victims of terrorism are saying. We should also listen to friendly Governments in the middle east which give advice to this country. We should listen to Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt. They say that Britain should not become a haven for Muslim fundamentalists seeking to wage war on friendly countries in the middle east.

We should not give asylum to political activists from the middle east who seek to abuse our hospitality by stirring up trouble there and by destroying our friendship and trade with those friendly nations. If we were to ask the President of Egypt and the Governments of Tunisia and of Saudi Arabia what they thought of the Asylum and Immigration Bill, we would quickly receive three assents to it.

Individuals sometimes come to this country to stir up trouble and to fight a war of Muslim fundamentalism. They are the blood brothers of those who went on the buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

We must also make certain that organisations in Britain do not fund terrorism in the middle east. We all know how people of the Irish diaspora in North America are used to fund terrorism in the United Kingdom. We must not allow individuals from the Palestinian diaspora and their sympathisers to fund terrorism in the middle east. It would be a great tragedy if they were to do so, and we shall be held partially responsible for it.

We must also ensure that we do not allow individuals to stir up a campaign of hatred on our university campuses, which can only influence the world outside the campuses.

I see that the National Union of Students has asked that action be taken on Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The NUS president, Mr. Jim Murphy, said at conference last week that the union should not be soft on HUT. He went on to say that HUT was filth and filth belongs in the bin.

I apologise for straying slightly beyond the Foreign Office's remit by saying that, as everyone condemns HUT, there is some surprise that there has so far been no successful prosecution of that organisation in the United Kingdom. Universities such as that at Birmingham have banned HUT from their campus, but there has so far been no prosecution. It is wrong for any organisation to preach religious or racial hatred on our university campuses. Members of such organisations are the blood brothers of the bus bombers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

It is important that our country takes action against such individuals, but it is equally important that Mr. Arafat is seen to arrest and prosecute. So far, he has been strong on arrests but not quite so strong on prosecutions. It is important that the Palestinian national covenant is amended within the time scale promised by Mr. Arafat. Were he to fail to do so, that of itself would be a danger to the peace process.

We in this country must, as a fellow democracy, show understanding of the reaction of the Israeli Government to assaults on their people and their democratic process. The tragedy is that those who are fighting the peace process in the middle east all come not from democracies but from one-party dictatorships. We must understand that when any democracy sees its people attacked, as Israel has done, it has to react to ensure that peace and democracy prevail and that its people are not bombed and bullied into submission.

The peace process in the middle east will survive only if the aspirations of all are met. We have witnessed the attempts to destroy peace by destroying security for Israelis, but we need more than just security—we need prosperity. This is where the western world can move in with joint ventures and where the Arab world can say that it recognises that Israelis have experience in tourism, agriculture and industry which the Arab world sometimes lacks. I look forward to the day when we see joint ventures in Jordan, Egypt and other countries between Israelis, western entrepreneurs and the local countries.

I hope that everyone in the middle east will remember that when we are trying to bring the Jewish people of Israel and our Muslim brothers together, we might quote from the New Testament and say:

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

I thank the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) for securing the debate and associate myself with everything that he said. I also thank him for being a great personal friend and pair and a doughty friend of Israel and of the Jewish people. I salute the work that he has done and is doing.

I also pay my respects to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) who, unlike his predecessor, has a clear vision of peace in the middle east and an understanding of the problems of a democratic Israel. In response to my outcry at the proposed closure of the British Council operation in Jerusalem, he stopped that closure. I greatly appreciate that, as do the many people who use it.

I shall deal with one further aspect of the peace process to which the hon. Member for Hendon, South has drawn attention. As chairman of the Maimonides Foundation—a Jewish organisation that seeks to foster good relations between Jews and Muslims—I have worked closely with the Muslim community. I pay special tribute to those in that community who have cried out against the attacks to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I pay tribute to Saba Risaluddin, the head of the Calamus Foundation, who said:

"Terrorism is completely alien to the ethos of Islam, as it is to the ethos of all the world's great faiths."

I pay respectful tribute to Ayatollah Rouhani, Imam of the Paris mosque and spiritual leader of the Shi'ite community in Europe, who called on

"all Islamic organisations and personalities to issue a joint fatwa condemning loud and clear all terrorist actions carried out by terrorist groups under the name of Islam aimed at the peace process in the Middle East".

I thank my dear friend and respected ally Sheikh Dr. Zaki Badawi, principal of the Muslim college in London, who wrote to The Times to attack

"those who glory in acts of violence and who equate peace with weakness. In this sad and crucial time, heroism should be accorded only to the peacemakers."

We have heroism in the middle east. We have the heroism of the Israelis in the face of attacks launched by people using pawns—those who believe that they will go to paradise by that path—but who would not take those risks themselves. We have the heroism of Shimon Peres and his people. He is coming up for election and we should think very carefully before we attack, in any way, the Israelis' efforts to damp down terrorism or the steps they have found it necessary to take in face of the ghastly atrocities that their people have faced. They have an election process, which others do not.

There is a certain heroism also on the other side and in Chairman Arafat, who is himself under constant attack. I hope that he will rise to what could be a great occasion for peace.

This country should have no place for the supportive mechanisms of terrorism in any other land, whether in the middle east or elsewhere. We should hunt down the supporters and helpers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Britain. We should ensure that money collected in this country for charitable purposes is used in the middle east for charitable purposes and not to support Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other terrorist bodies. We could then at least know that in our small role in a distant land we have done what we can to promote a peace that we all need so badly.

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) for the opportunity to address the issues surrounding the middle east peace process. I wish to thank him and the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner), who are at the forefront of all those in the House of Commons who care deeply about the peace process. They are the most genuine and regular speakers on the subject. Both of them are friends and I listen to, take advice from and discuss the issues with them.

I am saddened that there are no Front Benchers from the Labour or Liberal Democrat parties. That is regrettable, but the weight of opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South and my hon. and learned Friend—if I may so call him—the Member for Leicester, West has made up for that, given the importance of this debate.

The peace process is an issue of great concern to the Government and, I am sure, to all right hon. and hon. Members. I know that we are all deeply shocked and saddened by the recent dreadful terrorist outrages in Jerusalem, Ashkelon and Tel Aviv. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary have expressed the Government's deep outrage and revulsion at the attacks and I am sure that all hon. Members join me in those sentiments. It has been deeply painful for all of us to see the threat to peace from those appalling actions, and we must not give the bombers the victory that they seek. Peace is their enemy and we must remained determined to achieve peace.

In these difficult days, the United Kingdom has made clear its wholehearted support for the struggle against terrorism and the continuation of the peace process. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister attended the summit chaired by Egypt and the United States at Sharm el-Sheikh on 13 March, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South referred. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear the United Kingdom's support for peace through negotiation, coupled with our implacable opposition to terrorism. Officials are today taking part in a follow-up meeting to the Sharm el-Sheikh summit which we hope will lead to agreement on practical measures that the international community can take together to fight the terrorists. The Government will continue to support the process begun at Sharm el-Sheikh. Now, more than ever, the international community must unite behind the peacemakers.

The United Kingdom has been active diplomatically since the terrorist attacks to bolster the fight against terrorism and to boost support for the peace process.

We have spoken to Israel's neighbours about the vocal presence in their midst of violent opponents to the peace process. We have urged other countries of the middle east to consider what more they might do to fight terrorism, to undermine support for it and for those who fund it and more actively support the peace process. The presence of many Arab countries at Sharm el-Sheikh suggests that our representations, coupled with those of others, may have had some effect.

For those countries that continue to oppose the peace process, such as Iran and Libya, we have only one message. Their policy is unacceptable. The chargé d'affaires of the Iranian embassy in London was told that when he called into the Foreign Office after the bombings. We were outraged by Iran's initial reaction and little impressed by its subsequent equivocations. If Iran wishes to be treated with respect, it must recognise the force of that message and act accordingly. With our European partners, we will continue to press that home through the European Union's critical dialogue with Iran. We believe that the Iranian Government and their surrogates continue to promote international terrorism and that they have been responsible for many attacks on Iranian dissidents in Europe since 1989. As my hon. Friend said, the recent decision by the German federal prosecutor to indict the chief of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence Services, Ali Fallahian, adds weight to that claim.

In practical terms, the United Kingdom is doing much to help both the Israelis and the Palestinians fight the terrorists. Two City of London police experts are visiting Israel to offer advice on the surveillance and other techniques that help to form the ring of steel around the City of London. Although I cannot go into details today, there are other forms of co-operation with Israel in sharing information on the terrorist threat.

With the Palestinians, we are looking urgently at what further assistance we can give the Palestinian police in addition to the substantial assistance that we have given them in training and logistics to help them to maintain order and security in Gaza and the west bank. I was also pleased to visit Gaza not long ago and to see the gift of radios that has so helped the Palestinian police with security and the election process.

I am pleased too that the European Union is urgently working up a programme of assistance in counterterrorism to the Palestinian police. We shall ensure that that assistance is promptly given and co-ordinated in full with the other assistance that the Palestinian authority is receiving.

The United Kingdom fully understands the pressing need for Israel to re-establish security for its citizens. They deserve that. We understand the need for the tough measures that have been taken. At the same time, we also recognise—this is a point of agreement between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian authority and both made it firmly to me during my recent visit to the region in January—that stability in Gaza and the west bank depends on employment and prosperity for the Palestinian people. We recognise the extremely difficult task facing the Israeli Government in balancing their security needs with the needs of the Palestinian people. I know that they are tackling the issue with the maximum energy and determination. We welcome the easing of the closures that has already taken place and hope that the Israeli Government will be able to relax measures further, but only where compatible with their security needs.

I met the Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, when he came to London and was impressed with his determination to secure the future for his people. I was also impressed with the way he felt that prosperity for the Palestinian people would aid security for the region as a whole and further the peace process. I believe that all hon. Members wish the Israeli Government well in achieving those aims.

My hon. Friend also mentioned Ron Arad and the other brave people who are missing in action. I raised that issue with Yasser Arafat directly and felt that he was most positive in his responses. We should and could make further progress, although it is difficult since we are largely dealing with the Iranians and others on the matter. I hope that progress can be made, not just because of those individuals and their families, but because I cannot think of any issue that would be a greater confidence-booster than if we were to find a solution to this long-standing problem which is at root, as my hon. Friend said so movingly, a humanitarian, family matter.

These are difficult days for Israel and the Palestinians. Despite the gloom of current circumstances, we must not forget that there is still a peace process. We must remember how much has been achieved. There are agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which detail their mutual recognition and a process by which they can accommodate their differing interests. A Palestinian Authority has been established. As I mentioned earlier, there have been successful democratic elections for the new Palestinian Council and its president. We applaud these achievements and those who made them happen.

The vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis still crave peace and want the peace process to work. The terrorists cannot be allowed to dictate the fate of everyone else. They cannot be allowed to consign their neighbours to endless and pointless violence.

I shall say a few words about the Arab boycott, which is felt strongly in the United Kingdom and beyond. Following the first meeting of the Israel-Britain chamber of commerce, Israel's Minister for Trade, Micha Harish, told my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade that he was convinced that the boycott was no longer regarded by British business men as an obstacle to trading with Israel. Indeed, the rocketing trade figures over the past few years bear out that belief.

Both the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are taking a robust line, ensuring that companies are left in no doubt over our disapproval of the boycott. We are recommending, where possible, the use of an EU certificate rather than a certificate issued by the Arab-British chamber of commerce. The DTI, however, has an obligation to inform exporters of the facts. It would be useless to recommend the use of an EU certificate to a country which did not accept it, such as Syria.

The Arab boycott is now on its knees. Its final death throes are ever closer. It is unlikely, however, that the Arab League will end it formally before there is a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbours, but Egypt and Jordan have formally abandoned the boycott, the Gulf Co-operation Council no longer applies the secondary and tertiary aspects of it, and it is not applied, in practice, by Tunisia and Morocco. Only a few hard-line Arab countries insist on applying it. But while the Arab boycott office in Damascus is still open, we shall work hard to ensure that progress in the peace process brings with it a complete end to a useless, senseless and counterproductive boycott.

We look forward, of course, to the final settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute. The foundation of the settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, in the form of the declaration of principles and the interim agreement, already exists. We must all keep this goal in sight, for with it comes the prospect of a comprehensive middle east peace. Such a peace would bring immense prosperity to the entire region.

In that context, the United Kingdom welcomed the negotiations between Syria and Israel, which began at the Wye Plantation at the end of last year. The talks are currently suspended, but we hope that they will be resumed as soon as possible. It is vital that this opportunity for a comprehensive peace is not lost. We welcome the flexibility that both sides have shown to their approach to these talks and hope that they will continue to exhibit so constructive an attitude if and when the talks resume.

Our support is for those brave men and women, Palestinian as well as Israeli, who are building peace in the middle east. Nothing should detract from that goal. We shall do all that we can to help prevent the terrorists from destroying their and our dream of a comprehensive and lasting peace.