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

It is a great honour to promote the Bill today. It seeks to protect the most vulnerable and innocent in our society. It seeks to protect children from abuse, and closes down some of the avenues through which paedophiles operate. "Paedophile" is the wrong description—because "paedophile" means "child lover"; child molester, child rapist and child destroyer are all more accurate descriptions of adults who abuse children. Childhoods have been destroyed by individuals who have molested, raped or attacked children.

"Abuse", itself, is too gentle a word for the ordeal to which children—often very young ones—have been subjected, including oral sex, anal sex and a whole spectrum of sexual relations which no child should ever know about, let alone be subjected to by an adult who is meant to care for them.

The Bill refers to child care workers in whom trust has been placed. There are many people with immense power over the youngsters in their care—immense power to do good or evil. I pay tribute to the child care workers who strive hard to provide the best possible conditions of safety for children. I say to the others that we will close down their avenues of abuse. Child care workers who are decent and good know above all others how urgently the Bill's proposals are needed. Commenting on the proposals, the chief executive of the Children's Society said:

"It is crazy to leave the protection of children to chance. We need rigorous checks by law."

The need for vetting is now well recognised, and I commend colleagues who have battled for years to get the matter on to the political agenda, and charities such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Save the Children which work hard to shine some light into the dark places of child abuse. Supporting the Bill, the chief executive of Childline said that it is

"a vital step in preventing known abusers continuing to harm children."

Since my announcement in December that I would be dealing with child protection in my Bill, I have received many messages of support. An early one came inside a small Christmas card. The well-wisher simply wrote:

"Thank you, thank you, thank you."

It is clear that there are thousands of people in this country who, due to their personal experiences, are longing for greater child protection measures to be introduced.

Sadly, my Bill cannot deal with every possible area of vulnerability, and it certainly cannot guarantee that no child will ever suffer abuse again. I ask organisations to review their employment good practice procedures. Although the Bill cannot cover every avenue of potential abuse, it will substantially increase the level of protection in those public areas where that is most desperately needed.

It may help to follow the structure of the proposed arrangements if two crucial definitions used in the Bill are kept in mind—"child care position" and "child care organisation," both of which are laid down in clause 12. "Child care position" refers to a position that is concerned with the provision of services to children for which an organisation is responsible and where the worker has regular contact with children.

For the purposes of the Bill, a "child care organisation" is one whose activities are in some way controlled or regulated by statute, including all local authority social services functions relating to children; all children's homes—be they local authority, private or independent; nursing homes or mental service homes accommodating children; registered child minders; and some NHS trust services regarding children.

All those organisations will have a mandatory requirement to vet prospective employees, paid or unpaid. Other organisations not covered by the Bill—such as voluntary groups and cadet forces—will be able to vet employees and volunteers, and to refer names of abusers to the list. I sincerely hope that organisations such as the scouts, who have provided immense opportunities for youngsters, will fully avail themselves of the vetting mechanism for all volunteers who work with children.

No organisation is free from potential abusers. It is only right and proper that parents should expect organisations in which they have put their trust to vet their workers, paid or unpaid. That is a service that organisations such as Schools Outreach have pleaded for. Its chief executive remembers telling 12 interviewees that he was able to vet their backgrounds. One then admitted that he was a convicted child abuser; another admitted that he was awaiting trial.

It is important that the strong framework of vetting proposed by the Bill is balanced by a strong mechanism for appeal. The Bill proposes a right of appeal backed by an independent tribunal, as laid out in the schedule. It sets out for the first time a means whereby an individual who has had a conviction quashed on appeal or a malicious referral uncovered may have his name removed from the list. Furthermore, a discretionary power may be exercised by the Secretary of State without the need to go through the appeal tribunal. That is a major step forward in terms of civil rights.

Currently, an individual may be referred to existing lists without his knowledge, and if he discovers that his name is on a list, he has no statutory right of appeal. My Bill will allow for all those whose names are referred to the list to be notified. That, along with the appeal mechanism and independent tribunal, represents a significant improvement on the present situation.

Child care employers will be required to refer names to the list. That provision has been included to prevent the practice of letting people go when they are discovered to be abusive. By failing to report abusers, some unscrupulous employers have allowed—indeed, enabled—known abusers to move to new employment where they are able to continue their abuse. The requirement to refer is a fundamental measure in closing avenues of abuse.

Referrals will be made if someone in a position of child care is dismissed on the grounds of misconduct that harms a child or puts a child at risk of harm; if an individual resigns or retires in circumstances in which he or she would otherwise be dismissed; if an individual has been transferred due to circumstances of misconduct to a job in the same organisation, not in a child care position; or if an individual has been provisionally suspended or transferred to a non-child care position while inquiries are being carried out.

I apologise if I have misunderstood the hon. Lady's Bill. She says that there will be an obligation on the relevant organisations to refer, but I could not see any penalties in the Bill for failure to comply. Is that deliberate or because the issue is covered in some other Act that I did not study in conjunction with the Bill?

I am grateful for that intervention, which gives me the chance to clarify the issue. The child care organisations to which my Bill refers are covered by statute, so we have a means of bringing sanctions against them.

The message to child abusers and those who knowingly employ them is: "We will not tolerate you or your cruel and destructive activities."

The Bill has four main provisions. It will put the Department of Health's current administrative consultancy index, which lists individuals considered unsuitable to work with children, on a statutory basis and will require regulated organisations to refer names for inclusion on the new list. It will provide rights of appeal against inclusion on the Department of Health list and the similar List 99 of the Department for Education and Employment, which has always been statutory.

The Bill will require regulated child care organisations to check the names of anyone whom they propose to employ in posts involving regular contact with children against both the departmental lists and not to employ them if they are listed—although only if they are listed on certain grounds, in the case of List 99.

The Bill will amend part V of the Police Act 1997 to allow the Criminal Records Bureau to act as a central access point to criminal records information, List 99 and the new Department of Health list for those who need information on people applying to work with children.

The provisions that I have outlined form the foundations of what, in time, will become a one-stop shop. The proposals are the result of extensive consultation by the interdepartmental working group on preventing unsuitable people from working with children and abuse of trust. Its report was placed in the parliamentary Libraries on 25 January. Some 39 parties are recorded as having taken part in the consultation process. It is reasonable to conclude from the report that there was a thorough airing of the issues involved.

The Bill should be viewed as part of the process of seeking means to protect the most vulnerable in our society. It does not complete the process, nor does it deal with abusers operating outside the child care or teaching sectors. However, it is an indispensable step towards a more complete system.

Several hon. Members have approached me with concerns about vulnerable adults, particularly elderly people. The case studies that they have cited are horrific. I greatly regret that abused elderly people are outside the scope of my Bill. However, I understand that the working group is moving on to investigate how the procedures outlined in the Bill might best be extended to vulnerable adults. I welcome those urgently needed endeavours.

However, in clause 10 I have been able to include powers to extend the benefit of the Bill's provisions to adults suffering from mental impairment—those adults whose vulnerability arguably puts them closest to the position of children. The measure is welcomed by the charity Mencap, which has also brought to my attention the case of a child care worker who had abused a youngster and who was subject to disciplinary procedures that resulted in him being transferred to work in a residential care centre for children with learning disabilities, where the abuse continued. The Bill will close the loophole that allows known abusers to move on, free to abuse again.

The Mencap example is not isolated. Recent newspaper headlines provide all too many examples: "Freed sex killer given a job with schoolgirls"; "Social workers linked to widespread abuse"; "Child sex probe to go back 40 years". Such headlines represent only the smallest tip of a terrible iceberg.

I do not need to tell hon. Members that it is our job as parliamentarians to do all that we can to protect the most innocent and vulnerable in our society. That is the aim of the Bill.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on her good fortune in pulling out No. 1 in the ballot. Many of us who have been here much longer than she has—there are many who have been here much longer than I have—have never even appeared in the top 20. She is very fortunate. I also congratulate her on the excellent way in which she has introduced her Bill, presenting the arguments cogently and without the extreme emotional language that such issues can engender. Such language is not constructive to the purpose of the Bill.

None of us would disagree with the need to protect our children. We have all seen newspaper headlines such as those to which the hon. Lady referred. Many of us have come across constituency examples. We must do all that we can to address this very important issue. I had the privilege to be the Minister responsible for the youth service in the previous Government. We did a lot of work on problems in this area, from which the concept for the Criminal Records Bureau came. I am a little surprised that the Government have not already brought the provisions into force. We could not do so, because the issue came up in the last week before the House was dissolved. [HON. MEMBERS: "You had 18 years."] Hon. Members know that the issue has got worse over those years. If they want to make party political points, they are welcome to do so, but it is pretty pointless. I am trying to be constructive, as the hon. Lady was. I congratulate her on her speech. However, I wonder why the measure has not already been brought in.

It is right to ensure that we cover as wide a spectrum of children as possible. The hon. Lady is wise to have included the provisions covering mentally ill adults and I congratulate her on that sensible addition. I have a few concerns which I shall raise in a few minutes, but I assure the hon. Lady that I support her Bill in principle, although I hope that there might be one or two improvements.

I am not a great believer in rights generally. We spend too much time on rights and too little on responsibilities. However, we must bear in mind the right of parents to expect that a registered child minder or a statutory body to whom they entrust the responsibility of looking after their children has been properly vetted. The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that the measure will not stop all child abuse problems. Much child abuse takes place in the home. Parents who take on a nanny are not obliged to seek information about that individual.

We must find the right balance. Often in debates in the House, we try to put right wrongs and protect members of society, but we sometimes fail to keep a sense of proportion. I do not question the need for the Bill, but it might give the impression that there are millions of people out there preying on children when we all know that to be wholly false. Yes, there is a group of people who are almost beyond comment because of their desire to abuse children sexually and physically, but the vast majority of people—like, I trust, all hon. Members present—are sensible and reasonable, and concerned to protect children. We must not give a different impression.

I have immense respect for the work of the voluntary sector in caring for young people. It has a huge range of experience. The hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to Mencap; I have an excellent Mencap home in my constituency. I am anxious to ensure that the voluntary sector does not get into difficulties through the Bill.

Another aspect is the need to legislate on the back of the Utting report, which was set up by the previous Government and rightly continued by this Government. That report catalogued a range of abuses of trust and identified the need for an appropriate vetting system. I was surprised when I researched the issue to discover the Home Office study of 1997 which found that one in 60 males from a sample of those born in 1953 had a conviction for a sexual offence. I do not question that research, but I was astonished that the figure was so high. If that study was valid, it underlines the need for the Bill.

The study concentrated on men, but—as I hope the hon. Ladies present on the Government Benches will agree—the problem is not restricted to men. Women, too, can be involved in child abuse, both violent and sexual abuse, and it would be unfortunate if the debate focused entirely on men.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. It is important that the Bill is not seen as an anti-man Bill. Everything in the Bill refers to both men and women, and the hon. Gentleman is right to say that women abuse too.

I was not suggesting that the Bill and the hon. Lady's speech did not apply to everybody, but wider comments about the issue seem to imply that it is a male-only problem.

I ask the hon. Gentleman to do the arithmetic. On his figures, one in 60 is almost 500,000 of the male population. The problem is serious, but the hon. Gentleman dismissed the numbers earlier in his speech. I find that 500,000 a frightening figure.

I was not dismissing the figures. If that study is right, the figure is 500,000. I may be at fault for not going into great detail about how statistically valid that study was and whether it would be replicated if other age groups were examined. I do not know, but if the study is right, the problem is significant. However, that does not mean that all those 500,000, to use the figure that the hon. Gentleman derived, are out there being predatory. Many of them may be able to keep their problems under control, especially if they have already been convicted of an offence. Some people are rehabilitated by our systems.

Some confusion is caused by the present system of registers and they should be amalgamated. The Bill would not achieve that directly, but, as the hon. Member for Stourbridge suggested, it sets out a move to a one-stop shop arrangement. That is right, because too many agencies are involved and too many different criteria for inclusion on the lists are used. Policies also differ on access to the lists. It is time to put the consultancy index on the same statutory footing as the national computer database and List 99, so that we move towards a one-stop, centralised register.

I said earlier that I was concerned about the voluntary sector and that includes the issue of costs. I know that the cost of accessing the register will not be huge, but, for the voluntary sector, even a few pounds can be painful. I hope that the cost can be kept down. I assume that the hon. Member for Stourbridge will reply to the debate, and I hope that she will be able to shed some light on the link between the voluntary sector and the statutory sector. So much of the voluntary sector is grant-aided by the statutory sector, especially local education authorities, and I am not clear whether the obligation to make checks will automatically accompany grant-aiding. Will the grant-aiding body be able to impose that obligation on the voluntary sector?

I also wish to ensure that sufficient safeguards are put in place. I pay tribute to the work that the hon. Member for Stourbridge has done to try to meet the civil rights concerns that she described, but the process through which someone is included on the list is still administrative and not judicial. Although a tribunal will be set up, I find it surprising that the tribunal will not make the decision on whether someone should be included on the list, but instead it will be made by the Secretary of State or his nominees.

The threshold for initial inclusion on the list is quite low. That is not necessarily wrong, but it makes it harder to ensure that the list is operated fairly. Organisations that are obliged to report an incident involving an individual will still have to judge whether to report it and decide on the seriousness of the offence. I am referring not to offences that lead to prosecution, because they are covered in the Bill, but to activities described in clause 5(2) of the Bill.

I understand that there is no requirement that any dismissal should be lawful, and that must be addressed. Human nature being what it is, we must also be careful that no opportunity exists for malicious nominations of individuals to the list. We must be frank about the realities of life and accept that, for whatever reason, malicious accusations are made that do not have a basis in fact. Safeguards must be put in place against employers or anybody else who seeks to smear the reputation of an individual. How many people would have to endorse the submission of a name before that person was included on the list? What procedure would be followed by a firm, youth service or child-minding agency to submit the information and how would that submission be validated?

My hon. Friend served his penance with me in the Department for Education and Employment for some time, so he will know that a genuine problem in the education world is that pupils often make serious allegations against teachers. Those allegations may be unfounded, but sometimes they ruin careers and lives. Does my hon. Friend share my worry about the Bill—and I hope that the problem will be clarified later—that the provision for placing a person on a provisional list does not include access to a tribunal? There is, therefore, the possibility that someone will linger on the provisional list for some time, possibly on the basis of an unfounded allegation. Does that not reinforce the point that my hon. Friend is making?

My right hon. Friend is right on both counts. As I said a moment ago, we have to accept that life out there is not as good as we might wish. Some people want to be malicious, for whatever reason: their potential victims must be protected.

I should also be interested to hear what the hon. Member for Stourbridge has to say about paragraphs (c) and (d) of clause 5(2), which deal with the grounds on which people are to be considered unfit for employment. [Interruption.] Excuse me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but my pager is going off, as did the hon. Lady's during her opening remarks. I was impressed with the nonchalant way in which she silenced it and was not thrown off her speech.

I am worried about how wide the definition of who is fit and proper goes. Should not the Bill include some criteria about the seriousness of the alleged offence? Also, what about people who were themselves abused as children? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that such people are more likely—although not necessarily through their own fault—to become abusers when they grow up. I hope that the Bill will not mean that people, because they have been abused, will be regarded as not fit and proper to work with children: indeed, some people who have been abused learn from that awful experience and go on to become extremely valuable members of society. However, the problem needs to be tackled.

In addition, the onus is on people who believe that they have been included in the list wrongly to ensure that their names are removed. The Bill needs to place a greater obligation on the Secretary of State, or whoever will operate the list, properly to investigate complaints by people who believe that they have been wrongly included in the list. The hon. Member for Stourbridge will no doubt point out that the Bill provides that anyone included in the list will be informed and will have the right to inquire about why they have been included. Nevertheless, the onus appears to me to be in the wrong place, with the result that the Bill smacks a little of suggesting that a person is guilty until proven innocent. That is not a feature that I would welcome in our legal system.

There is also the worry that legal aid would not be given in such cases. Would not people without good financial resources suffer from the burden of trying to ensure that their names were removed from the list?

My hon. Friend has relieved me of the need to read the next paragraph of my speech, which deals with that very point. I am worried that many people who believe that they have been wrongly nominated will not have sufficient resources to fight to clear their names.

It is fashionable sometimes to use phrase "big brother", and I do not want to use it in the context of the Bill, but we have to strike the balance between protecting our children and enshrining in statute a level of authoritarianism that is unacceptable in a free society. We do not want to create a poisoned chalice: people who would otherwise be prepared to commit their lives to looking after children must not be deterred from doing so by a fear that their backgrounds may be subject to intense investigation and inquiry.

The Bill will not cover nannies and child minders employed by private individuals. However, will there be an obligation on registered child care agencies to carry out checks? That is especially important, as such agencies often bring in nannies and child minders from abroad. Will we find that it is much less safe to employ foreign people in that role than people who are registered in Britain? Hiring foreign workers is well known to foster good international understanding, and our young people also enjoy the benefits of working in foreign countries.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again, and I hope that the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) will return to that point when she replies to the debate. The House needs the maximum reassurance that the levels of quality and reliability of people hired from overseas are as high as we would expect in people from this country, because there is a danger of a lacuna appearing in the Bill if they are not. Our other option would be to say that people from abroad would not be allowed to work here if the information about their backgrounds was not reliable. Is that not a genuine dilemma which must be resolved if the measures in the Bill are to be secure and properly implemented? I suspect that my hon. Friend is aware of that problem, and I hope that the hon. Lady will deal with it later.

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. A person who employs a child minder from a registered agency may not realise that other countries have different vetting systems. It would be invidious to name another country, but a parent employing a person from, say, Scandinavia, may not realise that that person could be less well vetted than an English person.

I appreciate the value of the Bill. When it becomes law, agencies recruiting staff to positions of control, responsibility and care with regard to children will have to make the checks that the hon. Member for Stourbridge has set out. By simplifying and improving the system, the Bill will lessen the possibility that children will be abused.

I have set out where I believe that the Bill needs more work with regard to the civil liberties of people who may be wrongly accused, and I have described the safeguards that need to be put in place. I also spoke about the problem of the voluntary sector's links with statutory bodies not being covered by the Bill. However, I am sure that the hon. Member for Stourbridge will return to that, and the matters that I have raised can be discussed in Committee.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge on winning the ballot, and on her wisdom in choosing this subject, which is more complicated than those normally covered by private Members' Bills. I hope that there will be unanimous agreement that it should proceed.

Ever since I came to the House 12 years ago, I have battled to improve the lot of children. It has been a hard battle. So concerned was I in 1995 at the slow progress being made that, as shadow spokesperson for children, I, along with the late and sadly missed Joan Lestor—then Member for Eccles—and my right hon. Friend the current Home Secretary, wrote a letter to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who was then Home Secretary.

We asked, among other things, for the establishment of a nationwide database of known or suspected sexual offenders and a tightening up of the vetting procedures for those who worked with children. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's written response was positive, but his action was not vigorous. We have had to wait until today for this welcome Bill, promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley), to narrow a glaring and obvious gap in child protection legislation.

It is good at last to have a Government who contain so many members committed to improving the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society—children. As a trustee of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, I have even heard the complaint that so many excellent initiatives, guidelines and legislation are coming from the Government that the society is finding it hard to keep up with the pace.

Interdepartmental working groups have been making progress, and we have seen the continuing work of the social exclusion unit, sure start and the national child care strategy. There has been work on tackling drug abuse, and the positive response to the Utting report has included the proposal for important and long-fought-for children's rights officers. There has also been the long-awaited implementation of the remaining recommendations of the Piggot report on child witnesses. The quality protection initiative sets standards for looking after children. There is real progress at last.

Even when I wrote to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe in 1995, it was obvious that there was, despite the best efforts of the National Criminal Intelligence Service, an urgent need for a coherent cross-sector system to identify people unsuitable to work with our children. As the Bill makes clear, a number of departmental lists contain the names of people who should never work with children; lists are also held by the police and, more recently, there is the national sex offenders register.

I feared that those with a tendency to abuse children would be able to slip through the net simply because information held on one list was not available in another place. I also worried that voluntary organisations would be unable to ensure that volunteers had a clean bill of health. The system was quite unable to cope with the skill that child abusers develop in hiding their evil intentions, and we all know of many cases of that happening. We have seen enough evidence to know that abusers who have been caught have often had access to children through several previous jobs or voluntary positions.

We also know how hard it is to convict child abusers. The Crown Prosecution Service and the police often have to make hard judgments about whether the pain of going through the present court system is in the best interest of the child concerned, or whether the evidence of a child will be enough to convict. I am sure that the Government share my concerns about the fall in the number of successful prosecutions, and that they will keep a close watch on the number of failed and successful prosecutions. There are certainly further lessons to be learned in that area.

It was obvious to me then, and it remains so now, that to hold separate lists in different departments with no way of cross-referencing them would always put children at risk. I welcome the concept of a one-stop shop, making it clear to all the organisations that work to help children how they can help to protect those in their care.

I welcome the proposed tribunal to ensure fairness. There are dangers in having lists that include the names of people who have not had allegations against them tested in court. Many hon. Members will know of cases in which allegations have been made out of spite and vindictiveness. It is only right that there should be a right of appeal against inclusion on the list.

Some people will say that the Bill goes too far, and others that it does not go far enough. In my opinion, my hon. Friend has struck the right balance. I congratulate her on coming top in the ballot, but, even more, I offer my warm congratulations on her determination to put children first.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on achieving first place in the private Members' ballot. I know of her genuine concern for children's welfare and her desire to increase their protection. The Bill proves her acceptance that much can be done to increase the safety of children. Much can be done, but nothing can be done to ensure 100 per cent. safety for all children in every circumstance, or 100 per cent. peace of mind for every parent. Sadly, life can never be risk free.

In November 1997, I secured an Adjournment debate in which I called for a register of nannies and child care workers. The register would have listed all the people who work with children, their qualifications and their employment records. It could have been checked by employers, both corporate and individual. It would have helped them to make judgments about the people whom they were considering employing to look after their children. The Government have so far resisted setting up such a register, for a number of reasons. Instead, they have put forward other proposals, of which the Bill is one. With their backing, it will certainly fill some of the gaps.

The Bill has my backing, too. We have heard many positive reasons why it should be supported. It puts the consultancy index on a statutory basis, and it means that there will in future be a single access point for checking the names of people involved in the care of children. Employers will have to refer the names of relevant people to the list, and they will have to check the list before they employ someone.

However, the ability—if not necessarily the statutory duty—to check the list must be extended to every employer, perhaps on the payment of a fee. If that is not allowed, people on the list may see that their best hope of going undetected—we must remember that child abusers can be very devious and will seek other routes by which to carry out their actions—is to work for a private individual as, for example, a nanny. Private employers will have no access to the list, and abusers might thus yet again slip through the safety net which should exist for every child in every situation.

Everyone whose name goes on the list will have to be informed of that inclusion, and the Bill, for the first time, brings a welcome right of appeal. Everyone in the House will be appalled at reports of mental, physical or sexual abuse of children. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Stourbridge resisted the temptation to give us an horrific catalogue of events, but abuse is the ultimate destruction of childhood innocence. It is an abuse of trust for any adult to behave in such a way to a child in his or her care.

The hon. Lady is right to want to identify people who are unsuitable to work with children, and to prevent them from getting further access to children through their work. Both as a parliamentarian and as a mother, I want the House to do everything in its power to ensure the safety of children. However, the Bill will not address every instance of child abuse, especially institutionalised abuse.

The inspection of private boarding schools is currently split between social services, the Office for Standards in Education and the Department for Education and Employment. That tripartite arrangement means that a culture of low-level abuse or lack of care is often not sufficiently focused on. Each organisation takes only a partial view of the situation: Ofsted looks only at the quality of education in a boarding school, and it may not look at inappropriate relationships between adults and children; and, the DFEE says that it has no role or resources to investigate allegations in the schools.

I have written to Ministers about allegations of events in a school just beyond my constituency boundaries. Ultimately, it decided to close of its own accord. If it had not done so, it is difficult to see how the three bodies concerned could have engineered a closure. Certainly, that had not happened throughout the long period during which the allegations had been made.

Children are especially vulnerable when they are living away from home. Therefore, it is vital that we ensure that the inspection system within any child care setting is robust, comprehensive and co-ordinated. The Bill focuses on the individual abuser, but we must also focus on the institutions within which children are cared for because institutional abuse shows adults at their most damaging and dangerous.

The hon. Lady makes an important point, but I hope that she is aware that we have already outlined in the White Paper on modernising social services proposals for improving the quality, depth and range of inspections in children's services.

I am aware that there are proposals and I hope that it will not be too long before they are enshrined in legislation so that the system can be better co-ordinated than hitherto.

One part of the Bill worries me. The Secretary of State can decide that someone should be on the list, if he is of the opinion that the referring organisation reasonably considered the individual to be guilty of misconduct or incompetence and, therefore, to be unsuitable to work with children.

In the House, we often have to balance the rights of individuals and to come down on one side—it is not always obvious which side, and there will be differences of opinion between us. Looked at simply, it could be interpreted that the rights of the child to protection are more important than the rights of the adult to work in an employment setting of his or her choice. If we followed that argument to its logical conclusion, we would bar men from child care roles altogether as most, but not all, abuse is perpetrated by men. That would be taking the precautionary principle too far, as we all would agree.

If the list is to have credibility, we must ensure that the people on it are there because they really are a danger to children and have not merely fallen out with their previous employer or been the subject of malicious allegations. As has been said, we all know examples of teachers who have been wrongly accused of an assault by a teenager and whose career has ended as a result. If the Bill is enacted unamended, the danger is that men may not go into jobs in teaching or child care. Some men who are suitable for such work will feel that it is not worth the risk, and there is already a serious shortage of male role models in primary schools and residential child care.

I must make it clear that the Bill does not sexually discriminate between men and women. Women are abusers too. If we investigate in some depth, we may even find that a significant number of women abusers are not yet known. It is much harder to accuse a woman of being an abuser. There are a significant number of male abusers, but men should not be put off work with children by the measures in the Bill any more than women should be. Those measures apply equally to both genders.

I accept that the Bill is not designed to discriminate between genders. I was not trying to imply that it was. However, I think that we would all accept that, statistically, men make up the greater percentage of people who have been cautioned or convicted for child abuse. I also accept that those statistics may hide many cases of women who are never brought to court or of allegations that have not been followed through for various reasons, perhaps because it is culturally easier to accuse a man of abuse rather than a woman. That also means that it is easier falsely to accuse a man because the accusation is likely to be taken more seriously. The differences between me and the hon. Member for Stourbridge are not as great as they might appear.

If the Bill is enacted unamended, allegations may be made maliciously and may for ever destroy someone's career. That is a pretty big stick to hand to a disturbed or damaged teenager. The reasonable suspicion provision tips the balance too far against civil liberties and natural justice. I hope that we can look carefully at that part of the Bill in Committee.

I hope that the Bill goes to a Standing Committee because, in most ways, it is an improvement on the present situation. A number of issues cause concern, including the reasonable doubt provision and the maximum time allowable between someone's name appearing on the register and an appeal being held and decided on. I do not think that anyone would want someone who has been falsely accused to have to wait in limbo, unable to work in the setting of his or her choice while the process grinds on, so a maximum time limit must be written in.

I want individual employers outside the categories listed in the Bill to have access to the register. We must also consider the cost of checking the register, especially for volunteer organisations.

Such scrutiny is the purpose of the Standing Committee. I will certainly not oppose the Bill today because I support it in principle, as I hope that I have made clear. If I am fortunate to be a member of the Committee, I hope that we will be able to table constructive amendments to deal with some of the issues that I raised to enable a sensible debate to take place and to enable us to enact a Bill that will make life safer for many more children in years to come.

Before I sit down, I must apologise to the Minister and the hon. Member for Stourbridge as I have an unavoidable appointment after 12.30 pm and, if the debate carries on until lunchtime, I may not be here for the replies.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to support and speak to the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley). The Bill will not merely protect children and all who are vulnerable, but deal with many older people who feel that they have the right to abuse in private others who do not have the ability to protect themselves. Therefore, the Bill is profoundly valuable.

We and our society have been shocked too many times by revelations of day-to-day occurrences. No doubt, they have occurred in a minority of places, but those revelations have been heartbreaking and, invariably, repairing the damage has been almost impossible. The establishments concerned have been public—schools and care facilities—and there has been clear abuse of the privileged position of care.

Helping to develop a stable and caring home life and environment—whether in schools or public places of enjoyment, such as the scouts or the girl guides—is something that we all, as parents and people who believe that we are principled, want to do. That ensures the best start in life for all children and young people. That is obvious. We say the obvious so regularly, and achieving such a stable environment should be an obvious fact of life. However, for so many, that is not the case. Such a start in life provides the best way to achieve a well-balanced and well-adjusted society. However, we must protect the young and vulnerable from prejudicial acts or behaviour not merely because it helps us to achieve a stable society, but because that is their right.

Unlike the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), I see the Bill as clearly and determinedly establishing a right to be treated with dignity and with respect. It is valuable to have a right without question to be able to turn away and object to unwanted advances, which could well be abuse, and to have at all times and in all circumstances protection against all those who would threaten those rights. I see the Bill differently from the hon. Gentleman because I see it as implicitly and explicitly defining a right.

I hope that the hon. Lady will do me the courtesy of reading what I said. She will find that I did not say that I did not see the Bill as being about rights. I made the general point that we spend too much time thinking about rights, rather than responsibilities. I recognise that the Bill is about rights, both those that she described and those that I described—the rights of parents to expect their children to be cared for by responsible people.

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I misunderstood him; I will read his words.

I want a clearly stated law that will deter actions that have the potential to be prejudicial or damaging. It is not a question of appropriateness but one of establishing a right that without question should be afforded to all people, particularly children and the vulnerable, who are away from the public gaze in the private worlds of education, caring or police custody. The Bill is such a law in the making. For me, it is long overdue.

Laws that embody the protection of human rights are the cornerstone of a good society. Their very acceptance, existence and operation underpin individuals and their freedom to act. Rights inevitably define responsibilities. Rights, with their accompanying responsibilities, can control the acts of all people at all times and, I hope, outline, define and control consequences. The Bill is about establishing the relationship between rights and responsibility, an easily operated means of control and the facility to enable people to grow up, develop and participate in every situation without interference from others with known abuser records.

In my previous life, I worked in care as a house mother. From that experience, I want to describe for two minutes how rights can easily disappear. I happened to work in an excellent home with staff of the highest quality. However, the very need for the existence of that care establishment was heartbreaking. The children, aged from five to 16, obviously felt discarded and excluded by the good society. It was appalling to feel that sensation when we were trying to build up their hopes and expectations of life. It was a difficult task.

During the week, in a stable, warm environment, we survived most experiences. On Saturday and Sunday, I longed for Monday to come. Whether five or 16, the children sat at the window looking at the drive, hoping that a mum, dad, friend or someone who cared about them would walk up. That was a daunting experience, especially when, as often happened, no one appeared and the child would make excuses and say, "They are busy." Seeing such young people so vulnerable and out of all the good life has produced in me a belief that we must—and I believe that we can, with the Bill—make such situations as caring, supportive and without abuse as we can. We should have taken that responsibility a long time ago.

I was only a young woman when I was asked to work at another home because someone was away on pregnancy leave. I had had the experience of a good supportive staff. I was suddenly in a home where the staff were not supportive; frankly, they were scuppering. If the first experience was daunting, the second was unacceptable. The control mechanisms were few and far between. The children were told regularly that they were naughty and a problem, that they were not people whom someone could love. That was not abuse in the sense of sexual abuse or of being slapped, but traumatising emotional abuse. Putting a six-year-old who was out of his or her family life in a dormitory where he was the only one in a room with 12 beds, and then hearing of the abuse of other staff and the absence of the care that my previous experience made me feel was normal and natural, was very distressing.

I realise that the Bill in no way protects children from uncaring people; it is to protect children from known abusers. We must all understand that known abusers are a crucially group to control. Homes for children and vulnerable people must have control and protection mechanisms so that those in their care have a chance of coming out into society as well balanced as they can, given that they have often come from broken homes or homes to which death has ensured that they cannot return.

I am pleased—more than pleased, privileged—to support the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge. It seeks to ensure that all agencies—all statutory agencies; I wish it were all agencies, including voluntary ones—work together. A list—a one-stop shop—that can be effortlessly retrieved to give clear, precise guidance about employment will be operable shortly. That is an incredibly important first move towards ensuring that we afford the young and vulnerable in our society the protection that they deserve. It is the first move towards ensuring that they have rights that they can lean on against any abuse or potential abuse of which they are or could be victims, and that we can begin to prevent such abuse.

On behalf of the Opposition, I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on securing her position in the ballot and on her choice of Bill. I repeat that the Conservatives will support any reasonable, sensible measures that seek to address the abuse of children and other vulnerable people. No one in the House would dissent from the view that the protection of the vulnerable, especially children, is one of the paramount duties of Parliament. However, we have an obligation to uphold the principles of natural justice, and to ensure that adequate safeguards are provided, so that any infringement of liberty that is necessary to ensure the protection of the vulnerable is the minimum necessary to ensure that protection, and that proper mechanisms are in place to review any such infringements to ensure that injustice does not occur.

The hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) questioned whether the legislation, based as it is on maintaining the balance of probability standard of proof, was the correct way forward. I have asked myself the same question, but concluded that it is necessary—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

Of course.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman accepts that the balance of probability is the correct balance, according to the Utting report, which, as I am sure he knows, provides a full and comprehensive review of the needs of vulnerable children. After that lengthy review, the report recommends the balance of probability as the basis for judgment, and the Bill follows that recommendation.

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but, if she had waited another microsecond, she would have heard me say that, after careful consideration, I have concluded that to ensure the proper protection of vulnerable young people it is necessary to stick with the civil standard of proof, rather than move to a tougher standard.

When introducing her Bill, the hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to the need to get right the balance between protection of the vulnerable and the natural justice imperative to ensure that those who are accused have a chance to answer their accusers. She is absolutely right: if the legislation is to be durable and to command public support, it must achieve that balance.

By introducing a statutory ban on employment in respect of those on the Department of Health list, the Bill brings that list into line with the existing arrangements for the list maintained by the Department for Education and Employment. It also addresses concerns which have been voiced about the lack of appeal rights in respect of both lists. In those respects, the Bill represents a positive step forward. As the Minister reminded us, the Government have already announced that they intend to introduce measures to ensure tighter controls over those working with all vulnerable people. The Bill does so only in respect of those who work with children, and I share the hon. Lady's expressed view that it is a shame that it is so narrow.

I read Ceefax this morning while I was preparing my speech. I was intrigued to see that the lead story stated:

"Government plans to extend paedophile curbs",

and that it made no mention of the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley). Perhaps the BBC got it wrong and had not been briefed that the Bill was not a Government Bill, but we must take care to ensure that the issue does not become too political.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I approach the matter in a spirit of co-operation across the House and I sincerely hope that that Ceefax announcement is a result of a misunderstanding by the BBC, not of an attempt by Government spin doctors to claim credit for a private Member's Bill.

It is a small point, but the BBC got it wrong a couple of times yesterday: at one point, I was billed as the Health Minister.

The hon. Lady can live in hope, and I am sure that her performance this morning will have done nothing to diminish her prospects.

It is a shame that the long title of the Bill clearly constrains its scope, but, in a constructive spirit, I wonder whether the hon. Lady has considered the possibility of extending clause 10 so that the definition of mental impairment includes at least a significant number of vulnerable elderly people, for example, those suffering with Alzheimer's disease. I suggest that we explore that possibility in Committee: perhaps, by broadening that definition, we can ensure that, in practice, large numbers of vulnerable elderly people can be covered by the legislation without going outside the scope of the long title.

In view of the Government's announced intention to introduce tighter controls of their own, we have to ask the Government how they envisage the Bill interfacing with their programme. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether the Government, who back the Bill, regard it as complementary to their agenda, or as an interim measure which will be overtaken by, or subsumed within, the Government's more comprehensive proposals for registering and vetting all those who are employed in the social care sector.

Will the Minister also explain the Government's thinking in supporting the Bill? My remarks are not intended as a criticism of the Bill, but I note that the interdepartmental working group on preventing unsuitable people from working with children recommended that there should be no compulsion, either on employers to report dismissals or on potential employers to run checks on potential employees. The explanatory notes prepared by the Department of Health refer to that interdepartmental working group, but not to the fact that the group's recommendation was that there should be a non-compulsory system. Similarly, the regulatory impact assessment prepared by the same Department states:

"Extension of a 'voluntary' scheme would be likely to increase costs to Government without delivering significant benefits in terms of increased protection for children; it would not, therefore, represent value for money."

I do not necessarily disagree with that conclusion, but it contrasts sharply with the conclusions of the Government's own interdepartmental working group, so it may be useful and illuminating for the House to be told by what process the Government arrived at the decision to support the Bill in its entirety and so to abandon the conclusions of the interdepartmental working group.

I have several questions to ask and concerns to express, but I hope that the hon. Member for Stourbridge will accept them as constructive comments and criticism and regard them as issues on which we shall work together in Committee in an attempt to improve the Bill. They are in no way meant as criticism of or objections to the principles underlying the Bill, which I certainly support. However, I am concerned about the inclusion in clause 2(2)(a) of the reference to "incompetence". In her opening speech, the hon. Lady referred to paedophiles and abusers, and the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) said—wrongly, I am afraid—that the Bill addresses only known abusers; unfortunately, the inclusion of the reference to "incompetence" means that the scope of the Bill is far wider than that.

There is no doubt in my mind that those who through their incompetence put children at risk of harm need to be dealt with effectively. However, someone who is merely incompetent is in a quite different category from someone who has actively or aggressively physically or sexually abused a child. When we take into account the relatively low standard of proof required before a person can be included on the list, the breadth of the concept of incompetence is such that for people to be included on a list with paedophiles and abusers merely for being incompetent might be considered to be the basis of considerable potential injustice.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's constructive approach to what he sees as the problems with my Bill; I am sure that that is the right way to produce the best possible Bill to protect children. However, I should like to clarify the specific point which he raises. He refers to that part of clause 2(2)(a) that states:

"that the organisation has dismissed the individual on the grounds of misconduct or incompetence",

but the paragraph continues:

"(whether or not in the course of his employment)" —

that should read "his or her", but apparently I am not allowed to do that—

"which harmed a child or placed a child at risk of harm".

The reference to "incompetence" is not to any old incompetence, but is specifically targeted on cases where there is harm or risk of harm to a child.

I hear what the hon. Lady is saying. I have already said that I recognise the case for action against someone who puts a child at risk through incompetence. Let us take the example of someone who fails to supervise a child adequately when taking him or her for a walk and the child runs on to a road. Such a person must clearly be dealt with and is obviously not suitable to look after children. However, I question whether it is reasonable to include that person's name on a list with the names of known paedophiles and sex offenders.

The public will view this list as a list of paedophiles and child abusers. The hon. Member for Stockton, South shakes her head, but she said that the Bill deals with known abusers of children only. That will be the widespread perception. We must examine this matter later to see whether there is some way of distinguishing between names on the list. Perhaps sub-lists could be created.

I fully understand where you are coming from and I agree with you. We must work on it.

Order. The hon. Lady must not agree with me about these matters. Although I do not wish to constrain debate in any way, we are in danger of straying on to points that might be raised in Committee. An awful lot of hon. Members wish to contribute to this Second Reading debate, so I hope that we can move on.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene—it may mean that I do not need to speak later.

Hear, hear.

It may.

My hon. Friend drew attention to an issue that has concerned me: we shall need to consider the "momentary inattention" point. It also strikes me that a strict reading of the paragraph could give rise to the inclusion on the list of the name of a social worker, for example, who could be perceived to have caused harm to a child by failing to protect it. That individual could be caught by the provision and included on the list. We will have to examine that point in detail to ensure that the Bill does not move in a completely different direction from that obviously intended.

I thank my right hon. Friend for that point. Mindful of your strictures, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall move on.

We have said that, although we support the principle of dealing with abusers and paedophiles, we must be careful about how far we extend the scope of the list. We shall no doubt discuss the issue at greater length in Committee.

If incompetence is to remain a ground for inclusion in the list—or, I suggest, in any case—the Secretary of State should have the power to remove someone from the list when evidence of a material change of circumstances is presented. That would mirror the provisions in place in relation to List 99. The Bill, as drafted, does not give the Secretary of State that power. He is able to remove someone from the list only when he becomes aware subsequently that that person's original inclusion was wrong. That is a completely different circumstance. I am talking about a person who was correctly included on the list but who, 20 or 30 years later, should be removed from it because the Secretary of State has deemed that that person is no longer a threat or a risk to children.

The Bill does not require informants to provide information to the Secretary of State. There is simply a requirement to give the names of persons within the defined category. It will be necessary to include a provision regarding the supply of information to the Secretary of State in order to allow him to make a decision. Perhaps we should also include in the Bill a power for the Secretary of State to refer a case to the tribunal for decision when he is unable to reach a clear-cut conclusion in light of the information available. Under the present structure, the Secretary of State will have to make a decision using the information available, which may not be fully adequate. The person whose name appears on the list will then have to appeal to the tribunal, and it is only at that stage that the tribunal will become involved in the process.

Is my hon. Friend entirely comfortable with the general approach of proceeding via administrative action through the Secretary of State and only then allowing appeal to the tribunal? My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) recommended that the initial approach should be via the tribunal rather than through administrative action.

I recognise my hon. Friend's concern, which has been voiced by various organisations. We already have an administrative procedure in relation to the list. The hon. Member for Stourbridge proposes introducing an appeal mechanism that does not exist at present. I believe that we are moving steadily in the right direction.

The Bill provides that certain employers "shall" inform the Secretary of State in certain circumstances and that other employers "may" inform the Secretary of State. Those in the compulsory category—those who shall inform the Secretary of State—are regulated voluntary and statutory bodies. I have no problem with that. However, I am concerned about those who are invited to inform voluntarily, as they will not all be bodies of uniform competence or probity. The Secretary of State will be placed in a position of having to put people's names on the list—at least provisionally—merely because they have been referred voluntarily by a body.

My premise is that the list will carry considerable stigma: merely having one's name placed on the list—albeit provisionally—will stigmatise the individual significantly. I wonder whether we shall need in due course to consider ways of tightening the definitions of those organisations that report voluntarily to the Secretary of State. Perhaps we should at least give the Secretary of State some discretion to examine the quality of the organisation making the complaint and the quality of the information provided.

My hon. Friends have referred to the problem of the provision of malicious information. Some of the organisations that report to the Secretary of State may be very small. Perhaps information will be provided in the context of a matrimonial dispute; regrettably, allegations of child abuse are not unknown in those circumstances.

The Bill does not refer to the issue of defamation. It may be appropriate for the legislation to state whether the Secretary of State or the informant will be subject to the usual laws of defamation in respect of information that is supplied. I wonder whether the Secretary of State could be vulnerable to defamation action in respect of his decision to include someone on the list. Does the hon. Lady intend that proceedings in relation to the list will be absolutely privileged? If that is the case, it will be helpful if she will explain that point later this morning. It will no doubt be reverted to in Standing Committee.

The Bill provides for the inclusion of a name on the list as soon as information is received. I understand that, during the period of provisional inclusion, a person will be banned from any employment within the specified categories. However, he will not have access to the appeal mechanism during that time. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) said earlier, if a person is to suffer that jeopardy during the period of provisional inclusion without any redress to the appeal mechanism, a time limit must be placed on the term of provisional inclusion so that the period of jeopardy does not extend indefinitely. It appears that clause 2(2)(d) would compel the Secretary of State to include on the list people who have been provisionally suspended from their employment rather than dismissed by their employer.

Madam Speaker, with permission, I should like to make a statement about the publication of the report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. I have been asked by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to apologise to the House for the fact that he cannot be here today. He agreed with the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) that I would make the statement on behalf of the Government. I understand that the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) will reply on behalf of the Opposition.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary presented the report to Parliament on Wednesday. It consists of two volumes: the report itself and a volume of supporting appendices.

As the House will be aware, we have held up further distribution of the second volume of the printed report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry containing the appendices and ordered a reprint without appendix 11. Appendix 11 in that volume contains detailed information, such as the addresses of those who provided information to the police, which has not previously been in the public domain and which should have been kept in confidence.

We were alerted to that at about 10.45 am yesterday morning by the inquiry staff. They had been contacted by the Metropolitan police, who were rightly concerned about the sensitivity of the details in appendix 11. We immediately stopped further distribution of the appendices volume.

I have spoken to Sir William Macpherson this morning. He has confirmed to me that the inquiry takes full responsibility for the error and has expressed his deep regret. He has asked me to express that regret to the House. The inquiry staff had intended to include in appendix 11 a version of the document with names and other details deleted, which was the version used in evidence before the inquiry. The text submitted to the Home Secretary contained in error the unexpurgated version of that document.

It was the Home Secretary's responsibility to present the report and its appendices to Parliament. It was also our responsibility to ensure that the report of the independent judicial inquiry was published in full in exactly the text submitted. It would not, therefore, have been right for Ministers or officials to have edited the report or its appendices. Nor would it have been right for the Home Office to have second-guessed the judgments of the inquiry as to whether identities of particular individuals should have been omitted, especially as in other parts of the text the inquiry judged that identities should be made anonymous or pseudonyms used. Only the inquiry was in a position to make those judgments. It had the benefit of over a year's consideration of the evidence in order to do so. The Home Secretary deeply regrets that the error has happened.

The Metropolitan police have assessed urgently whether the publication of any of that information will pose any risk to the safety of individuals or to the further investigation of the murder. Their assessment is that a number of individuals may be put at risk by the disclosure of personal details. They have put in place appropriate protection measures.

The House will appreciate that I cannot disclose details of those measures, but we have been assured by the Metropolitan police that every possible measure is in place to protect the individuals concerned. The Home Office stands ready to offer any assistance that the police or the local authority believe necessary.

I take this opportunity to condemn the mindless vandalism that defaced the memorial stone to Stephen Lawrence on Wednesday night. I extend my deepest sympathies to the Lawrence family at this very difficult time. The Metropolitan police have confirmed to me that the memorial is now under constant surveillance.

The Home Secretary has said that this was a serious and regrettable error. It should not have happened. We should not lose sight, however, of the wider issues addressed by the inquiry report, which my right hon. Friend set out to the House on Wednesday. We shall not allow the error to sidetrack us in our determination to carry forward the recommendations of the report.

That is simply not good enough. This has been an appalling week for the Home Office. First, the most important report affecting race relations in Britain for two decades was leaked, accompanied by widespread rumours that Home Office Ministers and officials had been selectively briefing members of the press. Then, we had the farce of the botched injunction, followed by the Home Secretary's humiliation at the hands of a judge. We then witnessed prolonged dithering about whether there would be an inquiry into the leak. Will the Minister of State take the opportunity to confirm that he had nothing to do with any leaking or off-the-record briefings on the report?

We now have the grotesque spectacle of the Home Secretary having to take back part of the report because incompetence has imperilled the lives of people brave enough to support the local police inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. What a catalogue of errors: first, the report is leaked, then there is an injunction and now part of the report has been withdrawn. The Home Secretary and the Minister of State cannot abrogate responsibility for jeopardising the safety of informants and witnesses named in the Macpherson report.

We accept Sir William's apology and the gracious way in which he accepted that the initial mistake was his. However, the Home Secretary told the House on Monday that he received Sir William's report on the previous Monday—15 February. There was more than ample time for the report to have been studied by Ministers and officials before publication and for them to have spotted the obvious mistakes in volume II. Yet we are told that the Metropolitan police discovered the blunders within a day of receiving the report. We understand that Sir Paul Condon was allowed to visit the Home Office to read the report, but it is clear that, if the Metropolitan police had been extended the greater courtesy of sufficient time to study both volumes properly, that grave error could have been avoided.

Ministers cannot say that they did not have sufficient time to spot the mistake for themselves. Had the Home Secretary and the Minister of State paid more attention to what was in the report, rather than trying to reverse the damage of a deliberate leak from within the Home Office and seeking to prevent the press from writing about it, the sorry incident might never have happened.

Last Thursday, only eight days ago, the Home Secretary called for an end to the walk-on-by society and asked the public to play their part in fighting crime. Yet today, he, his fellow Ministers and his Department stand accused of putting in peril people who did just that. Has the Minister given any consideration to the damage that will have been done to public support for helping the police to deal not only with petty crime but with serious criminality and violence?

The witnesses and informants who came forward to help the police in the Lawrence inquiry have been placed in grave danger. We shall not publicly pursue details of the security arrangements put in place by the police beyond what the Minister has already said. We have absolutely no wish to jeopardise further the safety of vulnerable witnesses and informants who are now at risk as a result of such incompetence. However, we seek an absolute assurance that everything that needs to be done will be done and that the local Metropolitan police division will have all the resources that it needs to satisfy the concerns of those who are afraid for their safety. I am sure that the Metropolitan police authority and the Home Secretary, supported by the Minister of State, will recognise their responsibilities to ensure that adequate resources are provided.

Will the Minister give an unequivocal undertaking that such protection will remain in place for as long as is necessary? Has he given any thought to the possibility that some witnesses may seek help to move home as a consequence of their identity being revealed? Will any request for help and support be granted? Has any thought been given to how potential claims for compensation will be met, or will the Home Office force individuals who have already been wronged to resort to the courts to sue for any damages to which they might be entitled?

We wholeheartedly endorse what the Minister said about the despicable way in which Stephen Lawrence's memorial was desecrated again yesterday. I am sure that the revulsion that we all feel at such callous disregard for the sensitivity of the Lawrence family and their friends will strengthen our resolve to improve race relations and put right the wrongs of the past. We agree with the Minister about that, but will he say why the active closed circuit television camera at the memorial had been removed and replaced with a dummy one? What does that say about local police resources? Was no thought given to the prospect that racist thugs, some of whom may have been associated with those responsible for Stephen's death, might seek to vandalise the memorial to coincide with the publication of the report?

I do not for a moment doubt the sincerity of the Home Secretary in setting up the Macpherson inquiry or the way in which he has responded to its recommendations. We have supported him in both. The Prime Minister, who told the nation on Wednesday night that he had read the report, also spoke of his determination to root out racism in our society.

When the Home Secretary, on behalf of the Government, presented the report to the House less than 48 hours ago, he took justified pride—and I mean that—in what had been done and said that the report was a testament to

"the courage and determination of Neville and Doreen Lawrence… and upon the report we must build a lasting testament to Stephen."— [Official Report, 24 February 1999; Vol. 326, c. 393.]

We share that view. However, such a personal endorsement of the inquiry and its findings surely owed a responsibility to ensure that the matter was handled with the utmost care. The Government have failed in that task.

I shall not respond to the hon. Gentleman's personal attacks, save to say that they are utterly without foundation, and he knows it. On the point of substance, I spoke to Sir William Macpherson this morning and he confirmed that it would not have been possible for anyone who had not been closely involved with the inquiry and had detailed knowledge of its procedures to know that appendix 11 contained any information that was not already, or should not have been, in the public domain. Therefore, it would not have been possible for anyone not involved in the inquiry on a day-to-day basis to know that the release of that material would have serious consequences. That was Sir William's assurance to me. I take it at face value and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will do the same.

On the wider issue, which of course concerns the whole House. I have the utmost confidence in the determination of the Metropolitan police to ensure that all those at risk or potentially at risk as a result of this lamentable disclosure will have their best interests protected at all times. I repeat that we in the Home Office stand ready to do all that we can to assist the London borough of Greenwich and the Metropolitan police to make sure that all those at risk or potentially at risk have their best interests protected.

On the desecration of Stephen Lawrence's memorial, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is the responsibility of the Metropolitan police to ensure, as an operational matter, that that memorial is properly protected. The Commissioner is under no illusion as to our determination to ensure that the Metropolitan police make every possible effort to bring those who desecrated the memorial to justice and to make sure that all the security arrangements, which I cannot discuss, are now in place to make sure that it does not happen again. I hope that that assurance will satisfy all hon. Members that everything possible has been done.

Some of my constituents are named in the appendices to the report. Will my hon. Friend be writing to them to explain the circumstances that led to their names being published and to offer them any assistance that they may need from his Department? May I draw the attention of the House to the fact that, the last time Stephen Lawrence's memorial was attacked, the camera surveillance was not responsible for catching the perpetrator; intelligence given to the police led to the arrest? The camera was installed on the road as a deterrent, not as a surveillance device.

Will my hon. Friend review the procedures in his Department as I did not manage to speak to Home Office officials until yesterday, when I contacted the Department having discovered that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was coming to my constituency? In future, will his Department spare a thought for the constituency Member who is trying to defend his constituents?

Yesterday, I started the day defending my constituents, who had been accused of being racist because they live in Eltham. I finished the day defending my constituents, several of whom, at risk to themselves, gave evidence to the police to assist in the inquiry. Does my hon. Friend have a message of support for my constituents, who need time to reflect on the report of the Lawrence inquiry and rebuild the unity of the local community?

My hon. Friend safeguards and protects the interests of his constituents with care and vigilance. He is to be commended for that and for his efforts yesterday. Of course, the Home Office will afford my hon. Friend every facility in terms of advising him of the appropriate arrangements that are being made to protect the interests of his constituents—and I have instructed my officials this morning to that effect. We shall arrange a meeting this morning between my hon. Friend and Home Office officials so that he can satisfy himself as to the arrangements that have been set in hand. The many good people of Eltham who join him in the unequivocal condemnation of the desecration of the memorial to Stephen Lawrence are also to be commended for the care and devotion with which they have tendered their respect. The mound of flowers that is now on that memorial shows that there is a good anti-racist spirit alive and well and living in his constituency.

I share the deep concern and regret of everyone in the House that individuals should have been put at risk by the disclosure of their personal details, but I cannot accept that the Home Office did not think to check the publication of the relevant appendix with the inquiry. The responsibility must be shared; it cannot simply be passed on to the inquiry. It would have been sensible for the Home Secretary at least to question the danger posed to individuals by the publication of their names. Can we have an assurance that there will be a proper investigation into the failure of communication between the Home Office and the inquiry team to ensure that procedures are tightened so that such a serious and grave mistake does not happen again? I fully accept that details of protection measures cannot be given to the House, but can we have confidence that the Metropolitan police have the resources to provide adequate protection to the individuals named over what may be a lengthy period? Does he acknowledge that community relations are likely to be further damaged by the disclosure of those names and by the reprehensible vandalism to the memorial to Stephen Lawrence? What action does he think the police should now take to help minimise that damage to the community?

Resources will not be a consideration in affording proper protection to those at risk and potentially at risk. Everything that needs to be done will be done, and the Home Office will assist in that process.

I assure the hon. Lady, however, that there is no question of Home Office officials not having done all that they ought to have done with officials of the inquiry to ensure that liaison and communication between them was kept in a good state of repair. This matter cannot be laid at the door of the Home Office. Sir William Macpherson has written today to the Home Secretary—I will lay a copy of the letter in the House of Commons Library— accepting full responsibility for all that has occurred, and apologising most sincerely to Madam Speaker and to the House.

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that the safety of witnesses is paramount to any police investigation. Does he recall my effort to enact the Witness Protection Bill in the previous Parliament, which was thrown out by the Conservative party? It therefore ill befits Conservative Members to cry crocodile tears when the protection of witnesses fails. What steps are the Home Office taking to protect future witnesses in any criminal trial against such a thing happening again?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her comments. [Interruption.] No, she cannot be accused of being partisan—not least in the light of Conservative Members' response to this statement. She makes a valuable point. As the House should know, we are taking forward a raft of measures in the other place, which will soon come to this House, which are designed to protect vulnerable witnesses and to give them that which they have signally lacked in the past.

First, I thank you personally, Madam Speaker, for the effort that you have made, since I raised this matter on a point of order at 12.30 pm yesterday, to seek to ensure that information that should have been volunteered to the House has finally been made available.

We have heard this morning a junior Minister seeking to defend the indefensible, but we should have heard yesterday the Home Secretary, at the Dispatch Box, offering his resignation. [Interruption.] Labour Members may jeer, but I wonder whether they would feel differently if their sons, wives and daughters had been named and their addresses revealed.

The Home Secretary has turned a vile tragedy into a black farce. The handling of this by the Home Department has been lamentable; it has been a catalogue of disaster. The Home Secretary and his team have had this report for a fortnight, and it is simply not right for them to come to the House today to say, "We didn't know." Either the Home Secretary has read the report, in which case he should have withdrawn the relevant information or had it withdrawn, or he has not read the report, in which case he is culpable and misled the House on Wednesday when he said that he had read it. Have the Minister and the Home Secretary even yet read the report and appendices in full? Will the Minister ask his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to tell the House next week what damage has been done to the prospects of a successful prosecution of those who are guilty of this crime?

The hon. Gentleman takes a reasonable point, and goes over the top with it. An examination of the facts simply does not bear his imputation against the Home Office, its Ministers or officials. Every effort has been made—and will be made—to protect witnesses and all those who might be put at risk, or who are put at risk, as a result of this lamentable disclosure. The hon. Gentleman must surely appreciate that. He must also agree that Sir William's acceptance of responsibility in this matter makes it quite clear that this error cannot properly be laid at the door of the Home Office.

Did I hear correctly my hon. Friend say that information regarding the mistake was known in the House for 19 hours after the publication of the report? Did nobody in the Home Office receive any telephone calls from eagle-eyed Tory opponents who, having read the report, drew attention to the mistake? Did any of those Lobby correspondents, who are spouting about the matter, ring the Home Office to point out the fault in part of the appendices? Did anybody at the BBC, with its anti-Labour propaganda, draw it to my hon. Friend's attention? Does not every person who picked up one of those documents and its appendices suffer the same collective guilt? They had 19 hours to draw the fact to Ministers' attention.

The truth is that the Tory party is not concerned about the big picture. Conservative Members are not concerned about racism; they are not concerned about Stephen Lawrence. They have come here this morning to make a seven-course dinner out of a pan of boiling water.

My hon. Friend makes his own point in his inimitable way. There remains one truth: were it not for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, we would not have had a report, and the House would not be addressing these long overdue matters.

If Sir William is planning to take the blame for this shambles, are we not seeing, to coin a phrase, institutionalised incompetence of a level which would make even the most incompetent officer named in the report seem a paragon of administrative efficiency? Is the Minister asking us to believe that, with 10 days to read the report, those in the Home Office did not spot the information in the appendices and did not have the nous to get in touch with the Macpherson inquiry to clarify it? We are asking the Minister not to purge the report, but merely to clarify it.

Does the Minister accept that, when the report was shown to us in the Lobby yesterday, it was pretty obvious—one does not have to be an expert, who has followed the inquiry minute by minute—that a line in it saying, "Mrs. Smith of 23 Acacia avenue said X, Y and Z did it," was sensitive material of the first order, and that the Home Office and Ministers should have drawn it to the attention of the Macpherson inquiry?

A blush really ought to come to the cheeks of the right hon. Gentleman when he makes such remarks. He has sat in my place, as Minister of State at the Home Office, and knows very well that, while he did so, he did nothing whatever to bring these matters before the House. Yet he has the cheek to point the finger at us.

My hon. Friend is right to point out that we had to wait for a Labour Government to set up an inquiry into what went wrong in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and that Conservative Members failed to set up such an inquiry, which had been demanded and was necessary.

Having said that, it seems astonishing that, as the Home Secretary had the report for nine or 10 days—I appreciate that he may not have felt it appropriate to veto or amend the report in any way—nobody in the Home Office had the wit to telephone Sir William Macpherson to point out the inclusion of the names and addresses of sensitive witnesses and police informants.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Efford) and I live on the patch. Both his children and mine go to, and went to, the schools attended by Stephen Lawrence and those accused of his murder. I am probably one of the few hon. Members who met and knew Stephen Lawrence. I think that today's statement will be heard with disbelief by people in our area, who simply will not understand how a report with their names and addresses in it could have been published. I only wish that my hon. Friend or the Home Secretary would say, "Fair cop, guy, we accept some responsibility for that."

My hon. Friend expresses the concern of his constituents, and of residents of Eltham, about this matter. In the Home Office, we share that concern, which is why we have put in place the train of events that we have, to clarify how the error came to be made and to protect those at risk or potentially at risk, a number of whose names and details were already in the public domain as a result of the redacted copy which was used by the inquiry for many weeks. When my hon. Friend has had an opportunity to study the letter by Sir William Macpherson that I have today placed in the Library, he may feel that the charge that he lays at the door of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Home Office is not well founded.

Clearly, the bungling incompetence that the Government have shown throughout this sad affair has undermined the fight against crime, let alone the fight against racism. The Minister told us this morning that everything that could be done would be done. Would he like to tell us which ministerial job is now on the line?

The hon. Gentleman does not do himself or the occasion any favours by making that cheap party political point. He must understand how the error came about. He must understand the immediate steps that we took to rectify that error when the matter had been drawn to our attention by the inquiry team, and he should desist from pointing the finger where it ought not properly to be pointed.

I find the approach of the Conservative party—which failed to protect Stephen, failed to investigate his death and failed to ensure that we learned from the failure to investigate his death—horrific, but I do think that we might learn lessons from this episode.

When I read the appendix—I have actually read it—I assumed that the names were in the public domain, just as, had any of those people been called to give evidence at a murder trial, they would have been.

Although the situation is deeply perturbing, this episode and the statement that we received on Monday may lead us to the same conclusion: that, where such a judicial inquiry is demanded by a Government, it may be right that the publication of the report of that inquiry should be in the hands not of the Home Secretary, but of the chair of the inquiry. In this case, the fact that it has been in the hands of the Home Secretary has led the Conservative party to suggest that he exceeded his powers in seeking an injunction, and has led to a suggestion that he had not censored part of it, as he should have done. Some aspects of those two different positions seem to me mutually contradictory. If there is a similar inquiry in future, will the Home Office consider giving the inquiry chairman, instead of the Government, the right and duty to publish his conclusions, to ensure that the report is genuinely independent?

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. However, we had a duty to publish the report of the inquiry as it was presented to us. We were, to that extent, in publishing the report of the inquiry to the House, acting as agent for Sir William and the inquiry team, and it was right to do so. It was also right to publish it in the form in which we published it.

If my hon. Friend looks at the first page of the report, she will find as its preface a letter from Sir William to the Home Secretary. The last paragraph of that letter consists of this sentence:

"I take personal responsibility for all that is set out in the Report."

That makes the position absolutely clear—in reporting the report to the House, as the Home Secretary has, he was under a duty to publish it in full, unedited and unexpurgated, as it was presented to him.

Is the Minister not ashamed to come here today and effectively encourage the "not me, guv" society? Will he tell us again in detail exactly how long the report was in the hands of the Home Office before it was published? Will he tell us how many officials and Ministers saw, and had an opportunity to read, the report between when it was received and when it was published, and will he tell us whether there were any personnel or officials in common between the Home Office and the inquiry at any time who might well have provided the link that he previously denied existed?

I need no lessons in shame from the right hon. Gentleman. He does not know the meaning of the word shame, as his record in government shows.

My hon. Friend will of course agree that this is a catastrophic error, and that all that can possibly be done must be done by all agencies to help those named. Does he also agree that people will be heartily sickened to the stomach by the pictures of the desecration of Stephen Lawrence's memorial in the papers this morning, but equally will be sickened to the pit of their stomach by the utter hypocrisy and cant of the Conservative Members who seek to use this issue, of all issues, as a political football for some obscure, mealy-mouthed, small-minded political partisan gain? They are an abject disgrace.

The good judgment of the public can be relied on in this instance, as it can be in so much else, and all well-minded, well-meaning people will unequivocally condemn the desecration of the memorial, as all hon. Members do.

The statement that the Minister made to the House this morning is inconsistent. He first said that it would have been improper for the Home Secretary to withhold any section of the report; yet, as soon as—as he admits—the Metropolitan police drew that problem to his attention, he did withdraw part of it. So it was not improper to do so—indeed, the problem should have been spotted earlier by his Department. There is a profound inconsistency in what he said.

Moreover, it is not the responsibility of the Metropolitan police to examine reports of this nature; its responsibility is to investigate crime. It was not Sir William's responsibility either, because his responsibility was to produce a report to the Home Secretary and, subsequently, to the House, although he has been very magnanimous in accepting responsibility. The responsibility for the protection of witnesses is that of the Home Secretary, and he has patently failed to carry out that responsibility.

When the Home Secretary received the report, did he delegate any official or officials to examine the document to see whether witnesses or a future trial might be prejudiced? If he did not, he is totally culpable.

The hon. Gentleman, uncharacteristically, if I may say so, misses and misunderstands the point. The Metropolitan police notified the inquiry of concerns in relation to appendix 11. The inquiry then notified the Home Office and, at the instigation of the inquiry, on whose behalf the report was presented to Parliament, we withdrew it at once. That is the position, that is what occurred and that, I hope, now makes the position clear to the hon. Gentleman.

On the important point that the hon. Gentleman raises about the prejudice of any future investigation, we have this morning spoken to Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Grieve on precisely that matter. He is of the view that no such prejudice has occurred in relation to his inquiries.

I share the views that have been expressed by all right hon. and hon. Members about the extreme seriousness of this matter and the extent to which such a happening must be prevented in future. However, may I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to respond to the single suggestion that we have had from the Opposition that this event might have been prevented had the Metropolitan police read the report before publication? Does my hon. Friend agree that that would have been entirely inappropriate in the publication of the judicial review, in that it would have undermined the conclusions of Sir William Macpherson? More importantly, or perhaps equally importantly, it has been demonstrated that, after years of doing absolutely nothing about this matter, the Conservative party is still completely out of touch with the wider issues of racism and the extent to which we need to gain the confidence of local communities?

My hon. Friend is quite right. Conservative Members missed the point in making the reference that they did to access to the report by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. The Commissioner had such access as was appropriate in the circumstances and it would be quite wrong, and is quite wrong, for hon. Members to suggest otherwise. My hon. Friend's point is well founded.

Must not the Home Secretary take personal responsibility for the outcome of the judicial inquiry which he himself has sponsored? Will not people in London feel that the Home Secretary appears to have used the 10 days between the receipt of the report by his Department and its publication more to look for facile slogans about institutionalised racism and the easy headlines than to apply himself to the potentially extremely dangerous detail that could perfectly well have been eliminated by a process of responsible co-operation between the right hon. Gentleman's Department and Sir William Macpherson?

The hon. Gentleman is quite mistaken in suggesting that there is anything facile or headline-grabbing about institutional racism. It is a fact of life and it is something that was responsible for the most appalling miscarriage of justice, mistreatment and mishandling of the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence by the Metropolitan police at the time. Had the hon. Gentleman been listening to right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Front Bench who speak in relation to those matters, he would understand that they recognise the significance of institutionalised racism as the rest of the House does, even if he does not.

Two elements of this discussion will sadden right-minded citizens throughout the country. One is the cheap party political points of Opposition Members in calling for the resignation of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, the Home Secretary who called for the inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case, for which he is entitled to a measure of credit, which Opposition Members have accepted previously.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the second element that will sadden right-minded citizens throughout the country is the failure of the Home Office to accept a measure of responsibility for not identifying that there was a flaw in the report? Sir William Macpherson's letter saying that only someone who was involved in the inquiry throughout should or could have recognised that this was a mistake begs the question whether officials in the Home Office, either in the constabularies inspectorate or civil servants, were not tracking the report carefully enough or were not tracking it at all.

Conservative Members are members and officers of the "not me, guv" society. They created it during their 18 years in government. We have to learn the lesson that, if we make mistakes, we should put our hands up to a certain extent. However, this is not a resignation issue for the Home Secretary. I am sure that the Government will not be deflected from carrying out all the recommendations of the Macpherson inquiry.

My hon. Friend misunderstands the point. We have nothing to put our hands up to. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we do not intend to allow this to divert us from the proper point, which is to take forward the recommendations of the inquiry with all due expedition. This is much too much an important issue for it to be lost as a result of an unfortunate error. There is a job of work to be done in making a new beginning in tackling racism in our society. Nothing will deflect us from that task.

Will the Minister accept and understand that, in his statement, he was effectively silent on the job that he should have done in coming to the House this morning, which is to account to the House for the—[Interruption.]

Order. What is going on? There is only one Member who has the Floor, and that is Mr. Lansley.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The Minister should be accounting to the House for the actions of the Home Office in relation to the period during which the Home Secretary had received the report. I am sure that the Minister is right to say that nobody is expecting the Home Office to have acted as censor or to have deleted or second-guessed the report on its own account. The question is not whether the Home Office is simply a print shop, which clearly it is not, but what the Home Office was doing during nine days. The report was leaked, and now we know that it was not read by those who should have read it in the way that it should have been read with the knowledge that the Home Office had of the inquiry.

A specific question that the Minister has patently failed to answer, and should have answered, is: who in the Home Office saw the report? Did those persons include any official or Minister—but more probably an official—who knew the day-to-day workings of the inquiry well enough, perhaps by being a member of the inquiry team at some point, to be able to identify the error which had occurred in the presentation of documents to the Home Secretary?

The hon. Gentleman must understand that, in one sense, of course, the Home Office was the printing shop for the inquiry. It was our responsibility to make sure that the report was printed and presented to the House in its full and uncensored form. There was nothing on the face of the report or in its appendices that would have alerted one to the fact that witnesses, or potential witnesses, were being put at risk by the publication of the report and its appendices in the form in which they were published. The hon. Gentleman must understand that and, just for one moment, accept that the proper role of the Home Office in this matter, in printing and publishing the report to the two Houses of Parliament, was to ensure that our response, in the form of the statement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and in the work that is now being carried forward in advance of the debate on the report, was to direct the attention of the House primarily to the substance of the report. That was done.

rose—

Thank you. I shall bring this matter to a close now.

I was alluding to the fact that the Bill, as drafted, appears to provide that someone who is provisionally suspended from their employment—but whose dismissal is not confirmed—shall be included within the list. Is that what the hon. Member for Stourbridge intended, as it seems to go against the grain of natural justice? If that is the intention, their inclusion on the list pending confirmation of dismissal must be time-limited, and the employer must be placed under an obligation to make the dismissal fully binding within a certain period.

Does the hon. Member for Stourbridge, or the Minister, feel that there is a need for an offence to be created of applying for or accepting employment when on the list? Should a person who knowingly applies for or accepts employment be guilty of an offence?

It may help if I give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that the working group is looking at that area.

The interdepartmental working group has looked at it, and recommended that such an offence be created. Is it intended to introduce such a measure?

We will not be doing so during the passage of the Bill.

I thank the Minister for clarifying the point. I still suggest that there may be a need for such an offence, and I wonder at what stage the Minister plans to introduce one. He will, no doubt, clarify that in due course.

I am concerned because there will be situations—particularly in relation to volunteers—where there are multiple employments. Someone who is placed on the list because they have been dismissed from one employment may still have other employments where they have access to vulnerable children. Should there be a duty on an individual to notify any other employer when he is placed on the list? That is particularly relevant to paedophiles, as past cases show us that they often manage to get themselves into positions of multiple access to children. Does the Minister think that there might be a need to develop a system similar to the "alert letter" system that the Department of Health operates, so that a person placed on the list is the subject of an alert letter to warn other employers?

That takes us to the question of the rights of other employers to dismiss someone, on which the Bill is silent. Would it be a lawful ground for dismissal that a person already in one's employment is placed on the list as a result of dismissal from another coincidental employment?

If someone gives employment to a person because the checks have failed—it is in the nature of all bureaucratic procedures that there are occasional failures, as we have seen this morning—and a person is appointed to a position that they should not hold, will it be lawful for the employer to dismiss that person when the information comes to light?

I hope that the hon. Member for Stourbridge will take these points in the spirit in which they are made. I support the principle of the Bill, but clarification is required. Many issues will have to be discussed in more detail if the Bill is to form an acceptable basis for legislation. We strongly support the principle of placing the list on a statutory basis. I was pleased to hear the hon. Lady's commitment to proper safeguards and to having balanced legislation, because only if it is fair and balanced will it be durable.

The hon. Member for Taunton said that we must not allow people to fall into a sense of false security—that, because they have consulted the list, that is all they need to do. There is a danger that that problem may arise, and there will still be a need for detailed checks into the backgrounds of people seeking to work with children. The Bill has our strong support in so far as it addresses paedophiles and abusers, but there are areas of concern where it goes beyond that, as I have outlined.

The hon. Member for Stourbridge will recognise that there are many detailed issues to be addressed in Committee. I give her an undertaking that we will approach the issues positively and constructively in Committee if, as I hope, the Bill receives its Second Reading today.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on coming first in the ballot, and on choosing such an important issue. I also applaud the other hon. Members who have spoken in a measured and reasonable debate. I was pleased by the response of the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), and the Opposition clearly are taking this serious issue seriously. We all want to do what is in the best interests of young people at risk.

There has been much talk about balance, and our responsibility is to make sure that the scales come down on the side of those who are vulnerable—the ones whom we need to protect. Reports such as Sir William Utting's report "People Like Us" have warned us of the dangers facing children, and there have been enough horrid scandals over the years to shock us all.

Many members of the public would be surprised by how weak the existing system of checking is and how many loopholes it has. It is appalling, for example, that even when employers are aware that an individual is named on the Department of Health's consultancy index, he or she may still be employed in child care. People out there and in the Gallery may have had genuine hope and expectation that—

Order. Hon. Members do not normally refer to people who are in the Strangers Gallery.

I accept your rebuke, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I am sure that many would have thought that the existing rules and regulations were there to protect children. Clearly, they were not. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge is right to draw the matter to our attention and to seek to do something about it.

I fully support the Bill's attempt to close loopholes and to strengthen the process of vetting staff. It will also require employers to consult the new index. I should like to address some of the issues in the Bill in more detail.

I hope that putting the consultancy index on a statutory basis will ensure that the operation of the scheme is safe from legal challenge. We have had some discussion about how many people may be affected. The Utting report said that there were 750 names on the index. We are all aware that many more people could be abusers. The current status and operation of the index are unclear because of its informal nature. It will be important to alert employers to the need to report cases to the new register—not just those who have been dismissed from their job, but those who have been disciplined for offences affecting children.

I particularly welcome the clauses that provide for the names of those who have resigned before they can be disciplined to be included on the register. I accept the need for clarification in Committee of the meaning of the provisions that refer to people who have been guilty of a variety of disciplinary offences or potential disciplinary offences, but it must be right to include on the register someone who resigns from their employment rather than being disciplined. Leaving them free to seek employment elsewhere could put children at risk.

Voluntary organisations are not directly covered by the Bill. Adults who have been withdrawn from fostering or from voluntary activities such as being a scout leader should be included. There are separate mechanisms to monitor foster carers, but we should consider how such monitoring takes place elsewhere and link it to the proposals in the Bill. Voluntary organisations will clearly be encouraged to consult the list. I assume that they will also be encouraged to report people to it, because that would ensure that it covered a wider range of people working with children.

Reforms to the index, changes to the operation of List 99 and the amendment to the Police Act 1997 will enable the proposed Criminal Records Bureau to act as a one-stop shop for checks. That will be an enormous improvement on the current system of checking three separate sources. The social services departments in Blackpool and in Lancashire county council welcome the proposals, but they have pointed out that there are delays with the present system which can cause serious problems in the appointment of staff. I hope that my hon. Friend will ensure that it is easier for statutory agencies to access the current system before the new bureau is up and running, as well as the proposed one-stop shop. Employers need speedy responses to their inquiries.

I applaud the aim of making it unlawful for any person included on the index to be employed in a child care capacity. I should like clarification now or in Committee on whether it will be an offence for the employer, the employee or both. We need to consider the legal status of that aspect of the Bill. The Department of Health's 1997 regulations on the protection of children, which prohibited anyone with a schedule 1 conviction from being a foster carer, are under review. In a few cases, they have worked against the best interests of children. Perhaps some discretion should be introduced, but I applaud the general principle of prohibiting employment with children in such circumstances.

I am particularly pleased that the Bill contains an appeal mechanism for those who believe that their name has been wrongly included on the register. As a former chair of governors of a primary school, I am well aware of the potential for malicious false accusations against teachers. I know from my previous role as chair of Lancashire social services that such malicious allegations can be made against social work staff, residential care workers and nursery staff.

People working with children are in a difficult position. Any contact that they engage in to reassure children can be misunderstood and misinterpreted. There are rules governing their behaviour, but we should remember that not all accusations are accurate or well founded. I applaud the appeals mechanism, which will make it possible for those who feel that they have been placed on a register unjustly to have their name removed.

Clause 10 has not yet been discussed in detail. The Bill is aimed primarily at protecting children, but I welcome the recognition that many adults also need protection from those with a caring role who may abuse them. Adults with learning disabilities deserve as much protection as children because they are often as vulnerable and, in some cases, even more vulnerable. More and more children with profound learning disabilities are living through to adulthood because of modern medical advances. They often live in the community in supported homes and attend day centres. Social services organisations and private and voluntary organisations that employ staff to support those people need to vet their employees in the same way as those who look after children are vetted.

We have had some horrific instances in which child abuse cases have collapsed in court because children have not been seen as credible witness, but in just as many adults have been abused. However, because of their mental impairment, the courts have not accepted them as credible witnesses and the cases have collapsed. Preventing some of those instances of abuse by properly vetting and monitoring the staff who work with adults with learning disabilities will be an enormous benefit to everyone. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will present an order under clause 10 as soon as possible to reassure adults with learning disabilities and their families, who want to believe in care in the community, but have serious doubts about it.

Everybody who cares about vulnerable children or adults in our community must welcome the Bill. In my previous role as chair of Lancashire social services, I met many children who had been abused by their parents and I visited children's homes where they were usually looked after by caring staff, who had a difficult role to perform. Those children had suffered enough in the past without facing the additional fear that people who were employed to care for them in their new setting would also be potential abusers. If the Bill can reassure those children, and the wider community, it will do an immense service.

More recently, I met parents whose children were abused by their local primary schoolteacher, in a very difficult case in my constituency. Those parents went through the worst nightmare that any parent can: they sent their young children to primary school to be taught, but the teacher abused them. That is not an experience that any of us who are parents would wish to have. I want to be able to reassure those parents that we are doing something to prevent such abuse. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said earlier that the Bill would not catch every abuser, but at least we can say that we are doing what we can. That should be our role in this House.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on her success in the ballot and on selecting this excellent measure with which to proceed. I shall make a short contribution, which will concentrate on some worries provoked by the Bill. That is not because I am opposed to the measure—I welcome it—but because the length of the statement and number of hon. Members who wish speak mean that it would be unfair of me to cover all the issues that I wish to talk about. I shall concentrate on the few issues of concern that I have, but that does not mean that I am generally critical of the Bill. I am condensing my remarks for the sake of time.

The concerns on which I want to concentrate are those flagged up by the organisation Liberty. As an avid supporter of that organisation, at least since 1 May 1997—[Interruption.] I hold up my hands, which is more than my successor at the Home Office did earlier. I hope that, when he replies to the debate, the Minister, who is an honourable colleague and a decent man, will deal with the concerns expressed by Liberty.

Will the right hon. Gentleman stress that the brief from Liberty makes it clear that that organisation "welcomes the overall aim" of the Bill?

I am delighted to do so. I have the full text of that brief in my notes, but I will not need to refer to it as I also have an excellent short summary.

The process for initial inclusion in the list is administrative, rather than judicial. Liberty argues that that could contravene the European convention on human rights, which the Government have incorporated in our domestic law. The convention provides for fair and impartial hearings by an independent and impartial tribunal, for the purpose of the determination of civil rights and obligations. Article 6 of the convention states that a person is innocent until proven guilty. It could be argued that the inclusion in the list of unsubstantiated information is in breach of the convention. That is a small point and not an especially strong argument, but I should welcome some reassurance on it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) made an excellent speech, in which he said that the threshold for a person's initial inclusion in the list could be too low, as information that has not been tested by any formal disciplinary procedures will be allowed to be included. It is possible that people will have little or no protection against employers or, colleagues who refer them on malicious or inaccurate grounds. It is not too far-fetched to believe that a malicious member of staff—in, say, a social services department or some other organisation—with a grudge against a colleague could use the list as a way to destroy or severely disadvantage that colleague's career. I do not know the solution to that problem. Perhaps the judicial process should be put before the administrative process, although I appreciate the enormous difficulties and extra costs that could be created.

My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge also noted that the basis for inclusion in the list is not confined to sexual or other intentional abuse; individuals will also be referred for incompetence or misconduct that places a child at risk. However, the Bill contains no criteria on the seriousness of that incompetence or misconduct. I believe that in one of the pieces of legislation that I have studied there is a definition of what is to be considered as harm that places a child at risk. In the absence of guidelines, if the Minister proposes to make regulations about incompetence and misconduct, there is a danger that different definitions will appear in different parts of the country.

The example has been given of a person who takes a child for a walk and who does not guard that child properly, so the child is placed at risk when he or she runs on to the road. Does that amount to incompetence or misconduct? If so, every parent—unwittingly and accidentally—faces the risk every day, and such accidents can happen to everyone. Of course, no one condones such accidents when they happen under the supervision of a social worker or in an organisation charged with child care, but we must be careful to ensure that well-meaning people who love children and want to protect them are not included, because of a slip-up, in the list of dangerous paedophiles, which the press will no doubt call the perverts list.

To a large extent, it will be such a list. The list will include dangerous people who are child abusers and paedophiles. I urge the Minister, and the hon. Member for Stourbridge, to think about dividing the list so that that it may contain, of course, the names of child abusers and paedophiles, but does not allow those who love children properly and who are not paedophiles or abusers, but have made a mistake, to be branded by the press and by potential employers as child abusers.

I accept the right hon. Gentleman's point about definitions, but does he accept that part of the problem could be dealt with in the code of conduct for implementation of the Bill? It is important that bad practices, such as persistently shaking a child or inappropriate restraint, should be defined as misconduct, and should fall within the remit of the Bill.

The hon. Lady refers to child abuse that is almost as bad as paedophilia and other sexual abuse. Shaking a child or being violent is definite abuse, but it is not incompetence. It does not compare with the incompetence of which we heard in the example of a person who takes a child for a walk. That could happen to any schoolteacher at any time. All the time in London, one sees teachers taking a crocodile of a dozen children for a walk. How those teachers manage to guard those children every minute of the day is beyond me. I certainly could not cope.

If someone makes a small mistake which puts a child at risk, that person surely should not be on the same list and under the same heading as child abusers, paedophiles and those who shake, beat or hit children. Such people should not be perceived by every potential employer as falling into that category.

I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Luton, South (Ms Moran) that a code of practice could deal with my concern. A code could help authorities and other child care organisations to determine what is incompetence, or what the levels of incompetence are. If, however, the person involved is placed on a single list—it will be regarded as the paedophile list—we may do an injustice to people who, it should be admitted, are not totally competent to look after children, but should not be considered to be as vile as paedophiles and others who sexually abuse children.

I had intended to raise a few more points brought up by my friends at Liberty. However, I have taken slightly longer than I intended, and I do not want to delay an important Bill. I may write to the Minister and to the hon. Member for Stourbridge with those concerns. I may even be forced to serve on the Committee.

Although some of my hon. Friends have lamented the fact that they have been in the House for many years without ever coming high in the private Members' ballot, I am pleased to have been here for many years without having done so.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on introducing an important Bill. Like the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), I am happy never to have come anywhere near the top of the list during the past two years.

The Bill is extremely worthy, and I am privileged to be one of its co-sponsors. Apart from the ugly interregnum between 11 am and noon, on which I shall not dwell, I commend the Conservative Members who have spoken today for seeking constructively to help the Bill become a good law.

The House will know that the Bill is rooted in the Utting report. It may be less well known, however, that there was considerable debate on the subject during the Standing Committee's discussion of the General Teaching Council introduced by the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998. Both sides of the Committee then highlighted the need for the long overdue consolidation of lists.

Consolidation makes perfect sense and is entirely logical. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge has been honest in saying that the Bill does not provide the one-stop list which we all want, and which is essential. As a former councillor, I well remember the inordinate length of time—rightly in one regard—that it took to carry out police checks. Vital posts in child care were not filled, which caused its own problems because of the time that it took to pursue all the assorted lists and track down all the police authorities involved to check up people's records. The fact that we are moving a step closer towards overcoming that problem must be very welcome.

Strangely, as a co-sponsor of the Bill, I want to dwell on some aspects that we must explore further in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge will be the first to admit that the Bill is not perfect in many ways. Second Reading should be, and is, about the principles of the Bill. Happily, I have heard no one dispute the principle behind it and the fact that it should and must get on the statute book. The concerns that will be raised, which I will mention now for the record and with which we will deal in Committee, are not many in one sense, but they are of importance. What has been said about the low threshold for inclusion on the list is fair and I hope that we can tackle it. Taking the administrative rather than the judicial route has been mentioned, and that is a fair point, but, if the appropriate safeguards are in place when the Bill becomes law, it is not one on which we need dwell.

I see that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean)—the new-found friend of Liberty—has left the Chamber. I am sure that he would have even more to say on its behalf if we were talking about a judicial list—one that an individual would get on or off with extreme difficulty and only through the judicial process. There is a fear that, if we went solely down the judicial route, there would be a grey area—many people who would rightly be on the list proposed in the Bill would not find themselves on a judicial list.

The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border made a point about incompetence. Although he did so rather clumsily and laboriously, it was a fair point. If we are serious about a consolidated list being effective and preventive in tenor, as well as simply prescriptive—so that people will fear being put on it and will keep away from work with children in which they should not be involved—the criteria of incompetence and putting children at risk must be tightly defined. Being on the list must reflect the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge in promoting the Bill.

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), who has now left the Chamber, made an elegant speech about the voluntary sector. He spoke of how we could widen the Bill so that we get what we all want and include that sector, but not restrictively.

In Committee, we must also explore the notion that there will be no legal aid for the appellant. The notion, which is a real advance in terms of human or civil rights, of a statutory tribunal and appeals process for those who were on the Department of Health list or List 99 of the Department for Education and Employment will be further served if the Bill or the code of practice contains a much sharper and clearer definition of the rights of appellants and whether they can have legal aid.

We must also consider the notion of malicious or vexatious referrals by informants. It is not covered to any extent in the Bill and needs to be considered far more readily—I am sure that it will be dealt with in Committee.

I was pleased that hon. Members mentioned extending the provisions to those over 18 who have mental incapacities or learning disabilities. It would not be over-broadening the scope of the legislation if, as some have suggested, we explored in Committee whether it could go as far as covering the elderly and mentally infirm at the very least, if not more general abuse of the elderly in the care sector.

I promised to be brief and, unusually when I am on my feet in this place, I mean it today. None of those concerns, which are all genuine and raised in a constructive spirit, detracts from the Bill's validity. In choosing this Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge wanted to explore those and other matters in Committee. I hope that no one will block it.

As Jim Harden, director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said in the foreword to a recent book:

"one of the most challenging child protection issues of our time has been the realisation that children can be more vulnerable to abuse in the places where they ought to be safest".

That is sad, and one might add, "Among the people with whom they should feel the safest."

None of the positive criticism made by hon. Members detracts from the strength of the Bill, which goes far to start to plug the gap suggested by that quotation. I have great pleasure in being a co-sponsor of the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge again on coming No. 1 in the ballot; her ordeal is almost over. I commend the Bill and all who spoke for their productive approach.

Like the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), I will be uncharacteristically brief. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on her success in the ballot. I came much further down, and one of my reasons for brevity is that I hope to have an opportunity to discuss my Bill. I did not want the moment to pass without making some general comments and offering a further suggestion for consideration in Committee.

My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) said that it was right not to use emotive language, but it is also right that we have had the right balance of emotional response to the issue in this constructive debate. None of us would want to proceed down a rational path, carefully balancing probabilities, to find later that, by dint of failure to act now, some abuse of or harm to children had occurred that we could reasonably have prevented. I thoroughly support the Bill in that sense.

In the inquiry by the Select Committee on Health on children looked after by local authorities, I was given an opportunity to appreciate that, when parents cannot protect their children, we as a society have a particular responsibility. It is important that we take the range of measures that is offered to try to ensure that we deal with that. As a parent, I know that we strive to protect our children in a range of circumstances, but many avenues for achieving the absolute protection that we seek are frustrated in various ways. We should try to minimise the frustrations and maximise the protection.

Our debates often seek to balance rights. In this case, we must discriminate carefully. Working with children is not a right, but a privilege. We are balancing the privilege extended to people who work with children with the right of children to protection. In that context, it is proper to weight, to a great extent, the balance in favour of the rights of children to protection.

The right to privacy raised by Liberty, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) mentioned, is indeed a right for individuals, but it is balanced under the human rights convention—and now, by extension, in our legislation—by the protections that are necessary in a democratic society. If for this purpose we can equate democracy with civilisation, it is clear that the protection that is necessary in a democratic society extends to the necessary protection of children as proposed in the Bill.

In expressing my general support for the Bill, let me add one more point—not a reservation, but a suggestion. My constituency contains several English language schools, and representatives of the Association of Recognised English Language Services have raised with me two issues which I wish to offer for consideration in Committee: first, the extent to which those organisations that are not required to undertake the necessary checks do so; and, secondly, whether their efforts to carry out those checks should extend only to those who are in their employment, or also to those with whom they may contract for the purposes of acting as host families. My reading of the Bill is that the definition of employment is wide, and so might embrace host families; but it is important to make sure that it does so extend. The regular, often frequent, employment of host families by English language schools and by other organisations in several different contexts should be properly covered by the legislation.

The other point relates to the fact that, although certain organisations are not required to undertake checks, they have a discretion to do so. It is in our interests to arrange the structure of the process so that their ability to do so is maximised and they are not inhibited from choosing to do so. The level of resources is a question for the Minister, who should recognise that the administrative processes required to secure the checks must be swift and effective; otherwise, commercial organisations in a competitive market such as English language schools may be deterred from undertaking the necessary checks, not least in respect of host families, where there is rapid turnover. To echo the fair point made by the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard), I should add that the processes of decision making on the part of the Secretary of State and the appeal processes must also be equally swift.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that it is his understanding, as it is mine, that, while the transitory provisions of the Bill are in force, the list can be consulted free of charge at the Department of Health, but that, once the criminal records bureau has been established, there probably will be a charge? Might that not have a deterrent effect on those who are considering consulting the list voluntarily, for example, organisations such as those that he has mentioned?

Yes, that is my understanding. It is important to recognise that, although a large number of organisations—including child minders organisations, voluntary organisations and commercial organisations—may want to take the opportunity to undertake checks, some of them may find it difficult to do so if the costs are high. I would never present that argument in respect of commercial organisations, because such a charge is a proper one which should be included in their running costs, and they should not hide from it. However, such costs might be a significant factor to voluntary organisations; we should be aware of that and try to minimise them.

I promised to be brief, so I shall conclude by offering my support for the Bill. I am extremely glad that the results of the ballot—with the hon. Member for Stourbridge appearing before me—reflected the view expressed by the hon. Lady that the protection of children should be our No. 1 priority.

In introducing her Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley), whom I congratulate on having won pole position in the ballot for private Members' Bills, emphasised two issues: first, the confusion in current vetting procedures and, secondly, the loopholes that the Bill would attempt to plug.

Let us imagine a member of the public who is trying to launch an organisation such as a nursery or youth club, but is completely unfamiliar with vetting procedures. That person's first thought would be to turn to the criminal records vetting procedures that are run by the police. However, few people would have heard of the other vetting procedures, such as List 99, which refers to the educational sector. Even fewer would be aware of the Department of Health consultancy index, on which this Bill is based.

My contact with the voluntary sector has revealed that it is totally confused about the current vetting arrangements, which are laborious to operate. I welcome the Bill, and I shall vote for it because it attempts to link the various vetting procedures in a one-shop mechanism. All concerned will appreciate that. However, I believe that we will need some kind of consolidation Bill in future that draws together all vetting procedures and contains clear guidelines that may be readily interpreted by the public and by professionals in the statutory and voluntary sectors who need to vet potential employees.

I hope that we shall witness an explosion in child care as a result of the Government's child care strategy and the provision of nursery classes and after-school clubs. There is no doubt that that will put immense pressure on the current vetting procedures. The new deal will also put pressure on existing facilities. Councillors in my constituency have drawn attention to the fact that the Bill will not plug some loopholes. For example, staff at local leisure facilities, such as swimming pools do not have to be vetted. It is pretty obvious that children use swimming pools and that abuse may occur. The Government must plug such loopholes in the future.

An organisation in my constituency, the Bolton Lads and Girls Club, has experienced difficulties with the police vetting procedures. I have received figures from the Greater Manchester police regarding child access checks. In the year ending 31 March 1998, the police dealt with 44,851 applications. In the year ending 31 March 1999, they expect to have dealt with 33,130 applications. That is a considerable decrease in the number of applications submitted to the police, which means that some voluntary organisations that do not have to be covered by police vetting procedures are being left out.

The Bolton Lads and Girls Club used to receive fairly speedy vetting information via the Greater Manchester police procedures, but it has now been excluded from the process. In Bolton, the club has started what I believe to be a brilliant project. It is a mentoring project for young people, which encourages them to use their leisure time responsibly. It points young people towards education, training and employment and away from undesirable life styles. The project entails a one-to-one mentoring arrangement involving scores, if not hundreds, of volunteers.

The club is hoping to extend the project shortly to Bury, and would like to vet all the people involved. However, its inability to access vetting procedures is hindering the development of that project, as I am sure it is impeding the development of similar projects around the country. The club has approached the Voluntary Organisations Consultancy Service but, unfortunately, the membership of that organisation is full and it does not have the capacity to vet any more organisations, whether existing or soon to be established.

In conclusion, I welcome the Bill because it plugs some existing loopholes and tries to remove some of the confusion and point the way forward.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on winning the ballot and introducing the Bill, which deals with a complex subject. It is to her credit that she picked a Bill that will require a degree of parliamentary skill to pass. No doubt the general tenor of today's debate, which has revealed support from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber and from the Government, means that the Bill will go on to the statute book and stand as a testament to the hon. Lady's contribution.

In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), I pointed out that the lead item on Ceefax suggested that this was a Government Bill. Whether that is due to the poor quality of the BBC's reporting or a misunderstanding of a Government spin doctor, the hon. Member for Stourbridge ought to make a phone call to the BBC because Ceefax did not even mention her, which is a disgrace.

The Bill may be item No. 2 on Ceefax, but it is important and the fact that the BBC has flagged it up is a sign of the public consciousness about this issue. As the years go by, people have become far more aware of the importance of the protection of children.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) made a valid point. We must balance the rights of individuals with those of children, but we should always lean towards the protection of children.

On the point about the Government taking credit for private Members' Bills, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must pay particular attention to that tendency? Many of my hon. Friends and I are here to support this private Member's Bill on a Friday that is devoted to such Bills, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on her Bill. If, on this occasion or any other, the Government try to take the credit for private Members' Bills, they will have to suffer the risk of those Bills being defeated because they tried to bounce them through the House on a private Members' Friday.

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am sure that the Minister will make the same point in his speech. The issue is too important for us to lose sight of it in a party political spat, although we are all, as politicians, sensitive to the situation.

To some extent, the Bill picks up on part V of the Police Act 1997, which was passed by the previous Government to set up the Criminal Records Bureau. The central point of having a one-stop shop is very sensible. I was a councillor for 14 years, and it is important to have one body that can deal relatively quickly with inquiries, because many of the agencies that will have to make inquiries of it will want to take on people. They may have people within their care and duties that they must discharge. In many cases, it is not easy to recruit people to important jobs caring for children.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Health and, until recently, I had very little knowledge of this subject. Last year, the Committee went on an inquiry visit to Australia to consider the welfare of child migrants who had been widely abused in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. We interviewed between 50 and 70 people who had suffered abuse and what struck us was the collateral damage that it caused to those individuals up to 40 years later.

I remember Sitting next to a gentlemen at a dinner at the high commission in New Zealand who turned to me and said, "I was abused as a child. I have been married for 40 years and I have never been able to tell my wife that." He could tell a politician from Great Britain, but not his wife. The suppressed angst suffered by many of those people and the wreckage in their lives are due to how they were treated when they were young.

I shall not go into detail about the Bill's proposals because the hon. Member for Stourbridge has already done so; rather, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) did, I shall focus on a few concerns. Liberty, which no doubt will be mentioned again and again, expressed the concern that the Bill would set up an administrative rather than a judicial system. It could not be judicial, or we could not protect people. However, there is a duty within an administrative system at least to try to be fair and open. The appeal mechanism is good and sensible, although the provision of legal aid is also an important consideration as people without resources could well have to spend considerable time and money attempting to have their names removed from a list.

The thresholds for initial inclusion on lists are also important. If a list is too wide and encompasses too many spurious factors, it may become devalued. Although it must include paedophiles, there are people who could be described as eccentric. If a list includes people with eccentric characteristics as well as those who are dangerous, it will become devalued.

The Bill represents a great step forward and in my opinion it conforms to the European convention on human rights. In a recent case, the judge upheld the Secretary of State's right to include on such lists care workers about whom there were suspicions, even when there had been no criminal conviction, so long as the proof was on the basis of being beyond all reasonable doubt. Mr. Justice Richards said:

"It must be open to the Secretary of State, when acting to protect the welfare of children, to take into account the difficulty of proving allegations of sexual abuse to the criminal standard—and indeed the difficulty of establishing a real likelihood of harm. He has to strike a balance between the interests of the individual involved and the interests of the children whom the index is designed to protect."

That is a key point.

We must also consider the issue of people moving across boundaries and borders within Europe. It is vital that there is some exchange of information between countries. People come here from France and Germany, and indeed people from this country who are not permitted to work with children may decide to go abroad to pursue their particular interests. It is important for the Bill to be considered in a European and worldwide context in respect of the exchange of information.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire mentioned the problem of language schools. There are many such schools in Bournemouth and Poole and the students often stay with host families. That issue will certainly have to be addressed.

Another matter that received attention in all the briefing was the treatment of the clergy. I know that it is difficult to establish where the clergy impact on voluntary organisations in this respect, but perhaps those definitions will be determined in Committee.

I am not quite clear whether my hon. Friend feels that such is the sensitivity of the matter that the clergy should not be included or whether he feels that they definitely should. I do not share my hon. Friend's sensitivities and feel that the clergy have a sufficient track record in these matters that they should definitely be included and we should find a way to make sure that they are.

I assume that the Bill impacts on the clergy when they work with voluntary organisations, not simply because they are members of the clergy. As we heard earlier, many other issues are not covered by the Bill. We have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect Bill, so we have to ask whether it improves the protection of children and whether it provides an efficient and workable system. There are many ways in which we could attempt to make the Bill perfect, but that would actually make it unwieldy and unworkable. The matter will have to be examined closely in Committee to establish the proper boundaries.

The Bill may be the first stage in a process and when it becomes law we may be able to make progress on other related issues. I welcome the Bill and the principles behind it and I hope that it becomes law. I am sure that it represents progress in the protection of children, but one or two issues will have to be examined closely in Committee.

I know that we are short of time, so I shall not take too long. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on introducing the Bill and on the balanced and reasoned way in which she spoke to it. I am sure that her constituency party and her constituents are grateful to be represented by an hon. Member who is not only driven by compassion but able to put her case reasonably and in a balanced manner.

I speak in this debate because there is a Scottish dimension to the Bill: there is no mention of Scotland in it. In fact, there is no mention of Wales. There are no borders to paedophiles. The problem of people coming from other parts of the world has been mentioned, but, just within the United Kingdom, there are obviously people who will travel. Paedophiles, because of their predatory nature, will go to great lengths to be near people who then become victims of their abuse.

I was quite concerned when the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) said that a survey revealed that one in 60 people said that they had been involved in an offence or incident of sexual abuse. I calculated that, if the results of that survey are genuine, that would mean 416,000 people in the English population. I was therefore shocked to find only 950 names on the consultancy service index. That shows the gap between the potential danger and our knowledge of where it lies.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we should take care with the one in 60 figure because of the range of offences that it covers? Obviously, it refers not just to abuse but to any sexual offence, including some that are now legal following a change in the law on the age of consent.

I take that point, although we should still acknowledge the scale of the problem and the clear information deficit.

Mention has been made of the Australian experience. I, too, spoke to people out in Australia about some of their experiences. There has also been the recent Belgian scandal, and some nearer to home. The internet is polluted with people who use it to transfer paedophiliac information, and to consort with others, in a sense, to gather strength and protect themselves.

I should like to take up the negative comment about the concept of a big brother. Big brother is also often the person who protects smaller children from bullies and abusers. We must strike a balance in the use of the term. I would rather have a big brother who cared for me, than not have one to protect me when I was being attacked.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

No, we are short of time. Expanding on such a philosophical point would not necessarily add to our discussion.

We need a very close concordat with the new Scottish Parliament on how information from lists can be transferred quickly. Everyone who works for a public authority—all authorities named in the Bill are public authorities—in Scotland must already agree to undergo a Scottish Criminal Records Office check. The SCRO has become part of the public sector. Unfortunately, the check is not applied to many parts of the voluntary and private sectors. I noted the clear definition of an United Kingdom-wide working relationship in legislation that set up the Scottish serious crime squad, passed in the previous Parliament. We must establish such a relationship in this Bill as quickly as possible.

I have personal experience of the deficit of information in this area. On the second anniversary of the disappearance of Vicky Hamilton, a constituent of mine, I raised in an Adjournment debate the problem that, at that time—and probably not even now—there was not a United Kingdom missing persons register. From speaking to Mrs. Lamplugh, the mother of Suzy, I know that it is one of her concerns that information does not transfer. Someone can go missing in Scotland, but information to enable a search will not readily appear on any other register. We must do something about that.

Lists that are compiled nationally must be operated locally. I take the point of my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) and for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on the problem of the length of time that it takes to find those who may have some record that would exclude them from having contact with children. They can easily be allowed to escape from the net. Following the Cullen report, most authorities in Scotland seem to be taking a one-door approach, with child and family units, the police, social workers, education services and the voluntary sector working together very closely. I hear that that approach has much improved their responses.

In considering this Bill, and this whole area—I found the same when considering the Children (Scotland) Act 1995—and as an ex-teacher and a father of a 20-plus son and a 20-year-old daughter, I find the concept of breach of trust and abuse of power difficult to comprehend. I agree with the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) that it is a privilege to be given a position from which one can help, nurture, support, protect, defend and reconstruct the lives of children in one's care in education or, after a negative experience, through social work. However, the evidence tells us that that abuse of power goes on. We must deal with it firmly.

Questions still remain in my mind. First, at what age does someone cease to be a child? The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 answers that by saying, at 18 years of age in some circumstances—which is quite old. Secondly, what are the scope and range of the risk situations, and do we cover all of them? Obviously, the Bill does not do so. Does it do enough?

The potential exists to extend the terms of the legislation to those with mental impairment. For a long time before I came to this place, I taught in a secondary school for children with learning difficulties, and I believe that they need to be protected in many ways when they leave that environment. I often told the children, "You are not special when you leave here; you are special only when you are here." Sadly, in society that is the case.

Should the protection of the Bill be extended to other vulnerable persons? The elderly were mentioned and perhaps we should consider other categories.

Will what was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) as bad practice be covered by the concept of incompetence, when that incompetence is an act of commission, not omission?

In Committee, we should consider how to cover all those questions—or whether we can cover them, and whether instead we want to cut the remit of the Bill at a certain point and make it a useful addition, but not comprehensive.

Some deficiencies sprang to my mind from situations with which I am familiar. The name of a foster carer may not be on a list, but he or she may have a relative who has a record that makes that carer unsuitable. For example, if a foster care home has a parent or a former parent who is an abuser who may have contact with that family, that becomes an unsuitable environment. The person with the criminal record is not necessarily the foster carer, and his or her name may not appear on any list. Should it appear on the list? I would err on the side of saying that it should; it is an unsuitable environment when someone in the family at the same address, or likely to have contact with the family, has an unsuitable record.

I am concerned about two groups of people who work for contract companies who have contact with children through those contracts: taxi drivers and bus drivers. I know of a situation in central Scotland where a bus driver keeps popping up on contracted-out bus routes that take children to and from school—in one case, the school where I used to teach. He can be dismissed by a company when he is found out, only to turn up, a few months later, on another bus company's contract, doing the same thing. The exclusion of voluntary organisations also causes me great concern.

I urge members of the Committee to study the Cullen report and the situations involving Thomas Hamilton in central Scotland. He ran his own scout group of which he was the leader. He saw himself as an alternative to Baden-Powell. In all that he did, he had obviously been grooming children for years. As a council leader in Stirling, I refused him the right to hire halls from the council. He then tried to hire halls from the education authority and was turned down. He took the education authority to the ombudsman, who found in his favour and criticised the local authority for not giving him halls in which to run his youth club.

Photographs that emerged later showed that Thomas Hamilton had all the children in little black shorts which he supplied, and he took photographs of them constantly. He was never proven to have done anything that was child abuse, but obviously that, connected with his other behaviour, should have caused the police to list him as an unsuitable person—and yet they did not do so. That shows that paedophilia and child abuse can quickly spread in voluntary organisations. We should consider that closely.

I was also amazed to find that, if I interpret clause 12 correctly, subsection (3)(b) basically says that anyone working at an independent school cannot be considered to be offering child care unless it is a private school that is a children's home. Are we therefore saying that private schools are excluded from the protection offered by the Bill? That is such a glaring omission that surely we must consider a way of bringing those schools within the Bill's ambit.

I wish to illustrate some of the dangers. Sir William Utting referred to "soft information". He referred to the scheme of the Department of Health and stated:

"It is the only system available for dealing with soft information cases which is valuable."

He went on to express the hope

"that its future operation will preserve the balance of probabilities"

as the

"standard of proof."

That shows that, in dealing with soft information, we are in a dangerous area. For example, false accusations are sometimes made against teachers where there is malicious intent. Having been the president of a teachers' union in central Scotland, I have seen teachers break down as a result of the pressure that results from a false accusation. They have then to retire because their health has genuinely broken down. They will be on a provisional list. It is—[Interruption.] I see the signals that are being sent by some of my hon. Friends, but I did not make the mistake of printing the names at the end of the Lawrence report, an issue which took up about an hour of our time this morning. I must get on with what I wish to say. I must return to Scotland almost immediately for a surgery, which I hold every Friday night. However, I hope that my remarks will be taken in the spirit in which they are intended because they are designed to be helpful.

The problem is that there is no appeal against false provisional inclusion. If that inclusion turns out to be incorrect there is no guarantee, given the bureaucratic powers that are to be found in certain systems, that it will ever be removed. A person may go into retirement with a false accusation having been made against him and be branded for the rest of his life. We should examine seriously how we should deal with that.

The question is whether there should be an act of commission—with incompetence we are dealing with acts of omission. There must be massive safeguards to ensure that people are not labelled along with others who by acts of commission cause a child to be put in danger by their incompetence and not by failing to do something because of forgetfulness.

We should proceed carefully, but we should make firm progress because children deserve no less. We should not see the Bill killed because it cannot cover all my concerns and those of other hon. Members.

I am conscious of the time. Like my hon. Friends and Labour Members, I want to see the Bill proceed. Consequently, I shall not dilate for as long as I would like. Indeed, I shall be as brief as I can.

I am in favour of the principle of the Bill, but I want to take up a point that was made briefly by my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and taken up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean). Although it is a matter of profound significance, it has not been exposed in anything like the light that it deserves.

Oddly enough, the Bill makes an improvement. It starts with the situation that there is a purely administrative act for including people on lists. In addition, it would provide for a tribunal, which would allow an appeal. To my mind, that is an advance, so my comments are not intended to suggest that the Bill is retrograde. However, as it stands, it is a missed opportunity. I hope that, in Committee, we shall improve it, by reversing the order and ensuring that the tribunal becomes the basis for inclusion, with the Secretary of State's role much diminished.

I have two reasons for expressing that view. One is particular to the case and the other is general in its scope. The one that is particular to the case arises because, as all of us who are parents know, for good reasons, strong emotions are raised when somebody has been accused of abuse. I take the points that have been made about the difference between incompetence, abuse and paedophilia. I am talking not of where mere incompetence is involved, but of abuse. Unfortunately, in contrast to the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley), those emotions are raised to the level of hysteria by the popular press. However, I do not speak of that. I discount that. Of course the Secretary of State will pay no attention to such hysteria. However, he will be conscious of the strong emotions.

The point is that the Secretary of State will not have any discretion. If a name is referred to him, he will be required to include it provisionally on the list.

That is true, but I am speaking not of provisional inclusion but of final inclusion. I accept the points that have been made about provisional inclusion and I think that there is a problem there. However, when it comes to final inclusion, the Bill properly provides that the Secretary of State shall take certain considerations into account. That is right. He will be guided by an attempt to arrive at the truth, and not by the popular press and its hysteria. However, he will recognise that strong emotions are raised in such cases. He will be acutely conscious of the fact that, if he refuses to include someone on a list—and if, at a later date, that person transpires to be an abuser—then that Home Secretary and the Government whom he represents will suffer the grossest abuse, not only from the Opposition, alas, but from the popular press and others.

We have witnessed a realm of those problems in dealing with social services; the luckless director of social services who makes a slight slip and fails to pick something up is later categorised as a vile villain. The Secretary of State will not want that to happen, and the great thrust of his investigations will be to find a way of ensuring that somebody who has been referred for inclusion is on the list. There is in that a grave danger for civil liberties, and that particular point leads me to suggest that the Committee ought to find a way of reversing the order, so that the tribunal is the basis for getting on to the list.

There is a more general point. In the current state of affairs, and in the Bill—that is why I call the Bill a missed opportunity—there is a presumption of guilt. The appeals procedure allows that presumption of guilt to be overturned. Hon. Members on both sides have maintained that there is no presumption of guilt because the ability to engage in child care is not a right, but a privilege. I doubt whether those hon. Members were thinking as carefully as they should have about what they were saying.

Every hon. Member would agree that one of the fundamental freedoms of our society is that people should not be prevented by the state from engaging in the kind of work in which they wish to engage. Were there to be a Bill suggesting some blanket provisions preventing certain classes of persons from working in a certain field, hon Members on both sides would rise with one voice to oppose that, as a gross abuse of freedom.

It is important that people should not be prevented from doing something, unless it is shown that there is good reason to do so. The Bill acknowledges that logic by providing for an appeals process. If the Bill is enacted as drafted, we may be implicitly accepting the idea that—at least in relation to things where great emotion is attached—it is somehow reasonable to start with a presumption of guilt. If that principle were adopted generally, it would wreak havoc with civil liberties.

There is a particular reason—and a more general one—why it would be extraordinarily helpful if the Bill's supporters were willing to accept in Committee a change, so that the tribunal became the gateway to the list. With that profound amendment, the spirit of the Bill would be entirely preserved and the risk to civil liberties virtually eliminated.

I join those who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on the Bill, the intentions of which are welcomed by everyone. It is clearly wrong that there is no systematic method to stop people who have been guilty of abuse and have demonstrated their unfitness to work with children from continuing to work with children—and to wreck lives. That was brought home to me vividly when a young man in his late 20s in my constituency committed suicide as a result of abuse that he suffered 15 years ago. Lives are wrecked permanently.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said, we understand that the Bill in itself cannot prevent all abuse. We need good working practices. Children and other vulnerable people must be listened to when making complaints, or when exhibiting evidence suggesting abuse—such as self-harm. We need procedures to ensure that staff, if possible, are not put in positions where problems can develop; that is for the protection of the staff, as well as the child. We need speedy responses from management to problems. That may mean that people are sometimes suspended during investigations, but it is better to err on the side of caution.

However, we need to provide safeguards. It worries me to agree with the Tory right on the need for further consideration of such issues, but at least that may give me some protection from the tabloids. Innocent people should not end up on lists if that would mean wrecking their careers, their relationships and their lives. The tests in clause 2 are widely drawn. The problem of malicious accusations has been mentioned. What happens if an employer sets out to victimise someone? There is no guarantee that an employer is not capable of that just because it is a child care organisation.

Several aspects of clause 2 need to be considered in detail in Committee. Subsection (2)(b) covers an individual who

"has resigned or retired in circumstances such that the organisation would have dismissed him, or would have considered dismissing him".

That opens up broad areas into which people might be drawn.

Subsection (4) provides for convoluted mechanisms for information and observations to go backwards and forwards between the Secretary of State and the individual or organisation. Subsection (5) says that the Secretary of State will consider the information, observations and

"any other information which he considers relevant".

We have to examine the disclosure of such information in the appeals procedure.

If we are to have provisional lists because people are suspended, I strongly support the introduction of a time limit on how long someone can remain on such a list. I know of examples of people being suspended from their employment on the basis that disciplinary action may be taken for all sorts of reasons and the employer—sometimes a local authority—taking months or even years to make a decision. That should not happen, particularly in such cases.

We should consider strengthening clause 2, because it is written entirely in terms of employment and dismissal. How does one employ a volunteer? That applies not just to voluntary organisations, but to the many statutory organisations that use volunteers.

If entry to the system is to be widely drawn, a robust appeal process is vital. There is a powerful case for legal aid being available. It is difficult to know what the rules for appeals will be, because all the procedures are covered by clause 9, which gives the Secretary of State the power to make provisions. It would be helpful to know what the rules will be, particularly on disclosure.

I should like clarification on how people get off the list. I understood my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge to say that, if a criminal conviction were quashed on appeal, that person would come off the list. One could assume the same of someone who was acquitted of a criminal charge, but I am not sure that that is the case. If the test for being on the list is a civil one—a balance of probabilities test—it is possible that someone acquitted in a criminal court could end up on the list on the civil test.

We need to be clear on that point, because, if I am right, we need to acknowledge that that is the position. If I am not right, we could end up with the odd situation in which somebody against whom suspicions were felt strong enough to bring a criminal charge, but who was acquitted, would not go on the list, but somebody against whom there were lesser suspicions that were not felt to be strong enough to bring a criminal charge would end up on the list. That would be a perverse situation.

I welcome the Bill. It will be a major step forward and will improve the position. I hope that the issues that I have raised will be addressed in Committee and we will end up with a Bill that cannot be challenged under the human rights legislation. It would be a tragedy if the Bill were to be caught under that legislation.

I join my colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) on introducing the Bill. I shall be brief, but I wish to declare my strong support for the Bill. I have always argued strongly that children have rights, and I presented a Bill last year that called for children to be given further rights to be consulted on issues that affect their daily lives at school and in the community. However, children also deserve greater levels of protection.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House are horrified by the seemingly endless stream of abuse cases that have been exposed in institutions and organisations that have, as their first principle, the care of children. We have had far too many cases in my region. In Newcastle, Durham and Stockton, there have been cases of abuse perpetrated by both men and women put in a position of trust and responsibility. We have to put in place structures to stop that hideous abuse.

On the face of it, the man or woman in the street would think that the present database registers should be a strong check on offenders or people considered unsuitable being put into positions of trust, but the system does not seem to be working very well. The police national computer database of people with criminal records should be an adequate safeguard, but people still seem to evade police checks. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children tells us that there is a problem in the voluntary sector, with no comprehensive representation of voluntary bodies on the voluntary organisations consultancy service, membership of which is needed to be able to access police records. The Department for Education and Employment also has a comprehensive list of people considered unsuitable, by virtue of a criminal conviction or other misconduct, to be put in a position of trust with children. However, that list is updated only twice a year and it is sent only to local education authorities.

The register that needs root-and-branch revision, and is the subject of the Bill, is the Department of Health consultancy index. It has no legal footing or weight in law. It relies heavily on an employer determining that the name of a former employee should be placed on the list because of dismissal or resignation for behaviour that could be seen to pose a future risk to a young child. Many hon. Members have mentioned the 1997 Utting report, "People Like Us", which reveals that there were only 750 names on the index that had been referred by employers, when the report was drafted. That is incredible, given the many hundreds of thousands of people employed in schools, children's homes, social services departments and the voluntary sector. The suspicion must be that names are not being referred, for whatever reason, and that must be investigated by the relevant Departments.

At the very least, local authorities and local education authorities must have a legal duty to refer names to the list routinely when employees are dismissed. According to Utting, some 4,800 other names have been referred to the index by the police, following the conviction or cautioning of people employed in child care. Again, that figure seems very low. I understand that Utting noted that not all police forces send the information to the Department of Health. That is astonishing. It is easy for people to move from one part of the country to another, and from one police force area to another. There must be protocols and procedures to ensure that that information can be collated nationally and updated continually.

It also appears that the Department of Health does not routinely monitor its own index, and that, too, is astonishing. The Department cannot even say how many local authorities and voluntary bodies use the index, or whether some authorities do not access it at all. Once again, that is astonishing.

The fact is, unfortunately, that sexual crime is common in our society. The NSPCC briefing about the Bill states that Home Office research has established that one man in 60 born in one particular year this century had a conviction for sexual offences. Even more worryingly, that statistic records only those who have been convicted. Some instances of abuse have lasted many years and involved many children, which leads me to believe that the figure is only the tip of the iceberg.

In today's society, people are more mobile. Sadly, family patterns are also more fluid. Utting states that, of the 12 million British children under the age of 18, 200,000 are away from their family home for more than 28 days. That figure alone gives us some idea of the potential for risk.

The Bill fulfils the valuable function of creating a legal footing for the Department of Health index, but much more needs to be done. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) spoke of fears of an authoritarian, big brother computer watching over us, but I believe that many people recognise that the loss of privacy has to be balanced against the need to protect the most vulnerable.

The Department of Health index has to be put on a stronger footing, and the Bill will achieve that. However, that is only the first step. There should be a comprehensive review involving the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Education and Employment, the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Social Services, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the national voluntary bodies so that a fully comprehensive, constantly updated and easily accessible central register can be made available to authorities and organisations working with children. There must also be a stronger duty placed on local authorities and on voluntary bodies to update and use such registers, with a defined failure to do so punishable by law.

As so many hon. Members have said, our children deserve better, especially those who are vulnerable and confused, and those who are put by society in a place of safety. We must be vigilant in stamping out abuse when it occurs, but the prime duty must be to prevent abuse from happening in the first place.

I believe that the Bill will go a long way towards achieving that aim. I hope that it gets a speedy journey through this House and the other place. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge on the Bill, and warmly recommend it to the House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) for giving us this opportunity to take action to deal with the terror inflicted on many children, and to protect them from adults who are predatory and destructive. My hon. Friend is doing a great job, and I thank her very much.

Like many hon. Members who have spoken, I have had to deal with cases that are an outrage in a society that lays claim to civilisation. Children are abused by adults in a position of trust; when those adults are prosecuted, they somehow get back into positions of trust. In one case that I dealt with, allegations were made against a child care employee and police investigations uncovered a previous conviction for a very similar assault. Why had no checks been made on the person before he was appointed? The answer is because they were not compulsory.

I surveyed investigations and prosecutions of employees of child care organisations, and discovered again and again people with previous convictions for abuse or violence in positions of power over vulnerable children. Discussions with the NSPCC and the Cheshire police paedophile unit, with professionals in social work and education and with survivors of abuse have made it clear that the current systems and procedures for recruiting and selecting staff have failed. They are not capable of identifying and rejecting known abusers.

Criminal record checks are currently available only to statutory bodies and a small number of major voluntary child care organisations that are members of the voluntary organisations consultancy service. The vast majority of voluntary and private child care organisations are unable to check the criminal backgrounds of people to whom they will offer a job, paid or voluntary, which involves working with children.

The Bill will make access to records available to regulated child care organisations regardless of whether they are statutory, voluntary or private sector, and that is very welcome. I hope that the key issue of extending protection to other voluntary bodies that work with children will be addressed quickly. It is even more welcome that the Bill requires child care organisations that propose to employ someone, paid or voluntary, in a child care post to ensure that records are checked, and requires them not to employ anyone identified for specified reasons on either the consultancy index or List 99.

That is a radical change, and it is crucial. A shocking number of abusers who gain employment working with children turn out, after they have damaged children in their care, to have previous criminal records. The decision on whether a criminal record check is necessary should not be a matter for the employing bodies. Previous practice has been so inconsistent—and, often, downright poor—that a clear and enforceable position must be taken on what checks must be carried out, when and by whom.

The vast majority of people who work with children want to be part of a profession that is trusted by children and that empowers them. Those people want public respect for their work, and they are let down by the few who abuse trust.

The Bill makes sense of what is currently an administrative nightmare. The case for bringing together the three different national sources of information, for ensuring that information is of high quality and for requiring that it be used in appropriate circumstances has been powerfully made here, but most strongly made by the appalling list of the failures of the system actually to care for people.

The system of safety checks for staff recruitment and selection for paid and voluntary workers with children must be sufficiently robust to deter committed abusers. It is appalling to realise that devious and determined criminals have in the past been free to abuse and molest children because Departments of Government have not worked together to root them out. Change is happening, and it is about time.

I shall turn briefly to a matter that I hope will be addressed in Committee—support for frail and vulnerable older people. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge has supported that concept, and I hope that it can be brought into practice for a group of citizens who are much at risk and whose needs should be considered. I hope that our debate will generate speedy action to include those people in the remit of the law.

It is not possible to make vetting completely offender proof, but better and more comprehensive systems, with clear national guidelines determining usage, will make it more difficult for potential abusers to get around procedures for protecting children. Most importantly, the statement made by such Government investment would be clear: children are valuable, adults have responsibilities to protect them and our society will police and enforce their protection.

The whole House has benefited from an extremely well-informed debate, and we have heard distinguished speeches, including one from a former Minister, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), and several from Labour Members. Those speeches reflect the strong feelings of hon. Members about child protection. The debate has also tapped into the direct experience of Members in coming to terms with the problem.

I understand entirely some of the concerns raised on both sides of the House during the debate, and I hope to dispel some of them. If any outstanding issues of concern remain after I have spoken, I hope to deal with them further in the Standing Committee. The hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) and for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) welcomed the Bill, but expressed some concerns for civil liberties. It would not be appropriate to go into detail during a Second Reading debate, but I shall address those concerns in the Standing Committee. If the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is fortunate enough to be a member of that Committee, I look forward to discussing those matters with him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding), in another good speech, emphasised the importance of getting this legislation through and getting it right. She has played a huge role in developing better safeguards for vulnerable children, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the work that she has done in the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) spoke strongly and powerfully about her experiences and made a moving contribution to our proceedings.

I am pleased to welcome the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), who strongly supported the Bill and made some constructive suggestions. I am afraid to say that he got one thing wrong—I hope that he will not mind if I try to put him right. He felt that the Bill was inconsistent with the recommendations and work of the interdepartmental working group to which he referred, which is not the case. If he looks a little more closely at paragraph 5(12) of its recommendations—in particular, the second bullet point—I hope that he will be reassured that the Bill is entirely consistent with what that group says.

I apologise if I have misinterpreted the group's views. I have relied on the Library research paper on the Bill, which states, in paragraph 6 on page 12, that the group said:

"The new system should be voluntary; there should be no requirements on employers to make the checks or submit information to the lists."

I am grateful for that correction. I hope that, if the hon. Gentleman looks at the report of the interdepartmental working group, the position will be clear.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble), who is experienced in these matters and a distinguished former chair of social services in Lancashire, asked whether foster carers would be included in the provisions of the Bill. I understand that, as drafted, it would include them. Private and voluntary foster carers would be covered by the permissive provisions, but the local authority would be covered by the mandatory aspects.

The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border showed himself in his new and rather surprising colours as a defender of civil liberties. I do not want to disappoint him, but that is not how we have come to see him during our proceedings; but I am happy to see him in that new incarnation and all Labour Members look forward to more contributions in a similar vein. Together with a number of his hon. Friends, including the hon. Members for Poole (Mr. Syms) and for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), who is never here when I respond to his speeches, which is a shame, he expressed concerns about the basis on which the Bill is proceeding. The right hon. Gentleman described his concerns about the administrative nature of the list and how it is administered and asked whether it would be better to put it on a purely judicial footing, with a tribunal deciding whether someone should be on the list.

The right hon. Gentleman needs to look carefully at the structure of the Bill. One key aspect is that we are putting the list into a proper statutory framework. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will exercise his functions under the clear wording of the Bill. The appeal tribunal will exercise an appellate function and, on points of law, appeals can ultimately be made to the High Court and beyond. The system will be more transparent. It will be open and, as a result, significantly improved.

rose—

Does the right hon. Gentleman want to intervene about the appeals system?

indicated dissent.

In that case, I will not give way.

This is a stronger and better system. We are opening up the decision-making process and putting it on a proper legal basis. Therefore, I hope that Conservative Members will be assured that the appellate system and the structure of the Bill will support proper, independent decision making.

Am I not right in thinking that the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to make the final decision, over and above whatever conclusions the tribunal reaches? I understand that few Secretaries of State are likely to overrule the tribunal; nevertheless, the Bill as drafted could allow that to happen.

My understanding of the Bill is that that cannot happen. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced former Minister and knows the arrangements for reaching such decisions in Departments. The Bill's purpose is to put the framework on to a proper, open basis, with a proper appeal system and points of law going ultimately to the High Court. That is a significant improvement on existing arrangements. I know that the hon. Gentleman concerned about the quality and independence of decision making. Taken together, the Bill's provisions would significantly enhance the quality of the decision making that will underpin the list that we maintain. I hope that that somewhat reassures him about that fundamental piece of the Bill's architecture.

The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border was concerned about the concept of harm and its definition in the Bill, particularly in the context of misconduct or incompetence. He probably realises that the concept of harm for the purpose of this Bill will have the same meaning as in section 31 of the Children Act 1989. That will confine and define the way in which the term can be interpreted in any future cases. Ultimately, the Secretary of State himself has to he satisfied in the case of misconduct or incompetence that the person involved is unsuitable to work with children. There is a safeguard in the system, and I hope that he is reassured.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made a characteristically good speech. He correctly noted the need to strike the right balance between civil liberties and child protection. The Government strongly believe that the Bill strikes the right balance. The hon. Gentleman made the good point that employers should receive a prompt response from the Department when someone is referred for consideration against the list. We try to do that by striving to turn round responses to inquiries in five days. We want to ensure that our systems fully reflect the needs of employers. We will certainly continue to do that.

I am glad that the hon. Member for West Dorset is back. Egged on by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, he expressed anxiety about provisional inclusions on the list. It was partly that prompting that led him to conclude that people will go on to the list automatically, and that there will be no discretion and no independent judgment by the Secretary of State. That is not the case. He should examine clause 2(3) in more detail.

In my constituency, a convicted paedophile continues to profess an interest in the welfare of young people. He organises weekends for young people at his home and exhibitions outside. He does not do it for profit and is not part of any organisation. I am advised that nothing in existing law, or in this otherwise admirable Bill, can prevent that sort of thing. Can the Minister confirm that? Can anything be done under the Bill?

I have no details of the case to which the hon. Gentleman alludes. Social services departments have clear responsibilities under the Children Act 1989 in respect of children and vulnerable children. It is their legal obligation to discharge them. Has he considered raising this with social services locally? If he has, and is not satisfied with the response, I would be willing to receive representations.

The provisional list has troubled several hon. Members. Has the Minister considered whether a problem might arise in respect of someone who remained on the provisional list for a long time? The Bill contains a provision that precludes people on the provisional list from appealing to the tribunal. There could be a serious problem of possible injustice arising from perhaps malicious claims accepted in good faith by the Secretary of State. Once on the provisional list, someone could get stuck there because there is no way out.

I agree absolutely. If there are concerns about how the scheme applies as it appears on the face of the Bill, we shall be keen to explore those issues in Committee. If the right hon. Gentleman tables specific amendments, we shall give them careful consideration.

On re-reading, I accept entirely that the provision is not automatic, but does the Minister accept that the test for inclusion on the provisional list is merely one of appearance, which is extremely weak; and that we might properly examine in Committee whether that test ought to be strengthened?

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge will have her own thoughts and opinions on that, which is perfectly proper as she is the Bill's promoter. However, in general terms, the Government believe that it is extremely important that the new statutory framework includes provision for a provisional inclusion on the list. We do not want people to slip through the net simply by changing their employment or moving from one job to another. If we are to protect children properly, it is important that there is a provision that answers the need for provisional or temporary inclusion on the list until a fuller determination of events can be resolved. I hope that I have now dealt with most of the points raised in the debate. If I have failed to do that in any respect, I shall be happy to write to hon. Members.

Let me now join with other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge, not only on her good fortune in coming first in the ballot, but on choosing this topic for her Bill. We in this House have a special responsibility to ensure that children, especially the most vulnerable children in our society, are properly protected from harm and abuse at the hands of adults. The Government take that responsibility extremely seriously, and I am delighted that that view is shared by every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate.

That is why the Government have already introduced several measures to improve the safety and protection of innocent children; I shall speak briefly about those initiatives later. It is also why the Government strongly support the Bill and why we are grateful to my hon. Friend for giving the House this important opportunity to improve the safety and well-being of children. I am delighted that the Bill has received such strong support from child care organisations and from hon. Members who have spoken today. However, the Bill should be seen in the wider context of the Government's strategy to strengthen both the quality of care that vulnerable children receive and their protection from the activities of dangerous adults.

We have to start with a frank assessment of the extent to which we have discharged our responsibilities toward those children in the past. The evidence is clear: we, as a society, have let those children down badly. We have not acted strongly enough to ensure that vulnerable children receive the love, care and protection that all of us would demand and expect for our own children. For too long, we have failed to take the necessary action that would have helped those young people to develop their talents to the full. The price of that failure has been high in both human and social terms.

The Government are determined to learn the lessons of those past failures and to act decisively to improve children's services across the board. We are taking action now to improve the quality of care that those children receive, but we also need to strengthen the protection against abuse and criminal behaviour. That is why the Government welcome this private Member's Bill. The Bill will make a significant contribution to improving that protection and will thus be a fundamental part of our new approach to caring for vulnerable children. We are tackling the problem in a joined-up and concerted fashion, by addressing both quality and safeguards.

That is why we launched the quality protects initiative, to which several hon. Members have referred. It is a three-year programme to modernise social services for children which will be backed up by a new special grant of £375 million over the next three years. Quality protects is about delivering better outcomes for children in need by setting new national objectives for children's services, promoting an important role for local councillors, and requiring all local authorities to submit new quality protects management action plans to the Department of Health by the end of January. I am pleased to say that all the action plans were submitted on time and evaluation work is now well under way.

Before addressing the Bill, I should deal with the important issue of compliance with the European convention on human rights. Because the Bill is a private Member's Bill, section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998 does not strictly apply; however, it will be helpful if I make the Government's view on ECHR compliance absolutely clear. I can confirm that, in the Government's view, the Bill is fully compatible with the European convention.

I shall comment specifically about several important aspects of the Bill. They are the scope of the Bill, the appeal arrangements and the timetable for bringing the provisions into force should the Bill achieve—as I very much hope it will—Royal Assent. As the scope of the Bill, it is clear from what my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge has said that the Bill will lay the foundations necessary for a more complete system of protection.

However, it is clear that further action will need to be taken as we continue to develop our thinking in this area. The Bill does not, for example, make it a criminal offence to offer employment or fail to check against the lists. As I said to the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, those questions are being looked at within Government at present. They will, as necessary, be the subject of further Government legislation, taking into account all the relevant considerations. Even though that means that the most direct criminal sanctions are absent from the face of the Bill, we think that, in practice, all responsible organisations will act fully in accordance with its provisions.

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way on this point. I shall be brief. I raised this issue with the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) because I am worried about the lack of criminal sanctions. Like the Minister, I believe that most organisations will try to do their duty. However, some of the worst child abuse cases in this country have arisen because of failings on the part of social services departments. Does the Minister accept that, unless there is a threat of severe criminal sanctions—similar to those that apply to other departmental inspectors, such as members of the Health and Safety Executive—there is a danger of a lacuna in this legislation?

As I tried to imply a moment ago, the Government are examining the whole issue of criminal sanctions: what they should be and when and how we can bring those proposals forward. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border mentioned specifically his concerns about social services departments. So far as child care is concerned—and regulated organisations in particular—existing powers may be used to overcome any failures to comply with the terms of the Bill.

For example, there are powers of ministerial direction to local authorities and to NHS trusts, which will be covered by the Bill. Registered homes would risk putting their registration in jeopardy if they failed to comply with their clear and unambiguous statutory obligations not to employ people who were on the list. The public will demand this—as will we—from all those organisations covered by the Bill. We will not hesitate to use those powers, if that becomes necessary, to ensure that children are protected from dangerous and unsuitable people.

The Minister said that he would consider introducing criminal sanctions for organisations that did not comply with their obligations. Will that review extend to the creation of a criminal offence of applying for a position that one is not allowed to hold as a result of the Bill?

We are considering that proposal, but the hon. Gentleman will have to await the results of our deliberations.

Clauses 4 and 9 deal with appeals. Most hon. Members who have spoken in the debate have expressed concern about that issue, and the new provisions will significantly improve the protection against unfair or unreasonable inclusion on the list. They represent an enormous improvement on the existing scheme and strike the right balance between increasing protection from abuse—which is what the Bill clearly does—and respecting individual civil liberties. The Secretary of State will in future be required to exercise his functions within the clear framework of the Bill, subject to proper review in the tribunal and, ultimately, in the courts.

I understand the concerns that hon. Members have expressed about those aspects of the Bill. The Government's view is that the provisions will both improve protection and defend the civil liberties of the British people. We do not need to trade off one against the other. That is one of the many strengths of the Bill. However, the Government are persuaded that the provisions are necessary: strong powers must be accompanied by strong protections. Although we are all concerned about protecting children, we must also have regard to the position of individuals who face being placed on the lists and the serious consequences that they will face if listed. There is always a danger of false or malicious allegations, and people must be given every reasonable opportunity to clear their names. I believe that the Bill will provide those opportunities.

The tribunal will act entirely independently in making its decisions on individual appeals. The Secretary of State's responsibilities will be to provide staff and accommodation and pay expenses. The tribunal will also have the power to review completely afresh the full circumstances that led to listing. That will include a factual review of the allegations made and a review of whether the individual is unsuitable to work with children. The tribunal will not, however, be able to review any finding of fact on which a criminal conviction was based.

The Secretary of State will, quite rightly, be consulted in the appointment of lay panel members to ensure that the individuals have suitable education or social service experience. The regulations for the tribunal's proceedings will be made by the Secretary of State. The independent Council on Tribunals will, however, be fully informed and consulted about any proposed regulations.

Finally, I should say something about bringing the measure into force. The relevant powers are in the final clause of the Bill and give considerable flexibility over timing. That is sensible and appropriate, and I hope that the House will be prepared to accept our intended approach.

We intend to be open and inclusive in consulting fully about all aspects of the Bill's implementation, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge would want. There is also the point that the Criminal Records Bureau has not yet been set up and it will not, therefore, be possible to introduce the one-stop shop—the central point of reference—until it has been.

If the Bill is passed, the Government will have to think hard about enforcing the provisions in clauses 1 to 3 before the tribunal is set up. Parallel regulations were made under the Education Reform Act 1988, and there would be subsidiary regulations under, for example, clauses 4(1)(b) and 12. In addition, careful and extensive administrative guidance would have to be prepared and issued simultaneously with the implementation of the necessary statutory instruments to make sure that everyone in the regulated and unregulated sectors understood what was expected.

Hon. Members will, I am sure, recognise the difficulties involved. There will be no unnecessary delay in implementing the Bill, but we shall make absolutely sure that all the preparatory work has been done thoroughly and all the machinery is in place before that happens.

This is an important measure which will improve the safeguards protecting vulnerable children from abuse, strengthen the arrangements for maintaining accurate information about the abusers and fully address the proper concern for civil liberties.

For all those reasons, I strongly urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading and, in doing so, help to discharge our clear responsibilities to some of the most vulnerable children in society.

With the leave of the House, I shall make a few more remarks.

The Bill is a serious attempt to ensure the protection of children, and I am greatly heartened by the fact that hon. Members on both sides of the House have accepted it as such. The comments today included serious propositions for areas of difficulty. I am grateful for the support of all colleagues for the Bill's intention.

Several times, the hope was expressed that some of the issues raised would be dealt with in Committee, and it is my firm belief that they should be. Serious points have been made. All hon. Members have carefully thought through the issues and received the backing of various organisations that also recognise the Bill's importance, the necessity for measures to protect children and the fact that there must also be a balance to protect individual rights.

I thank the House. I am pleased that there is so much support for this important Bill.

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to share in the good fortune of the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) in the ballot, albeit in a much more humble position. I present a Bill that the House will recognise to be of a lower priority than that introduced by the hon. Lady, but I hope that, on reflection, Members will none the less find it an important and useful measure that should secure their support.

I should first declare a past interest. Some 10 years ago, when I was deputy director of the British Chambers of Commerce, I was made aware of the difficulties involved in the control of the title "chamber of commerce", which give rise to the Bill.

The Bill follows one that was introduced last year by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Mr. Trend). During discussions at the time, I was grateful for the support of and the interventions by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), then the Minister responsible for small businesses. As a result of our exchanges, many potential difficulties have been ironed out of the Bill that we are now discussing.

To put the Bill in context, chambers of commerce have transformed themselves over the past 10 years. Accreditation, approval of chambers and the establishment of a system of quality service have led to the creation of a network of more than 230 approved chambers of commerce. Some 95 per cent. of companies and businesses in Britain now have reasonable access to the services of chambers of commerce, which cover national and international trade, export support services, information services, representation of business and access to training sources. In the latter context, some 16 chambers of commerce have recently merged with training and enterprise councils, adding another important aspect to the work of those organisations which are led by the private sector and work in partnership with the public sector.

The increased integrity and comprehensive character of the chamber of commerce network increases the need to ensure that those who seek the support of a chamber of commerce receive the standard of service that they should expect. The difficulties and the scope for abuse in the system fall into two categories. First, persons without the essential characteristics of a chamber of commerce seek to describe themselves as such. I shall not delay the House by giving too many examples, but, particularly after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, there were a number of opportunities—happily as part of the growth of freedom and capitalist enterprise in those countries—for people to establish themselves as chambers of commerce of a bilateral character, working between the United Kingdom and some former Soviet republics. It was not always the case that people who sought to use such a title were genuinely representative of the business community in the countries concerned.

As hon. Members may know, chambers of commerce around the world often occupy not only a significant position in the business community and as providers of services, but a statutory position. As a result, those who deal with them expect a service that is of a disinterested character. That would not be the case in respect of the bodies to which I referred, which did not have the backing of their local business communities. In one case, a sole trader might have been seeking to gain a preferential trade advantage with companies that were not aware that they were not dealing with a chamber of commerce, as the term applied in their own country.

The second problem arises within the United Kingdom and relates to the geographical description of chambers of commerce. It is important that people dealing with a chamber of commerce understand which business community it represents. Its title should accurately reflect its responsibilities. For example, a chamber of commerce in the west of Wiltshire that represented a small geographical area sought to describe itself as the Wessex chamber of commerce. Another chamber of commerce in West Yorkshire sought to describe itself as the West Yorkshire chamber of commerce, although there were chambers of commerce that had been established for more than a century and a half in other major cities in West Yorkshire. It is important that bodies that describe themselves as chambers of commerce, even though they may properly be chambers of commerce, do not do so on the basis of an inappropriate geographical description.

I suspect that I shall pre-empt my hon. Friend by what I am about to say, but, just in case I do not, may I ask him whether he intends to describe—however briefly—the mechanisms and bureaucracy that he thinks will be required to fulfil the purposes of the Bill?

My right hon. Friend is right; I was proposing to come to that. I shall happily address it now, if it will help him.

The Bill's structure closely matches that of the Companies Act 1985 and the Business Names Act 1985, under which any company or person seeking to carry on a business is able to apply for the use of a name. Therefore, there should be no increase in the compliance cost to a person seeking to register as a chamber of commerce or any other related title. That person will apply in the normal way, in recognition of the essential characteristics of a chamber of commerce, which the Secretary of State will be able to stipulate. The Secretary of State will undertake consultation with a relevant representative body—the British Chambers of Commerce or the Scottish Chambers of Commerce—and determine whether to approve registration.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), I do not want to create a structure that will increase the compliance cost for bodies that want to describe themselves as chambers of commerce. On the other hand, I am anxious to introduce a measure that secures benefits for the business community and, on balance, is therefore desirable to it.

The business community as a whole has a substantial vested interest in ensuring that businesses beyond those that subscribe to a system of approved chambers of commerce understand that chambers of commerce fulfil a role and operate services to a standard, and that a chamber of commerce with which they deal has all the essential characteristics—in effect, they see what they get.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has helped me by allowing me to move on to describe the essence of the Bill. It works on quite a narrow basis. It seeks to support an essentially private sector body, which operates in areas where the Government often require it to participate in partnership. Chambers of commerce, not least in the light of recent mergers with training and enterprise councils and the establishment of business links, are increasingly the leading private sector vehicle for achieving a shared public sector-private sector objective. It is therefore important to recognise that the Bill is designed to give such private sector initiatives support and additional status.

Clause 1 requires the Secretary of State to include chambers of commerce and related titles—I could happily instance what sort of titles I have in mind, although I will not delay the House by doing so—in controlled titles stipulated in the Companies Act 1985 and the Business Names Act 1985. Clause 2 ensures that, before determining whether to approve registration under the Companies Act, the Secretary of State consults the British Chambers of Commerce or the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, with provision to consult other relevant representative bodies, which we shall come to later. Clause 2 also provides that the Secretary of State may publish guidance concerning which factors he will take into account in determining whether a body might appropriately use such a controlled title.

Clause 3 parallels the structure determining the use of any company title, but relates specifically to the Business Names Act. Therefore, under clause 2, the Secretary of State undertakes the consultation process in relation to factors for companies; under clause 3, he does so in relation to business names.

Clause 4 defines the bodies that the Secretary of State should consult. I mentioned the British Chambers of Commerce and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, but there is further provision to allow the Secretary of State to add further relevant representative bodies. The specific example that I have in mind is the Training and Enterprise Councils National Council because, as mergers between chambers of commerce and TECs are increasing, it is important that the nationally representative body should be in a position to exercise a consultation role in relation to the granting of a title to such a body.

Clause 5 relates to commencement, at the discretion of the Secretary of State, and extent. Hon. Members may note that Northern Ireland is not included in the extent of the Bill. That is normal practice for companies legislation; comparable provisions have, in the past, been made and introduced in Northern Ireland by subsequent order, not incorporated into primary legislation. It is intended that, in a like fashion, if Ministers are willing, the Bill will be followed by a statutory instrument.

To sum up, the Bill is not designed to be retrospective; it is not designed to challenge the use of any title by any existing chamber of commerce. It does, however, address itself to where there is scope for improvement—there have been difficulties with the present system—and it strengthens the administration of the control of titles for companies and for those carrying on a business, and removes scope for abuse.

The Bill gives an opportunity to reinforce the very positive move that chambers of commerce have made towards the provision of approved and accredited services to the business community, and it does so without shifting the status of chambers of commerce in this country towards the public law systems that pertain especially on the continent, which would lead us to a mandatory system for chambers of commerce, with levies on their turnover and so on. My hon. Friends—I believe, from conversations, hon. Members on both sides of the House—would regard such a system as undesirable.

If we can reinforce a private sector-led, voluntary organisation that is trying to improve its service to the business community substantially by its own efforts, and if we can do so by changing the administration of the Companies Act 1985 and the Business Names Act 1985 in ways that will help it, there is everything to be said for that. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House, including the Minister, will express support for the Bill today.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) on the clarity with which he explained his Bill, and on his luck in the ballot. I have been in this place for considerably longer than he has, and I have never come close to being successful in the ballot. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] I am very grateful for the response of my colleagues on the Benches behind me.

A private Member's Bill is a double-edged sword, but I do not think that that will be the case with this Bill, as I can confirm that the Opposition support its provisions, as we did when we cantered round this course about this time last year. We share the conviction of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire that there is scope for abuse at present; he eloquently outlined why it occurs. People who are not representative of the business community as a whole, or who are pursuing a private commercial interest, will none the less seek to incorporate the chamber of commerce title, knowing that it gives credibility. Undoubtedly, the title "chamber of commerce" lends valuable assistance to any organisation. In my experience that is most certainly the case, and especially in international trade matters.

At one time I was associated with the Confederation of British Industry. These days, I disagree with one or two of the CBI's policy stances. However, when I was associated with it, I was frequently written to by international organisations which had the title "chamber of commerce". I had to check extremely carefully that it was bona fide, that it was in reality exactly that which it purported to be. It is clearly important that the use of such a title, including the geographic description, is accurate and is applied only to a body that generally meets all the criteria for the proper description of a chamber of commerce.

We accept that the Bill is intended to address weaknesses in existing legislation. When Companies House receives an application for the incorporation of a chamber of commerce, it considers, of course, whether the application will result in a genuine chamber of commerce. The problem is that no benchmark exists for making such a judgment. I have been advised by lawyers that in law—I should say that I am not a lawyer, for which I think I am grateful—there is no definition that would constitute a chamber of commerce, and that there is no criterion for approval as a chamber of commerce. The Bill will help in that situation as it will provide objective—that is the important word—criteria to be used in determining which bodies should be able to use the title chamber of commerce.

When an application for incorporation is received, the current defences, as I have already said, are simply not good enough. In effect, as others have said, anyone can set up a chamber, canvas for members and sell services under a chamber trade name. I recall that some organisations with which I used to deal did not even have members. They claimed the title and then sold services, which is not acceptable. I think that we all accept that, including the Government. In practice, not a great deal can be done at present to stop this process. That is why my hon. Friend's Bill is extremely valuable.

Although no evidence exists of wide-scale abuse, we may see in future further examples of businesses attempting to sell services under the title "chamber of commerce". In effect, that is all that they are doing. That is why my hon. Friend is correct in what he is trying to do.

I wish to emphasise that existing legislation has not been applied badly. It is important to say that. Robust procedures within the present system have been followed by Companies House and the British Chambers of Commerce. Therefore, we do not regard my hon. Friend's Bill as a criticism in any way of Companies House. The Bill will help that organisation to do its job more effectively. For those reasons and the many others that my hon. Friend has outlined, we wish him well. We, for our part, will do all that we can to ensure that the Bill becomes law.

I shall be brief because I know that other hon. Members wish to speak. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) on introducing the Bill. It is an excellent measure and I think that it will produce a much-needed improvement in the law. I do not think that it is necessary for me to reiterate all the arguments in favour of the Bill which my hon. Friend has adduced.

My constituents are fortunate in that we have two excellent chambers locally: the Bournemouth chamber of trade and commerce and the Dorset chamber of commerce and industry. Both chambers perform an extremely useful local function.

I have one or two detailed concerns about the Bill which I shall flag up in case they may be dealt with in Committee. First, there is nothing in the Bill to provide for deregistration. That seems to be a defect. We have already heard from my hon. Friend that there have been turf wars on occasion in North Yorkshire and in east London. In future, an existing chamber may fall into desuetude and not enjoy the support of the majority of local businesses. If that were the case, an alternative chamber might be proposed by local business men who felt that they could do better than the existing chamber. There ought to be a mechanism by which a chamber can be deregistered. That is not present in the Bill, and I hope that my hon. Friend turns his mind to it.

In clause 2(2), the responsibilities on the Secretary of State to publish guidance are merely permissive—he "may publish guidance". In this day and age, there ought to be a mandatory responsibility for the Secretary of State to publish guidance, and I hope that that can be incorporated in the Bill. Similarly, he may publish guidance

"with respect to factors which may be taken into account in determining whether to approve the registration"

—but when?

The Bill does not refer specifically to chambers of trade—a description commonly used by many chambers. I have checked the relevant statutory instrument, the Company and Business Names Regulations 1981, and I see that the word "trade" is included. It may reassure members of the public—and existing chambers of trade—if the word "trade" is included in the Bill.

I now refer to the Secretary of State's responsibility in terms of the relevant representative bodies in clause 4. The bodies that he must consult are the "British Chambers of Commerce" and the "Scottish Chambers of Commerce". He can add or delete, but in dealing with local disputes, there should be a responsibility for the Secretary of State to gain some local knowledge.

The British Chambers of Commerce may know the national position, but not the local position in every part of the country. Therefore, there ought to be an obligation on the Secretary of State to consult local people where the registration is applied for—whether that should be the local authority, or even local Members of Parliament, I do not know. Having said that, I very much welcome the Bill and wish it well.

I am pleased to support the Bill, and I was a supporter of the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) in the previous Session. One day, he may be in a position to support one of my Bills—if I am lucky enough to come as high in the ballot as he has.

I support chambers of commerce. My local chamber of commerce in Guildford, and the Surrey chamber, support the Bill. I support chambers of commerce because they stand up for the little guy. As big business reaches out across the world, it is harder for small companies to export. The role of chambers of commerce in helping exports is significant. They organise hundreds of overseas trade missions, securing nearly £1 billion a year of additional business for those who go on them. They also assist smaller companies with export documentation.

In other European Union countries, chambers of commerce are taken more seriously and have more power. As the single market develops, and with it opportunities for foreign companies over here, we must have a strong system of chambers of commerce to help our smaller companies develop their business opportunities across Europe and the rest of the world.

Some hon. Members are concerned about a bureaucratic burden. There is a role for the chambers of commerce in protecting smaller businesses and alerting them to the bureaucratic burden that has been the unfortunate penalty and consequence of the single market, which causes problems for many of our small businesses. We fought the good fight in my constituency to enable a small business in Cranleigh to carry on selling its brandy butter. In the past month, we have finally won that battle against the might of the European Commission. I look forward to the day when we have the help of stronger, even more vibrant chambers of commerce in Guildford and throughout the country when fighting such battles.

I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) for bringing forward the Bill. He began by declaring an interest. I hope that he was proud to declare it, because he brings welcome and valuable experience to the Bill. The Government support the Bill. The speeches that have been made suggest that there is a consensus in the House in support of the Bill.

The term "chamber of commerce" and some other related titles are already declared sensitive under the Companies Act 1985. Their use is at the discretion of the Secretary of State. The British Chambers of Commerce is concerned that Companies House has no legal requirement to consult it on new applications for use of the title, although I understand that in practice that happens. The Bill will ensure that the Secretary of State consults the British Chambers of Commerce or the Scottish Chambers of Commerce when determining whether expressions such as "chamber of commerce", "chamber of trade" or "chamber of commerce, training and enterprise" may be used as part of a registered company or business name. The Bill provides for the names to be specified by statutory instrument under existing companies and names legislation. The link will help to advertise more widely to the business community that it needs to seek approval before a relevant name can be used for a company or business.

The term "chamber of commerce" comes from French. I understand that we are not allowed to speak French in the House and I shall not try to imitate a French accent. The term "chambre de commerce" was introduced in 1601. It came into the English language when the first chamber of commerce was founded in Jersey, the nearest territory to France, in 1768. The Glasgow and Belfast chambers were set up in 1789, with another chamber in Edinburgh and one in my city of Leeds—of which I am rather proud—in 1785. I received letters and petitions from the Leeds chamber of commerce inviting me to support the Bill. I am sure that other hon. Members received similar letters from their local chambers. I hope that all hon. Members will get behind their chambers of commerce and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire.

The Government support the Bill because it will provide a clear link with existing companies and business names legislation in providing that the Secretary of State will consult before determining whether to agree to the use of the titles, including the phrase "chambers of". The Bill also provides that the Secretary of State may publish guidance setting out the factors that he will take into account in reaching his decision. No existing organisations using the titles will lose the right to call themselves a chamber under the Bill.

The British Chambers of Commerce is working hard to ensure that standards among its members are high through an accreditation scheme, which I believe was introduced three years ago. A programme of quality and performance improvement has led to the creation of a core of 60 effective approved chambers, each of which meets stringent accreditation standards. I understand that only a few small and localised chambers continue outside the BCC. I encourage them to join the accreditation scheme, because it is vital to the competitiveness of the UK that the business community at local and national level can recognise quality services designed to enhance business competitiveness.

The role played by chambers of commerce at the local level cannot be underestimated. There are 120,000 business members in chambers nationally. Some 75 per cent. of them are in the five to 500 employee range and some 40 per cent. of them are exporters. They have the largest representative base of SME businesses in the country.

The Government fully recognise the work of the British Chambers of Commerce and see it as a valuable partner in the work that we are doing in progressing the competitiveness agenda that we set out in the White Paper just before Christmas. The chambers work at local level but, through their local work, they advise the Government, at the national level, on the complex and varied interests and issues that concern business on the ground, and their contribution is vital in Departments across Whitehall. They are a major partner in the business link network, which is a key deliverer of business support services, and are fully involved in the drive to ensure that high-quality, appropriate and effective business support is available to all businesses.

The national campaign for enterprise, led by the BCC, is an exciting and valuable exercise in spreading the enterprise message to produce a rather more entrepreneurial culture, which also gives advice on where to go for the best advice and back-up.

A major part of the BCC's work centres around increasing the export potential of UK companies, and chambers of commerce nationally are involved in over 170 missions to over 100 countries each year, which have resulted in follow-up business of over £745 million. That is a major contribution to the economy. We hope that they will participate fully in the setting up of the regional development agencies—they have work to do there.

The Government are happy to support the British Chambers of Commerce through the Bill, which will provide a clear link with existing legislation on the protection of business and company names. It is encouraging that the Bill is receiving support from all parties and, I hope, all hon. Members. The chambers of commerce are seriously valued as a contributor to the Government's initiatives. They have worked continually and enthusiastically to introduced accreditation systems. The Bill echoes steps that the Government are taking to ensure that businesses receive the representation and assistance needed to ensure increased competitiveness in our economy.

Statutory recognition of the title "chamber" will give a moral boost to the cause of quality support to businesses. We owe thanks to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire for his patient efforts in developing the Bill and tackling this small but vital matter.

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

The Bill went through its Committee stage in the last Session of Parliament, and has received support from hon. Members on both sides of the House. It has the support of the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association and the Consumers Association, and has widespread support outside the House.

This is an important measure which, although it was considered in the last Session, needs to be considered again today. Thomas Threadgold, the engineer who was born in 1787 and died in 1829, devoted his spare time, while still an apprentice, to the study of mathematics and architecture. During his career, which included carpentry, he continued to study science and engineering. One legacy of that was his book "Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings", which contains the following:

"One of the most valuable arts which Divine Goodness has placed within our reach is that of producing and distributing heat. Destitute of this power, the condition of man in the world would not be much superior to that of the lower animals. It is a power that adds to our comfort anywhere, but acquires an additional value in the cold and variable climate of Britain. Hence, the art of applying heat has been studied with attention, and illustrated with talent, while it has been practised by men of no ordinary skill. Yet there still appears to be a field sufficiently open for new and useful researches".

Object.

Not moved.

Object.

Object.

I am pleased to be able to raise this important subject in the House, and I am especially grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson), for appearing so late in the parliamentary week to respond to the debate.

The Essex local waste disposal plan has been a number of years in incubation, but it finally bore fruit in October last year. A period of consultation that was to have ended in January has been extended by a further six months. I wish to draw the House's attention to the plan's primary objective, which is

"to achieve a balance between

a) adequate provision of necessary waste management facilities and

b) safeguarding the environment of Essex and the quality of life of its residents."

I hope to argue that, unfortunately, the county council and the borough of Southend-on-Sea have failed to achieve that balance.

In many ways, waste management and waste disposal have haunted me throughout my public life. Up to April last year, I had the privilege to represent the Orsett and Stifford division on Essex county council. That division is part of the borough of Thurrock, which for many decades has been the main resting place for millions of tonnes of waste and rubbish from all over the country.

That was borne in on me when I was first selected as a candidate for the county council elections. I went to a housing estate and one of the residents said, "This is a wonderful estate, Mr. Hurst. In front of us we have a nature reserve." I looked in front of me and saw a deep depression in the ground, with trees on its banks and a small lake in the basin of the depression. According to the developers, that was a nature reserve.

A few weeks later, the excavators and lorries arrived, because an old gravel extraction consent was still extant. The nature reserve regenerated itself pretty quickly and returned back to gravel, but the intention was to use it for waste disposal. Historically, waste disposal and mineral extraction have always been inextricably linked. That is especially true in the county of Essex, which has large amounts of gravels to extract. It still has some marshes, but its greatest misfortune is to be very close to London.

For centuries, Londoners have disposed of their waste in Essex. That disposal began on the marshes, but it moved further and further down to the River Thames estuary and then spread into the county itself. We must break the link that allows London to export its waste to Essex in complete defiance of the agreed principle of proximity. London exports half its waste to our county. By 2010, we are told, it expects to deal with its own waste, but there are fears in Essex about whether that objective will be achieved. At present, for example, there is a moratorium on incineration in London. Unless London achieves its high recycling targets, there will be only one place for its waste to go—Essex.

The Essex waste plan is particularly attractive to London. It is based on a small number of major sites, which, by their nature, lend themselves to incineration. When I read about these matters, I come across the phrase "hierarchy of waste management". It puts one in mind of the House of Lords, although I shall not tread too far into that matter. If landfill is a life peer, major sites with incinerators must be dukes: they last an awful lot longer, and they cost an awful lot more.

We are to reach optimistic recycling targets. Optimism is a terrific human quality, but we are expected to reach 25 per cent. by 2000, which is 10 months away, and 40 per cent. by 2008. The Essex waste plan assumes that landfill will account for 60 per cent. of waste, with 18 per cent. dealt with by recycling and reduction.

The policy is based on major sites, and I believe it to be flawed. I have been supported in that view by the hon. Members for Colchester (Mr. Russell) and for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), who send their apologies for not being here today.

I, too, support the hon. Gentleman, and I agree with his well-considered and well-argued case.

I am most grateful. Opposition to the county waste plan is fairly widespread. Of the 12 district councils in the county, 10 have formed a consortium, including the councils that cover the constituencies of the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) and my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler). The 10 councils have instructed a consultant to devise an alternative scheme to that put forward by the county and by the borough of Southend.

The primary arguments against major sites are that they are a disincentive to recycling, and that they defeat the proximity principle. A large site with an incinerator is an expensive capital investment for a commercial company, and the company will require a continuing supply of waste.

I agree with all that my hon. Friend has said. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that London is not realistic about its waste disposal. London may be over-aspirational and under-realistic, but Essex and the surrounding counties are put under greater pressure to deal with London's waste. That is the nub of the problem. Essex has always been rich in landfill sites and, when I visit landfill sites in the south, I see the arrival of load after clearly marked load from London boroughs. I fear, as my hon. Friend fears, that that will continue, and that, once the landfill sites are full, the waste will go to major sites, possibly including incinerators.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who takes the same view as the hon. Member for Epping Forest, that, by their nature, such sites will attract imports of waste into the county. They defeat the principle of proximity and they are bound to militate against recycling and reduction. They are in every way contrary to what I understand to be the Government's objectives for waste disposal.

A better approach would be to encourage recycling and reduction and to have a number of small sites, so that each locality can deal with its own waste. That argument must also apply to London, which needs to take account of its own waste disposal questions and to devise a plan which, to use a somewhat over-used word, is sustainable. I understand that to mean a plan that would work for some time to come.

Rivenhall is mentioned in the title of this debate. It is a site in my constituency, but the arguments that I will use for it not to be used for waste disposal must apply to many other sites listed in the Essex waste plan. The Rivenhall site was formerly agricultural land. Strangely, it is designated as a brown-field site, although any one who goes there will see, if not 40 shades of green, a considerable number, because it is primarily still an agricultural area. During the second world war, it was an airfield from which the Air Force flew during the bombing of Germany. After the war, it reverted to agricultural use and that is predominantly what it remains today.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I am sure that it is not a coincidence that in my constituency such a site is planned for North Weald airfield, from which bombers also flew during the battle of Britain. It would be far better to preserve it as an airfield than use it as a waste management site. Once again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out.

The Rivenhall site is in a completely rural setting, surrounded by the small and historic villages of Bradwell, Kelvedon, Coggeshall and Stisted and, finally, a village that at least Labour Members may know, Silver End, which was founded by the Crittall family as a model village. Indeed, Sir Valentine Crittall was my predecessor in the 1920s. That model village is within half a mile of the proposed site.

The access to the site is by small, narrow, country lanes. It is close to the river Blackwater. Imagine what may occur if a vast incinerator is placed on the site. I had the opportunity of seeing a scale model of an incinerator, with a model of a London bus next to it. The bus looked like a Dinky toy in comparison. I fear that the incinerator will dominate the landscape to such an extent that the whole character of that attractive area will be changed for ever.

I fear that people will argue that the site is not that far from a major road, the Al20, which has figured in the Government's road programme. Indeed, consent was given for dualling that road in the programme, for which I was most grateful. However, dualling is to take place between Braintree and Stansted. The location that I am discussing is east of Braintree, on a stretch of the Al20 where there are no proposals for improvement and where the road is two-way and already overcapacity. It has been the scene of serious accidents. Recently, the chairman of Braintree district council was involved in a most serious accident, from which he has fortunately recovered, within half a mile of the proposed site.

By its nature, a major incinerator site will increase traffic movements. If the road is already overcapacity, it will create a dangerous and unhealthy situation for local residents. There is no guarantee that lorries will even use the Al20. It is open to them to work their way up country lanes to the rear of the site, thus avoiding a journey of several miles.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does he agree that the plan published by Essex county council has almost carelessly failed to consider the effect of some waste sites on small local roads?

I am pleased again to agree with the hon. Lady. The position at Rivenhall is in some ways stranger that at other sites. There was a similar proposal for a major landfill site with a rail link in 1995. Local community objections were so strong that there was an exhaustive 17-day public inquiry at the Silver End hotel. The proposal concerned the same location and there was universal opposition. Everything was the same as with the present proposals. The recommendation was refusal.

I can do no better than to quote the inspector's report, which stated:

"I conclude there are visual, heritage, amenity, traffic and ecological objections to appeal proposals, all found in discord with the development plan".

That was said in 1995 about a similar large-scale waste disposal proposal. Nothing can have changed in the three years since. It is difficult when local residents ask why we had an expensive public inquiry, with all that research and erudition, if a variation of the same scheme was to be proposed within three years.

I know that the Minister will take account of the representations that other Essex Members and I have made today. It is not immediately for her to take a view, but it may ultimately be. I hope that I have shown that there is real concern and distress in Essex about the proposals. Essex is increasingly united against them, and they do not fit with the county's own waste management objectives. In due course, we hope that they will be rejected and that the alternative scheme that is being prepared by the consortium of districts will prove a better solution.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) on securing this debate. Clearly, plans for the management of waste in his area are an issue of great importance. That was underlined by the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler) and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), and the support of the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell), who is not here.

Early in his contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree said that Essex had a particular problem because of its proximity to London. He is right in saying that half of all waste currently landfilled in Essex comes from the capital. Serplan—the south-east regional planning conference—guidance recommends that London should be expected to halve its export of waste by 2005 and manage all its own wastes by 2010. It will take time to develop the necessary strategic approach, with challenging targets underpinned by realistic programmes. That is why the creation of the Greater London authority and the new mayor will be so important in tackling this issue. The mayor will be required to produce a municipal waste strategy for the capital in consultation with all bodies affected, including Essex and Southend councils. In the meantime, we are anxious that neighbouring waste authorities such as Essex and Southend should recognise that there is a continuing need for some landfill outside the capital for treated waste.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree said, this debate relates to the Rivenhall-Essex waste disposal plan, and I am sure that he is aware that our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions has the power to intervene in a plan process at any stage up to the time the plan is adopted. That quasi-judicial role means that it would be improper for me to comment on the merits of the Essex and Southend waste local plan. However, on the extent to which Government policy on waste matters is generally likely to develop, it might be helpful to the House if I were to outline our intentions during 1999.

First, we aim to issue new planning guidance on waste management. Current guidance on that subject and on the drafting and adoption of local waste development plans is contained in the Government's planning policy guidance note 23. That guidance is being revised, and drafts of the new guidance, PPG10, were circulated for consultation in 1997–98. The new guidance will be published as soon as is practically possible and it should come into effect before the end of 1999. It should assist authorities in the preparation of their waste development plans and the determination of planning applications for waste management facilities. It will also provide specific advice on the criteria for siting facilities.

Both PPG23 and the emerging PPG10 encourage taking account of the waste hierarchy—which cannot necessarily be compared to the hierarchy seen at the other end of the Corridor, as my hon. Friend said—when preparing plans. The hierarchy currently comprises, in descending order of merit: reduction, re-use, recovery—recycling, composting and energy recovery—and disposal. The need to revise that sequence will be considered in the Government's new waste strategy, but it is important that the hierarchy is used flexibly.

Secondly, the Government are currently developing guidance for regional planning and technical planning advisory bodies, which has just been published as a consultation draft PPG11. That guidance will have some impact on waste planning issues.

Thirdly, at the beginning of last year, the Government announced their intention to review the previous Administration's waste management strategy for England and Wales. In June, we published a consultation document, "Less Waste: More Value", which included our initial views on issues such as waste reduction and the likely need for a substantial increase in re-use, recycling, composting and incineration with energy recovery in the coming years. The consultation exercise ended last September, since when we have been developing our new waste strategy. A draft of the new strategy will be published later this spring for further consultation and we intend to publish the final version before the end of 1999.

The Government's vision for the new waste strategy has seven key commitments, including substantial increases in recycling and energy recovery; engagement of the public in increased re-use and recycling of household waste; a strong emphasis on waste minimisation; and use of the waste hierarchy as a guide, not as a prescriptive set of rules. The Government are committed to sustainable development in which environmental, economic and social objectives are combined; that involves protection of the environment and prudent use of natural resources. Our main objective in developing the waste strategy will be to ensure that waste management in England and Wales plays a full part in the search for greater sustainability.

Policy is also evolving on the European front. The draft European Union landfill directive reached a common position last year and has now received its Second Reading in the European Parliament. The current text of the directive ensures tight regulation of landfill sites and sets diminishing limits on the landfill of biodegradable municipal waste. It also requires all wastes to be treated before they are landfilled and bans the landfilling of certain wastes altogether. It will require the development of other methods of treating banned wastes—reduction at source, recycling or composting, or incineration with energy recovery.

We are currently considering a number of options for meeting the targets in the directive, such as limits on the amount of biodegradable waste that individual landfill sites can accept, or issuing permits to local authorities for the waste to be sent to landfill. Assuming that the directive is finally adopted this summer, we plan to publish proposals for meeting the targets and implementing the other requirements of the directive later this year.

The European Commission has formally proposed a waste incineration directive and a directive amending the hazardous waste incineration directive 94/67/EC to include waste water discharge standards. As part of discussions of the proposals in the Environment Council working group, the current German presidency of the EU is seeking to combine them with the existing hazardous waste incineration directive. This would produce a single directive setting tough standards to control emissions to air, water and land from virtually all waste incineration processes. The presidency hopes to reach a common position on such a proposal by the end of June this year.

Despite the impending changes in policy waste disposal, authorities are under a legal obligation to draft and review waste development plans, and these must take account of contemporary Government guidance. It would be unfair to require planning authorities to take into account guidance that has not yet been published. Thus we would expect waste disposal authorities, such as Essex and Southend, that are now bringing forward plans to take account of PPG23 the White Paper "Making Waste Work" and the consultation document "Less Waste: More Value".

As stated in "Less Waste: More Value", we are committed to reducing our reliance nationally on landfill, to greater emphasis on waste minimisation and to substantial improvements in recycling and recovery rates according to the best practicable environmental option available for each waste stream in each area. The Government also believe that high levels of energy from waste and recycling are compatible and that each has its place in the hierarchy of waste disposal. Waste management decisions should also take account of the principles of proximity and self-sufficiency.

Final disposal of waste, generally through landfill, makes little practical use of waste, so it is, in principle, the least desirable waste management option. It is important that we consider other ways of disposing of waste. That will require developments in the treatment of waste by reduction at source, recycling, composting or incineration with energy recovery, which—as I have said—are all in the waste hierarchy. We must plan for the introduction of new technologies and new infrastructures that will enable us to make progress in meeting what are likely to be stringent targets under European Union directives.

The Government believe recycling is critical to the task of making our waste management more environmentally acceptable, and are committed to a substantial increase in the role it plays in this country. To this end, we keenly encourage local authorities and businesses to increase recycling and expand public education on recycling issues.

Source segregation is a common feature of the waste systems of countries with higher recycling rates; but those rates have sometimes been achieved at a very high cost, with increased transport use and insufficient development of end markets for the recycled material. However, the Government believe that a concerted effort is needed to overcome those problems and that a system based on source separation of waste and kerbside collection could provide substantial environmental advantages. The Government also consider that there is scope for local authorities to work towards longer-term contracts for recycling, possibly on a consortium basis, to overcome some of the uncertainties about price fluctuation.

Another priority for the Government is setting and enforcing a high environmental protection standard for incineration. We are of the opinion that incineration with energy recovery should not be undertaken without consideration first being given to the possibility of composting and material recycling. However, alongside a move to a higher level of recycling, a move to a higher level of incineration with energy recovery is necessary over the next 15 years in order to develop a more sustainable waste management system.

On the Essex and Southend waste local plan, I note my hon. Friend's concern at the inclusion of Rivenhall airfield among the major waste management sites. I recognise that people would prefer not to live next door to a landfill site or in close proximity to an incinerator. That means that waste strategies centred around such facilities have to be imposed on reluctant neighbourhoods or located far from human settlements, and in both cases there are often environmental problems arising from noise and traffic movement. That was pointed out by my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Epping Forest. Whatever progress can be made on recycling and local processing of waste, disposal facilities will still be required, at least in the short term.

Sites for major waste management facilities and landfill sites are specifically proposed in a waste plan to provide clear guidance when applications for planning permission are submitted and to encourage provision of perhaps controversial but none the less necessary facilities. There is no intention to prescribe the nature of the process possible on each site.

In relation to a plan's overall strategy, the selection of sites must in the first instance be a matter for consideration and debate at the local level. I am aware that the Rivenhall airfield site was the subject of a major scheme for sand and gravel extraction and landfilling of domestic and commercial waste—a scheme that was rejected on appeal in 1995 following a public inquiry. That does not prevent the waste planning authority from identifying it as a suitable location for a major waste management site in the waste local plan.

However, much more information would be required, including environmental assessment where appropriate, and that can be considered in principle and detail only when proposals are made at the planning application stage. As with any representations on the plan strategy itself, dissenting views on the merits of individual sites identified in the plan should be conveyed to Essex and Southend councils, and objections put before the inspector at the public inquiry.