I regret to have to report to the House the deaths of Mr. Roger Stott, Member for Wigan, and the right hon. Alan Clark, Member for Kensington and Chelsea. I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House will join me in mourning the loss of our two colleagues during the recess, and in extending our sympathy to the families and friends of those Members.

Together with my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary. I attended a special meeting of the European Council from 14 to 16 October in Tampere, Finland. The main purpose of the meeting was to agree the priorities for action by the European Union and member states in justice and home affairs.

We agreed action in three areas. First, on asylum and immigration we agreed: a common approach to the way in which member states deal with applications for asylum, to remove the incentive for asylum seekers to shop around, and to ensure that asylum seekers are dealt with in the first European Union member state that they enter; effective action against illegal immigration, especially against trafficking in people; and a commitment by all EU member states to treat third-country nationals who are legally resident in their countries fairly and without discrimination. All EU countries are now committed to providing equal access to education, health care and other benefits, as we do already for long-term residents in the United Kingdom. Action was also agreed in relation to the six countries of concern studied by the high-level working group, set up last year. Those countries were Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Morocco, Albania and Iraq. We are using a broad approach involving all available policy instruments to tackle poverty and other root causes of migration.

Secondly, on judicial co-operation, we agreed that there were important areas where court decisions in one jurisdiction should be recognised elsewhere in the EU. This is needed to provide legal redress for individuals and companies when their problems, in business or leisure, originate in another member state and to co-operate better in bringing criminals to justice.

The British proposal that the cornerstone of policy in this area should be mutual recognition of court decisions, rather than the harmonisation of laws, was adopted unanimously. The European Council agreed that there must be drastic simplification of the present, slow and laborious arrangements for giving effect in one member state to the decisions of a court in another member state.

The European Council also decided that practical steps should be taken—for example, agreeing on common procedures for making small claims across internal European borders, together with making better information available to the public—in order to improve the access of all member states' citizens to justice throughout the European Union.

Thirdly, the European Council decided on a series of measures on combating cross-border crime. At our suggestion, there is to be a new task force of European police chiefs working alongside Europol, to plan and organise joint police operations across Europe. There was also agreement on our proposal to set up a European police college. A new body will be established, consisting of national prosecutors, magistrates and police officers, to assist and support investigation of organised crime and the prosecution of those involved. The principle of mutual recognition that was agreed should apply to judicial decisions in criminal cases, particularly those required to secure evidence and seize assets.

Action will be taken in due course to replace extradition with a simplified system for convicted criminals. We will also develop a fast-track extradition process for those accused of a serious crime. In addition, we agreed on a new focus among member states on youth crime, crime prevention and the protection of the victims of crime.

A comprehensive list of the action agreed by the European Council is to be found in the Council's conclusions, a copy of which has been placed in the Library.

In addition to its main business, the Council discussed the situation in Pakistan, following the military takeover there. It also had a preliminary discussion of the prospects for EU enlargement, an issue that will be a major topic for the Helsinki European Council in December. It was unanimously agreed that our commitment to enlargement must proceed.

In the margins of the European Council, I made it clear to the Prime Minister of France and the President of the European Commission that France's failure to permit the sale of British beef was unacceptable, and that the French Government had to implement EU decisions.

The EU Scientific Steering Committee is due to complete its review of the French advisory committee's report before the end of this month. If there is no new scientific evidence, the President of the Commission has agreed with me that he will insist that France implements the earlier ruling, and will take legal action if the French Government fail to do so.

We will pursue every available avenue to ensure that British farmers can exercise their right under European law to sell beef throughout the European Union and, of course, it is only because of European law that we are able to do this with the backing of the law.

At the Tampere Council, we restated and safeguarded essential British national interests on asylum and immigration. We reached agreements with our European partners on law and order issues, which of their nature do not respect national boundaries, and on which international co-operation is vital. We restated the overwhelming scientific evidence on the safety of British beef and the fundamental importance of swift observance by the French Government of European Union law. In short, it was, I believe, a successful Council in which we engaged constructively with our European partners in support of British national interests.

We welcome the progress made at Tampere on co-operation between EU member states in the fight against drug trafficking, organised crime, money laundering, fraud and theft. Clearly, progress was also made on improving co-operation on asylum procedures and the creation of a European police chiefs task force. Where such co-operation takes place between nation states within the European Union, we welcome it. The mutual recognition of court decisions agreed at Tampere obviously has merits and we await further details of that.

Is it not important to ensure that, with such co-operation, we do not give away the right of this country to make its own decisions? The Home Secretary tells us that we are not moving towards a single system of justice, but, these days, when the Home Secretary has been to visit, we all start counting the spoons. In the light of this, can the Government guarantee that none of the measures to which they have signed up will undermine our own system of justice or lead to a corpus juris in Europe—something to which we should be implacably opposed?

The Prime Minister referred to the continuing ban on British beef in France. Can we ask him to try a new tactic to get France to lift the ban? Why does he not show his confidence in British beef by lifting his ban on beef on the bone here in Britain? What does he say to the French Prime Minister? "Please lift the ban on our beef? Mind you, I don't touch it myself if it has a bone attached to it." What a stupid position to be in.

We welcome the commitment to enlargement. Everyone acknowledges that this will require changes in the way in which Europe operates. The important question is what those changes will be. Is it not in the interests of Britain and of Europe to argue the case for a more flexible Europe of nation states co-operating together? Government committed to that vision would be pressing for treaty amendments at the next intergovernmental conference that would allow nations greater flexibility. Is that not necessary to make an enlarged Europe work? Is it not necessary to protect the great strength that nation states bring to Europe?

Is it not Britain's responsibility to stand firm for this vision of a flexible Europe? Is not the truth that, instead, our Prime Minister is going along with, and encouraging, a more centralised, more bureaucratic, more interfering Europe? Did we not see yesterday that agenda unfolding as his so-called wise men, including his own former Minister and current adviser Lord Simon of Highbury, published their report? It included a massive increase in qualified majority voting, the abolition of the national veto in key areas including even changes to existing treaties, a separate European defence capability, a written constitution for Europe, and substantial new powers to be taken from national Governments and given to the unelected Commission.

Is it not the right position for the Prime Minister of this country, in the interests of Britain and Europe as a whole, to put forward the alternative to those ideas rather than welcoming them and persisting with his fraudulent insistence that the advancement of any alternative proposals means withdrawal from the European Union? He would have told anyone arguing for the British rebate, for opt-outs from the single currency or for the social chapter that they wanted to withdraw from the European Union. Perhaps we should remind the Prime Minister that the only one of the two of us ever to have fought an election on a platform of withdrawal from Europe is him.

Does the Prime Minister recall that Romano Prodi was meant to concentrate on the heroic task of cleaning up the Commission? Now, he is spending his time saying that, for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, we have the opportunity to unite Europe. Talk about delusions of grandeur—from hero to Nero in a few short months. Why is the Prime Minister so content to be carried along with the tide to a single European state? What the great majority of the British public want from Europe is very straightforward. They want co-operation with other European nations on issues such as fighting drugs and many of the other issues rightly discussed at Tampere, but what they do not want is for ever more rights and powers of this country to be taken away slice by slice with our own Prime Minister wielding the knife. That is why the party that stands for being in Europe, not run by Europe, defeated his party at the European elections a few months ago. Is it not time that he listened to that majority? He is not listening to the British people, so it falls to us to speak with clarity and consistency, and to speak up for the people of Britain.

It is no wonder that Norman Tebbit said that he had never felt happier in the Conservative party than today. The Thatcherites have won, have they not? They have taken it over. Not the back-seat driver any more, she has kicked the right hon. Gentleman out of the front seat. Now, she is going to be driving that flat-back lorry as it goes around the country. The only chance that the right hon. Gentleman will get to have a spin is when his L-plates are on.

I shall come back to that rant in a moment. First of all, in so far as the right hon. Gentleman had any substantial points on Tampere, let me answer those points. Will the agreement undermine— [Interruption.] Calm down. Will the agreement undermine the justice system of Great Britain? No, of course it will not; it is a very sensible set of proposals. I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that he actually opposed all those proposals when we negotiated this at Amsterdam. He opposed the very things that we have now agreed at Tampere, but I thank him for his welcome.

In relation to enlargement, and the wise men's report, let me point out, as the right hon. Gentleman attacks the President of the Commission, that the President was talking about uniting Europe and about enlargement. He was saying how good it was that eastern Europe, which used to be divided from western Europe, is now part of the European family of nations again. I would have thought that Conservatives could welcome that.

The report itself is an advisory report to the President of the European Commission, not a statement of the European Council. As we enlarge the European Union, from 15 to 20, or to 25, we shall have to look at the ways in which we take decisions in the European Union to make it more streamlined.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"]— There is no hidden agenda. It is a sensible debate to have. The experts on qualified majority voting are the Conservatives in power. They agreed 42 different changes, allowing qualified majority voting. I do not criticise them for that. We could not even argue that the ban on British beef should be lifted were it not for qualified majority voting. We shall not agree to any lifting of the veto in areas such as tax, defence, or our border controls—again, something that we secured at Amsterdam, but I am perfectly prepared to look at it in other areas, if it is in the country's interest. That is a sensible position—not the sort of hysterical rant that we got from the right hon. Gentleman a moment or two ago.

As for the right hon. Gentleman's actual policy, there are two points. First, he is saying that he will renegotiate the terms of entry for Britain into the European Union, and will block—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—Oh, yes. He is saying that, unless he is allowed to choose which areas he agrees to—other than free trade, or the internal market—he will block all European Union change. That is his policy; it cannot have changed just in the past two weeks. If the rest of Europe says no, then he will have no option but to leave. That is why his policy puts us on a conveyor belt to withdrawal. [Interruption.] Do not take my word for it. This is what the former Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), said. He said:

"The Eurosceptics in my party have been given a free rein. They have taken advantage of that to try and force the Conservative party to take more extreme anti-European views."

The former Deputy Prime Minister—

Who is he?

Who is he? Well, some of us are not going to airbrush the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) out of history. He said that the Conservative party

"is being taken down a road where the Eurosceptics have got a hidden agenda, which is beginning to emerge, called 'Britain Out'."

Chris Patten said:

"The Conservative policy now appears to stop enlargement unless we get our own way on opt-outs from everything that moves. I just don't understand where we have got to."

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), said:

"The acid test of whether we go into the euro will, at the end of the day, be an economic test: are we being damaged by staying out?"

He called the sceptics policy "politically crazy". Douglas Hurd said:

"Judging from last week's speeches in Blackpool, Conservative policy in Europe is increasingly based on caricature, not on reality."

Malcolm Rifkind said that the Conservative policy is

"a call which is little more than a euphemism for us to quit Europe."

The Conservatives do not agree with any of those remarks, so let me tell the House what they do agree with—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who is the new Conservative spokesman on education and employment shouts, but this is what he said previously:

"Renegotiation should start from the premise that we will stay in the European Union if we can strike a deal that is in our interests and pull out if we cannot."

As someone once said, "game, set and match".

The truth of the matter is that the Leader of the Opposition has turned his party into a single-issue pressure group that is anti-Europe. He has turned his leadership over to the far-right Thatcherites. He might save his leadership and get some media backing, but he is playing a dangerous game of politics with the fundamental interests of Britain. The party that now represents mainstream sensible thinking on Britain in Europe is the Labour party.

It is easy to agree to a great extent with the Prime Minister's sentiments—apart from the last one, with which some of us might take issue.

This European statement gives me my first opportunity to contribute from my new, lowly vantage point—my elders and betters are all behind me; I look no further than the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) when I say that. I beg your indulgence, Madam Speaker, in the hope that the Prime Minister and the House will take this moment to pay tribute to the consistent, coherent and principled contribution made by my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), not least on matters European.

No.

On European issues, no is the only word that the Conservatives have.

Does the Prime Minister agree that much of the detail of the summit, especially in respect of crime and judicial matters, deals with issues that know no borders and respect no frontiers? If ever there were a classic reason why Britain should be in Europe and should be influencing Europe, it is that we cannot pull up a theoretical drawbridge and make ourselves immune from what goes on around us elsewhere in the Community and beyond its boundaries.

The difference between the real world and the unreal world on the other side of the Gangway is that there are those of us across parties and in all parties—including the Conservative party—who recognise that we have to make Europe work for us as a country, as well as for the broader interests and issues affecting Europe as a whole. In the more detailed discussions at the summit, the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary were trying to influence the agenda towards improvement, rather than isolation, which is not an answer to anything.

I have some specific questions about judicial matters. There is a genuine citizens' issue regarding Europol, its accountability and Europol members' immunity from prosecution. Does the Prime Minister believe that there is scope to press further to try to ensure that that state of affairs is in the interests of individual European citizens rather than simply in the interests of the members of that force?

Finally, I refer the Prime Minister to the accursed issue of the French attitude to British beef. Can he give us some idea of the scope and time scale involved in pushing the issue hard? Being good Europeans means that, when another member state—in this case, France—flagrantly disregards the jurisdiction of the European Union, we can be in a stronger position to prosecute our case. Let us do so sooner rather than later.

I welcome the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy) to his new position and I agree entirely with his comments about his predecessor. As to his elders, at least the right hon. Gentleman gets on with them.

As for the summit, cross-border crime is an area where we need greater co-operation. We must deal also with illegal immigration and try to iron out some of the inconsistencies in asylum rules that cause havoc across the European Union. That task will become even more important as enlargement takes place. As the borders of the European Union are pushed further eastward, it will be very important to have proper controls in place.

Europol will remain subject to ordinary judicial rules and principles. Europol is primarily an intelligence-gathering operation, but it will be subject to strict safeguards to ensure that citizens' liberties are protected properly. We think that it is important that Europol, together with the new police chiefs' task force, draws up an agenda of the changes that can be made within the European Union to try to tackle organised crime.

As to beef and the time scales involved, I think that the Scientific Steering Committee of the European Union will meet on 28 October. We will expect to receive a European Commission statement straight after that meeting and we will obviously progress the matter through the courts as quickly as possible. We have made that quite clear. I have told the French Government that, if the Commission and the Scientific Steering Committee decide, as I believe that they will, that there is no fresh evidence that casts doubt on the safety of British beef—all the evidence submitted recently was available previously to the committee—I hope that the French Government will abide by the decision.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the long-term question of our relations with Europe is a political matter and not something that should be viewed as simply meeting Treasury criteria? Is he aware also that the "patriotic alliance"—which gives the impression of being a shadow national Government—is being grossly inaccurate and deeply offensive in attempting to characterise those who take a different view as Conservative or extreme in their character? Many people, including me, who are good Europeans do not want to see the people of any European country—let alone those in Britain—denied the right to elect and remove those who make the laws and decide economic policy. European co-operation will not be durable unless it is refreshed continually through popular consent and support for those who govern Europe in the general elections of every country, including Britain.

Hear, hear.

I accept entirely that people who hold the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) are perfectly sincere. I have read some of the comments made by both Conservative Members and the press and I believe that those who have joined the Britain in Europe campaign get as much abuse as those who oppose Britain's participation in Europe.

As for my right hon. Friend's comments—which enjoyed great support from the Conservative party, as he would have seen—he proposes that nobody should make laws other than those whom we elect directly and whom we can remove from office. Being a part of the European Union means pooling our sovereignty with that of other countries. Those who object in principle to any such pooling of sovereignty also object in principle to the European Union. We might as well be honest about it: that is the debate. Those who oppose this idea because they believe it to be fundamentally undemocratic—I do not happen to share their view—should state their argument openly. They should say what a large part of today's Conservative party wants: they want out of Europe. I am afraid that that follows logically from the position that my right hon. Friend has adopted from his perspective, and that many Conservatives adopt from theirs. That is a perfectly sensible debate to have, but I happen to be on the other side of it.

The Prime Minister will know, I am sure, that, all over the country, people are pleased to think that the processing of asylum applications will be speeded up. However, is he aware that many of my constituents are increasingly disturbed by the fact that, although we are spending much time and effort on new procedures to speed up asylum applications, law-abiding citizens are having to wait seven, eight or even nine months for a passport—if, that is, the passport has not been lost. This week, I have had the humiliation of having to write to a foreign embassy asking it to intervene because the passport of one of my constituents had been lost by our people, and only an intervention by the Turkish ambassador could allow that person to get back to Istanbul to see deprived and anxious relatives, who had suffered in the earthquake. That is no way to go into a negotiation with Europe, with disgraceful incompetence in our procedures.

We are reforming our procedures, precisely because we have a huge backlog of claims. I understand that the casework is now back to normal, but I accept that things have been very difficult for people. However, that does not detract from the fact that it is in our interests to ensure that there are common asylum procedures across Europe. As for our asylum procedures, and our ability to make our asylum system more efficient, the changes that we propose will achieve precisely that. In relation to the matter that the hon. Gentleman raised in connection with his constituents, we have been working extremely hard, and we believe that the casework is now back to normal—but we keep the situation under constant review.

I warmly welcome what the Prime Minister has said about our stance on the lifting of the French beef ban. Anyone who believes in the European Union also believes that everyone should abide by the rules. Clearly, the French are not doing that, so it is important that we are challenging the French Government. However, does my right hon. Friend accept that the very fact that we have a legal framework within the European Union, setting out rights and responsibilities, means that we have a method of legal redress against the French Government? If we had followed the advice of the Conservative party, which increasingly seems to suggest withdrawal from the EU, we would have no legal right of redress whatever.

It is true that it is only because we are part of the European Union that we can pursue legal redress. It is also true that opting out of everything, which is now the Conservative party's policy, would include opting out of aspects that were nothing to do with the issue. The shadow Foreign Secretary said that Community law should be concerned only with free markets and free trade. That would mean that, in respect of the environment, agriculture and a whole range of other things, countries could simply pick and choose, and do whatever they wanted. That would be used against us, to our detriment; that is what is so crazy about Conservative policy. As the European Union enlarges and more countries come in, it will be in our interests to ensure that a small country cannot block change that we want in the European Union—change that would be in our interests.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to welcome the developments at Tampere, and to encourage the Prime Minister to be tougher with the French by using the Commission and the European Court of Justice in the proper way, in Britain's national interests. He was also right to welcome the enlargement measures. However, will the Prime Minister acknowledge the fact that one consistent Conservative policy has always been that, within the European Union, to overcome the protectionist instincts of any one member country, we need qualified majority voting? That is the principle behind the Single European Act, and it will become more important as the EU enlarges.

Did the Prime Minister have time to discuss with his fellow leaders at Tampere the forthcoming world trade talks in Seattle? Again, there is evidence that, because decisions are not taken by qualified majority voting, it may be difficult to reach a common position for negotiating on behalf of European Union interests in those talks, at a time when the Americans are showing more and more protectionist instincts.

The hon. Gentleman is right about qualified majority voting, which is why I do not criticise the Conservative Government for negotiating to have many matters decided by QMV. If they had not done so, a series of changes could never have been put through in Europe.

I also agree with the hon. Gentleman about the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle. We take the forward end of the free trade position. There are varying degrees of enthusiasm for that in the European Union. It is important that Britain has a leadership position in the European Union, so that we can help to push the EU towards the most open policy that it can possibly have at Seattle. The hon. Gentleman is also right about protectionist sentiments in the United States. The worst thing that we could do from a European perspective would be to echo those sentiments rather than to confront them.

I was the leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Peru, and we were told that Peru produced more coca leaves and raw material for drugs than any other country in the world. President Fujimori and many others in a position to know, including the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, said to us that Peru was doing its best—"look, you have seen our gunboats on the Amazon and the dogs that smell every bit of luggage"—but, as long as the west has anonymous, numbered bank accounts, drugs operators will get away with it. What can be done about anonymous, numbered, drugs accounts or the suspicion that such accounts exist? It is not easy.

That is a good point. It is precisely for that reason that, at Tampere, we discussed the problem of money laundering. We agreed to draw up a list of action to take against secrecy and illegality that make it difficult to trace where much of the drug money goes.

I should point out to my hon. Friend that, as a result of Europol intelligence gathering and the co-operation that we have now established between police forces across the European Union, we have a better chance of taking action in those areas. However, it would be foolish to pretend that we have anything other than a long way to go.

The presidency conclusions refer to a new agreement to give residents of European Union member states, as well as their citizens, the right to move to, and work in, any other member state. How is that new right consistent with keeping control of our own borders?

That is not correct. Residents will get the same rights as they do in the member state: their rights will not be pushed beyond that, so we will be able protect our borders. I should also point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that, under the Amsterdam agreement, we still have an exclusive right to protect our own borders. Whatever issues are raised in the legislation that is agreed, we will be able to protect our own borders.

That is an opt-out.

That is absolutely right. As a result, even were the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) right, that would not affect our border controls, because we would still have the right to protect the integrity of our borders.

I am referring to what the presidency conclusions say.

No, they do not say that. They refer to residents having the same rights as in the member state. That does not mean that they have the freedom that the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggests.

May I build on the drawbridge analogy made by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy)? Some of us do not believe that we should construct a new Hadrian's wall across the English channel. In his discussions on the margins, did my right hon. Friend tell his colleagues in the European Council that 57 per cent. of our trade is with the European Union, that 3.5 million jobs in this country, including many on Teesside, are because of our participation in the European Union, that the Government have no intention of renegotiating the treaties or withdrawing from the EU, and that they have majority support in the House and in the country?

That is right, and that is why it is important for Britain not just to remain in the European Union, but to be positively engaged in Europe. Some 3.5 million jobs are dependent on our membership of the EU, 800,000 jobs are as a result of inward investment, and 30 per cent. of such investment in European Union countries comes to Britain. Every day, we put and sell into the European Union £320 million worth of goods and services. That is why it is important for Britain to remain part of the European Union. More than that, however, all the decisions that are made in Europe affect our own ability to operate these rules successfully. If we end up without influence in Europe, or sidelined in Europe, or marginalised in Europe, we end up being unable to defend this country's proper national interests.

I am sure that we would all agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is entirely desirable for us to have a system whereby the law can be enforced across the Community, and we can work together to prevent drug smuggling, the dissemination of pornography and other awful things; but can the right hon. Gentleman explain how the system of common judicial authority will work, particularly in the absence of a common system of law? For example, what is an offence in Greece may not be an offence in this country. Does the right hon. Gentleman envisage circumstances in which a Greek judge could require the arrest of a British citizen, and require that citizen to face trial in Greece, for something that would not constitute an offence here?

No. The proposal is in respect of serious crimes that are recognised across Europe. The purpose is to ensure that judgments can be enforced quickly, without there being, as there are now, great delays and problems in the courts. It is a perfectly sensible idea.

Many will welcome the discussion that the Prime Minister said had taken place about the serious situation in Pakistan. Will he give us some more information about that discussion? Will he also confirm that his Government, like the rest of the Commonwealth and the vast majority of the international community, will do everything possible to ensure that that country returns to democracy as speedily possible?

We will do all that we can—independently, through the Commonwealth and through the European Union—to try to ensure a return to stability and democracy in Pakistan. The discussion around the table of the European Union showed total unanimity on that point.

Will the Prime Minister veto any attempt to introduce corpus juris?

As far as I am aware, no one has suggested that we have a corpus juris, and I have made it absolutely clear that we do not want a corpus juris across the whole of Europe. There is not even a proposal for that. We will always oppose anything that we believe to be contrary to this country's national interest, and trying to introduce one legal system across Europe would be. [Interruption.] I have already said that we would oppose any such attempt; what is more, no such attempt has ever been made. Why do these people raise these scare stories? They do it because they are so obsessed with being anti-Europe that they allow their dogma to blind them to the proper interest of this country, which is to be in Europe—and not just to be in Europe, but to be constructive, to engage and to lead in Europe, rather than being at the margins of Europe, which is where we found Britain two years ago.

Could a common approach on asylum mean that, in the future, applicants arriving in this country via another EU country will have no rights in the United Kingdom under the United Nations convention on refugees, even when courts in this country have taken a different view and rejected the view taken by the country from which the applicants have come? If the Prime Minister regards that as undesirable, does he agree that we need common approaches not just on procedures but on standards, and that we must avoid establishing common standards across Europe by sinking to the level of the lowest common denominators?

We are trying to achieve proper standards, but it is important for countries to protect their own boundaries, and to protect themselves against illegal immigration—and, indeed, unlawful asylum. What is required is a balance. We want to establish proper standards in regard to the way in which people are treated and received, but we do not favour harmonisation. What we favour is the adoption of some common procedures, and the introduction of proper minimum standards; but, as a result of what we negotiated at Amsterdam, we retain integrity over our own borders.

I welcome the Prime Minister's initiative to try to get France to take in British beef, but does he recognise that its refusal to do so is strictly against the spirit of the European Common Market? Furthermore, such action turns people away from wanting to be closer to Europe.

When the Prime Minister raised France's refusal to accept not only beef into France, but lorry transit through the country, did he also raise the severe allegation that France is subsidising its pig farmers behind the back door and is giving other subsidies to its farmers?

Why have we to wait for another meeting of the Scientific Committee before France takes in British beef? If it can get away with that, why cannot another country raise another objection, which would mean that we would have to wait further?

The only proper recourse is through the law. The hon. Gentleman has said that the French action is against the spirit of the law. It is against the letter of the law. That is why we are taking the action that we are taking. As I said earlier, it is only because we are part of the European Union that we have any power to take action against the French.

In respect of transit, as a result of the temporary agreement that we have secured with the French, transit is now allowed, so that obstacle has been cleared, but that does not alter the fact that we still do not have clearance of British beef in Europe. We will carry on fighting the case until we win it.

In view of the Prime Minister's fairly recent answer on that pompously named project the corpus juris, I hesitate to ask another question, but will he please tell me whether, during the deliberations on crime and justice, the corpus juris was discussed at all and whether the recommendation by those who wrote the project that there should be a European public prosecutor was discussed?

No is the short answer on corpus juris. There are people who talk about having a European public prosecutor. That is essentially to root out fraud in the European Union, but we have not agreed to that and there is no active proposal on it.

When the Prime Minister was at the European Council, did anyone draw to his attention the fact that, since he told the House last summer that he was planning to sell more than half Britain's gold reserves because so many other countries were planning to do the same thing, 15 European central banks, supported by the United States Treasury and the Bank of Japan, have pledged not to sell any gold for the next five years or longer, with the effect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer sold the first two tranches of British gold at an all-time low price at the end of a long bear market, involving the British taxpayer in heavy losses?

As Germany holds 3,400 tonnes of gold and has said that it will not sell any of it, will the Prime Minister now abandon his Government's plan to reduce Britain's gold reserves to less than one tenth of that amount?

The hon. Gentleman is back to the old gold conspiracy again. We took the decision for sensible reasons. As for selling Britain's reserves, the one party that I will not take lessons from in the matter is the party that gave us the exchange rate mechanism debacle, where we lost more reserves in one day than this country has ever known.

It was reported in the press that, during a break in the proceedings at Tampere, some of the Heads of State and Government visited the Lenin museum in Tampere. Is the Prime Minister aware that that museum contains one of the few surviving documents—the treaty of Brest Litovsk—that was signed by Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky? Can he think of any three Conservative politicians who will be able to sign any document jointly?

No is the answer to that. I should also say that I was not one of those who visited the Lenin museum.

On that note, we shall move on to the next statement.

Madam Speaker, I wish, with permission, to make a statement about the horrific railway accident that happened at Ladbroke Grove junction on the approach to Paddington station on 5 October, when, at 8.11 am, the Great Western train from Cheltenham collided with the Thames train leaving Paddington. The House will be aware that, last week, my noble Friend the Minister for Transport made a statement in another place.

I am sure that the House will wish to join me in expressing deepest sympathy to the families and friends of those who lost their lives and hoping for the fullest possible recovery of those who were injured.

Immediately, we asked how such an accident could happen and how we could prevent such a thing from ever happening again. The latest casualty figures are 30 fatalities—including both drivers—and 245 injured. It was the worst rail accident in Britain since the Clapham Junction accident in 1988, when 35 people died.

Once again, the vigour, courage and professionalism demonstrated by our emergency services—fire, police, medical and health and safety staff—were outstanding. The emergency services' reaction was the product of constant training and planning, enabling them to perform in a manner of which I know that the whole nation wants to express its appreciation.

A striking feature of the appalling event was the remarkable reaction of ordinary people who were nearby at the time. Railway workers, staff from the local supermarket, others working nearby and, of course, survivors of the collision rushed to help those in distress without regard to their own safety. In the midst of horror, their selfless behaviour was a testament to human courage and willingness to reach out to others during a crisis. I am sure that the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to them all.

In addition to investigations by Railtrack and the railway inspectorate, there is to be a full public inquiry into the Paddington crash, under the chairmanship of Lord Cullen. I am pleased that Lord Cullen has agreed to take on the task and begun his work so promptly, visiting the site on the day of his appointment. He will, of course, soon have the benefit of the Southall inquiry, to which we attach the highest importance.

Lord Cullen will be examining the causes of the tragic accident, and also the wider issue of the overall safety regime in the railway industry. He will, inevitably, take some time to complete his work, but the Government will do all that we can to remove any obstacles to progress and ensure that we avoid the type of delay that the Southall inquiry experienced.

On Friday, 8 October, Her Majesty's chief inspector of railways issued interim findings on the causes of the crash. Subject to final confirmation, we now know that the Thames train passed a red signal before travelling a further 700 m into the path of the Great Western train. The automatic warning system on board would have applied the brakes if it had not been cancelled by the driver.

The chief inspector of railways has made it clear that, whatever the immediate causes of the tragedy, they should be considered as symptoms of a more general problem in the organisation of an effective railway safety regime.

I am determined to ensure that the industry takes firm and urgent action to reduce greatly the number of signals passed at danger—so-called SPADs. There has been considerable concern about SPAD incidents. Although the number of such incidents had been falling—from almost 1,000 in 1991, to just under 600 in 1997—last year it increased to 643. Consequently, last month, the railway inspectorate published a report detailing actions companies were required to take to strengthen safety systems. The chief inspector has my full support in that.

On 7 October, the railway inspectorate wrote to the train operating companies, instructing them to re-brief all drivers on the location of suspect signals and ways of avoiding passing signals at danger, and to review their driver training and arrangements for monitoring performance.

On 8 October, the inspectorate issued three enforcement notices. The first prohibits the use of signal SN109—the signal passed at danger by the Thames train—until Railtrack takes effective action to prevent further trains from passing it at danger. The second requires Railtrack to introduce by 6 November additional controls at 21 other signals passed at danger more than seven times in the past eight years. The third requires Railtrack by the same date to produce plans to reduce the risk at all other signals with a recent history of being passed at danger.

Meanwhile, I have asked for a weekly report to be sent to me on the number of SPADs. The chief inspector of railways has reported to me that, in the seven days after the accident, there were 16 SPAD incidents on the network. That is consistent with the average weekly numbers for October over the past three years. I have asked the railway inspectorate to produce a monthly analysis of SPADs which will be placed in the Library of the House.

The concern about SPADs has been increased by last night's incident at Lewes, where a Hastings passenger train collided with an empty train. There were 11 passengers plus driver and guard on the Hastings train, and all were safely evacuated. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Railtrack promptly informed the Health and Safety Executive, and an inspector from the railway inspectorate arrived on the scene.

The initial report from the HSE indicates that the train left Lewes station against a red stop light, and although the signaller at Lewes put out an emergency general stop call via the cab secure radio network, he was unable to prevent a collision. The likeliest explanation is that a number of errors by the platform staff at Lewes and the train crew combined resulted in a signal being passed at danger. The railway industry intends to carry out an internal inquiry. Meanwhile, the HSE is continuing to investigate, and we await its conclusions.

These incidents have led to a lot of discussion about train protection systems. Indeed, the inspectors consider that the Paddington accident would have been prevented had the train protection and warning system been installed. In 1989, the Hidden inquiry into the Clapham crash recommended the network-wide fitment of automatic train protection, although no workable system was available in Britain at that time. No decision to implement this recommendation was taken, except on a pilot basis.

When this Government came to office, the Health and Safety Commission—aware of my close interest in the area—expressed concern that the industry was not making sufficient progress on either of the two key rail safety issues of the day: namely, the development of train protection systems and the withdrawal of mark 1 slam-door rolling stock.

We made it clear to the HSC in January 1998 that it should bring forward whatever regulations it considered necessary to improve safety on the railways and to reduce the incidence of signals passed at danger. Those regulations—signed by me on 30 July—will introduce train protection across the network and will bring forward by two years the elimination of mark 1 rolling stock.

The regulations require the early introduction of the TPWS and the continued use of ATP where it is already operational. The regulations do not preclude the introduction of further ATP, especially on our high-speed rail network. In fact, ATP is already operational on the Great Western line, the Chiltern line and the Heathrow express. It is being introduced on the channel tunnel rail link and the west coast main line, together with the east coast main line and the midland main line when they are upgraded. There is a balance of systems on our railway network.

There has been much discussion in the media and elsewhere about different types of train protection systems, and a great deal of misinformed opinion and differing technical advice has added to the confusion. I want to identify the safest and most appropriate options for use on our railways. I have therefore asked Sir David Davies, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, to assess and report back to me on the effectiveness, practicability and cost of train protection systems, and also on how best to reduce the present number of SPADs.

The Paddington incident has of course given rise to a large number of other questions not related to signals being passed at danger. They include the safety of the rolling stock and emergency equipment in case of fire; the behaviour of automatic central door locking; the type of diesel fuel; and the design of the track configuration and signalling.

We would all like instant answers on those issues. They will be examined thoroughly and properly in the investigations into the crash. I trust that the House agrees that it would be wrong to leap hastily to conclusions. Of course, should right hon. and hon. Members wish to raise any specific points, I shall ensure that they are drawn to the attention of those conducting the investigations and the public inquiry.

Concerns have been expressed since privatisation about fragmentation leading to a blame culture. Particular concern has been expressed about the wide range of responsibilities that reside in Railtrack's safety and standards directorate.

Last year, at my request and in line with a recommendation of the Transport Sub-Committee, the HSC began a review of the issue. Its interim report reached my office on the day of the Paddington crash. The report raises serious concerns about the rail industry, largely relating to priorities and decisions on safety standards, approval of the operators' safety cases, safety audit, incident investigation and the adequacy of strategic research. It states that those issues should be explored further.

As a consequence I acted immediately, and at my request the Health and Safety Commission has appointed a specialist team to investigate those concerns and advise on any action required. I am glad to say that Railtrack has publicly welcomed that initiative.

I am minded to transfer the main functions of Railtrack's safety and standards directorate out of Railtrack, but where those functions are best located requires careful consideration. The answer must be one that ensures greater coherence on safety and does not, through disrupting safety management, result in an increase in risk.

The chief inspector of railways is keeping me informed of the progress of his investigations into the Paddington crash. He hopes to have sufficient additional information from the various tests and examinations now under way to be able to make a second interim report shortly.

I asked for an early report on action undertaken by Railtrack to improve safety on the approach to Paddington station, both in the short and longer terms. Although the emergency services have completed their work and the track has been cleared, Railtrack will reopen Paddington station only when the railway inspectorate is satisfied that it is safe.

There will be some restrictions on services, in particular at peak times, notably because of the closure of the approach to signal SN109. The actions that I have taken since the Paddington crash have been designed to enable the fullest possible investigation of the causes of this appalling accident and the best ways of preventing it from happening again. They should ensure that the decisions that need to be taken will be properly informed, thoroughly considered and as prompt as possible. In the meantime, whenever it becomes clear that a measure needs to be taken, we shall take it. Neither shall we hesitate to introduce legislation to the House, should that be required.

I have summoned the managing directors of all the passenger and freight operators, the shadow Strategic Railway Authority, the Rail Regulator, Railtrack and the general secretaries of the rail unions to a meeting next Monday to thrash out any immediate and additional steps that can be taken to improve safety. In particular, we shall discuss the HSE reports on SPADs and Railtrack's safety and standards directorate.

The Ladbroke Grove junction rail crash touched the heart of the entire nation. It must be a watershed for railway safety. We must make it so. We must emphasise to everyone concerned that safety comes first, second and third on Britain's railways.

The lasting legacy and the outcome of all the urgent actions now in progress must surely be a more open, more responsive, more rigorous culture of safety across the rail industry. We owe the victims and their loved ones nothing less. I am sure that the House agrees.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. On behalf of the Opposition, I send my deepest sympathy to all the relatives of those who died near Paddington. The House is united in a feeling of shock and grief and we all send our best wishes for a full recovery to those who were injured. We shall all find it difficult to put behind us some of the scenes that we saw, particularly those of us, including me, who represent constituencies along that ill-fated railway line. We are all united in thanking the emergency services for all that they did after the crash to take care of those suffering.

Safety is above party. We all want safer railways. From the moment of the crash, the Opposition have stressed two points. First, we must have a full and speedy inquiry into both Southall and Paddington, and we welcome the news on that. Will the Secretary of State give us some firmer idea of the timetable that he has in mind? It is dangerous to leap to conclusions before knowing the full causes of the crashes, but we wish to press on with the issue because of the fear felt by the travelling public. Secondly, the Opposition will support any sensible measures that can make such dreadful crashes less likely in the future.

It is my unwelcome task today to ask some of the questions that the nation wants answered—that is the role of the Opposition—but I do so with a heavy heart. Many people have been shocked to learn of the number of red signals that have been ignored. When did the Secretary of State first become aware that the number of signals passed at danger has been increasing? He has demanded a weekly report of red signals passed, so is he telling us that he can do something as Secretary of State to ensure that it does not happen in the future? That would be most welcome. What action could he take following yesterday's collision, for example?

We all want swifter progress with the Paddington inquiry than took place with the Southall inquiry. Is the Secretary of State aware that the Opposition wish to co-operate with any reasonable change that may be necessary to allow public inquiries to proceed in parallel with other legal processes? We feel that that is most important.

Will the Secretary of State publish all the evidence and advice that has persuaded him to strip Railtrack of its safety responsibilities before seeing the inquiry findings? For example, does he intend that the same staff currently doing the job should perform the duties in a new body, or should they be dismissed and new people found and trained? Will the instructions to the new body be the same as the instructions to Railtrack, or does he now think those instructions were inadequate and part of the problem? Why does he wish to give Railtrack responsibility for a significant part of the London underground when he does not think that it can be trusted with safety responsibilities?

We wish to know what the Secretary of State has decided about the remit of the Southall inquiry. Will he meet the legal representatives of the families caught up in that tragedy, as the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow transport Minister and I did this morning, to ensure that their concerns about the scope of the inquiry are met? They are deeply felt concerns, and we were deeply moved by the requirements that their legal representatives put to us today.

Is it true that the HSE has said that Paddington is unsafe and that the station definitely cannot reopen tomorrow? The confusion surrounding the reopening of Paddington is doing nothing for the feelings of those affected by the tragedy or for the confidence of the travelling public. They all deserve better. I hope that the Secretary of State will return to the House soon with a plan of action, based on inquiry findings, for better technology and better train driving, so that travellers can be assured that he and the industry have done everything they can to learn from this series of tragedies. He will find the Opposition very willing to help.

I am grateful for the remarks of support for the organisations involved in that terrible tragedy. We are united in wanting to improve safety, and I readily accept that questions raised by the right hon. Gentleman were not raised in a critical tone, but as a proper function of the Opposition in such situations. The House wishes to ensure that we have the best and safest railways, but I have made it clear from the beginning that I have avoided making political points, although it would be easy to do so. They do not help in such situations. People want us to get on with the job, because they are concerned that the railways are not as safe as they should be. They want the Government and the House to work together to improve matters, and that is our intention.

I met some of the relatives of victims of the Southall crash and discussed their concerns. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, I do not wish that inquiry to be delayed or held up while the Cullen inquiry takes place. It is important to get the conclusions of the investigation of the Southall crash before us as quickly as we can. Those conclusions will be relevant to consideration of the automatic train protection system and will have much to teach us about what went wrong that day. That is the purpose of inquiries. Indeed, I have asked Sir David Davies to make his engineering expertise on automatic train protection systems available to the inquiry. It is important that the Southall inquiry should not be delayed; I disagree with the lawyers who argue that it should be delayed until the Cullen inquiry starts. However, that is a difference of opinion. I think that the House would want that report to be concluded. It has been too long in preparation: people want to hear its conclusions, and they want to do so now.

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) asked when I knew about the increase in SPAD incidents. Almost my first action, in the first month after I took office, was to call for a report on rail safety. Three or four months later, I called in the Health and Safety Executive to discuss precisely how we were to end the delay in the introduction of an automatic train protection system. The advice that I was given was that something like 70 or 80 per cent. of such incidents could be avoided. Naturally, I told the Health and Safety Executive, "Get on with providing the system—bring me the regulations." If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the dates of the relevant decisions in this matter, he will see that I acted promptly, within weeks of coming into office.

The reason why I acted so quickly is simple: I have always been concerned with safety, and have felt that not enough was being done in that regard. That attitude characterised my actions in my early days as Secretary of State with responsibility for rail safety.

The right hon. Gentleman asked what actions we have taken since the inquiries were instituted. Of course we will act on the inquiries' recommendations. The Southall inquiry is a very important matter for us. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the inquiries are crucial in allowing us to learn the truth. We must not try to guess what happened, and then act on emotion. The purpose of public inquiries is to allow reasoned consideration and a thorough examination of what needs to be done.

However, that is not to say that we can do nothing. Indeed, the country would not thank us if we were to say that we should do nothing while awaiting the inquiries' outcome. That is why I have called representatives from across the industry to a meeting on Monday, and why I have made it clear, through the Health and Safety Executive, that there is more that we can do.

I am not convinced that we cannot reduce the number of SPAD incidents, and I believe that more could be done about driver training. More responsibility should be borne by the industry and those who govern it, and there is more that they can do. That is what the public feel, and what I feel, and I intend to make that absolutely clear at the meeting on Monday. I believe that, by working together, we can improve matters. I hope that we can achieve that on Monday.

Everyone agrees that the Southall inquiry should report very quickly. I hope that it will be ready in December, and that we will be able to judge some recommendations then. That is relevant to my previous point: I believe that Sir David Davies can give us some good advice on the technical information that is available. There is a lot of confusion about such matters. Press reports maintain that people are not sure about automatic train protection, but I was asked—as I think were the previous Government—to adopt a system that was not proven to work 100 per cent. of the time. If we are to order safety systems, it is our responsibility to ensure that they work properly and well.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned transferring the work of the safety and standards directorate, but the conclusions of the report from the Health and Safety Executive were clear. He knows that that report has been published, so he has had access to the evidence that I received. The report suggested that there should be further discussions on train and station operators' safety cases being accepted directly by the HSE. It also suggested the transfer of the oversight of railway standards development to an existing appropriate organisation such as the British Standards Institution, which is an independent body. Other suggestions included the relocation of some safety audit functions, and the development of new mechanisms for strategic research to achieve better incident investigations.

Those are serious charges to be made against a body with responsibility for safety such as the safety and standards directorate. Nevertheless, I have told the Health and Safety Executive to send in an independent body and find out what it has to say about the criticisms. We will report back at the appropriate time and make a proper judgment. I think that that is the proper way to proceed. I await the report, and all the measures that are taken will be presented to the House. That is evidence of our desire to achieve greater safety on the railway system.

Will my right hon. Friend pass on the appreciation of the people of Reading for the many messages of support and condolence that they received following the awful news of the Paddington train disaster, not least the messages from him, the Prime Minister and Her Majesty the Queen?

Does my right hon. Friend agree that my constituents are right to feel angry that such a disaster—I refuse to call it an accident—occurred so short a time after Southall? Does he agree that Railtrack does not have the confidence of the travelling public and that that problem has been compounded by what has occurred in Lewes? Does he agree that the shambles of the reopening of Paddington has compounded matters further, as have revelations that drivers' warnings about lack of visibility regarding signal 109 were ignored, and that drivers' warnings that the infrastructure for the Heathrow express was causing confusion and blocking sight lines were also ignored?

Will my right hon. Friend consider implementing one more recommendation, made by the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs in March last year? The Committee's report said:

"The Government would be well advised to consider whether it could better obtain its strategic objectives by taking an equity share in Railtrack."

Would it not be of some comfort to the travelling public if they knew that someone on the board of Railtrack had wide responsibility for community safety rather than just a legal responsibility to a group of shareholders?

I will certainly pass on my hon. Friend's remarks about the gratitude felt by many of his constituents. I understand the anger expressed by people in Reading and in other areas. I was pleased to meet hon. Members last week who told me of their concerns.

We must be careful not to jump to conclusions. My hon. Friend has apparently already concluded that the Lewes incident was due to Railtrack, but I am not sure that he can so readily jump to that conclusion. That is the whole purpose of inquiries. The inspectors have already told me that that incident possibly involved a driver passing a red light. I do not want to blame anyone, but we should not jump to conclusions.

I understand why my hon. Friend feels as he does, given all the other matters that he mentioned. However, I must be guided by proper investigation and inquiry that provides a thorough examination of the facts before I can come to conclusions about action needed to improve safety. That is what inquiries are for, and they have played a tremendous role in improving safety in Britain. I am quite a fan of inquiries; they have done an excellent job.

My hon. Friend's point about buying an equity share in Railtrack is interesting. In fact, the Government hold some shares in Railtrack for various reasons, but it amounts only to a small part of the company. I believe that that is not the way in which to control safety. We need properly to apportion the responsibility as between the companies that must implement safety measures and the public authorities that have the duty to interpret and impose safety standards on the industry. The balance of responsibility between those bodies provides the best safety operation.

I believe that there may be a conflict of interest in Railtrack over safety and operation, a point that has been strongly made. The point is not, I am bound to say, unique, as the inquiry conducted by Lord Robens concluded that we should make great efforts to ensure that there was no conflict of interest. Several departments had their safety functions removed on those grounds and there has been a massive safety improvement across the board as well as in the rail industry. I shall take care to ensure that we strike the proper balance between safety authorities and the industry.

May I associate the Liberal Democrats with the sympathy expressed by the Secretary of State for all those affected by the tragedy of the Paddington rail disaster? In addition, may we associate ourselves with his comments on the courage and efficiency of the emergency services and, as he was right to point out, of the members of the public who also assisted?

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's consideration of a separation of safety issues from Railtrack. Will he confirm that he accepts that Railtrack—a for-profit company—must not be judge and jury on rail safety issues? If the public are to regain confidence in our railways, Railtrack must not have the power to set and monitor its own safety standards.

I welcome the Secretary of State's desire to introduce measures intended to ensure the speedy introduction of effective systems to prevent trains from passing red signals. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, modern technology is more than capable of preventing trains from crashing into each other. The public will not understand it if that technology is not used to make our railways safe or not introduced as quickly as realistically possible.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that while contractors for the installation of the train protection and warning system—TPWS, to which he referred earlier—have been asked to speed up the time scale within which their bids are entered, Railtrack has not speeded up its process for letting the contract or allowing contractors on site? There must therefore be doubt as to whether the system will be in place within the agreed time. Will the Secretary of State agree to investigate that issue and report back to the House?

Finally, the Secretary of State said that cost is not to be the issue where safety is concerned. Will he therefore clarify who exactly is to foot the bill for safety improvements and assure us that other vital investment in the rail industry will not suffer as a result?

I welcome the hon. Gentleman as the new spokesman for the Liberal Democrat party on transport and the environment, albeit on a sad occasion. I am certainly grateful for his warm words of support for all those involved in this terrible tragedy.

On Railtrack, I agree that there is a problem—it was expressed in the industry and it was certainly expressed in the HSE report to which I referred. Railtrack appears to have the role of both judge and jury with its standards department. That is why the Select Committee recommended that the functions should be separated. I think that when the relevant Bill was before the House both Opposition parties opposed the measure. I have therefore asked the HSE committee, which is an independent body, to study the accusations that have been made about that conflict. We expect a report shortly and I shall deal with it. However, I have a word of warning for the hon. Gentleman—I am not as yet sure to what single body the role should be transferred. No doubt we will debate that.

On the system itself, on contracts, the introduction of TPWS and concerns about automatic train protection systems, it is true that we should use the best technology. Perhaps we have not been as effective in using the best technology to improve safety on our railways by comparison with some European railways. At the end of the day, we want a technological system that works and is effective. It is not solely about money. Indeed, the various sums mentioned in connection with automatic train protection systems and TPWS could be financed, and properly so. In talks, Railtrack and other bodies have understood that it could be done in that way. Of course, it should become an essential requirement of the industry's charges that they should cover a safe railway system. People in this country are concerned that there should be some form of train protection system. I think that that is a minimum requirement if we are to restore confidence to the travelling public.

I will investigate the hon. Gentleman's concerns. Indeed, the Davies report should give us some good engineering advice, which might deal with some of the conflicting concerns that have arisen in relation to types of technology in automatic train protection systems. I will certainly look into the matter.

The whole House will welcome the focus and urgency of the actions of the Secretary of State on the matter. This is indeed a watershed in railway accidents. People will need to be reassured that the railway system is still among the safest means of transport in the United Kingdom.

My right hon. Friend mentioned moving the safety unit out of Railtrack. It is essential for it to be a free-standing body. The Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs took evidence that made it clear that that could be part of a first step towards an independent safety authority. There is no criticism to be made of the railways inspectorate, or indeed of the Health and Safety Executive, but some worry exists about the HSE's enforcement powers. Will my right hon. Friend study how quickly it can get responses not only from Railtrack but from the train operating companies when they make recommendations?

Will my right hon. Friend also ensure that Railtrack introduces as soon as possible a confidential reporting unit—it could already have announced that—to enable train staff and drivers and anyone else connected with the railways to give confidential evidence about companies or incidents that break the law or safety rules? It is clear from my postbag that there is a nasty atmosphere in some of the companies, with bullying meaning that people are frightened to speak out. The public will be protected only when people are openly able to report on what is happening and on what is endangering lives.

Finally, the House expects not only Railtrack but all the train operating companies to produce new programmes for signalling, to respond by introducing new rolling stock and no longer to talk about bringing new installations into play only when they are given new franchises. That sort of tacky bargaining will not work any more.

I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks. She is right to say that this is a watershed for safety in the railway industry. I congratulate her and her Committee on the good sense of their recommendations on these matters. I find myself constantly following them, whether in respect of the Strategic Railway Authority, the proposals for a separate, independent safety authority, or those for a hotline or confidential line where people can talk with the confidence that they will not be exposed about the pressures that they feel they are under—and then have them properly investigated. People tend to think of that arrangement only in respect of the air industry, but it has been working quite well in Scotland, where it is financed by the companies themselves. Introducing such a scheme to the English railway system is one of the issues that I will discuss with them at the meeting on Monday.

My hon. Friend's Committee is right to propose an independent safety authority. I want to see independence associated with safety and a reduction of the conflicts of interest that, I fear, exist in some areas. I have yet to make up my mind. I appear before my hon. Friend's Committee on Thursday and we may have further exchanges on that, but I certainly want independence; there is an argument only about the sort of body needed. The Committee is again leading the way on that.

I agree with my hon. Friend on whether the TOCs should be as concerned as others in the signalling system and railway safety. In the new franchise negotiations, we have always considered what safety standards and what kind of technology and signalling should apply. The industry is making some steps towards operating nationally rather than as a fragmented body, as we have seen in the past 12 months. Bringing the companies together on Monday will remind them of their national role and of the fact that acting nationally and co-operatively, not in the fragmented way of the past few years, is the way to achieve the best standards.

I join the Secretary of State in expressing my deepest sympathy to the families of the bereaved and my admiration and gratitude for the work of the emergency services. I agree that the highest importance should be attached to safety, not only in the railway industry but in all transport sectors. It is in the interests of the industry itself that it should have that attitude, not least in attracting and retaining confidence with the increasing volume of passengers and freight on the railways.

The right hon. Gentleman is also right not to reach hasty, immediate conclusions on many such matters without the evidence and views of those conducting the inquiries. As he knows, these are never easy matters to resolve. I am grateful for his recognition that it was as much the technical and viability worries as anything else that led the previous Government not to adopt the automatic train protection system.

In the Secretary of State's consideration of what he might do about the safety and standards directorate, will he bear in mind the utmost importance of ensuring that nothing is done to undermine, reduce or take away Railtrack's management, operational and day-to-day responsibility for safety?

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's remarks. In looking up the history of this whole business, I had occasion to read several of his statements as Secretary of State for Transport dealing with these difficult issues of automatic train protection. It is right that we need to get the best system as soon as possible. Cost is not the only consideration; safety is our highest priority, as he has emphasised.

On whether there is a conflict of interests in respect of Railtrack and whether safety standards interfere with the operation of the railway system, we must always balance the best operation against the highest safety. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that even if we separate the safety and standards responsibility from Railtrack, which I am minded to do, Railtrack will still be left with the responsibility under present law to operate a safe railway system.

As the Deputy Prime Minister is aware, this terrible crash took place within the borders of my constituency. I am grateful to him for his warm words to local residents for their part. Indeed, as he said, staff at the nearby supermarket and primary school and many local residents not only were among the first on the scene but provided vital support for the emergency services during the course of the day.

Will my right hon. Friend spare a word and a thought for the residents of a number of blocks of flats which directly overlook the site of the crash? Emergency workers have had the grisly task of taking part in the recovery for two weeks, but in addition hundreds of residents—many of them very vulnerable people—have had to confront that sight every day for a fortnight.

Will my right hon. Friend respond to this morning's news reports that an independent safety panel found that there were still severe visibility problems at 24 signals in the approach to Paddington? Can he reassure me that the Health and Safety Commission and the railway inspectorate will examine that evidence as well as all their other findings before Paddington is allowed to reopen?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's remarks. I hope that she will pass on the feelings that I, the Opposition and all Members of the House have expressed about the tremendous contribution made by the local residents. Anyone who visited the site was struck by the fact that it was narrow, and access for the emergency services was difficult and depended a great deal on the co-operation of local residents. We are all extremely grateful for the role that they played in this terrible tragedy. Their help ranged from helping to get people out of burning coaches to going around offering coffee to members of the emergency services. It was remarkable and I hope that my hon. Friend will pass on the feelings of the House.

As for the 24 signals at Paddington, the various reports are being studied by the HSC and the railway inspectorate. The Paddington line will not be reopened unless the HSC is satisfied that it is a safe operation.

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his courtesy in keeping me informed of developments since the tragic accident and especially for inviting all hon. Members with constituencies along the route of the 6.03 from Cheltenham to the briefing last Monday, which was very useful.

Will the right hon. Gentleman say something about speed limits in the area of the accident in view of the estimated combined impact speed of around 180 mph? Will he put pressure on Railtrack and the operating companies to upgrade the whole of the south-west region to replace single-track lines and introduce electrification so that never again will we see head-on accidents resulting in diesel fireballs such as that which occurred on this occasion?

Yes, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we, the Health and Safety Executive and the railway inspectorate are looking at how it is possible to achieve the best form of track layout for the railway system. The accident has obviously brought that very much more to mind and the matter is highlighted at Paddington, but there are other pinchpoints in the system that could perhaps be better designed. They are being studied, particularly with regard to signals, by the HSC and the railway inspectorate.

It is difficult to know exactly what speeds were being done at the time of the crash. The black box in the cab of the Thames train was recovered, but in a much damaged state. There was also one in the back of the train, from which some information has been obtained. The other one has been returned to its country of origin for investigation to see whether we can get anything more from it. Until the inquiry gives its judgments on the matter and the HSE completes the second interim inquiry, it is difficult to tell the exact speed of impact. Various estimates from 120 mph upwards have been made, but we must wait to see what the inquiry has to say.

While I welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend, does not a further profound question need to be addressed? Can the fragmented structure of the present railway system deliver the sort of railway that he has outlined? Does he share the widespread concern that, in spite of the dramatically increased profits of Railtrack, a recent report by the Rail Regulator suggests that the rail infrastructure is deteriorating?

Is it not time to look at whether, under the powers of the proposed new Strategic Rail Authority, enough emphasis is given to exactly how much responsibility it will have in the provision of rail infrastructure in this country?

These matters are of concern; there has been much comment about them. The Booz-Allen report was critical about the amount of money going into rail infrastructure and about Railtrack. Indeed, Railtrack has since argued that it has accepted the criticism of the Booz-Allen report and has improved. An effective infrastructure is very important; we are looking into that at present. I have no doubt that these matters are all part and parcel of what we might call the safety culture or regime in the industry, and that Lord Cullen will address himself to them.

The Deputy Prime Minister has placed great emphasis on the early use of a train protection and warning system. However, on 8 October, in the first interim report from the Health and Safety Executive, it clearly emerged that automatic train I protection equipment was part of the pilot scheme and was fitted to the Great Western train. However, the equipment has a great history of unreliability and in this instance, it was switched off. Could the Deputy Prime Minister please make it an early priority to ensure that that equipment and the train protection and warning system are tried and tested, and operational as early as possible?

Since that terrible tragedy—which Professor Uff is investigating at the moment, and we must await his report—actions have been taken to ensure that those systems are properly implemented and not isolated in the way that was suggested. However, we must await the report, as it has also been suggested that the driver was not familiar with that kind of system and that it had been isolated for a good period. That is another example of the fact that the automatic train protection system is not necessarily 100 per cent. operative on what we call the bolt-on system.

If ATP is put on new track—as has been done in many parts of the continent, especially on the French railways, on our own new European rail link and on the Heathrow connection—where it is specifically designed, it works very well. The difficulties tend to come with the bolt-on systems that we have. That is a difficulty that all Secretaries of State for Transport have had to face—how to balance the high-speed automatic train protection that we want to see brought in against other factors. In some cases, even if there was a workable system and I tried to bring it in, it would take 10 years to do so, whereas the one that we are now dealing with—the TPWS—can be introduced by 2003 and will reduce 70 per cent. of these incidents. I think that is a good decision to take.

I represent a constituency in which five people who were killed in the incident worked, and the people of Slough are concerned to ensure that lessons are learned fast. They appreciate the message of sympathy and the speed with which the Deputy Prime Minister has acted in the matter.

However, we should not focus only on technology. I had a meeting with representatives of a local train operating company only two weeks before the episode, and learned that many drivers and signal operators had only quite recently been recruited, because of the difficulty of recruiting people to these posts in south-east England. Will my right hon. Friend examine the training of new appointees to the train operating companies to ensure first, that there is sufficient expertise and secondly, that sufficient attention is paid to the safety ethos of the railways?

We should not be over-concerned with technology, although it does have a role to play. What we want is an effective rail system. Even with the best technology in the world, we require to take into account human error, caused either in servicing or working the system. Indeed, in a perfect world, the automatic warning system on a train would stop that train, because the warning has to be cancelled and if it is not cancelled within a few seconds, it will stop it. However, incidents still occur when drivers cancel it and there is a collision—for whatever reason. There are various systems that, if implemented, could actually stop the train itself—that is why we talk about automatic train protection systems.

However, my hon. Friend makes a very sound point about the training and recruitment of drivers. She will be aware that, when the industry was first privatised, an awful lot of drivers were taken out of the industry and there were considerable redundancies—largely because it was thought that there would be a decline in the rail system for one reason or another, but the opposite occurred. Now, there is a desperate need to increase the number of drivers—indeed, we came to an agreement with the industry on getting 800 new drivers this year.

The time it takes to train a driver is also an important question: under British Rail, there was a single training period, but now there are varying training periods and different systems used throughout the industry. Those factors cause me concern, although I make no judgment about their safety, and it is an issue that I shall take up with the industry on Monday.

I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister will join me in thanking the emergency services for their speed and efficiency in attending the incident in Lewes. I am relieved that, unlike the horrific accident at Paddington, no one was killed in last night's incident. However, the fact is that two trains crashed at Lewes, and my constituents will be horrified to learn that there have been 643 incidents of trains passing a red signal—almost two such incidents a day—in the past year. My constituents in Lewes and elsewhere expect a safe train system, but they do not believe that they have one.

When will measures be in place to ensure that no train anywhere on the British network will be able to pass a red light, as happened in Lewes last night and on many other occasions over the past year in this country? According to the press release issued this afternoon by Connex, the train operating company that runs trains through Lewes, not only did a driver pass a danger signal, but

"a safety device to remind the driver to check the signals was not used."

What steps will the Deputy Prime Minister take to ensure that, once the necessary safety systems to make drivers aware of red signals have been implemented, drivers cannot override or cancel those systems and that the systems will be fail safe? We cannot have drivers cancelling signals that are there to protect them and the public at large.

I am sure that the whole House identifies with the hon. Gentleman and his constituents in Lewes, and wishes to express great appreciation of the emergency services. From speaking to people involved in such accidents, I have learned that, terrible though the circumstances are, the one comfort is the knowledge that the emergency services will be there quickly to help. That does real credit to those services and I am delighted to have another opportunity to express our appreciation. The circumstances in Lewes were difficult, and we are all pleased that no one was injured there.

The 643 so-called SPAD incidents are a source of great concern, and it is no comfort to know that that total has come down from more than 900 incidents. We must do all we can to reduce that number. I shall place a report on the incidence of SPADs in the House of Commons Library, but it must be seen in perspective. Approximately 70 per cent. of incidents involve distances of less than 50 yd, and sometimes the train has gone over by only one, two or 10 yd, whereas the safety margin built into the system is something like 150 yd. I want to give the House a precise picture of the seriousness of the problem.

I want to prevent every such incident from occurring, and I am sure the House does as well. That is why we paid such close attention to the Health and Safety Commission's report, which contains 22 recommendations to Railtrack and the train operating companies on ways in which to improve the record. On Monday I shall discuss with the industry how those recommendations can be implemented and how we can get something done.

During my inquiries into automatic train systems, I have been told that if the signal has gone red—even if that is a failure of the signal—the train cannot be moved if the automatic train system is on; therefore, sometimes such systems have to be isolated to enable the train to be moved. There are circumstances when technology fails, but the train has to be moved. We have to avoid the easy option of simply cancelling a warning system and getting into the habit of thinking, "It's yellow, it's yellow, so it's bound to be green." Sometimes, the signal is yellow, yellow and then red, and that is when problems arise. We have to do all we can to avoid such difficulties.

I have only a brief question, unlike many of those asked today. When will we stop the system of penalties and fines that operates between the train operating companies and Railtrack, which clearly has implications for safety?

We are reviewing several penalties and fines, and the new franchise negotiations are seeking to find a better way of dealing with those kinds of problems. The shadow Strategic Rail Authority has been appointed to provide an overall system that meets the requirements of a better railway rather than simply talking about sanctions, fines and penalties. However, make no mistake, any breach of safety will be met with heavy fines for companies. If companies are not operating proper rail safety systems, they must face the possibility of losing their licences.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that drivers may occasionally override and pass through a series of yellow signals before coming to a red signal and overriding it also. Is that scenario not made more likely because the warning that the driver receives in his cab at a red signal is precisely the same, both audibly and visually, as the warning for a yellow signal? If the warning given to the driver for a red signal were made different from that for a yellow signal, it would surely make the sorts of accidents to which the Deputy Prime Minister refers much less likely.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for repeating what he said to me a week ago. I promised then that I would report his comments to the authorities and I have discussed the matter with the Health and Safety Executive, which had considered it from time to time. There is a different warning sound for green, but the same warning for yellow and red signals. That can create a great deal of confusion in the cab, with all kinds of sounds and signals. The Health and Safety Executive has promised to consider the issue, which we shall certainly put before the Cullen inquiry.

Madam Speaker, with permission, I would like to make a short business statement as an addition to my pre-recess business statement—in other words, it is not a substitution for the normal weekly business statement.

The business for Thursday 21 October will now include, at the beginning, a motion to approve the 10th and 11th reports of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. The business for the remainder of that day will follow as announced previously.

The Opposition are content with the proposed change to business on Thursday. On that day, we would like raise the more substantive issue of the future business of the House.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give taxpayers the right to direct that proportion of their income tax which would otherwise be spent on military purposes to a fund for international aid.

I come to the House directly from the funeral of my constituent, Brian Cooper, the driver of the Great Western train in the Paddington rail disaster. I take this opportunity to send the condolences and the sympathy of the whole House to his family.

The central purpose of the Bill is to give taxpayers who have a conscientious objection to war the right to direct to the Department for International Development or to a non-military security fund the proportion of their income tax that would otherwise be spent on military purposes.

I shall briefly explain the detail of the Bill, and then set out the rationale for its enactment. The Bill would give all taxpayers the opportunity to express on their tax return their conscientious objection to the expenditure of their taxes on preparations for war or the prosecution of war. Taxpayers would be able to express their desire for that proportion of their income tax that would otherwise be spent on military purposes to be spent instead on the prevention of war—to be invested in the search for peace rather than the pursuit of war.

Tax revenues would be diverted either to the Department for International Development, to assist areas of the world deemed at risk of conflict, or to a non-military security fund. The fund, which would be established by the Bill, would have three purposes. First, it would support research into non-military conflict resolution and peace building. Secondly, it would establish a United Kingdom mediation and arbitration service, for use at an early stage in areas of potential conflict. Thirdly, it would support international peace-building organisations, including the United Nations. The fund would be managed by trustees, appointed by the Government, with experience of non-military security, who would report annually to Parliament on the disbursement of the moneys allocated to the fund. I envisage that the simplicity of those measures would enable the scheme to be introduced as early as the tax year 2001–02.

The rationale behind the Bill is as follows. The right of conscientious objection has been acknowledged in this country for centuries. In the late 17th century, the Government sought to induce Quakers to engage in military activities. They refused, and went to prison in a body. Subsequently, in the Militia Ballot Act, Quakers as a body were excluded from military service.

The general right to refuse on the grounds of conscience to participate as a combatant in military service was included in the Military Service (No.2) Act 1916, which introduced conscription for the first world war. Bonar Law said in the Chamber that conscientious objectors were no less filled with patriotism than others fighting in the trenches, and the legislation provided alternative ways in which individuals opposed on religious or ethical grounds to fighting could serve their country in a pacific rather than an aggressive way.

The right to conscientious objection has also been recognised in the United Nations declaration on human rights and the European Union convention on human rights. More recently, the legal right to act in accordance with one's conscience has been placed firmly on the statute book by the Government through the Human Rights Act 1998.

My Bill seeks to give meaningful recognition to the right of conscientious objection and to bring the practical exercise of that right up to date. Modern wars are no longer fought with conscript armies in which a conscientious objector can refuse to serve; they are fought with high-tech weapons paid for with our taxes. Today we are not conscripted to fight; instead, our taxes are conscripted to pay for the high-tech weapons of modern warfare and the trained professionals who fire them.

For those who object to war, there is little moral difference between actually firing lethal weapons and paying for someone else to do so. The Bill gives meaning to the right of freedom of conscience in the modern world. If the right of conscientious objection is to have any real meaning today, it must be the right not to support the pursuit of war with our taxes. We must allow those who object to war the right to have their taxes used for the prevention of war.

Bonar Law acknowledged the heroic humanitarian contribution made by many conscientious objectors during wartime, and modern conscientious objectors should be allowed to make their contribution to society by investing their taxes in the peaceful service of our community.

The Bill is not an attempt to allow people to avoid paying taxes, or to reduce anyone's tax burden. Any taxpayer who wished to exercise the right under the proposed legislation would pay the same amount of tax. The only difference would be that the proportion of their tax that would have been spent on military purposes would be diverted from waging war to waging peace by developing non-military security initiatives.

Organisations such as the United Nations and the European Union already invest in non-military security work, but that is undermined by the lack of funding and a lack of political support. The Bill could release additional resources to enhance peace building and conflict resolution, thus preventing potential conflicts and addressing their root causes without resorting to military force.

In recent years, there has been a tragic failure to invest in conflict resolution at an early enough stage, and that has resulted in bitter and bloody wars, with all the resultant human suffering. Ireland, Palestine, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and now Kashmir represent a litany of failures of the civilised world to invest its resources in preventing conflict. They reflect our disastrous propensity to watch disputes fester and grow, only to intervene belatedly and militarily.

Non-military security involves a flexible, imaginative, interventionist approach to securing peace. It is based on prioritising mediation and other peace-building techniques as a way of avoiding armed conflict. It requires resources and the development of an independent arbitration service ready for use at the earliest possible stage of any potential conflict. It includes the monitoring of the implementation of agreements between parties to a potential conflict, which necessitates the creation of an independent peace-monitoring service. It involves the stabilising of areas of potential conflict by promoting the establishment of democratic structures, civil authorities and an independent media structure to protect human rights and build social cohesion.

Where conflicts have occurred, the Bill would enable the release of resources to invest in the rebuilding of the social and economic infrastructure of a conflict zone, including the clearing of landmines and the rebuilding of homes, hospitals, schools, workshops and factories. Those resources could also support the conversion of industry from military to civil production, and could be used to retrain people in the skills needed to rebuild their communities and their economy so as to secure long-term peace.

Various arguments have been used against the measures proposed in the Bill, and some have expressed opposition to the principle of the Bill, but the right of conscientious objection has been accepted in principle in Britain for a considerable period. The Bill does nothing more than put that principle in a modern setting.

The Treasury initially raised some practical objections to the operation of the Bill's proposals, and argued that it broke the Treasury's sacred rule of opposing hypothecation of taxation. With the introduction of the system of self-assessment for individual taxation, there are no practical hurdles left. As for the alleged offence of hypothecation, the Government have introduced hypothecation of taxation in their congestion charging proposals.

Another charge is that the Bill would set a precedent for others to direct their taxes, thus opening the floodgates to other objections to Government expenditure programmes. Although many may wish to divert their taxes for political reasons, the right to refuse to kill or to pay others to kill on our behalf uniquely rests on a basic human right that is recognised in domestic and international law.

Last year, this country budgeted for more than £21 billion of military expenditure. That represents about 8.5 per cent. of the Government's total expenditure and an annual contribution of roughly £500 per taxpayer for military programmes. With such large sums, a relatively small number of taxpayers opting to exercise their rights under the Bill would result in a major investment of resources in preventing conflicts in the world by promoting peace-building measures.

The campaign to extend the right of conscientious objection to taxation has been waged across Europe and the United States. By enacting the Bill, the Government, who have been elected on a commitment to an ethical foreign policy and to putting human rights at the heart of government, could establish themselves as a world leader for peace.

In 10 weeks' time, we shall celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ and the start of a new millennium. It may be worth reminding ourselves of Christ's words in the sermon on the mount. He said:

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

The Bill could assist us all in becoming peacemakers, and would make a small contribution to ensuring that the next millennium is a millennium of peace.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary on her appointment. I am sure that she will do very well indeed. I also congratulate the Treasury Sub-Committee on its excellent report on the Office for National Statistics. I am glad to see that the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) is present, because he and his colleagues have done an excellent job. The present Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer), has taken over the right hon. Gentleman's work very ably.

There is no doubt that the report has made the Sub-Committee a significant player in the debate. The Sub-Committee's remit is to scrutinise the Departments and agencies for which the Chancellor is responsible. It has a big programme, and it has done very well so far. It has produced reports on the Office for National Statistics and the Inland Revenue; a report on the Valuation Office Agency is expected, and a report on Customs and Excise is in progress. There are also to be hearings on the management of the Government's cash and debt. I believe that only three bodies remain uninvestigated, and they will certainly have been investigated by the end of the current Parliament. The Sub-Committee is making an important contribution to the Committee's work, and, indeed, to parliamentary accountability generally.

The first reaction of most Members to the word "statistics" is probably "very boring", but statistics are also very important. They are certainly key to the running of modern Government, a modern economy and a modern society. In paragraph 8 of the report, the Sub-Committee says—rightly, in my view—

"There are three key uses for statistics: forming and implementing policies and targets, providing information to enable Parliament and the public to assess the actions of Government, and contributing to efficient resource allocation and improved competitiveness of the economy as a whole."

Not only Government use statistics. At the back of the report is a list of witnesses, including a business user group, a health statistics user group and an education statistics user group. A host of bodies needs to be certain that the Government are producing statistics of integrity.

Statistics need first to be technically accurate, and secondly to be produced in an independent way. People should be able to rely on their integrity. In particular, they should be free from political interference. Let me give an example of technical accuracy. Last year, there was a major problem involving the average earnings index. The index was clearly of great importance to the running of the economy, for the Monetary Policy Committee used it as one of its key indicators. Although the committee never said so specifically, there is no doubt that its decision to raise interest rates last June—or, rather, the June before that—was influenced by the rise in average earnings. It is true that no one quite knew what would have happened otherwise; the MPC might have made the same decision in any event. If it is to do its job properly, however, it must have proper statistics in order to run the economy.

Perhaps more controversial is the question of political interference, Conservative Members may have their own examples, but I remember that, in 1992, there was some controversy about whether the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, had massaged the public sector borrowing requirement figures just before the 1992 election. That was a key issue. The then Treasury Committee, asked questions about that. Again, it is important that statistics should be politically independent. We should have faith—trust, as the slogan says—in our statistical system.

I am sure that the recommendation to which the right hon. Gentleman refers is recommendation (d) of the Select Committee report, which says:

"For 'National Statistics', where integrity is of the utmost importance, we recommend that the ONS take responsibility rather than home Departments."

Does he agree that, in the light of the controversy over the Home Secretary's remarks to the Labour party conference about 5,000 non-existent new police officers, it is disappointing that the White Paper makes no suggestion of reforms relating to the Home Office?

I said that each side would have its own versions. I repeat: it is important that statistics should be free from political interference.

When the Sub-Committee looked at the whole issue of statistics, it had in front of it the Government's Green Paper and it wanted to influence what came out of the White Paper. It therefore laid down certain criteria in its recommendations: that there should be more effective, more accurate statistics; that national statistics, the concept of which we welcome, should be authoritative; that the head of the statistics department or body should have real authority, including access to the Prime Minister to discuss not just integrity but resources; and that the whole system should be underpinned by legislation.

No doubt, the right hon. Member for Fareham will correct me if I have paraphrased his suggestions and proposals inaccurately, but that is what the Sub-Committee said in broad principle. This is not the occasion for me to speak at length, except in praise of the Sub-Committee.

We have to test the White Paper by comparing it with the Sub-Committee's proposals. I am delighted that the White Paper was published in advance of the debate. Perhaps that is one argument for having such debates. It is no criticism of the present Minister, I hasten to add, but some might think that it would have been good if the White Paper had been published a bit earlier. I am pleased that it has been published, so I will not be curmudgeonly about it. We have the document in front of us, so we can read it. Some of us received it yesterday, when it was published, and have read it. My overall judgment on it is that it is a good start, but that there is some room for improvement.

I propose to refer to three or four themes. I welcome the post of national statistician. It is a good idea to have an important figure in charge of national statistics. It is important that we choose a top-rate person to do the job. We have to ask: has he or she sufficient authority to do the job properly? In relation to the national statistics, I would say yes, because his or her professional responsibility for national statistics will be separate from that of Ministers, and that seems to me to be an important step forward.

In relation to departmental statistics, the situation is more ambiguous. What should we deem to be national statistics, and how might we resolve the argument? The White Paper is ambivalent on that point. Although the national statistician will necessarily be involved in resolving that argument, I should like to know how we are to do so in relation to national crime and health statistics, for example. If Ministers are sensible, they will realise that they will have far greater authority if they can say, "I can cite national statistics on crime and health, which state the following."

The people chosen for the statistics commission must be highly distinguished. However, I have no quarrel with the idea that not every commission member should be a professional statistician, as one or two non-statisticians may be able to bring other qualities to bear. Nevertheless, the majority of commission members should be professional statisticians. Members of the Monetary Policy Committee—to use that model—are appointed because they are highly qualified in monetary policy.

We have to ask whether statistics commission members will be independent and sufficiently competent and authoritative for their pronouncements to carry weight. I welcome the Government's commitment to the commission's independence—of which Ministers are making much—and welcome the commission's ability to make not only spot-checks on quality, but an annual report to Parliament. Any body that can make an annual report to Parliament is starting out on the road to independence. Once a body is able to make an annual report to Parliament, it can make statements independently of Government, which is an important development.

I agree with the Sub-Committee that we should enshrine in legislation the statistics commission's independence, as we did for the Monetary Policy Committee. Although there is pressure on legislative time, I am glad that Ministers are at least keeping an open mind, and that the statistics commission has been given the task of reviewing the issue.

I welcome the statement in the White Paper that national statistics should be scrutinised by Parliament. Although the commission's report to Parliament will provide a focus for such scrutiny, I hope that Select Committees—particularly the Treasury Committee—will continue to have a role. The Select Committee has already shown that we can do a job of scrutiny, and we should continue doing so.

On national statistics and the Government's new model, the proof of the pudding will certainly be in the eating. The choice of national statistician will be very important. If a really impressive person is chosen, it will send a signal to those who understand about statistics. Moreover, if potential national statisticians think that they will not be overruled by Ministers, they will go forward for the job. There may also be a role for confirmation hearings, which the Treasury Committee has pioneered, in ensuring that those who are chosen for the statistics commission are impressive people.

The White Paper contains only very broad outlines, and we shall need to see some of the detail. The framework for national statistics will be very important. Treasury Committee and Treasury Sub-Committee members will be watching developments with great interest.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice) for his kind words about the Sub-Committee report, and for selecting some of the most significant points.

Although, alas, I am no longer a member of the Select Committee on the Treasury—which the right hon. Gentleman chairs with tolerance and skill—I was lucky enough to be the Chairman of the Sub-Committee which produced the report on the Office for National Statistics. I am sure that I speak for my erstwhile colleagues in expressing gratitude for the help that we received from the expert individuals and organisations that gave us written and oral evidence, and in saying a word in appreciation of our astute and immensely energetic Clerk, Jennifer Long. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I thought that members of the Committee would want to cheer that.

I welcome the Economic Secretary to the Treasury to her post, and I wish her well. Although I shall be critical of the Government, I realise that she arrived well after the die had been cast, and that the Government's shortcomings are not hers. I hope that she will be able to remedy some of them in the months ahead.

It was no accident that the Sub-Committee, which was set up last year to look in turn at all the Departments and agencies for which the Treasury is responsible, made the ONS the subject of its first inquiry. It was plain to us that sound, comprehensive statistical data which everyone could understand and rely on were increasingly essential for good government, and that the services provided by the ONS and the Government's statistical service were central to effective policy formation by Ministers, and to the ability of the public at large—as well as Ministers themselves—to judge their success.

It seems that the Green Paper, "Statistics: A Matter of Trust" reflected the same view, and that the Government were determined to make a fundamental change in the structure of statistical services. We hastened our inquiry in the summer of 1998 with the intention not of pre-empting the Government's Green Paper consultation but—having listened to our expert witnesses—of providing a set of criteria which we felt the new arrangements that were to be produced by the Government last autumn should satisfy.

We need not have hurried. The White Paper was finally published only yesterday—a year later, on the last day of the recess and one day before this debate, making it certain that most Members will not have had a chance to read it and that none will have had the opportunity to study it. It is deplorable that the Government should have contrived to ensure that Members had the minimum of opportunity to reflect on the White Paper before the one day of debate on the subject. The timing of the publication, and of the debate, is effectively in the Government's hands. It is as if the Government are ashamed of their White Paper and do not want it talked about.

Having read the White Paper, I am not clear why it should have taken so long to produce. It sticks more closely to the status quo than the Green Paper appeared to presage. Perhaps the delay and the disappointing content are both explained by the difficulty of finding agreement within Government for the more thoroughgoing change that is required. At this point—time to study it apart—it is difficult to know, as the right hon. Member for North Durham said, what to make of the contents, as much waits to be spelt out in another paper, "The Framework for National Statistics".

A number of major points need to be made now in the light of the Sub-Committee's recommendations and the existing White Paper. The proposal for an independent statistics commission is certainly welcome, as far as it goes. It makes sense that such a commission should be comparatively small and coherent but—apart from the important task of monitoring the methodology and standards of ONS outputs—its role appears to be solely advisory. It may be more wieldy, but it seems to be little different from the advisory committee which the Government have recently disbanded. Perhaps the Minister will tell the House why the Government disbanded the advisory committee when they did. Would it not have been valuable to have the informed comment of that committee on the White Paper? At a time when the Government needed the committee's advice, they got rid of it.

The Sub-Committee set much store by the recommendation that the commission, rather than Minsters, should decide what statistics should be included in the scope of national statistics if the desired level of integrity—real and perceived—for important statistical series is to be achieved. Hospital waiting lists and school league tables are obvious candidates, as so much store is set by them in terms of policy formation and the public's judgment of the Government. The White Paper makes it plain that Ministers will continue to have the last word.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that what he says is relevant to issues such as police numbers? The integrity of the statistics is vital and there is a huge cloud over the Home Secretary's recent speech.

I agree with my hon. Friend that all Government statistics should be absolutely reliable, although however reliable they are—even if they are produced entirely honestly and clearly and launched in that way by the ONS—politicians on both sides will cherry-pick them to bolster their argument. One sees that at party conferences sometimes, and my hon. Friend has picked a good example.

We recommended in particular that, because it is of such central significance, the retail prices index should cease to be the sole responsibility of the Chancellor and should be a candidate for ONS management. However, the Government made it clear in an earlier response that the RPI was too important and too widely used for the Chancellor to let it go. That reply makes nonsense of pious rhetoric to the effect that key national statistics should be seen to be expertly and independently produced. The RPI is apparently too key. If it needs the Chancellor's protection, why is not the earnings index, which is so significant for the Bank of England when it sets interest rates? The Chancellor was rightly bold when he passed responsibility for interest rates to the Bank of England. He should show the same qualities by passing responsibility for the RPI to the ONS in due course.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the situation is slightly worse than that? If the Chancellor can manipulate the inflation figures that underlie his target, that target is in his own hands, so he is making nonsense of his policy of delegating monetary control to the Monetary Policy Committee.

My hon. Friend makes an extraordinarily good point, with which I entirely agree. He will understand that I am trying to be as cross-party as possible and am sticking to supporting the recommendations of the Sub-Committee rather than laying on with a trowel the reasons why they are even better than some of us thought when we made them.

During its inquiries, the Sub-Committee became very aware that the director of the ONS and his senior colleagues had had a difficult task in building an effective organisation following the merger in 1996 of the Central Statistical Office, the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and a range of responsibilities and statistical outputs from a number of Government Departments. We felt that the ONS had made commendable progress, but I should like to quote recommendation 48, which puts the issue in the proper context:

"We recognise that Dr Holt"—

the director—

"faces many difficulties arising from the newness of the organisation, the problems it has inherited and the limitations of the present governance structure. We believe that the combination of roles and responsibilities which the ONS Director is required to fulfil are, as presently constituted, more of a hindrance than a help in dealing with these problems. We recommend that the Government accord a high priority to ensuring that the 'Head of National Statistics'"—

the national statistician, as he will now be called—

"role is managerially workable and supported by sufficient powers to co-ordinate the production of official statistics as well as ensuring that the Head has the required freedom from political interference."

Alas, there is little sign in the White Paper that the Government have fully comprehended that problem. It looks increasingly as though the national statistician, like the director before him, will sit at the top of the ONS with the commission, to whom he is not directly responsible, looking over his shoulder. The ill-defined responsibility for the standards of statistical work done in Departments will continue, without the national statistician having the authority to act if and when necessary.

The Sub-Committee also expressed concern at the lack of strategic vision across the range of official statistics, which we mostly attribute to the organisational structure of the ONS. We feared that the White Paper might not deal with that issue, and our fears appear to be confirmed by yesterday's publication. That issue may be covered in the framework document, but the White Paper gives no grounds for optimism; nor does it encourage us to believe that we are moving beyond the Rayner view that official statistics should be provided primarily to meet the management needs of Government. The needs of local government and business are compelling and should be far better served, not least by better coverage of the vast and growing service area. We recommended that the ONS should publish a document setting out the criteria that it will use to assess the competing demands of Government, local government and business. The Government may have it in mind to do that, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that point later.

As part of KPMG's efficiency review, it was commissioned to make a report. It recommended that great savings would be made by contracting out much of the collection of raw statistical data, releasing resources to improve the service generally and—importantly—releasing the demands on top management time which could then be devoted to strategic and customer concerns, both of which need more attention than they receive at present. Why did the Government not take KPMG's advice?

The Sub-Committee's most important and difficult recommendation is in paragraph 10. I shall read it in full so that its meaning is clear:

"Canadian Statistician Ivan Fellegi has argued that 'A key end objective is to help the public policy process to discern the relevant "policy levers" that are likely to be most effective in moving us toward the achievement of desirable social and economic objectives' and cautioned that 'We cannot assume that the traditional policy levers are necessarily the most important ones.' For example, he suggested that life expectancy might be affected as much by family income as by medical intervention. We asked Dr Holt, the Director of the ONS, about its role in identifying statistics which would improve understanding of a particular policy area. He replied that 'It is a perception that this aspect of Government statistics is not well developed' and that he expected the issue to be raised in the Green Paper consultation. We recommend that in its response to the Green Paper the Government shows how the independent expertise of the GSS and ONS can be better used to translate politically determined objectives into meaningful targets and indicators."

Everybody can think of examples of that. For example, the reliance on waiting list statistics which, even if accurate, may help to distort rather than improve the provision of health care, and the reliance on class sizes, in statistical form, as a key measure when evidence suggests that others are probably more relevant to raising educational standards and ensuring that educational budgets are spent most effectively.

Elected Ministers must of course set policy, but it is in their interests—and certainly in the electorate's interest—that they have the best statistical assessments to help them find the ways to achieve policy goals. Those ways will not necessarily be the obvious ones, those most readily to hand or those to which Ministers committed themselves in opposition.

I am in good company in being critical of the White Paper. The Royal Statistical Society was extremely disappointed with it, and I suspect that few will give it many cheers. If the Government had been less inconsiderate in the timing of its publication—if I had had the opportunity to study more closely its every detail—I might have found cause to welcome at greater length its promise of higher standards of methodology and more coherent and user-friendly forms of publication. I note, too, that the Sub-Committee was grateful that the Government promptly published the reports that they commissioned during the examination of the Green Paper, although it would have just cause for complaint if the Government had not published them.

It is disappointing that the Government have not yet given any sign that they have the courage and wisdom to recognise that they would help themselves if they created a competent structure and handed to it the responsibility to perform a thorough, independent and professional job on all the main statistics that they use and by which the public judge them. However, I draw encouragement from the fact that the commission will be in a position to report publicly on those matters and that the Government have committed themselves to review the case for legislation should the commission recommend it in two years' time. I hope that the commission will use its opportunity well and that more of the Sub-Committee's recommendations will be put into practice than the White Paper portends.

I join my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary on her promotion. I also congratulate her on her wisdom in producing the White Paper the day before our debate. I do not wish to be churlish, and I recognise that this is the first day back for Parliament. It is welcome that the White Paper has been published, albeit that we have not had time to study it in as much detail as we would have liked.

I also add my thanks to the former Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), for his leadership. I suspect that he will know that that is not an empty courtesy from the other side of the House, but is said with genuine affection and respect. I identify myself with many—I can probably statistically say most, though sadly not quite all—of the remarks that he made about the White Paper.

We should acknowledge that the Government have taken other steps besides the White Paper to improve the quality of national statistics. The White Paper is entitled "Building Trust in Statistics". It is unfortunate that that title was necessary. We have to rebuild confidence in Government statistics because some notable failures, especially the collapse of the earnings index, have gone to the heart of policy making. That could have—in some ways, it already has had—an effect on the decisions of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and it might have brought those decisions into technical disrepute. I think that it is extremely unfortunate that that episode occurred. One of the aims of this debate, and of the Sub-Committee's recommendations, is that there should be no repetition of that event. The Government are clearly set on correcting those difficulties.

I welcome the fact that, over the summer, the Government appointed two new directors of the Office for National Statistics. I especially welcome the appointment of Mr. Pullinger, with his expertise in census and small-area statistics. That will be warmly welcomed by many of our colleagues in local government. I welcome also the appointment of Mr. Goldsmith, with his extensive commercial background. As the whole House recognises, and as the Sub-Committee's recommendations make clear, there need to be considerable improvements in the quality of British commercial and economic statistics. For example, we are engaged in a major endeavour to raise the level of productivity in this country, but we simply do not know enough about it.

In that connection, I welcome also the Government's decision to produce an index on services and distribution. That will go some way towards filling another gap in statistics that the Sub-Committee discovered and listed in its recommendations. I regret that it will be some time before the series of statistics on services will be robust enough to provide a solid basis for making policy. However, it is important that we know more about the service sector of the economy, and about the banking and financial services on which so much of this country's expertise and wealth now depend.

I do not wish to introduce a sour note into the proceedings but, although I acknowledge the very important role played by Dr. Holt in creating the Office for National Statistics in 1996—a not inconsiderable task, to which the House ought to pay tribute—I believe that he could and should have used his right of access to the Prime Minister as soon as he became aware of the deficiencies in the earnings statistics inherited from the former Department of Employment. It is important to make that clear, as future Government national statisticians must regard their right of access to the Prime Minister as an important right in the defence of the public interest. It is not simply an icon to be kept in the cupboard.

Dr. Holt became aware of the deficiencies early in 1996. If he had gone to the Prime Minister at that time, or a little later to the present Prime Minister, we might have avoided the collapse of the average earnings index in 1998, in what were difficult and potentially troubling circumstances. I hope that future holders of the position will bear in mind what I have said, and that they will use their right of access to the Prime Minister in a solid, proactive and meaningful way, on behalf of Parliament and the British public as a whole.

I turn now to the White Paper's proposals to create a statistical commission, which will have clear duties to defend the public interest and patrol the integrity of Government statistics. Clearly, those proposals are to be welcomed, as they represent a considerable step forward. However, I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will say how some of the potential difficulties will be resolved.

The White Paper states that Ministers will be able to block the access of the statistical commission and the national statistician to the work of their Departments. The House is entitled to seek an assurance from my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary that that blocking ability will be used sparingly, that its use will be reported to Parliament—not least in the annual report of the statistical commission—and that, if right of access is blocked, a full, serious and comprehensive explanation will be given to Parliament. We must operate on the basis that the ability of Ministers to block access by the national statistician and the statistical commission to statistics being prepared in Departments will be used only in the most exceptional and unusual circumstances.

I subscribe entirely to the hon. Gentleman's view, as far as it goes, but can he imagine any circumstances under which it would be legitimate to block the access of the national statistician?

It is unwise in debates such as this to engage in flights of fancy or to exercise one's imagination, but I can envisage circumstances in which Ministers might wish to block that access. However, as a Select Committee member of long standing, I am not sure that I should endorse or register approval of the possible exercise of that power to block access.

We are all conscious that this is a new Government, who have embarked on some serious and new projects that will require much stronger statistics than were inherited from the previous Government. We will require much more solid information to guide us in tackling matters such as health improvement and health inequality. We will require better small-area statistics to guide our colleagues in local government and enable them monitor their work.

The Government, too, will require better statistics to determine what really can be made of employment zones, health action zones, education action zones, the sure start initiative, and the like. It is important that the right statistical basis to support such policy initiatives and to measure their achievements is available. Sadly, that is not the case at present, and we look to the statistical commission to help bring it about.

It is extremely important that the Government consider again the need for legislation that would defend and entrench the rights of the Office for National Statistics, and of the proposed statistical commission and office of the national statistician. It is absurd that the quality of small-area statistics in this country depends on a curious quirk of the Census Act 1920, which says that there must be full cost recovery. It is ridiculous that that ancient provision should impede the development of proper small-area statistics, given that the House, local government and the devolved Parliaments all need them in their work. I hope that the Government will reconsider that matter.

It is important that the code of practice in national statistics, which is what we shall have to rely on for the integrity of Government information, should be entrenched and defined in law. It is important that the right of access to information—by Members of Parliament and by our fellow citizens—should also be entrenched in law. Parliament will soon consider freedom of information legislation, so it is important that that concept be brought to bear on the information and statistical work of the Government. I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will look at that matter again.

In addition, I hope that my hon. Friend will assure the House that the statistical commission and the Government national statistician will have right of access to the service agreements between the Bank of England and the Office for National Statistics that underpin much of the work of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. Parliament should be aware of the dialogue between the Bank of England and the Government in that respect. It should know of any exchange of information between the Bank and the Government, and of any anxieties that may exist about the quality of the economic information being dealt with.

I share some of the anxieties expressed by other hon. Members about the fact that responsibility for the retail prices index will remain with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I believe that the Chancellor would be far more comfortable if responsibility for the RPI were passed to the statistical commission and the national statistician. My right hon. Friend would benefit from passing over that responsibility and would find that remarks—such as those he apparently intends to make tonight about average earnings—would be reinforced if he operated against a background in which no one could dispute the independence or integrity of the information that he intended to deploy.

There is current and active concern in the House over whether the RPI properly reflects the needs and conditions of pensioners. That cannot be dealt with in a political way as it requires independent and robust investigation. I ask the Minister to consider these matters. We, and the Government, might be better served by legislation that entrenched the right to independence of the statistical commission and the national statistician.

Finally, we have to deal with the devolved Parliaments. The Government address the Parliaments in the White Paper and have also produced within the past few weeks a memorandum of understanding on statistics between the devolved Parliaments and the UK Parliament and Government. The devolved Parliaments clearly have their own duties and their own understandings of priorities. No one wants to stand in the way of that.

However, it is of fundamental importance to citizens of the UK that on some basic measures of public information—waiting lists or economic information such as measurements of productivity—statistical unity should remain. There must be a common base for statistics. The UK must not be prised apart by a growing disconnection between statistical bases deployed for policy making in the devolved Parliaments and the Westminster Parliament. I hope that the Economic Secretary will address that point, and I know that the Government would wish to ensure that statistical unity was maintained.

Our debate is informed by a Select Committee report on an important matter of public interest. We acknowledge the serious consideration and importance that the Government accorded to their response and the position that they have taken in the debate. We welcome publication of the White Paper, which in many ways goes towards meeting the anxieties and recommendations of the Treasury Committee. However, the White Paper remains deficient in some vital respects. We invite the Economic Secretary to consider views expressed across the House about those deficiencies. I am sure that she will at some time and in some form consider those matters again.

I, too, welcome the Minister to the Treasury Bench. I look forward to our debate today and debates over next year's Finance Bill. I am sure that she looks forward to that as much as I do.

I congratulate the Treasury Committee on its work and its report. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) on their speeches, although I felt that they did not do full justice to their report. In many ways, I felt, they hid their feelings of disappointment about the White Paper. They were critical of it, but pulled their punches.

I had the privilege of speaking today to the president of the Royal Statistical Society, which is incredibly disappointed by the White Paper. The society was encouraged by the Green Paper and the Government's consultation process. It agreed with many of the Treasury Committee's recommendations. However, it feels that the Government have let the side down in the White Paper, the last-minute publication of which seems to reflect a new Government attitude. The society fears that the Government will not be as open and transparent as they had implied during consultation and that they will not deliver on their promises.

We have seen the same happen before under the present Government. They promise a sea change and a modernisation of the whole approach to the government of the country. However, when they try to deliver, they fail significantly to do so. The White Paper is another example of that.

The society would make two major points if it could speak to the House. First, it is concerned about the scope of statistics that will fall to the statistics commission. The commission is to be given control of national statistics, but not of other statistics produced by Departments. Decisions about whether the commission should have access to information will, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central said, be taken by Ministers. He called that a right to block, and I believe that that position is unfortunate.

The second key weakness of the White Paper is that there will be no legislative framework. The hon. Gentleman said that the Government remained open-minded about that, but it is noticeable that they will remain open-minded until after the next general election as they do not promise legislation before it. It would be nice to have an independent statistics commission before then to judge the Government on their election pledges last time round. We could see whether the statistics that the Government are producing on hospital waiting lists and class sizes are correct, and judge whether the pledges have been kept. The House and the country would feel more confident about all the statistics the Government publish if the figures came from a statistics commission. The failure to legislate is a great weakness.

I want to link those two points to the Government's failure on freedom of information. Citizens and Parliament will not know what statistics and what factual information lie behind the Government's policies. They will have no access to that information under the draft Freedom of Information Bill, even after the changes announced during the summer recess. The blanket exemption will apply to statistics, and that is much to be regretted.

On the detail on the scope of statistics to come under the commission, the Treasury Committee's first report stated, at paragraph 13, that

"in order to achieve the desired levels of integrity, real and perceived, it will be crucial that the Head of National Statistics or of any statistical commission decides which statistics are included within the scope of National Statistics rather than Ministers, and for the distinction to be strongly enforced."

However, the White Paper, written on the basis of the Committee's recommendations, states at paragraph 4.5 that Ministers will decide whether any changes to the scope of national statistics are appropriate, publishing their response. That has caused consternation among the country's top statisticians.

The Royal Statistical Society, in a press release yesterday,

"expressed its extreme disappointment at the very limited scope of the Government's proposals to guarantee the future integrity of National Statistics. Only the statistics currently produced by the Office for National Statistics will automatically come under the new arrangements."

The society adds:

"National Statistics has been defined much too narrowly."

During my conversation with the president of the society, she said that the narrow definition went against all the soundings that the Government had given during the consultation period. It is her belief that the vast majority of respondents favoured a much broader definition of the statistics that the commission is to control. The Government have not delivered on what they were promising the respondents to that consultation process.

Other models were debated during the process, such as the Select Committee model, whereby it would be up to the commission to decide what statistics it should have access to. One might have considered a purchaser-provider split, with Government Departments purchasing statistics from a commission that was in charge of all national statistics, which were defined as covering everything. The Government should study those models. I hope that the Economic Secretary will tell us that this is not the last shot and that the Government will reconsider whether they are prepared to widen the scope of the statistics that will come under the new commission.

The importance of statistics in public policy debate cannot be underestimated. In the Select Committee report, we see how they can be used to make decisions about the allocation of resources and to measure the Government's performance so that we can scrutinise Government properly. In recent years, they have been used to measure the objectives and targets of Government, which is relevant to the debate about waiting lists.

Unless the Government are prepared to ensure in legislation that such statistics, which are crucial to public policy, are made available independently, they will not rebuild the confidence of the British people in the statistics that we debate. Under the previous Government, we had an annual discussion about the unemployment statistics and whether the various definitions were correct, which brought the whole process into disrepute. Many people did not believe that Government when they said that unemployment was coming down. There was a huge argument about which way it was going and about what the real level was. On the one hand, the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) might have put it at 3 million, 4 million or even 5 million, while other politicians put it much lower even than the Government. That brought the whole debate into disrepute and made it rather sterile.

It is so important for the Government to get this matter right. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central talked about pensions. He is right; that is a topical debate. As we know, the retail prices index figure for September was low at 1.1 per cent., which means that pensioners who rely on the basic state pension are looking forward to an increase of only 75p a week next April. The important question is whether that is the right inflation measure. Should we use the underlying rate, or should we consider a special pensioner RPI? Those statistics could be made available by a statistics commission. It could give Parliament public advice about the most appropriate RPI. Pensioners in my constituency will not be terribly happy if the current RPI is used to make the decision.

Deciding the right statistic is also important. We note that the Government have ensured that they will keep total control over such decisions. One might argue that subjectivity is involved when one is commenting on and deciding between different statistics—that that is always subjective and should therefore be a political decision. I believe that if such a decision is based on authoritative advice, the Government can be held far more accountable for it.

When the Government present their information, in particular when it relates to election pledges and key political targets, they are always likely to try to manipulate the figures. I do not think that any of us could say hand on heart that if our party were in government, we would not be up to the same tricks. Of course we would and that is why the Government must try to ensure that independence is enshrined in the system.

Debating statistics in the House is always difficult; the truth is often complex. One isolated statistic can give one picture, but when others relating to it are considered, one can draw a completely different picture. That is why we need the statistics commission to give that sort of high-level advice—commentary, if one likes—when it provides statistics for the Government. Judging from the White Paper, I do not see that sort of role being given to the commission.

There are many other problems, but because of lack of time, I will mention only three. The first is that so much is resting on the document, "The Framework for National Statistics", as the right hon. Member for Fareham pointed out. I have it on authority that the Royal Statistical Society would like to be consulted on that framework document. I hope that the Government will not publish it as soon as possible, as they state in the White Paper. Before it is published, many people, including in the House, should have a chance to have an input. If the Government fail to do that, they will be breaking faith with their previous excellent consultation process.

The second problem is that the accountability proposals in the White Paper should be reviewed. The Government seem to want to ensure that the statistics commission reports to the Treasury. They want to maintain that structure. As the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice) said, it is time that we ensured that such bodies report to the House—to Select Committees. If we could develop the informal process of confirmatory systems into a statutorily based system of confirmatory hearings, we could ensure accountability and strengthen the integrity and independence of such commissions.

The third and final problem is that the commission is being given the huge task of auditing, collecting and presenting. According to the White Paper, the commission will be relatively small. Unless it is given serious backing, in terms of both resources and support, it will find that too hard a task. As we approach the census, that is extremely worrying.

The Government started on this process with the best of intentions. They talked about ensuring independence, rebuilding trust, maintaining and developing integrity and improving quality. Although some of the recommendations of the White Paper go that way, by ducking out and not ensuring that an independent statistics commission can comment on and be involved in all statistics if it so chooses, and by failing to ensure that its independence is enshrined in law, I am afraid that the Government will fail to meet their own objectives.

I was pleased to serve on the Treasury Sub-Committee under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), who was always a wise and good-humoured guide in our deliberations. What he omitted to say about our choice of the Office for National Statistics as the subject for our first inquiry is that the members of the Committee suspected that it would be a fairly straightforward issue—a gentle dipping of our toes into the water. Little did we suspect that there would be the great national explosion of the failure of the average earnings index in October, which would concentrate the attention, seemingly, of the world on the work of the investigation and of the ONS itself.

In defence of the Government—I ask myself why I should defend them, but I choose to do so—and as regards the timing of the publication of the White Paper, following what happened with the average earnings index we had two investigations into the index, a further review of the efficiencies of the ONS and the deliberations of our Sub-Committee report—all of which feature strongly in the White Paper, which is good to see, as matters that have been taken into account. Those also include the work of the Select Committee. That is all pleasing and a reasonable defence of the timing of the production of the White Paper.

Information is power, and statistics are a component of that for policy advisers or makers in the public, private or voluntary sectors and for the public at large. Everyone is interested in possessing accurate statistics and information. I shall use the story of the average earnings index to show what happens when official statistics are compromised and what the possible causes of that might be. The story of the AEI shows two pressing needs for the work of the Office for National Statistics. First, there should be strong management capable of clear strategic thinking. Secondly, the management must have robust independence from political interference.

The right place to start the story of the AEI is in the spring of 1998. The earnings growth figures that spring were worrying. The Monetary Policy Committee had delivered itself of the opinion that average earnings growth in excess of about 4.5 per cent. would be inconsistent with meeting its inflation target without having to raise interest rates. That spring, earnings growth was about that figure. Everyone knew that bonuses influenced the figures but people wanted to know whether they represented one-off payments as a reward for the past 12 months' performance, in which case they could largely be discounted as an inflationary pressure, or whether there was something more to them. In spring 1998, the Bank of England asked the ONS to work on analysing the bonus-related element. In April and May that year, the ONS did some work on that and passed its findings to the MPC.

In June 1998, the MPC announced another rise of a quarter of a percentage point in the base rate, to 7.5 per cent. That decision surprised forecasters and, in explaining its decision, the MPC said that it had had regard to the average earnings growth figures. The figure available was that from the ONS for March 1998, which had risen to 4.9 per cent., clearly above the 4.5 per cent. that the MPC had stated was consistent with not raising interest rates. Given the MPC's thinking, it was no surprise that it raised interest rates at that months' meeting. The MPC was heavily criticised at the time for that rate rise, for giving too much emphasis to only one economic indicator. In defence of the MPC, although the indicator that it was relying on was earnings growth, it did not rely only on the figures from the ONS. It had access to other information such as that produced by the Reward Group, business surveys and its contacts with the business community. Nevertheless, that was its decision.

We returned to the average earnings index in October 1998. The public's attention was attracted to the index by two sets of startling revisions in a short space of time. First, on 6 October, the earnings figures for May, June and July were slightly revised. There were no great shocks there, but on 14 October, the whole back-run of data was heavily revised without any warning to the markets interested in the statistics. It was a stunning event and everyone was shocked. There was huge criticism of the MPC's decision back in June because the revised data suggested that the peak in earnings growth in spring and summer had not been as high as the MPC had been led to believe. One national newspaper carried a banner headline saying that the MPC's blunder had cost the country 10,000 jobs. Little wonder that the Chancellor was described as being incandescent with rage.

The director of the ONS, Tim Holt, announced that he was suspending the index forthwith and that an independent inquiry was to be undertaken by Southampton university into what had gone wrong. He said that it was right to suspend the index from publication because everyone had lost trust in the statistics. At the same time, the Chancellor announced a separate inquiry into what had gone wrong with the index, led by Andrew Turnbull from the Treasury and Mervyn King from the Bank of England. They directed Martin Weale of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to conduct a second inquiry especially for the Chancellor. Both inquiries produced reports this March, when the average earnings index was rehabilitated and reinstated.

It is interesting now to look back at what the reviews concluded was the state of earnings growth back in spring and summer of 1998. The reviews showed that the original figures, prior to any revisions, were about correct; if anything, they were slightly overstated. It was a case of "as you were". It could be argued that the MPC had been vindicated but, alas, there were no banner headlines to that effect.

During the furore of the reviews, the Treasury also announced a new efficiency review of the ONS. KPMG was to report to a Treasury-appointed steering group with recommendations for making further efficiency savings in the costs of the ONS. That review led to several recommendations, three of which I shall cite as examples. It said that the number of ONS offices could be reduced, that more support services could be outsourced and that there should be changes at the top of the management. The collective result of the recommendations would eventually be annual savings of £20 million. In announcing that it accepted most of the report's recommendations, the Treasury said that the £20 million would be recycled into improving the rest of the ONS's services.

I fear that all this demonstrates the potential for political control of statistics. The Government set the ONS' s budget and are its major customer. On this occasion, the Government appointed their own review into what had happened with a particular set of statistics and put in train their own efficiency review. Those are the sort of things that we as politicians should guard against in protecting national statistics. As the Green Paper said, it is a matter of trust.

As the right hon. Member for Fareham said, the ONS has many other customers, not only the Government of the day. As my example showed, the Bank of England is an important customer. The nations and regions of the United Kingdom, local government, business and the public at large also all want accurate statistics.

When the Government responded to the Treasury Select Committee report, it seemed that there was agreement between the Committee and Government on two things that should be improved in the ONS: improving the statistical base and capacity, and prioritising services to users of the ONS. That offers some encouragement as to how we go from here.

I want to consider the White Paper. No one has mentioned that our report draws attention to the international comparison of the costs of the ONS with those of similar bodies in other countries. We get our statistics remarkably cheaply. Who am I to say whether those countries are spending too much on the provision of statistics or we too little?

Despite several speeches this evening which showed ways in which doubt could be cast on statistics, the people producing them or the Government standing behind them, it has to be said that the evidence received by the Select Committee was that by and large the statistics produced by the ONS are among the best in the world in terms of their reliability and the processes by which they are produced. It is important to make that point to redress the balance of the tone of the debate so far. There is no reason why we should not have it as our ambition, White Paper or not, to make the statistics produced in this country world leaders. Indeed, that phrase appears in the foreword to the White Paper.

Some of the vital issues to be discussed as a result of the White Paper have already been mentioned by other hon. Members. In deciding what statistics are national and what are not, I stand by the recommendation of the Select Committee. It ought to be the job of the national statistician, the statistics commission or a combination of the two. It is not the job of Ministers who want to defend their departmental interests. So in that area, the White Paper needs further development.

Mention has also been made of the right of the director of national statistics to go to the top—to the Prime Minister of the day—to complain about any infringement of the integrity of national statistics. As two hon. Members have mentioned already, the Select Committee recommended that in addition to being able to go to the Prime Minister about the integrity of national statistics, the director ought to be able to go to the Prime Minister on the question of resources. Resources are the Achilles heel of the White Paper. There is no explicit mention of the mechanisms by which anyone can decide whether we are spending the right or the wrong amount on producing national statistics. That needs to be corrected.

Four components are essential to our future statistical service. The first is quality management. That is dealt with in the White Paper. The second is political accountability—not interference in management. To some extent, that is dealt with in the White Paper, but not to my satisfaction. I make it clear that that is my own opinion. The third is adequate resources, which I have now mentioned twice. It is important to stress a third time that, when used by some people such as exporters, accurate and timely statistics may have an influence on the wealth of the country. So if we need to spend more money to produce greater wealth, that is a consideration to which we ought to have regard. The fourth component is customer involvement. It is important for the commission to take on the role of ensuring that the views of those who want good statistics are heard right at the top of the tree.

I said at the beginning of my speech that information is power. I hope that what we are about tonight is helping to form a view on how to create a statistical commission and national statistician that produce statistics that contribute to the power and wealth of our country. I suggest that statistics ought to be impartial, reliable, accessible, timely and economic to produce. When right hon. and hon. Members read Hansard tomorrow, they will see that the first letters of those words spell irate. I suggest that Members of this House will be very angry indeed if we do not produce a statistical service of which we can all be proud.

I begin by echoing the welcome given to the Economic Secretary in her new post by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I also welcome the debate. In many ways, it shows the House at its best. We have heard measured comments from hon. Members of all parties. We are debating a Select Committee report that firmly shows the House of Commons trying to fulfil its age-old task of holding Governments to account and insisting, in the terms used by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), that the public, experts and democracy as a whole have the power to understand what is being done to them and on their behalf. Statistics, therefore, are not a byway. They are one of the centrepieces of democratic society. Without faith in accurate statistics, we stand in imminent danger of beginning at any time on the slippery slope to totalitarian rule. I do not mean that we are anywhere near it today or have been at any time in our history, but it behoves us, and it is right that we take the responsibility seriously, to concentrate without the slightest complacency on whether our statistics are accurate and our systems for making sure robust. Otherwise, the threat to our democratic liberty will be very great.

I welcome the Select Committee report. As several hon. Members have mentioned, there is no doubt that recommendation (b) goes to the heart of the matter. It has been quoted already. I merely remind the House that it states clearly that it should be the head of national statistics or any statistical commission who decides what is included in the national statistics and hence what is subject to the rigours of the new commission.

The White Paper has been much discussed in the debate so far. It is headed "Building Trust in Statistics". It was introduced with great acclaim by the Government. The Economic Secretary told the world in her press release:

"This White Paper marks a new era for official statistics."

I am bound to say that I am not a great believer in Government hype, whatever Government are in power. I am afraid to say that this Government have been rather better at Government hype than most in our history, but hype is least appropriate when it is least true. I accept the infinite delicacy of the comments of Government Members in attacking the White Paper. Labour Members have been careful to avoid outright attack, and I understand entirely that I should do the same in their position. But the mood of the House this evening has shown clearly that the Royal Statistical Society, to which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) referred, was right.

The White Paper does not mark a new era for official statistics. It is perhaps at best the beginning of an idea of what, later, if put in legislative form and much enhanced in various ways, might be a somewhat better way of arranging official statistics. I admit that that does not quite carry the same soundbite characteristics as

"a new era for official statistics",

but it is alas the truth. It is the truth not least because, as various hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), have said, the crucial recommendation (b)—that the decision about what goes into national statistics should be independently made—is precisely the one that is by implication turned down in the White Paper.

We have to attend to just how much of a problem there is here. The Chairman of the Select Committee, who carries some weight in the matter, said that there was some ambiguity about who would decide what went in and what stayed out. I rather agree with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. I do not think that there is any ambiguity. The Select Committee talked in terms of decision, but section 2.10 of the White Paper on page 5 makes it clear that the new commission will

"advise on the scope of National Statistics".

As if that left any ambiguity—I suppose that it might be argued that the phrase by itself was ambiguous—the White Paper says in section 4.5 on page 13:

"The Government will ask the Statistics Commission to keep under review the scope of national statistics and make periodic recommendations"—

again, in advisory mode—and

" … Ministers will decide".

I think that it is pretty clear that we are dealing not with an independent body that will decide what things it vets but with a wonderful combination of Ministers. The Minister is undoubtedly a human being and hence probably prey to the temptations to which we are all subject. That certainly applies to all of us on the Opposition Front Bench. How convenient not to admit into the fold of national statistics any series of statistics that may be dubious because of the character of the collection.

Collection is a difficult matter. Economic judgments, as many hon. Members have said, often depend on judgments about how accurate statistics really are. However, any Minister may also wish to conceal a series that is politically embarrassing.

I wish I could say that, from my own experience of working in a bureaucracy, I had any confidence that our civil service would always provide a bastion sufficient against that temptation. However, I fear that the structure of our government makes it systematically unlikely that the civil service will do so. On the whole, civil servants are entirely decent people trying to do a good job, but the job that they are asked to do is to serve the Government of the day—not Parliament and not the electorate. It becomes extraordinarily difficult for them to resist a Minister who finds it inconvenient to have a particular piece of information released.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House who have any experience of government—most of them have vastly more such experience than I have—will know what I am talking about when I say that one cannot rely on the home Departments to vet their own statistics. That was the conclusion reached by the Sub-Committee and that was very clear and right. It is extremely to be deplored that the White Paper says nothing as to how we can avoid that problem in the future. That is what the Royal Statistical Society is on about.

It is also relevant to remind ourselves of which sort of statistics are involved. Some of them have already been mentioned this evening: waiting lists and crime statistics—and police numbers, which are so topical. However, the most interesting question of all relates to those statistics that never appear. I feel morally confident—I am absolutely sure that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice), the Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, who, in a previous incarnation, played a distinguished role as the Opposition spokesman on education, would echo what I say—that buried somewhere in the Department for Education and Employment are fairly large numbers of surveys and a fair number of statistics as to how effective or ineffective the new deal is turning out, and that they have not been revealed. I say that because it was always the practice of the DfEE and its predecessors not to reveal surveys and statistics that they did not find convenient. I am sure that Ministers have sought to inform themselves as to those matters and have revealed—perfectly honestly—those things that they think are convenient, and have concealed those things that they think are inconvenient. That is not the way to convey to an electorate or to Parliament a proper picture. It is not special to this Government; it has been true of Governments for ages past. Now there is an opportunity to change it by consensus. The Select Committee has given us that opportunity; the White Paper should be rewritten to give it to us properly.

We turn to the home Department that is the most important; that is what I want to add to the debate. That Department is of course the Treasury—Her Majesty's Treasury—the august body that is the subject of the Select Committee's whole endeavour and which produced this splendid, or not so splendid, White Paper, and which is responsible for enormously important statistics.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham has already referred to the inflation figures. I restate the point that I made in an intervention to him; if there is a single set of exogenous statistics that matter most, it is the inflation statistics. Those statistics are not merely a piece of information; they are an operator. As the Chancellor has chosen to set the targets of the Monetary Policy Committee in a series of statistics, the choice of the series itself and the governing of the way in which that series is compiled are matters that quite directly affect policy as well as information. Clearly, that is intolerable. It is not possible for a Chancellor of the Exchequer honestly to claim that he has subcontracted the control of monetary policy to another body under a clear and transparent target, if the target is in fact not clear and transparent, but opaque, and run by his own officials in ways that he does not declare.

I admit that, in principle, the national statistician could come along and say, "But Chancellor, I do not really believe you, I should like to see exactly how this is made up". Earlier, we heard an exchange on that matter. However, the poor old national statistician—be he ever so distinguished a statistician, as I hope and believe that he will be—will not stand much chance against a Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Chief Secretary, a Financial Secretary, an Economic Secretary, a Paymaster General, a Permanent Secretary and a head of the economic service, all of whom tell him, "We don't really think you ought to have this".

I do not speculate in this matter—or if I do so, it is based on recent experience—because, in dealing with certain matters to which I am about to turn, I asked whether I could go to see Professor Likierman, the head of the financial management, reporting and audit service to ask him some questions. First, a record of my telephoned request was lost. Secondly, it transpired that we had to send a request by fax, so I did so. It then transpired that my request could not be answered, but had to be referred to the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was referred to that office and a long delay ensued. We were then informed that I could not see Professor Likierman about the national accounts, because I could only do so if a Minister was present and it was not felt that a Minister should be present.

I can remember a similar occasion when the hon. Gentleman's party was in power and I wanted to see the chief inspector of the then HMI. I was told that I could not do so unless the Secretary of State for Education was also present—he was Sir Keith Joseph. I thought that that was not appropriate, so I arranged to meet the chief inspector at a party.

I admire the right hon. Gentleman's ingenuity. I may adopt the same tactic, although my social sphere is not yet as elevated as his. Indeed, my point is not about the Government; it is not a party political point. The truth is that all Governments have an institutional tendency to conceal. I fear that there will not be much chance for that ever-so-distinguished chap to break through that veil.

I have already expressed myself on the substance of the point that the hon. Gentleman makes; I agree with him. None the less, we should record that neither the Sub-Committee in its investigations of the Office for National Statistics, nor the main Committee, when it considered resource accounting and budgeting—we shall come back to that—found a shred of evidence that the Chancellor and the Government had exercised the kind of influence to which the hon. Gentleman refers and which he rightly fears.

I am terribly grateful to the hon. Gentleman because he moves me on to precisely the topic that I now address: the belief—at least on our part—that there is some evidence of that problem, in respect not of exogenous statistics, but of the most important statistics of all, which are those under the Government's operational control. I refer to the national accounts.

if there is one set of statistics that matters most, it is those that relate to the fiscal balance. Alas, that is also the area in which there is the greatest scope for any Government to engage in subterfuge. I have to say that the present Chancellor and his colleagues have raised that subterfuge to a fine art. We are dealing with a sort of Mr. Mephistopheles, who has managed to conjure the most extraordinary results from the brilliantly illuminating 189-page document that is the Red Book. One of the nation's leading experts told me that for years he had felt that he knew little about life, but he knew one thing: how to make sense of the national accounts at last—until the Red Book and its predecessor of the previous year appeared on the scene. At that point he more or less gave up.

Why is that? Some of those matters must be conscious, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer is an extremely intelligent man, with a bright set of officials and colleagues who work with him. It cannot be an unconscious act that the working families tax credit—billions of pounds of public expenditure on any normal definition—has famously disappeared into an accounting adjustment. If it is unconscious, I suppose that is a resigning matter, but I do not believe that for a moment. It was a conscious adjustment—an adjustment of an adjustment, so to speak—in order to make us wholly unaware of what was going on, except that it was so obvious that most people caught up with it eventually. It did take a couple of days after the production of the Red Book, but eventually people caught up with it.

Alas, as one goes through the whole document, one finds dizzyingly many minor examples of misleading or ambiguous arrangements of statistics, which make it extraordinarily difficult for someone trained in ordinary accounts or finance to penetrate the document. Some of those may be the result of error, some may be unconscious and some may be conscious—I genuinely do not know which is which. We struggled mightily to find out but, not least because of our failure to meet Professor Likierman, we have been unable to do so.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that how to present the working families tax credit is an interesting problem: should it be presented as expenditure, or in some other way? He should give the Government some credit. The way in which the presentation used was arrived at is comprehensively set out in the Red Book, and further documents were produced to reinforce the presentation in that document. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to disagree with that presentation, but it is undeniable that the Government have made it entirely clear how the presentation of the working families tax credit in the national accounts was arrived at.

In a way, I agree with the hon. Gentleman, in that if one reads all the fine print, one can eventually work out what has happened. I also agree that how to deal with the tax credit—indeed, with tax credits in general—is an interesting question: are they expenditure or negative income? There is no case for calling them an accounting adjustment; the only reason for doing so was to ensure that we did not notice for a little while. That is not a good way to present such matters.

Let me move on to some other examples. Table B27 in the Red Book registers the current budget surplus as 0.5 per cent. of gross domestic product. Yet, in table B25, something ostensibly similar called surplus on current budget is labelled as £6.2 billion. Those are both 1998–99 figures. With GDP at rather less than £900 billion, it is extraordinary difficult for the ordinary man to make those two figures match. There might be a perfectly good explanation for that, but as the Red Book does not provide it and one cannot meet the man who drew up the figures, it is difficult to tell what it is, which is probably why the press does not have the slightest idea what has happened. I rang a couple of expert commentators, who told me that I had a good point and that they could not work it out either.

The question is not merely one of figures and principles of accounting; we are dealing with a sort of definitional glory. I have never seen so many definitions as have been produced, changed and reproduced over the past couple of years. We have current expenditure, net capital expenditure—although of what it is net is an interesting question in itself—and general Government expenditure. Then, we have total managed expenditure, which is not to be confused with annually managed expenditure or with net departmental outlays, which a common man might have thought bore some relationship to it. We have net borrowing, which is quite different from net cash requirement and from the surplus or deficit on the current budget. Most mysterious of all, we have other financial transactions, which are wholly different from miscellaneous financial transactions.

I could bore the House by going on for another 20 minutes with other definitions, but I shall please the House by not doing so. The fact is that it would all be a joke—if it were not so serious. What makes it serious is that a 189-page document—which is 186 pages longer than a set of company accounts, containing straightforward profit and loss, balance sheet and cashflow figures—has been produced, partly in an effort to inform and partly in an effort to conceal and obfuscate. Nobody has the slightest idea which component of the item in question is generated by which of the two motives, and I strongly believe that it will not be long before the Treasury itself loses sight of the distinction.

In the end, it will be the Government—and, of course, those who elected them—who will suffer from not understanding their own rhetoric expressed in their own statistics. That is the very fate that befell regime after regime in circumstances in which there was not the same degree of public accountability as we in a democracy are used to. It became genuinely impossible for decent people trying to run a country such as Czechoslovakia to understand their own accounts, because they had been so concocted that those who concocted them had lost sight of the motives and techniques of concoction. That is a fate to which we have not yet succumbed, and we must never succumb to it.

We have been having a most interesting debate within the debate. The hon. Gentleman offers the example of Czechoslovakia—I do not know whether that is intended to upset us. One of the interesting features of the former communist regimes in eastern Europe is that they drew no distinction between capital and revenue, but neither did British public sector accounts until the innovations made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. Those are the very innovations which the hon. Gentleman criticises, and he makes heavy weather of the resulting difficulty in presentational terms. However, does he disagree that the current Government were entirely right to bring about a long overdue revolution in British public accounts by introducing a distinction between capital and revenue, which all of us—every enterprise, company and household—make as a matter of daily routine?

No, I do not disagree at all. It is entirely right that the resource accounting process, which began under the previous Government and has admirably been continued under the current Government, along with the national asset register, the effort to create some principles, including the fundamental underlying principles of the golden rule, and the distinction between capital and current, are all common currency—I should not say that—and are all commonly accepted on both sides of the House. That is not the issue. The issue is whether the methods of presentation are such as to make matters clear, or to keep matters obscure. I maintain that they are not such as to make matters clear.

The remedy is to have an independent body, statutorily established, that creates firm and clear definitions, just as the accountancy profession has, for hundreds of years—since the 13th century—in one way or another established definitions for private sector business. That is the appropriate way to set the standards for fiscal accounting. I do not claim perfection for previous Governments of either party. The situation is not unique—we have merely reached a pinnacle of obfuscations during the current Government's tenure—but there has been a lacuna for many years and it needs to be resolved.

Alas, the concern of the Sub-Committee was not with that matter. Even more regrettable is the fact that the White Paper says nothing about it. I hope that the Select Committee will continue its good work—[Interruption.] Notwithstanding the sedentary remarks of the right hon. Member for North Durham, I have read what the Committee has so far produced and I accept that it is moving in the right direction. However, I do not accept for a moment that the Government have shown the least sign of moving in the right direction.

The Government should strengthen the statistics commission and the role of the national statistician and increase the rights and powers of those bodies to ensure that matters that they think should be documented in certain ways, not things which Ministers think should be documented, are so documented. The Government should also establish an independent commission that will govern the definitions and principles of national accounting, so that we are never again faced with an incomprehensible 189-page set of statistics that diminish democracy and the ability of Government to govern.

I think that it was Disraeli who coined the aphorism:

"lies, damned lies and statistics."

Much of today's debate has underscored the political warning implicit in that statement. Disraeli would have enjoyed the fact that the first subject debated in the spillover Session is statistics, although that probably has more to do with lack of demand from other quarters than with any obsession with statistics on the part of the business managers. However, there is no doubt that statistics deserve Parliament's close attention, for at least two reasons that have already been touched on.

First, statistics are often—not always—useful props to Government propaganda, and sometimes they are of critical importance. Examples have been quoted by hon. Members on both sides of the House of the way in which unemployment, health and education statistics have been presented. Such statistics have formed part of the propaganda of Governments from both sides. Secondly, statistics sometimes—but not always—play a vital role in the formation of policy. Some examples have been given this evening, the most obvious current example being the retail prices index and the average wages index and their effect on the interest rate policy of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. I shall come in a moment to other examples, including European trade statistics and statistical decisions that might or might not be made about the single currency, which can have policy implications.

As has been said, a national statistical service has two requirements. First, it should be independent and, secondly, it should be open—especially when matters are subjective and when the methodology upon which the statistics are based is changing.

The report of the Treasury Sub-Committee—I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) and his colleagues on their achievements—states clearly that neither independence nor openness apply fully to national statistics in general or to the Office for National Statistics in particular. Several relevant examples have been given in this debate.

On the question of independence, the RPI—which is crucial to policy determination and propaganda—remains within the power and gift of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The report's recommendation (b) addresses that issue in particular.

As to openness, the report documents fully the average earnings debacle. It is a nice coincidence that we are debating this issue on the day that the average earnings index has apparently reached 4.9 per cent., which was the same figure cited in June 1998. That was an overstatement and the real figure was apparently much lower. The report states clearly that there has been no openness in describing national statistics in a way that the public can understand.

The real question that we are debating tonight is what will happen as a result of the Treasury Committee report, the publication of the White Paper and this debate. The omens are not good. The White Paper—which is, perhaps significantly, black rather than white—was produced yesterday without any real notice. I am told that Treasury Committee staff did not know about the imminent publication of the paper until fairly late on Friday. That is quite extraordinary, especially given that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues had worked on the paper for a year. I am told that the document was produced at a press conference at which journalists were controlled unusually tightly: only six journalists were permitted to attend and they were allowed to ask questions for only 10 minutes. So much for open government and so much for the aspirations of the black paper.

At the beginning of the paper, the Prime Minister says:

"In the consultation document 'Statistics: A Matter of Trust', the Government emphasised its intention to seek a new relationship with citizens based on openness and trust. I believe that having access to official statistics which we can all trust is essential in any healthy society."

On the facing page, the Economic Secretary begins her contribution by saying:

"The Government is committed to establishing public confidence in official statistics."

A nice photograph of the hon. Lady accompanies those comments. She may not have had much of a chance to influence policy decisions, but there was obviously time to print her picture—which is rather better than the slightly indifferent photograph of the Prime Minister that appears on the other page. The aspirations in the Economic Secretary's comments and throughout the black paper do not square with the way in which the paper was produced.

As to openness, the fundamental point that has been made in this debate is that vital statistics—the RPI and information about hospital waiting lists and educational performance, for instance—remain under direct ministerial control. That is contrary to the basic proposition advanced by the Treasury Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) pointed out clearly that the pivotal point in the Select Committee's recommendations has been refused. Therefore, there is no question—as the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), said—that the White Paper flies in the face of the Select Committee's recommendations. Not only was it produced at the last moment in a manner that was pretty discourteous to all those involved, but, in essence, it contradicts the main recommendations of the Select Committee.

As to the future of the ONS and the way in which it operates, nothing seems to have changed since the average earnings debacle. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said that he was tossing a new thought into the proceedings and I shall toss a new piece of information to the House about openness and the way in which the ONS explains its statistics. I refer to correspondence initiated by my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch this summer on the question of European trade statistics. He wrote to Dr. Holt about those trade statistics on 14 September and, in essence, said:

"When … the 1999 Pink Book is compared with … Economic Trends in December 1998, it becomes apparent that very substantial re-allocations have been made between countries."

He then instances this case and states:

"Income in respect of EU '14': it appears that Credits have been increased (compared with the figure given in December 1998 Economic Trends); while Debits have been decreased, resulting in a 'swing' in aggregated Balances over that period of £37.6 billion … In other words, the 'picture' suggested in the December 1998 Economic Trends breakdown, of the UK having a more-or-less structural 'Income' deficit with the rest of the EU … now turns out … not to have been the case. The new Pink Book appears to indicate the opposite: that the UK has an on-going 'Income' surplus with the EU".

That is quite important information. Dr. Holt replied to that letter on 4 October, and said:

"Dear Lord Pearson"—

I shall quote key extracts from the letter—

"First, let me say that estimating portfolio investment and associated income flows across international boundaries is one of the most difficult parts of national accounting statistics … The statistics we publish are therefore subject to wider margins of error than most of our other statistics.

This problem is not confined to the UK. Other countries face the same difficulties. Indeed, it has been a matter for international discussion for many years. In 1992, a committee under the auspices of the IMF felt that to address the problem there should be a survey … The results of this survey, although only partial thus far, are the cause of much of the revision you refer to in your letter."

The fact that the IMF has sponsored an international survey on those statistics is revealed, and some rather complicated arguments ensue. That disclosure was prompted by a letter; none of the information was forthcoming when the statistics were produced—even though they are profoundly important when making policy decisions.

For instance, policies towards monetary union and the single currency may hang to some extent on such trade statistics. To come out blandly with figures on trade flows for one year that say the opposite to what was shown for the previous year, and then—only when prompted—to add that all the statistics are very subjective and difficult, and moreover are subject to international surveys, IMF reports and so on, does not square with the objective of openness.

The Committee has been nosing around those matters for a whole year now, and the ONS and its head must have known that questions would be asked about openness, and about describing what the methodologies were, and when they were required. There have certainly been definitive questions about subjective judgments. All those ideas have been floating around, and have been the subject of intense questioning by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham and his colleagues on the Committee. What is so difficult to understand is that, even this summer—this month, indeed—we have still heard examples of bland assurances and remarks that prove that the need of people outside to know and understand why statistics have been produced in a particular form is not taken seriously. All that seems to continue, despite the work that my right hon. Friend and others have done.

The obscurantism is profound; the latest information that one can glean suggests that it is still there. The problem needs to be addressed, yet I understand that Dr. Holt is to leave his job before Christmas, and no replacement has yet been made.

The White Paper says that there will be a statistics commission. I hope that colleagues both on the Committee as a whole and on the Sub-Committee will take a strong interest in that prospect, because this cannot be the end of the matter. We now have the White Paper, but it has denied the essence of what the Committee wanted. It would seem that the people producing the statistics are still carrying on with their bad old ways. For all the reasons that have been given in the debate, we must continue to watch the matter carefully, and I hope that we shall do so.

I add my congratulations to those of my colleagues to the new Economic Secretary to the Treasury. May I reassure her that we are in no doubt that she is a human being? I also congratulate the Committee on its excellent report, which recognises the growing role of statistics in the political process.

Nowhere is that more true than in health, the subject on which I speak, and which I would like to draw into the debate. Statistics are critical in measuring performance, determining the allocation of resources and setting policy targets—all uses of statistics that were singled out by the Select Committee.

A Government's performance on health is seen as a barometer of their overall success or failure, so the use of statistics to demonstrate relative success or failure will have an important effect on the future electoral chances of any Government. I therefore argue strongly the case for health statistics to be taken into the ambit of the Office for National Statistics.

As we know, the ONS does not collect centrally data on health or expenditure on health. As a relatively new politician, I say that there is a need for independent collation of statistics, so as to allow more objective assessment. There are many areas in which the Department of Health does not publish national data, despite the fact that we are talking about a national health service. As a former member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, I inquired about the booking system for the maternity services required at the time of the new millennium, and the crisis that we may face at the end of the year. When I asked about the additional number of bookings for women due to have babies at the time of the date change, I was told that the information was not available centrally.

I found that frustrating in my work, because I was trying to assess whether there had been a rapid increase in demand for maternity services at that time, and to assess the sort of provision that had been made in our national health service.

Many other important health statistics are not collected centrally. So as to be even-handed, and in case my point about the lack of centrally collected data might appear partisan, I did a little research on questions asked by Members from other parties.

The hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) asked a question about MRSA. I shall not attempt to pronounce the full version of that term, but it is a drug-resistant infection by the staphylococcus bacterium. When the hon. Gentleman asked for the basic statistical information about the number of infections by that bacterium, the response was:

"there are no centrally held statistics on deaths from this cause."—[Official Report, 5 May 1998; Vol. 311, c. 352.]

That would have frustrated him in his work as a Member of the House in trying to get to the bottom of the subject.

Another important national issue is the high rate of abortions in this country, about which questions have been asked by Members in all parts of the House. Specifically, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) wanted to know the cost to the national health service of abortions carried out in the first trimester. She received the same sort of reply—that the information requested was not centrally collected. That is another example of an important area of the national health service's responsibility in which it is difficult for Members of Parliament to carry out their work and make assessments based on nationally collected data.

Another important question—indeed, it was raised by the Opposition during Health questions today—is the rise in the instance of autism, and whether there is any correlation between that and the introduction of the triple vaccine for mumps, measles and rubella. The hon. Member for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth) once asked how many health authorities held a database with detailed information about how many people had autism. Again, she received the dry reply:

"The information requested is not held centrally."—[Official Report, 9 June 1998; Vol. 313, c. 539.]

All those examples show how difficult it is for Parliament and parliamentarians, whether they are on the Government or the Opposition side, to carry out their work when data concerning our national health service are not centrally collected.

As several hon. Members have said, statistics about patients waiting for treatment in the national health service have become something of a political football. In that regard, the trust in statistical information that has been mentioned has been called into question. There is a huge temptation for Governments to manipulate statistics to meet political targets.

In closely examining the use of waiting lists, we have discovered that not a little use of smoke and mirrors is being practised. It transpires that there are main waiting lists, subsidiary waiting lists and lists of people who are not on any lists at all. Only the main list counts, and it concerns the time that somebody waits between seeing a specialist and getting treatment.

The officially collected statistics on the waiting list of patients in the national health service take no account of the number of people who are waiting to get on the waiting list. According to the Government's own statistics, that number is about 190,000, which is an increase of 140,000 since they came to power. That staggering increase in the number of out-patients who are waiting to get on to the list has arisen as a direct result of the Government's attempts to reduce the main waiting list. It creates great confusion for people who are waiting for treatment and whose experience does not match the vaunted claims about falling waiting lists.

There has been a policy of removing certain patients from the list, and that has been done by creating a subsidiary list. There are several examples of that practice around the country, but I shall just use one of them, which is sufficient to make my point. A memorandum from the Bradford Hospitals NHS trust states:

"Following new NHS guidelines, patients on waiting lists for operations to remove metalwork are not to be included in the monthly returns. To enable us to identify patients more easily, a new list '05' has been set up."

One wonders what list 05 is. One thing is for certain, it does not appear in the headline figure for the waiting list of patients by which the Government invite the electorate to judge their performance. That causes me considerable disquiet as a parliamentarian, because the people on the 05 list have disappeared from the national statistics that we have received from the Government and that have been used as a measure of their performance.

Certain operations are being collated on an alternative list, which does not count in the overall tally. It is significant that this ruse started in June 1998, which was the month when the numbers on the main list supposedly began to fall.

We are also beginning to see the use of time-efficient operations—as opposed to more complex operations—to manipulate the figures. The trouble is that, if the target is to reduce statistically the number of patients on the list, that will have a huge impact on clinical priorities. It is a fact that to reduce the numbers on the main waiting list, there has had to be an increase in the number of minor conditions that are treated. If all cases of in-growing toenails are treated quickly, that will reduce the size of the list, whereas if the operations that are carried out are for cardiac by-passes, which take longer, are more expensive and reduce the budget, the wait will be much longer. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) pointed out that this use of statistics distorts priorities for health care. Not only do we deplore that, but, in the decision of the new Secretary of State for Health to have what he called a change of tack and to put fresh emphasis on the treatment of cancer and heart disease, we detect a recognition on his part that clinical priorities have been distorted by attempts to reduce the waiting list statistically.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not only clinical priorities that have been distorted, but the figures for NHS personnel? Will she comment on the British Medical Association's discovery yesterday that the announced additional 400 consultants are already in the system?

I was going to come to that, because it is another example of the "Jack Straw style of creative accounting" to show the number of people working in a public service.

The statistical debate on waiting lists has obscured the facts about how long people are actually waiting. That is all that matters to a patient. They do not want to know how many people are in front of them or behind them on the waiting list: they want to know how long it will take. It is hard for an ordinary person to get that information. That is yet another case for having health data collected, collated and published through the Office for National Statistics.

There has been a large increase in the number of people waiting more than a year to be seen. The figure is up from 30,000 to 48,300 since the election, which is an increase of 61 per cent. in two years. During the past two years, the number of patients waiting to be seen after being referred to a specialist has also increased.

MPs have recourse to the House of Commons Library and, if requested by our constituents, we can obtain information. In March 1999, in response to a request from a constituent, I asked the Library about the number of people waiting more than 13 weeks for treatment. The figure given to me was 248,000. By June 1999, that figure had risen to 485,000, so between March 1999 and June 1999 there was an increase of 84 per cent. That statistic shows what happens when clinical priorities are distorted so as to produce a reduction in the headline figure for the main waiting list.

The House of Commons Library has also given me the figure for the number of patients still waiting for more than 13 weeks. The number of people who have waited 13 weeks or more has increased by 115 per cent. The average waiting time is a more useful statistical measure of the performance of the national health service, and closer to people's experience of treatment under the NHS. The average waiting time between being referred to, and being seen by, a specialist has gone up from six to seven weeks. Without an independent official statistical source, it is difficult to get such information into the public domain.

Although the Government have said today that, with only 30,000 to go, they are on target to meet their promised reduction in the in-patient waiting list, the number of people on the out-patient waiting list is steadily increasing. It will be easy for the Government to achieve their target and to pronounce that their early election pledge has been fulfilled, but it will not reflect the true position or people's real experience of having to wait longer to be seen and, on average, to be treated.

Other statistics for the health service have been quoted, such as the 400 extra specialists. The new Secretary of State was quoted in The Guardian as saying that they were extra resources, but only a day later that was denied by the BMA. In fact, those specialists are already training in the system. The correction of such information by the profession concerned does nothing to build trust in the use of statistics by Departments.

The use of statistics in a misleading way can undermine trust. The new Secretary of State announced that the £15 million was new money, but it is not new money: it is part of the £21 billion allocated to the health service in the spending review that was announced by his predecessor. The money is new only in the sense that it will not be borrowed from other NHS departments. That nuance is lost on the public. When it becomes the subject of a debate about the truth of the matter, public confidence in the initial statements is undermined.

I want to make a strong case for the inclusion of health statistics in the remit of a reformed Office for National Statistics, rather than leaving their publication to the Home Department. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice) said that the collection of statistics should be free from political interference. Nowhere is that more true than in the health service.

I could not agree more with the recommendation that the decision about which data the ONS ought to publish should lie with a statistician outside Government. A cursory reading of the White—or black—Paper led me to identify only one item that troubled me greatly. I read very clearly that it was the Minister who would decide, and that leaves me dissatisfied. I fear that insufficient independence will be involved in the remit for data collection—in decisions about what should be collected, and about how it should be published—if the final decision rests with the Minister. I fear that the temptation will be too great for the Home Department to restrict access to information which, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) pointed out, could prove inconvenient to Government if it came out.

For that reason, although we wholly endorse the Government's pursuit of a method of collecting statistical information that will build trust, we are anxious to hear the Minister's latest thinking, in the hope that it will give us a degree more assurance than the White Paper gives us that the long arm of Government can be kept well clear of the collection of information that must be accurate, accessible and reliable if ordinary people are to be able to assess properly the performance of a Government and the public services within their care.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have welcomed me to my new post and given me their kind good wishes. I also thank the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) for his hesitation on the question of my humanity, which was welcome. I note that he did not agree with the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), who clearly thinks that I am human—another example of the Opposition's failure to arrive at a common policy.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I do not want anyone who was not present earlier to be in the slightest doubt when they read Hansard. I fully recognise the Minister's humanity.