If she will make a statement on her work to date in the co-ordination of Government policy on rural affairs. [106582]

I chair the new Cabinet committee on rural affairs. The committee met at the end of last year and will meet again as and when necessary. The committee's role is to co-ordinate the Government's policies affecting rural areas.

Given that farming incomes have fallen by 75 per cent. in three years and, on average, hill farmers earn only £2,000, is it not an abominable insult to countryside dwellers for a Minister who admits ignorance of rural affairs to co-ordinate a policy in which she has no input on behalf of people for whom, as the Prime Minister showed yesterday, he cares little, and will do less?

I think the role of co-ordinating between Departments is valuable. I have a love of the countryside and an understanding of agriculture: I was merely pointing out that I do not have a vested interest—from one perspective or the other. What the hon. Gentleman said about the Prime Minister is patently not true. My right hon. Friend made it clear when he spoke to the National Farmers Union yesterday that the Government have given British farmers considerable support: £3.5 billion, with an additional £750 million this year. In addition, the rural programme that we have just put together will modulate some of that money to ensure that other parts of rural communities are allowed to grow—not merely the environment, but industries in addition to agriculture, and communities as well. That is a much greater degree of interest than was shown by the Conservative Government when they were in power.

Can my right hon. Friend tell the House whether the Government are considering extending the committee for rural affairs into a fully fledged department for rural affairs, to embrace both agriculture and the countryside? Would not that be a joined-up approach, and would not my right hon. Friend be an admirable person to head such a department?

The ministerial network is working with Departments that have an interest in rural affairs to ensure that we maximise the impact of our policies for rural communities. The suitability of a rural department has been discussed on and off many times. There are vested interests on both sides. Obviously, that view will be considered in the rural White Paper, but our current position is that the ministerial network is the most effective and efficient way to move forward.

In addition to the considerable problems that face agriculture, does the Minister recognise that the fate of village sub-post offices poses a huge threat to the viability of rural communities? Will the right hon. Lady take it upon herself—as the only example that we can see of an opportunity for joined-up thinking on the issue—to ensure that her colleagues in the Departments of Social Security, of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and of Trade and Industry talk to one another about this extremely important matter? Clearly, there is a failure of communication at the moment.

There is no such failure. The performance and innovation unit is looking into the future of rural post offices and will produce a report. The previous Government did nothing to stop shops and post offices closing—in fact, 32 schools closed every year—but we have put extra money into more schools and buses. We have already offered village post offices and shops a 50 per cent. tax relief because we realise what an important and central focus they are for many rural communities. On the future of the post offices, we are listening and consulting. Departments are talking. We have talked about the matter with many Departments, and an announcement will be made as soon as possible.

If she will make a statement on the Government's drugs strategy in north Wales relating to children and young people. [106583]

One of the key aims of the Government's anti-drugs strategy is to help young people resist drug misuse in order to achieve their full potential in society. The others are to help communities protect themselves from anti-social and criminal behaviour; to provide treatment to help people overcome their drug addiction; and to stifle the availability of drugs in Britain.

The National Assembly for Wales will shortly be launching a refocused substance misuse strategy for Wales that will reflect the same aims.

Is my right hon. Friend aware of a survey that was conducted by the University of Wales, Bangor, on behalf of the North Wales police, which revealed that more than a third of north Wales school children who have been offered drugs were first approached at the age of 12 or under, and that there is a misconception that rural areas are not affected by drugs?

I am aware that a drugs treatment fund has been identified in Wales, but, in view of the alarming figures among children and young people, do the Government have plans to allocate additional resources for drugs prevention and education?

My hon. Friend is right to say that substantial numbers of young people of varying ages throughout Britain are being approached and offered substances such as drugs and alcohol which can be abused. It is important to have a partnership approach. That is why the National Assembly for Wales will be putting forward proposals to work with communities in Wales on an agreed national strategy. Since 1998, substantial new resources have been provided for a three-year programme to tackle drugs misuse, criminal activity, rehabilitation and refocusing people's lives, and education to try to develop awareness among young people of the dangers of abusing substances including drugs. My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue and I assure her that drugs issues are a No. 1 priority for the Government.

Following the question of the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams), with which I fully agree, will additional resources be made available for the Welsh Assembly? It is not overstating the case to say that primary schools in particular are being targeted by those evil people who sell drugs, and resources are needed to educate children about the evils of drugs. Is there any possibility that further resources will be made available?

The operational strategy for the new drugs proposals for Wales is a matter for the Assembly. However, I clearly said that so far the Government have made available an extra £217 million—to deal with prison issues; to pilot and implement drug treatment and testing orders; for health authorities and local authorities to provide new treatment services; to improve community care services for drugs misusers; and for drug action teams. That is a multi-million pound new investment. The Government are providing significant new resources throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to tackle drugs misuse at its roots in the community. At the same time, we are providing resources for those who suffer mental and physical ill-health as a result of their drug addiction.

When will the Minister realise that his drugs strategy is not working, in north Wales or anywhere else? When will a royal commission be set up to examine all aspects of drugs misuse throughout the United Kingdom?

The hon. Lady's first comment was a rather cheap shot. I speak with some feeling and gusto when I say that heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and a range of other highly addictive drugs cause serious physical and mental health problems, destroy individuals' lives, damage and disrupt families and communities, and cause HIV and hepatitis C. We do not need a royal commission to tell us that; it is staring us in the face. What we need is support for the 10-year Government strategy to reduce drug addiction, tackle those on the street who peddle drugs and deal with those suffering from addiction, the victims and their families. Hon. Members should get behind the Government strategy and stop making cheap political points.

The results of a recent Home Office drugs survey showed that 50 per cent. of 16-year-olds have tried cannabis at least once. Bearing in mind the American experience that a strong anti-drugs campaign with a clear message can deliver results, will the right hon. Gentleman now endorse a "just say no" message and support tougher penalties for drug pushers who target young people outside schools and elsewhere, as advocated by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition?

May I deal with the various aspects raised by the hon. Lady? Every sane person in Britain is, like the Government, behind the campaign to encourage people to just say no to drugs and other abuses, but it is not as simple as that. We need to provide our children with the skill to deal with peer-group pressure, which means providing resources at every level of the education system to encourage young people—at a very early age—and teachers to acquire knowledge of how to handle being approached on drug issues in the community, at school or in a family situation. A long-term investment in education and training is needed so that our young people can cope and not only say no but withstand any sustained pressure that is put on them.

The hon. Lady raised the issue of dealing with drug traffickers: those who peddle drugs for profit in the community and the big-time criminals. The Government are currently undertaking a review dealing with the seizure of criminal assets and a report will go to the Prime Minister in the spring. I am responsible for that report. Rest assured that we are four-square on tackling drugs and improving access for Customs and Excise, the police, the courts and others to ensure that we get to the criminals and the heart of organised crime and businesses that are designed to flout the law and import drugs into Britain at every level to abuse our children and our communities. I hope that the House is four-square behind our strategy.

What plans she has to hold more open days in Government Departments. [106584]

Open days are an important way of making Departments more accessible to people from all backgrounds. The Cabinet Office held its first open day in November last year. Other Departments have already held similar open days; some plan to hold their first later in the year. Achieving a dramatic improvement in diversity is a central plank of our civil service reform programme.

Will my hon. Friend do as much as he can to encourage as many open days as possible in various Departments across government? Students attended the Foreign Office's many recent open days and they are a good way of encouraging diversity so that people from a wider variety of backgrounds enter the civil service.

My hon. Friend is quite right: open days are a way of attracting people from all backgrounds, including ethnic backgrounds, into the civil service. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, GCHQ and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions are to hold open days later this year and it is important to get across the fact that a person does not have to be a white male middle-class graduate of Oxford or Cambridge to get into the civil service.

Will taxpayers be able to visit Departments on those open days to see whether they are getting value for money for the extra £4 million that the Government are squandering on armies of special advisers?

The hon. Gentleman knows a great deal about special advisers. I think what he objects to is the fact that the Government are putting forward their policies effectively. If he looks at the figures on expenditure at the centre of government, he will find that in real terms there has been an overall reduction of 5 per cent.

What progress is being made in implementing the social exclusion unit's report on truancy. [106586]

Good progress is being made in implementing the social exclusion unit's report and, as part of that process, the Department for Education and Employment recently launched "Tackling Truancy Together" for consultation. My right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards and I are monitoring progress within and across Departments in Whitehall and beyond.

I welcome the action that my right hon. Friend and her ministerial colleagues in the Department for Education and Employment are taking to tackle truancy and exclusion, as about 1 million children are truanting and many thousands are excluded. There is no doubt that more has to be done to cut those numbers, so I am delighted that a new unit is to be established at Britannia school in Rowley Regis to tackle that very problem. The social exclusion unit has set out an action plan to reduce those numbers by a third by 2002. Is my right hon. Friend confident that we can meet that ambitious target?

As chair of the ministerial network that exists to ensure that we meet our targets by working with Ministers across Departments, I firmly believe that we have a chance.

We have put an extra £500 million into the policy, so there is money "on the ground"—as with the unit that has been established in the school that my hon. Friend mentioned. We have introduced guidelines to help schools deal with truancy, and in April we will introduce a dowry system that will give children who repeatedly truant, or are socially excluded, grants to enable them to attend schools that will provide for their needs.

I am glad that the right hon. Lady has taken responsibility for the social exclusion unit, thus ensuring that there is leadership at Cabinet level. I hope, however, that she will pay particular attention to the role of child mental health services in truancy cases. Truancy may be the beginning of a delinquent career, but it may also be an indication that things are seriously wrong for a child. There is a real problem here in regard to joined-up government—the problem of ensuring that the Home Office, education services and social services jointly fund child mental health provision. Will the right hon. Lady consider that herself, and also, perhaps, speak to representatives of Young Minds, which provides some of the most pioneering and effective services?

I know of the right hon. Lady's interest in the matter. Let me reassure her that child mental health will be one of our considerations when a system is established—either in the form of units, or in another form that will enable us to deal with the specific question of educational health in schools—for repeated truants, and kids who have been excluded from school. That system will be cross-departmental.

As the right hon. Lady will know from experience, such a system will be particularly hard to achieve, but we think that the cross-departmental work that we are currently doing is quite successful in establishing joined-up policy-making. We hope that, following some of our submissions to the spending review body, we may even secure joined-up money, which would encourage still better co-operation. We are doing all that we can to bring that about through our links with local partnerships, local authorities, the voluntary sector and health departments.

If she will make a statement on her role in co-ordinating news releases from different Departments. [106587]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office has no role in co-ordinating news releases from other Departments.

That is interesting. Is the Minister aware that last year the Government issued 13,500 press releases—one every nine minutes? What was the cost to the public purse? Have there been any objections to the practice in the Civil Service? Does that explain why 16 out of 17 heads of information in the Civil Service have been replaced since the Government came to power? Perhaps the Government prefer heads of disinformation.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that Liberal policy is that we should not tell the people of this country what the Government are doing? That is how it sounded. As for changing heads of the information service, if the hon. Gentleman looks back to the period between 1979 and 1981 he will learn that 13 departmental heads of information changed over that time. It is not unusual for heads of information to change when Ministers change.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that, while the Cabinet Office has no role in co-ordinating the publication of news releases, the present Government have had more good news to release in two and a half years than the last Government had in 18?

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. The basic policy of both Opposition parties is not to want the Government to spend money on informing people of rights that they—the Conservative party and the Liberal party—have opposed on the Floor of the House.

Does the Minister agree that civil servants should remain neutral and should not be politicised? If so, how does he reconcile that position with the recent statement by the head of attack at Millbank, the headquarters of the Labour party, to the effect that it has regular contacts with No. 10's press office?

It is clearly the Government's policy that the civil service will retain, and does retain, its impartiality and integrity. The existence of special advisers whose responsibility it is to explain Government policy in a political context helps to retain the impartiality of the civil service.

What recent discussions she has had with internet service providers on the provision of Government services online. [106588]

I began last year a series of quarterly meetings with a range of private sector colleagues, including internet service providers, about information age government services. This is in line with our strategy of: creating a platform of integrated service delivery, which would support a wide range of access technologies and partnerships with local government and the private sector; using the Government secure intranet to link up public servants and also establish how local authorities can interface with it; a common policy on authentication, smartcards and website navigation; and a strategic approach to data standards.

Fresh from meeting Bill Gates last year, the Prime Minister said that Britain could lead the world in exploiting e-commerce. That is clearly not an ambition shared by the Home Office. Will the Minister confirm that 11 of 17 Home Office information technology projects have not been or will not be completed in time? If so, why, and what measures will the Minister and the Government take to improve their appalling IT record in this area?

First, the vast majority of IT projects that have run into trouble, with which the Government are dealing, were procured under the previous Conservative Government. The Labour Government have had to clear up the mess that was left behind for us. Secondly, 55 per cent. of businesses in Britain are already using e-commerce because of the Government's activity. That is the highest use level in Europe. However, we will do more. We will ensure that in both the private and public sectors we will be leaders in e-commerce.

My right hon. Friend will know that when we were dealing with the Y2K issue, we eventually published a sort of league table setting out where each Department was. Does he intend to do the same in regard to the electronic delivery performance of each Department?

My hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce and myself and the e-envoy are responsible for ensuring that Departments reach the Government's targets. I assure my hon. Friend that all three of us are working with the Departments to ensure that they meet the target of 100 per cent. capability by the year 2008.

The Government are keen on targets and have set one to ensure that 25 per cent. of dealings with government involve the electronic delivery of services by 2002. Will the Minister therefore explain why only 3 per cent. of such dealings were through the internet in 1999, and why the Government's figures project only 12 per cent. in 2002?

We are the first Government to set any targets in this area. The previous Government did nothing to establish a platform for the introduction of e-commerce. I made it clear to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) that the Government have targets and that we intend to reach them. We have the structures, policies and finance in place, and we will get training in place. We have the political leadership to do that.

I have made it clear to the Minister that the Government admit that they will not reach their target.

With the advent of digital technology, many people will be hoping to use interactive television, which will be user-friendly to many who do not have personal computers. The Government's figures suggest that 0 per cent. of government dealings with the public will be by interactive television by 2002. Why so poor a performance?

The hon. Gentleman must have been asleep last week—or else trying to keep his job in the shadow Cabinet. If he had been awake, he would have noted that we placed in the public domain a digital television strategy for the provision of government services. The hon. Gentleman is well behind the game. He should start listening, and catching up with what the Government are doing.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the internet—and IT in general—offers the best means of restoring to isolated rural communities the services that they lost under the previous Government, and of providing many services that they have not hitherto enjoyed? Does he further agree that the provision of such services has the additional merit of reducing dependence on both public transport and the private car, because they reduce the need to travel? Will he ensure that the rural White Paper to be published later this year will place due emphasis on this issue?

My hon. Friend is right. One of the key strategies that the Government have implemented was designed to save the rural post office network from privatisation by the Tories. That will mean hundreds of millions of pounds of new investment and will provide a technology platform for post offices in rural areas and for rural communities. At last, the rural community has a Government who battle for it.

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 2 February.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

May I take the opportunity to thank the Prime Minister for coming to my constituency, accompanied by the Deputy Prime Minister, to celebrate Labour's first 1,000 days in power?

My question concerns the economy. The Prime Minister is aware that, between 1990 and 1992, 140,000 businesses failed and 188,000 mortgage repossessions took place. That was due to the dogma of Tory party politics. [Interruption.]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is putting his question.

Will the Prime Minister outline how Labour is helping small businesses and business in the community to prosper across the country and in my constituency?

We have reduced small business tax, but, most important, we have produced stability in economic management after the boom and bust of the Conservative years, and there are 800,000 more jobs in the economy since this Government came to power. We have also introduced a minimum wage, a working families tax credit and Bank of England independence. The Conservative party would scrap every single one of those measures. Indeed, today, the new shadow Chancellor has recommitted himself to the tax guarantee and said that we are spending too much money, so let us hear no more complaints from Conservatives about schools and hospitals. We are spending more. They would spend less.

May I first express, as we have not done so in the House yet this week, our horror at last Friday's attack on the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones) and our deep sadness, which will be felt across the whole House, at the death of Andrew Pennington? We send our condolences to his family and our good wishes to the hon. Gentleman for a speedy return.

Is the Prime Minister aware that, since he took office, the backlog of asylum seekers has doubled? Is he aware that some councils now spend more on bogus asylum seekers than on looking after elderly people? Is he aware that the Home Secretary said in 1996 that, if a Labour Government did not speed up applications, they "shall have failed"? Will the Prime Minister now confirm that the Home Secretary has failed?

I concur entirely with what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones) and Andrew Pennington. We all join in sending our very best wishes and our sympathy to the hon. Gentleman and our profound condolences to the family of Mr. Pennington.

On the Home Secretary's record, of course, it is precisely for that reason that we have introduced the new asylum provisions. That will mean that we can speed up the asylum seekers cases. We can distinguish better between the bogus and the non-bogus cases. Of course, we inherited a system that was a complete mess. As a result of our legislation, in many ways opposed by the right hon. Gentleman's party, we can now clean it up.

The Prime Minister has been there for three years now and it is always promises. The cheque is always in the post, or going to be in the post. It is not just us saying that. The Labour majority on the Public Accounts Committee says that the Government are

"not living up to their responsibility"

and that the response of the Home Office is,

"to say the least, inadequate."

He should know that, in the last full year of a Conservative Government, the number of asylum seekers fell by 30 per cent. [Interruption.] Oh, some of the figures are arriving. Let us hope that they are the right figures. Let us hope that they show that, since he has been in office, the number has increased by 140 per cent. It follows decision after decision by the Government to weaken asylum policies.

Will the Prime Minister tell the House the latest figures—now that the Home Secretary has started passing him figures—on what proportion of people served orders to leave the country actually left the country in the past year?

The right hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that we have taken no action on asylum. As a result of the measures that we have introduced, we shall be able to shorten dramatically the length of time that it takes to deal with asylum cases. We know the reasons why the number of asylum cases has increased. Most of the cases that are coming in are from countries such as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, providing a very good reason why the numbers have risen in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. There was also a time under the previous Government when asylum seeker applications rose dramatically.

The only way of dealing with it is to have in place a proper, fast and effective way of dealing with those cases, which is precisely what we have done. We have also changed—this is important—the benefit rules for asylum seekers. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that Conservative Members opposed our changing those rules, despite having complained about them. If we had adopted the amendments tabled to the Immigration and Asylum Act by Conservative Members, we would be paying out £500 million more.

The reason why the numbers have increased is that the Prime Minister has made the United Kingdom a soft touch for asylum seekers—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, it is. The Prime Minister clearly does not know the numbers, but he ought to, because it is a national scandal. In the past year, 19,000 people were served orders to leave the country, but 6,800 actually did so. More than two thirds of the people whom he thinks should be deported are not deported.

So for the Prime Minister it is more promises—the cheque is in the post. The Government have reversed deportation decisions taken by the previous Government. They have abolished the fast track list and failed to enforce our controls on illegal working. On this issue as on so much else, he is all talk—no delivery.

It is completely untrue to say that we have dismantled the controls on immigration and asylum, because we have been tightening them up. We have also had to do so in the face of opposition from Conservative Members. A moment ago, I mentioned the benefit rules. I should mention another provision that Conservative Members have opposed—the provision that fines lorry drivers who bring illegal asylum seekers into the country. The right hon. Gentleman opposed that measure. Therefore, let us not have it from him that we inherited a perfect situation, because we inherited a backlog of tens of thousands of cases—[Interruption.] Yes, because the system was at fault.

Our Government reformed the system. From April 2000, the new system will be in place, with new rules on benefit and new holding centres being opened up, so that claims can processed quickly and we shall be able to get the numbers back down again. Those are the measures that we have introduced, clearing up the mess that the right hon. Gentleman left us.

Is the Prime Minister aware that, after its decontamination, the former Ravenscraig steel site in my constituency is now ready for rebuilding? I remind the House that the workers at that steel site felt betrayed and abandoned by the former, Conservative Government. Will the Prime Minister accept from me, a former steelworker, an invi1tation to come and see for himself how Ravenscraig is rising from the ashes of its industrial betrayal?

That is great news. I know that my hon. Friend worked at the Ravenscraig steelworks for 14 years, and it is good to see that regeneration project under way. People will of course remember that the previous Government closed the steelworks complex, with the loss of 1,200 jobs—[HON. MEMBERS: "Boring."] It was not boring for the 1,200 workers who lost their jobs. However, it will be a better and more interesting life for those who will now be able to work there again.

I thank the Prime Minister, the leader of the Conservative party and many others from both sides of the House who, over the past few days, have expressed their condolences for the dreadful murder of Councillor Andrew Pennington and the vicious assault on my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones). Those sentiments have been much appreciated. I am sure that we all agree that nothing so outrageous will cause any of us in any party or any part of the country to undermine the vital link with our constituents of enabling them to come to see us.

As the rural agenda is to the forefront this week, in advance of the Prime Minister's visit to the south-west tomorrow, and given the importance of post offices to rural communities, will he tell us how many rural post offices closed during the first two years of his Administration?

We have given a strong commitment to rural post offices. The previous Government were committed to privatising the Post Office. That is not our policy. As a result of the measures that have been announced, we shall be able to protect rural post offices in future.

The House of Commons Library figure is 476. The chief executive officer of the Post Office predicts that, if the Postal Services Bill is passed, a further 8,000 post offices will close. That is almost half the national network. Will the Prime Minister rethink the legislation and consider the possibility of subsidy? If he does not and that many post offices go, it will be a further nail in the coffin for villages and rural communities throughout the land.

The figure of 8,000 is wrong for the reasons that I have just given. In the Bill, we are ensuring that we protect rural post offices. So that everyone understands, let me explain the issue. The Department of Social Security and the Benefits Agency will move to paying all benefits via personal bank accounts. It is expected that, by then, the Post Office will have extended its arrangements with the banks to offer a range of banking facilities on an agency basis. That will enable people to continue to collect their benefits in cash. It would be very foolish—I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting this—not to modernise the way in which benefits are paid. We should surely modernise so that benefits are paid into bank accounts for people who want that, but we shall make arrangements for those who do not want that to enable them to continue collecting their benefits in cash. That is a sensible arrangement. Now that the technology exists, it would be foolish to leave post offices to carry on paying benefits in the same old way. That would cost a lot more money. As for further subsidies, it is time that the Liberal Democrats stopped asking for more money to be spent on everything without making a single suggestion as to where that money will come from.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for reminding the House and the country that the great divide between Labour and the Tories is that Labour will rebuild the national health service while the Tories would just privatise it. When he is considering the specific measures that will allow Labour to close the gap between Britain's health spending and the European average, will he look at the artificial ceiling on national insurance contributions and a more progressive system of corporate tax contributions, which are far lower in Britain than in most of our European counterparts? Will he also reflect on whether the current public mood would prefer us to put a penny into health rather than taking it off tax?

Hear, hear.

My hon. Friend has a lot of support from somewhere. I do not agree with him on tax. We were right to cut corporation tax. However, he is entirely right to say that the Conservatives have made a big strategic decision on the health service. I do not know whether anyone has read today's "Clear Blue Water" pamphlet, but it spells out starkly that their policy is to drive large numbers of people out of the health service and to make them take out private medical insurance. For those over 65, it will cost £60 to £80 a week to get private medical insurance. The only way to tackle the problem is our way: more hospital buildings, more nurses and doctors into the health service and more facilities. We are doing all that. The way to do it is to modernise the national health service, not to privatise it.

Is the Prime Minister comfortable with what he has read in today's papers concerning the purchase of shares by the editor of the Daily Mirror? Does he agree that it is only fair and reasonable to all concerned that the Press Complaints Commission should examine the issue?

I can truthfully say that that is really not a matter for me.

Will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to praise the teaching profession, particularly in light of the generous pay award that teachers received yesterday and their hard work putting into effect the reforms that the Labour Government have introduced in the past two and a half years?

Teachers have delivered magnificent results in our primary schools, with the best-ever results in literacy and numeracy. I believe that the performance-related pay proposals are increasingly winning support. It was a good settlement for the teachers, but we are now linking an even greater pay award to standards and results. That is the right way to do it. Teachers and parents should realise that if the Conservatives had been in government, the money would have been taken back.

British farming and the countryside are in deep crisis. Post offices and village shops are closing. Will the Prime Minister reconsider his plan to pay benefits directly into bank accounts and preserve more rural post offices?

I think that the hon. Gentleman is a Conservative Member. His party's plan at the election was to privatise the Post Office. It is absurd that he should stand there and tell me that we should not pay people's benefits in the most effective way. The way to deal with the problems of post offices and others is to modernise the system, but to make sure that we can still allow people to collect their benefits in cash if they so wish. As for the rest of the hon. Gentleman's question, I said yesterday that the farming situation is serious, particularly in sectors such as the pig industry. We need a proper long-term strategy; we do not need simply to pay ever-greater subsidies because we cannot do that. As for the countryside, I would remind the hon. Gentleman that, under this Government, the policy of closing rural schools has been put in reverse.

In view of the forthcoming elections and the by-elections in Wales and Scotland, will my right hon. Friend tell us what lessons the Government have learned from the people of Falkirk, West, who elected their Member of the Scottish Parliament with the biggest vote, and the biggest majority, in Scotland?

First, it is good to see the hon. Gentleman back again. I remind him that it was this Labour Government who delivered devolution to the people. Many previous political parties—indeed, previous Labour parties—promised devolution. We delivered it. We are also delivering the working families tax credit, the minimum wage and the new deal, all of which have helped people in his constituency. I believe that that is one reason why people will return loyal Labour Members of Parliament at the next election.

Does the Prime Minister still think, as he has claimed on various occasions, that it would be "fatuous", "absurd" and "daft" to rule out joining the euro in the next Parliament?

Of course I do. Our policy remains exactly the same: to keep the option open and determine it according to the British national interest. That is a more sensible position than the right hon. Gentleman's position, which I thought I had described as fatuous. It was fatuous of him to say that he would oppose it as a matter of principle for five years, but consider it as a matter of principle in the sixth year.

The president of the European Central bank says that our economy is out of step. He said:

"if ever the UK decides to join, you are talking about years from today".

The former Labour Foreign Secretary, Lord Owen, said:

"the time has come to rule out UK membership … for the next Parliament".

Is that not now the view of the sensible mainstream majority of the country? In addition to his previous answer, can the Prime Minister confirm that he will fight the next election determined to keep open the option of joining the euro in the next Parliament?

Of course—because we have set out the policies; I repeated them last Friday. The decision is simply this: there are those people who say that we should join the euro now, regardless of the economic conditions; then, there are those people, such as the right hon. Gentleman, who say that we should not join the euro, regardless of the economic conditions. I happen to believe that the sensible test is British jobs, British industry and British investment.

To rule out the euro in the next Parliament—hon. Members should remember that the final decision lies with the people in a referendum—is foolish and backward. I shall have no part of that, either at the next election or in the future. That is the position held by the right hon. Gentleman and that is the difference between us.

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to quote sensible mainstream people, there were many people in his own party who used to be in the mainstream but are not there now, because the mainstream of his party is now the extreme of politics.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his answers. I thank him for making it clear that the only sure way to keep the pound is to support the Conservative party at the next election.

There will be a referendum. The choice is with the British people. The question is whether we remove that choice and say, "Even if it is in Britain's interests, even if it's best for jobs and industry and business, then we are not going to give you that choice at all". That is not a sensible position. It is a position born from the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has subcontracted his leadership to the extreme right in his party.

Are people such as the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), now outcasts in that party? Is the former Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) now an outcast in that party? Is the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), also an outcast? Those people are addressing the national interest.

What is in the national interest is to keep the option open, to make the preparation so that we can join if we want to do so, to give the final choice to the British people in a referendum, but not to end up retreating to the sidelines of Europe for the sake of pandering to a few anti-Europeans in the Conservative party.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the statement made by the Secretary of State for Health yesterday, informing the House that he was setting up an independent inquiry into the issues raised by the murders committed by Dr. Shipman, has gone down well in my constituency? People there are understandably still deep in shock as a result of the court's findings. Will my right hon. Friend use his best endeavours to ensure that the inquiry is thorough and expeditious, and that the Government act speedily on its findings?

Yes, I am sure that that will happen. I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has been doing to help his constituents to come to terms with a terrible tragedy. I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending our deepest sympathies to the relatives and friends of those who died.

The vast majority of doctors provide an excellent service for their patients. It is important to say that straight away. This case was highly exceptional. However, we must learn lessons from it. I am sure that the General Medical Council will consider those lessons. We shall learn them through the independent inquiry announced yesterday. We shall act on them; indeed, we are already taking certain measures.

However, it is important that we realise that this was a highly exceptional case. Doctors look after their patients throughout the country. There is no more important relationship than the bond of trust that exists between doctors and their patients. They do a fantastic job for this country. This has been a terrible, tragic and exceptional case. We have to learn lessons from it; we will learn them and we will act on them.

If the Prime Minister is prepared to speak only equivocally about the future of this country's relationship with the euro, will he at least speak clearly about the consequences of the present strength of the pound, especially on the farming industry, which he addressed yesterday? In these circumstances, how can he fail to respond to the needs of the farming industry by making the compensation payments for the strength of our currency, which he is allowed to make and which have been agreed by the European Union?

What the right hon. Gentleman has not pointed out to people but I will is that we are paying out hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation for the strength of the pound. However, if we were to make the claim that he is suggesting, 70 per cent. of that money would have to be repaid. In other words, it is a very large public spending commitment. To put the matter into context, we are spending £3.5 billion in agricultural support. That is more than the support that we pay out for the rest of British industry put together. It is important and right that we do so. Agriculture and farming are important to our country and they are, as I accepted yesterday, in a state of crisis. The only way of dealing with that is a long-term plan for the future and not the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives promising that they will end up paying out large sums of money in the short term. That is simply not going to be the answer.

As for the euro, it is not an equivocal position; the tests are quite clear. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to go into the euro tomorrow—

No.

Then the right hon. Gentleman's position is, I suspect, the same as mine. It depends on the national economic interest. That is the proper test. We are not convergent with the euro at the present time, which is why it would not be sensible to join now, but we have set out the economic conditions. Provided that those economic conditions are met, we will make the recommendation to the British people. We have said that, and we will hold to that.

From time to time, the media pass comment on the ability, and sometimes the inability, of party leaders to control their parliamentary party. Does my right hon. Friend agree that perhaps an extreme form of control freakery happens when a leader of a party who is unable to control his Back Benchers seeks the assistance of another party leader to help him along the way a little?

I cannot quite think to what my hon. Friend is referring. Anyway, it is all fine—the new relationship between the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor is all sorted out, because the shadow Chancellor has described the Leader of the Opposition this morning as "unassailable".

Have the Government got the courage, decency and honesty to admit that no decommissioning of terrorist weapons has taken place in Northern Ireland? Will they stop putting unfair pressure on the law-abiding people of Northern Ireland and the long-suffering Unionist party and place the blame where it rests—firmly on the shoulders of the terrorists, Sinn Fein-IRA?

There has to be decommissioning; there has not been decommissioning. Under the agreement, it is quite clear that decommissioning is supposed to happen. There is no doubt about that at all. I am interested, as ever, in trying to find a way through this—be under no mistake about that. I know that people, such as the hon. Lady, have not been in favour of much of what we have done in the past two and a half years or indeed of the Good Friday agreement—

What have you done?

What have we done? For all the difficulties in Northern Ireland today, we have the best chance of peace that we have had for generations, there is investment pouring in and there is peace in place that may not be perfect but is a million miles better than what was there before. There has to be decommissioning and, if there is not, there is going to be a serious problem with the process. There is no doubt about that, which is why we are now working day and night to try to overcome that difficulty. I simply say to the hon. Lady that to dismiss everything that has happened in Northern Ireland is wrong, and we are not putting unfair pressure on people. We are trying to make sure that we find a way through that allows peace and stability for the future. At the heart of this deal in the Good Friday agreement is a good deal for both sides.

Let me explain it once again so that people understand. It is that we end up with the principle of consent accepted by everybody; it is that we end up with the relinquishment of the territorial claim of the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, which we now have; it is that we have institutions that reach across the communities in Northern Ireland, which we now have; and it is that we have justice and equality for nationalists in Northern Ireland with a recognition of their nationalist aspirations. Decommissioning is part of that and it has to happen, but let no one doubt how far we have come and therefore how important it is to try to save it.

Is it not a fact that, whatever happens in the present difficult circumstances, the Good Friday agreement should remain on the agenda? It was a fine achievement and it is fair to both communities. By refusing even to start decommissioning, is not the IRA playing into the hands of the very people who were opposed to the Good Friday agreement from day 1, who include, I believe, the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton)?

That is why there has to be progress on that issue. To be blunt, at present there is insufficient progress for General de Chastelain to make the report that needs to be made. However, I hope that we can still bring home to everybody the need to make that progress because of the importance of the peace process. This is the moment when we have to know where we stand on this particular issue, and that is the importance of the discussions that are going on now.

Whatever happens in the next couple of days, I shall carry on working to try to make the peace process take root because, in the communities of Northern Ireland, people desperately want it to work, but not at any price, which is why decommissioning has to be, and is, part of the agreement. Before we dismiss the progress that has been made, we should remind ourselves that, if we do not sort out the peace process and get it moving forward again, there are people who will not grow up in normal conditions and some who will not be alive at all. We should never forget that that is what is at stake.

There are very few things in politics that one can affect profoundly, and this issue is one of them, so we shall carry on working to resolve it as best as we can. There is no doubt that there is a serious problem and, unless there is substantial progress, we will have a serious crisis on our hands. I hope that we can get over that difficulty and that all Members of the House will try to help us to do so.

We now come to the first debate on the Opposition motions. I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It may assist the House if I explain what I have already explained to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). Keen-eyed Members may have spotted the fact that the Government amendment on page 556 of the Order Paper this morning did not relate to the Opposition's motion, but was an amendment that the House passed on 26 October 1999.

It comes down to the expression famously coined by Mr. Peter Preston, the former editor of The Guardian, in a different context: it was down to a "cod fax". As usual, Ministers agreed an appropriate amendment last night but, owing to some infelicity in the arrangements for taking that text off a word processor and faxing it, instead of its coming over to the House, the text of the amendment on 26 October 1999 came over. I hope that that does not in any way inconvenience the right hon. Lady or the hon. Gentleman in their speeches.

The Secretary of State is, as always, extremely helpful to the House.

rose—

There is no further point of order. The matter has been dealt with.

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the Government's failure to deal with the widespread abuse of the right to political asylum and its incompetent management of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate; notes that the number of asylum applications in 1999 exceeded 71,000, more than double the total inherited by the Government when it came to office, and that the backlog of unprocessed asylum applications has doubled over the past two years to a total of more than 100,000; further notes with great concern the Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts (HC 130) about the Government's mismanagement of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, and the fears of local authorities about the practical difficulties associated with the asylum seekers dispersal scheme; believes that the Government's 'soft touch' policy has helped bring about the current crisis; and calls upon the Government to take urgent action to reduce the backlog of unprocessed immigration and asylum applications, to put in place new and effective systems of enforcement and to ensure the integrity of the United Kingdom's immigration and asylum controls.

As you will take no further points of order, Madam Speaker, may I say that the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister on the Order Paper says it all? When I first saw it, I thought that the Home Secretary was so ashamed of his record on asylum that he was desperately trying to debate the Mitrokhin archive instead. He now tells us that the amendment in his name and that of the Prime Minister was just an error.

I do not know whether the Secretary of State made it clear to you, Madam Speaker, when he revealed the error—he certainly did not to me—whether he blames himself, his special advisers, his much-blamed officials or his fax machine, but on this occasion he cannot blame the previous Government.

As far as my researches have so far carried me, which is back to 1982, there has never been a single instance of an amendment in the name of the Prime Minister not being selected for debate. The Home Secretary has set a new record, which few of us will be keen to outdo. Presumably, he would sum it up in his usual phrase—as opposed to The Guardian's—as "business as usual" at the Home Office.

Week after week, month after month, we are confronted with the chaotic situation into which the Home Secretary's brief has descended—police numbers down, crime figures up, criminals out of prison early and reoffending when they should be in jail, not to mention the Mitrokhin archive and a host of other gaffes and instances of incompetence, which the Government were so eager to debate today.

We shall concentrate on the Home Secretary's most visible and devastating failure to date. It is devastating not only to his and the Government's rapidly declining reputation, but to the people of Britain, especially the people of Kent, and, above all, to the genuine asylum seekers who need a settled haven quickly. The facts speak for themselves. The number of applications for political asylum in the United Kingdom was less than 30,000 in our last full year of office. Three years later, in the third year of a Labour Government, the figure is 71,000—an increase of 130 per cent. Yet the latest figures show that nearly 80 per cent. of applications are unfounded and thus rejected. None of that is coincidence.

The Home Secretary has only himself to blame. He promised an amnesty for thousands of asylum seekers, regardless of the merits of their cases. That was his decision. The Government deliberately abandoned the checks on illegal working that we introduced in the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. Again, that was his decision.

Not true.

The Minister claims that that is not true, but I refer her to the debate during which we considered the Government's measures. A previous Minister of State had to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that the decision not to implement our measures against illegal working was wrong. I suggest that the Minister re-read the debate; perhaps it will give her some idea of her Government's proposals.

The right hon. Lady is absolutely wrong. We have not dismantled any of the controls that she mentioned. Indeed, from time to time, I receive submissions from officials about them. As to the implementation of the prohibition on employing people who are here illegally, this Administration, unlike hers, have issued warnings.

When the Minister was in opposition, she said that our measures against employers who took on illegal workers without having made due checks were a burden on business, which a Labour Government would not implement. Only last summer, when challenged at the Dispatch Box, a previous Minister of State admitted that the Government were wrong, and that they were reverting to measures that they may not have dismantled, but did not implement.

The Government also promised to abolish the list of safe countries of origin. They reversed high-profile deportation decisions that we had made. They even returned someone who had already left the country. They also abolished the primary purpose rule. The message was loud and clear: Britain was once again a soft touch. The message, the decisions and the responsibility were all the Home Secretary's.

I am sorry that I cannot attend the whole debate, but I have to attend a Public Accounts Committee hearing on entry clearance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, with asylum applications soaring and chaos in the immigration case load, it beggars belief that Ministers decided to introduce a new computer system and move the immigration and nationality directorate offices?

Indeed. I shall comment on that later. I hope that my hon. Friend will not have left for the Public Accounts Committee meeting by then.

Thousands of asylum seekers whose applications have been refused are still here. Will the Home Secretary confirm that more than 70,000 asylum seekers a year come to the United Kingdom, that up to 80 per cent. of applications are rejected, but that the immigration and nationality directorate's targets envisage only approximately 10 per cent. of those people leaving the country? Will he further confirm that even that paltry figure is not being met? Does not that mean that the system is in growing chaos? Is it surprising that so many bogus applicants come when they know that they will not be removed even when the due processes have rejected their claims?

That is not all. The backlog of unprocessed asylum applications now stands at more than 100,000. Can the Home Secretary confirm that that is double the number that Labour inherited on coming to office and that last year, the number of asylum claims processed fell to fewer than 100,000 a month as a result of what I can only describe to my hon. Friend as the Government's totally barmy decision to reorganise and relocate the immigration and nationality directorate at the same time as it was introducing a new computer system?

Why did the right hon. Lady sanction cutting 1,200 staff in the directorate before she found out whether the new computer, which she ordered, was efficient? The Public Accounts Committee says that it is not.

I should have thought that even a child could have worked out—

Answer.

I am. Even a child could work out that, with a 40 per cent. fall in applications, one can afford fewer staff, but when the number of applications is rising, one needs more. If the Government cannot even take that easy step in logic, it is no wonder that the system is in chaos. However, this is the very Home Secretary who, when he opposed our highly successful measures, said:

"if a Labour Government do as badly administratively in dealing with asylum applications as the present Government have done, we shall have failed."—[Official Report, 15 July 1996; Vol. 281, c. 805.]

If doubling the backlog is not failing, perhaps the Home Secretary will tell us on what basis he works it out to be a success. Not even the sort of arithmetic that he deployed for the new police recruit numbers will be able to weasel him out of the morass of his failed asylum system.

The immigration and nationality directorate is failing to meet many of its key targets. For example, the published target for the present financial year is 59,000 asylum decisions, but the Government's latest estimate of achievement for the whole year is only 38,000. Three quarters of the way through the financial year, the IND is only half way towards its target for nationality decisions.

Does the right hon. Lady accept that the real motive for this debate is to enable the Conservative party to play the race card—[Interruption.] Let me finish. That will lead to insecurity for black and Asian people from ethnic minorities who are lawfully settled here and for many who are British citizens. Clearly, she is playing the race card.

If the hon. Gentleman wants good race relations in this country, as we all do, a firm and fair immigration and asylum system is an absolute prerequisite. If he looks at what has been happening in Dover and elsewhere as a result of the chaos into which the Government have allowed the asylum system to descend, he will know that what we are doing today is in the interests of all sections of the community.

To return to my argument, the failure to reach targets has been described by the Public Accounts Committee in its latest report as "deplorable". The Committee—it is not a Conservative Committee—said that under this Home Secretary

"the Home Office are not living up to their responsibilities."

That is an understatement.

There are grave concerns throughout the country about the Government's plan for dispersing asylum seekers. Local authorities are concerned.

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee is a Conservative. He said of the project which the right hon. Lady authorised in 1996, that it

"it was over-ambitious from the outset. To combine a complex information technology project with a major reorganisation was always likely to be a risky venture."

Why did the right hon. Lady authorise that contract, fail to take account of the risks, and bind the next Government to it?

Answer.

I will answer. Have you noticed, Madam Speaker, in overseeing the House, that as soon as a Member comes to the Dispatch Box to answer, hon. Members yell "Answer", which is rather a pointless exercise. Perhaps now they will listen to the answer. [Interruption.] I shall not follow the Prime Minister's example and fail to answer, I will answer.

The decision to relocate was the Home Secretary's. He knew that a computer system was being installed and everyone knows that the installation of a new computer system is likely to be accompanied by many teething troubles, which he should not have augmented by deciding on relocation and reorganisation, as he did with the Passport Agency; then it was his computer system, and his decision to amend the law on child passports, that were involved.

It is no wonder that my hon. Friends shout "answer" when the right hon. Lady fails to answer the question. The point made by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee was that the project was over-ambitious from the outset: that she made the errors.

The Government made it worse.

I shall come to that when I make my speech. But does the right hon. Lady now accept that signing the contract and imposing it was ill thought through and over-ambitious from the outset and that the principal responsibility for that rests with her?

Three years into a Labour Government they still try to say that all is the fault of the Conservative Government. I have just pointed out that the decisions that added complexities to what was already ambitious were the right hon. Gentleman's. He added those complexities and he cannot get out of that. When the day comes that the Home Secretary takes some responsibility instead of blaming everybody and everything else going for the fiascos in his Department, that will be the day he has the right to call upon others to answer anything at all.

I was saying that the local authorities are concerned about the potential impact on their budgets of the dispersal system and the increased strain on the services being provided to local communities. The Home Office's plans for dispersal are in chaos, which is unsurprising given that the Home Secretary got his own figures wrong at the press conference when he first put forward his ideas.

It is now reported that the local authorities will be asked by the Home Secretary to continue their voluntary scheme after 1 April, when the Home Office was supposed to take over. Is it the case, as has been reported, that there is a £90 million funding gap for the current financial year, which will have to be met by local authorities out of their budgets and, ultimately, by council tax payers?

Does the right hon. Lady agree with Kent county council that funding for asylum seekers should be a national responsibility; if so, why did she introduce the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, which placed responsibility for funding on authorities such as Kent?

Where I agree with Kent county council is when it says that, in the last six months of the Conservative Government, it was processing 50 asylum seekers, while under this Government it is processing thousands every month. That is what has come out of Kent county council, and that is what matters.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that Kent county council, short-changed by the Government by £4.5 million, has now been told by Home Office Ministers to go with its begging bowl to the Department of Social Security because the Home Office will not fork out? Is she also aware that it has been made plain by the Government this week that local authorities are expected to find, out of the public sector, 40 per cent. of the houses necessary to house asylum seekers? How does she think that they will do that?

Not only that, but when the supposedly national system comes in, local authorities will remain responsible for people who have come through their systems and been dispersed elsewhere in the country. That is what Kent fears, and that is what other local authorities, which are particularly hard pressed by the chaos, also fear.

Is it the case that the Local Government Association has called the Government's funding plans "grossly inadequate"? Is it true that the terms and conditions for the 1999–2000 grant have not yet been published, despite the fact that it is only eight weeks from the end of the financial year? Is it true that just 4,000 places are currently on offer against an estimate of 20,000 needed? I hope that the Home Secretary will answer. To say that that is many less than required would be a gross understatement. I am told that two regions have failed to offer any places at all. Again, will he confirm whether that is true?

The Government need to explain why their plans are in chaos and what they now propose, for the problems will escalate if the backlogs and the number of asylum seekers arriving keep increasing and the accommodation available simply is not adequate. The Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), recently proposed £10,000 bonds for visitors from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, saying that her colleagues had been pressing for them. Such a measure may be popular on the Labour Benches, but we question the sense of imposing a bond in circumstances in which it is feared that the person—

rose—

Let me finish. The Minister will not know what she is intervening on if she does not hear the end of the sentence. We question the sense of imposing a bond in circumstances in which it is feared that the person will disappear. Surely it is better not to let such a person in at all. Although a bond may deter the genuine who cannot afford it, those who are determined to get round our laws now have a choice: pay racketeers to bring them in or pay the Home Office to let them in.

I thank the right hon. Lady for her courtesy in giving way. I sought to make an early intervention because she is eminently predictable; there are no surprises with her. She should not believe all she reads in The Sunday Telegraph. Her party did not speak out or vote against the proposal in Committee, so why does she come new to the issue? Clearly she has no idea of what is going on.

It seems to me that the hon. Lady can tell us what is going on. Is there such a bond or not? If there is, will not it deter the genuine and make it terribly easy for those who are prepared to find the funds to get round our system?

I am happy to help the right hon. Lady with her research. The proposal was debated in Committee.

Yes.

The right hon. Lady says yes, but clearly does not know that. The proposal was debated extensively and the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) spoke on it. A consultation document was issued, inviting responses as to the level of the bond and where it should be applied. It was made clear that representations on visitors are often made from both sides of the House. She clearly thinks that the proposal is new and has completely failed to read the document. I am amazed that she has not done her research properly.

I want a simple answer. You will have noted, Madam Speaker, that Labour Members love answers and call out, "Answer!" Will she answer? Is there such a bond?

Let me try, for the third time, to make the right hon. Lady understand. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer!"] I am happy to answer. When we discussed the Bill in Committee—[Interruption.]

Order. Let us hear the answer.

I shall speak slowly for the right hon. Lady. The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 contains powers for a bond system. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department said in Committee that we would issue a consultation document. That has been issued. Some Members of Parliament have received a copy and doubtless responded, but clearly she has not even seen one. We shall introduce a bond scheme and are consulting on it, but it would help if she read the documents.

After all that, I think that we gather that there is a bond—in which case, all my comments stand.

A moment ago, my right hon. Friend suggested that what might be called the bizarre bonds policy commanded widespread support on the Government Back Benches. Would she care to note for the record that it has incurred the justifiable wrath of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), who might be described as the conscience of the London Labour party? Last Sunday, on BBC On-line, he said that the proposed policy was discriminatory and possibly illegal. That raises the question of whether he has "heavied" the Minister of State.

That the policy is discriminatory is certainly true in the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. I suspect that if we had proposed a measure that applied only to certain countries, involving a bond of such magnitude, we would have been denounced as racist. We would have been told that we were playing the race card.

What we did was implement tough solutions that worked. We now propose further tough solutions, which will clear up the mess that the Government have made of the very good position that they inherited. There must be an end to amnesties that only encourage more people to present bogus asylum applications in the hope of benefiting from the next. We propose the automatic detention and fast-tracking of asylum applicants from safe countries, and those who arrive without papers. The genuine refugee will have nothing to fear; our plans are aimed at the bogus applicants and economic migrants who constitute the vast majority of those who apply.

Currently, 71,000 applications for asylum are being made each year. The latest refusal rates are nearly 80 per cent., which means that tens of thousands of applicants have no right to be in this country, because they are not found to be genuine refugees. However, the Home Office's own figures show that only about 3,000 are being removed, and a similar number are leaving of their own volition. The Home Office admits that many of the remainder simply abscond and disappear.

We therefore propose the establishment of a new removals agency with tough targets and a remit to trace, detain and remove those whose claims the judicial processes have duly rejected. The number of failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who simply disappear is too high.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that such an agency will need the support of local police forces if it is to detect and detain illegal immigrants? What does she think of Home Office policy that has led to plans for the removal of 250 police officers from the Staffordshire force over the next three years? Even at its present level, the force is unable to detain illegal immigrants.

That is why it may be necessary to extend powers of tracing beyond the police.

It is undeniable, as the Kent constabulary have found, that the whole business of policing the results of illegal immigration and excessive bogus asylum seeking has put enormous strain on the force at a time when there are fewer police nation wide, police budgets have been slashed, and the police are finding it extremely difficult just to stand still, let alone to perform extra tasks.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

No.

We must face the fact that efficient removals are part of the deterrent to those who would play our system. People who want to play the system need to know that if they come here, they are likely to be detained, that their claims will be dealt with expeditiously, and that they will then be duly removed. At present, the message is that if they come here and hang on long enough, they will probably benefit from an amnesty.

rose—

rose—

I have made it clear that I want to make progress.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Order. The right hon. Lady made her position clear a second ago.

I must say that being asked to give way on the point on which I wish to make progress strikes me as rather odd.

Will the right hon. Lady give way on the issue of the amnesty?

On the amnesty, yes.

If the right hon. Lady is so worried about the figures, why did her party allow an amnesty in 1992–93? Moreover, why did her party write off 26,000 asylum applicants? On both counts, why did it fail to tell Parliament?

The straightforward answer is that we have learned from that mistake and this lot have not. Applications rose following an amnesty. Following tough solutions, they fell, so the first thing that the Government do is to propose an amnesty. It is completely illogical. Our straightforward position is that we have learned from past amnesties and there should be no future ones.

I call on the Government to say whether they agree that there should be no future amnesties. Are they leaping up to say whether there will be any? They are not. Presumably, they do not dare.

Those are just some of the measures that we propose. By contrast, the Government are all talk and no delivery. On asylum and immigration, as on many other issues, they have said one thing and done another. They have lost their grip on the situation and are flirting with desperate measures and gimmicks, rather than taking the necessary tough decisions that are required to sort the situation out.

The Home Secretary and his Ministers are guilty of grave misjudgment, staggering mismanagement and horrendous incompetence. [Laughter.] Laughter greets that. There was rather an embarrassed silence when the Home Secretary explained why he could not even get a relevant amendment on to the Order Paper today.

Therefore, the House and the country should not be surprised when things get worse—as they will—rather than better, under the Government. I commend not only the motion, but the measures that we took and will take. Not only the House, but the country has realised that, under the Government, there is to be nothing except what they are getting: rising asylum applications; failure to control the backlog, which the Government trumpeted as a flagship measure; failure to remove those who are found to have no grounds on which to stay; failure to help local authorities that are picking up the bill for the Home Secretary's incompetence; and a general failure throughout the system.

One fact remains. In our last full year in government, asylum applications fell by nearly 40 per cent. They have risen by 130 per cent. under the present Government. If it had gone the other way, the Home Secretary would have taken the credit. Let him not try to pass the blame to his officials, his fax machine, or the immigration service. Let him take responsibility for the mess that he has inflicted on this country.

After that speech, Madam Speaker, you might have done the House a favour if you had allowed the Government amendment, because the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) covered the same ground as she covered on 26 October, but less well. What I now regret is that the parliamentary department in the Home Office did not fax over that speech as well as our amendment—she could have just read it out.

I am always ready to hold a serious debate on the important issue of immigration and asylum, but a serious contribution to that debate was the last thing that we heard from the right hon. Lady. Instead, we heard a speech that was as confused in its analysis as it was empty of any serious propositions to deal fairly and firmly with those who apply for asylum in this country.

The right hon. Lady's bare-faced opportunism is best shown by the extraordinary lurches in policy over which she has presided, first in government and then in opposition. Today, we hear that she is on the side of toughness, yet she is the same shadow Home Secretary who, just three months ago, backed a Conservative amendment in the other place to restore social security cash payments to all asylum seekers, at a cost of £500 million a year—an amendment that she described as both common sense and sensible. She is the same shadow Home Secretary who, despite the thousands of clandestines entering the UK, smuggled through our ports in the backs of lorries, has sided with negligent or complicit hauliers by opposing the civil penalty against those truck drivers and owners who fail to take any reasonable precautions to stop people gaining access to their trucks.

The right hon. Lady now talks about those who are facilitating bogus asylum seekers. However, she is the same shadow Home Secretary who, when Minister with responsibility for immigration and confronted with mounting evidence of the connection between the serious criminals who traffic in unfounded asylum seekers and the unscrupulous immigration advisers and solicitors who help them manufacture their claims in the United Kingdom, did absolutely nothing. Worse, when the Government were in opposition and we tabled amendments to the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 to control those unscrupulous immigration advisers, what was her response? It was not to say, "Yes, we have a problem and should introduce controls", but to wash her hands of the problem and to reject those controls.

Currently, some lorry drivers are discovering that, against their best endeavours, they have people in their loads who should not be there. Until the right hon. Gentleman introduced the new measures, those lorry drivers were able to feel quite secure in reporting that fact to the authorities. Is he aware that I have been receiving letters from lorry drivers who have done that in the past, but who say that, in future, they would be very wary of reporting it to the authorities in case they were faced with a fine for their pains?

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there have been plenty of instances of illegal entrants being detected, claiming asylum—naturally—and then being issued with a voucher and told to go to Croydon, but never getting to Croydon? He has said that there have been no solid proposals from us. Does he not accept that a proposal for automatic detention in such cases would solve an awful lot?

I shall deal with the right hon. Lady's point on detention in a moment. However, her first point was absolutely extraordinary. The proposition she is advancing is that if a haulier has 20, 30 or 40 clandestines—not one or two, typically—secreted in the back of his lorry, he should be under no duty before his lorry is put on the ferry to check whether those clandestines are there. That is her proposition.

The Government are proposing a sensible and fair system under which, if hauliers take the reasonable precautions specified in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, they will not incur a penalty; but if they do not, they will. I think that that system is accepted by the whole of the British people except—extraordinarily—the right hon. Lady.

The burden of the right hon. Lady's speech is that the unexpected increase in asylum seekers that occurred in 1999 is the consequence solely of the Government's approach to the issue. However, on that puerile analysis, Douglas Hurd and Kenneth Baker were entirely to blame not for a doubling of asylum seekers, as happened last year, but for the tenfold increase in asylum seekers that occurred at the beginning of the 1990s. Moreover, on her analysis, the fact that the Berlin wall had come down and communism had collapsed in the intervening period was only a minor irrelevance.

We do face—as do all other prosperous nations—a significant problem of unfounded asylum seekers who are in truth simply economic migrants. However, if we look down the list of the top countries, what do we find? We find the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan—which together last year accounted for almost 31,000 asylum applicants; more than 40 per cent. of the total. Even the right hon. Lady would find it difficult to deny that each of those countries has faced severe upheaval of one sort or another, and that many of the applications from those countries are genuine and well-founded.

If that is the Home Secretary's defence, how does he explain the fact that last year the number of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom increased by 98 per cent., whereas the number of asylum seekers in Germany decreased by 3 per cent?

I am happy to explain that point. Some, but not all, European countries faced similar and, in some cases, larger increases than the United Kingdom. Germany still has a higher number of applicants in absolute terms than we do, but the figure is diminishing. The reason for that is that some years ago Germany put in place the systems of control that we are introducing and made the necessary investment that we need to make in order to make good the failure over which the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald presided.

Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that in October 1997 my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and I visited the Home Office on the advice of the police, who had told us that there would be an influx of 3,000 illegal immigrants from the Czech and Slovak Republics? Does he deny that we asked then for visa restrictions to be imposed? Does he deny that his junior Minister said that there was not a problem and nor was there likely to be? Does he deny that it took him a year to introduce a visa requirement for the Slovak Republic? Does he deny that he has still done nothing about the Czech Republic? Does not all that show that the Government are seen by others as a soft touch?

No, the Government have not been seen as a soft touch. We have to consider the problem of playing the race card. We need a swifter system to deal with well-founded applications, but we have to be careful in our use of language. I gave the figures for the four countries that I mentioned because under the 1951 convention, which the Conservatives have observed just as we have, we are obliged to consider every application on its merits, regardless of whether the applicant comes from a country that is currently on the white list or one from which only a tiny proportion of applicants—or even none—have been accepted for asylum.

Of course.

Yes, but the natural consequence of the emotive language that is used is that we should somehow abrogate our responsibilities under that treaty. The Conservatives have to accept that 40 per cent. of the large increase that we have faced comes from countries that, on any analysis, have suffered the most serious political upheaval and violence that any of us could imagine.

During the past two years only 2 per cent. of applicants from China have been granted leave to stay, but only three months ago the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and many Conservative Members condemned China during its President's state visit for its record on human rights, indirectly giving encouragement to all claimants from that country.

The right hon. Lady claims that numbers would be under control if we had followed the policy and approach of the Government of whom she was a member. She rests a large part of her case on the fact that numbers had started to go down as her Administration left office. If the 1996 Act was so good, why has it produced such poor results? The stark truth is that all the increase in asylum seekers about which she protests occurred under a legal and administrative framework that the Conservatives laid down.

The dip in numbers in late 1996 and 1997 came about after the previous Administration removed any entitlement to welfare support or benefit for those who applied in-country. However, one of the Conservatives many failures was not thinking through what they were doing. They were bound to be faced with a judicial review of that decision, which resulted in the policy being overturned by the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. That badly thought-through policy resulted in a huge burden being placed on local authorities—not spread evenly throughout the country, but principally in Kent and London—to provide support for those who applied in-country. The restoration of that support is one reason why numbers started to rise.

Will the Home Secretary give way?

In a moment.

I remind the right hon. Lady—who, even by her standards, seems extraordinarily poorly briefed—that for the time being the 1996 Act remains binding on the Government. We are replacing most of its provisions by more streamlined and effective measures in the new legislation, but until they are implemented, the 1996 Act remain in force—including the so-called white list which she claimed we had already abolished.

The right hon. Lady also claims that the Government have somehow encouraged the increase. That is a complete travesty of the facts. There has been and there will be no amnesty. The arrangements in the White Paper for dealing with the backlog of cases which had been waiting for an initial decision—not during our period in government, but since 1993—reflect the reality of those cases. New applicants have been in no doubt that their applications will be considered in the usual way.

The difference between Labour and Conservative is that we announced the policy for dealing with that backlog, but until this afternoon, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), never before has the right hon. Lady or any Conservative Member admitted that they had any policy to deal with the backlog from 1992–93, that it was an amnesty, and that it was a mistake. They were so ashamed of that amnesty that they failed to report it to Parliament. I wrote to the right hon. Lady three times last year asking her to accept responsibility for what happened and three times she failed properly to answer. The simple fact is that in 1992–93, under her amnesty, 26,000 people were granted exceptional leave to remain, compared with fewer than 6,000 in the years around that period.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. As he is dealing in simple facts, the simple fact is that he inherited from us a backlog approaching 50,000, which he described at the time as scandalous. The backlog now stands at 102,000. The whole of that increase has occurred under his administration. Will he take responsibility for that increase?

Of course I take responsibility for what has happened under my administration. I have never denied that. It is part of my role. In my very first speech as Home Secretary I said that I would take responsibility for what happened under my administration and my holding of this office. I invite the right hon. Lady to accept that we are not in the era of Pol Pot and 1 May 1997 was not year zero. What happened before may just have some bearing on the circumstances and systems that we inherited.

The right hon. Lady complained today, as she has in previous years, about the pressure on asylum seekers in her county of Kent. In her conference speech last year, she even had the audacity to say:

"I went to Dover myself, saw the effects of the government's disgraceful concentration of asylum seekers on the town."

Yet she was the Minister responsible for the shambolic arrangements which have piled the pressure on Dover and other towns in Kent—keeping social security cash benefits and housing benefit for port applicants, with all the incentive for sucking in unfounded applications which they provide—and then forcing Kent and London local councils to bear the brunt of supporting almost every other applicant who applies in-country and then, on top of that, proposing an extra £500 million in social security cash handouts. What sort of message did that £500 million in unnecessary cash handouts send to asylum seekers?

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the damage that the right hon. Lady did in Dover when she pirouetted through Pencester gardens? At a time when Labour Members were trying to quell social tensions and solve community problems, she came along surrounded by television cameras, looking for a quick soundbite and a headline. Is she aware of the terrible damage that she did on that day?

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work that he has undertaken in Dover and in the surrounding area. Secondly, I point out to the right hon. Lady that the Liberal Democrat amendment—which is better than a curate's egg, although I am sorry that I cannot accept all of it—includes an important reference to the statement signed by all party leaders on the need for those of us who hold office to conduct our debates and arguments in a way that does not damage race relations.

When I listen to the language used by the right hon. Lady and examine some of the things that she has done and her complete evasion of responsibility for what has happened in Kent and in Dover, I wonder whether she does not come perilously close to what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) invited his party to do—to use immigration as an election issue.

Some of us remember all too well the hon. Gentleman's chilling words when he was the head of the Conservative research department. He stated that immigration was "an issue which we"—the Conservative party—

"raised successfully in 1992 and in the 1994 European election campaign. It played particularly well in the tabloids and has more potential to hurt."

The hon. Gentleman was talking about hurting the Labour party, but that language—that sort of invitation—does not hurt our party nearly as much as it hurts people from black and Asian communities. It hurts genuine asylum seekers, as well as those who are not.

Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that those who suffer most from the failing asylum system are the genuine asylum seekers, who, as I said in my speech, need a rapid and safe haven? They are at the centre of our wish to have a streamlined and effective asylum system. Is it really his view that, when asylum applications and the backlog have doubled, it is improper for the Opposition to criticise the Government for that, to point out why it happened and to make our own proposals for rectifying it? Is he saying that to do that is to come perilously close to racist language? Let him grow up.

For five years, we have been asking for the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire to withdraw those remarks, or for them to be disowned by Opposition Front-Bench Members. I am looking forward to that.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. If he cares to look back, he will find that my remarks were made entirely in the context of the Labour party's policy in both the 1992 and the 1994 elections. He will remember that policy well; it was to extend a right of residence in the United Kingdom to everybody who enjoys the right of residence in other EU countries. He knows that that was a damaging policy—as we argued in both elections. He acknowledged that and dropped the policy.

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me or my constituency—

Order. I think that one bite of the cherry is sufficient.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire protests too much. I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison).

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. May I take him back to the collapse in the administrative machinery at the Home Office that is at the root of the problem? Last March, he told the Special Standing Committee on the Immigration and Asylum Bill that he was taking personal responsibility for that machinery and that it was the most important task that he faced. Since then, the backlog has grown by a further 30,000; it is now more than 100,000 and growing every month. When will he bring that matter under control? When will the backlog start to go down?

Later in my speech, I will give the hon. Gentleman the figures that spell out how, after a period of considerable difficulty, the processing of asylum applications, as well as the casework on other immigration applications, is improving.

Like my right hon. Friend, I have no time for bogus asylum seekers. Is it not true that time and again the Tory party has played the race card—including an onslaught on the ancestors of several Members sitting on the Tory Benches?

I bow to the greater historical knowledge of my hon. Friend.

What, above all, gives lie to the posture of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald is the Opposition's record during the passage of our Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. She calls today for a huge extension of detention, yet at no stage did those on the Conservative Front Bench or any Member of the Opposition table such an amendment during the passage of the Act. She calls now for a continuation of the white list, yet those on the Conservative Front Bench were evidently so satisfied with our alternative to the white list that they did not even seek to debate the proposals in the Act, still less to vote to against them.

Twice in the space of three years the Conservative Government tried to reform the asylum system. If their first Act—the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993—had worked, the second would not have been necessary. Dramatically short turn-around times in processing applications were promised when the Act was considered in 1992. The then Home Secretary promised that many applications would be turned around in 10 days.

The 1993 Act failed, so the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) had to introduce the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. He admitted what has now happened. He said:

"Unless we take firm action now … Home Office projections show that the number claiming asylum will rise to at least 8,000 a month—almost 100,000 a year—by the end of the decade."

It was fundamentally because of the failure of the 1996 Act that we decided that the system needed root-and-branch reform. Following a comprehensive review of the system, our White Paper set out the provisions for that reform.

The 1999 Act, unlike the provisions of the previous Administration, will deliver a single, comprehensive right of appeal. It will create a new asylum support system to replace the current shambles and it will regulate immigration advisers to eradicate the unscrupulous who exploit and cheat vulnerable applicants. It will strengthen the power of the immigration service to target the criminal facilitators who profit from the traffic in clandestine and illegal immigration.

At the time of our 1998 White Paper, asylum applications were projected to increase to 44,000 in the current financial year, but we now expect to receive more than 80,000. As I spelled out in answer to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, numbers in many other countries have increased to a similar degree. The Republic of Ireland, proportionate to its population, has seen a huge increase, and so has Finland. Under figures just released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, per head of population Britain is not at the top of the league tables; it is ninth. That fact needs to be taken into account if we are to have a balanced and sensible debate about the well-founded and unfounded problems of asylum seekers.

The right hon. Gentleman's predictions seem as likely to be fulfilled as was Billy Bunter's postal order to arrive. Given that thousands of asylum seekers habitually disappear when their applications are turned down, can he explain why the Home Office target for the removal of such people in 1999–2000 is only 8,000, even though the applications of many times that number are rejected each year? Is not his policy—pusillanimous as it is—a recipe for a constant, on-going increase in the number of people staying here who should not be staying here?

I am not entirely clear to which figures the hon. Gentleman refers. Total removals in the last financial year were 35,200, which happens to be up on the total number of removals in the last year of the previous Government, which was 28,000. Let me make it clear that I accept that we need to do much more to expand enforcement and removal activity. That is one thing that we propose to do. However, we start from a very low base because the previous Administration effectively collapsed the staffing of the immigration and nationality directorate by taking the astonishing risk that all the savings that were promised, but never delivered, under the old contract would be available.

The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald was at her most extravagant when it came to criticism of the increase in the backlog of asylum applications. Part of the reason for that increase is the higher than expected volume of applications to which I have already referred. However, it is also significantly the result—if I accept responsibility for what happens under this Administration, the right hon. Lady and the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe have to accept responsibility for what happened under theirs—of the contract that she signed with Siemens for the delivery of so-called business change in the immigration and nationality directorate. That contract is binding on the Government. At its signature, Home Office Ministers described it as

"a unique opportunity for the transformation of the IND."

It certainly had a transforming effect. As I have already said, the Public Accounts Committee recently described it as

"over-ambitious from the outset".

The previous Administration even made provisions for a redundancy programme to get rid of people before they had any savings in their pockets. We reversed the redundancy programme, but unfortunately by then the IND had lost valuable caseworking expertise.

I can tell the hon. Member for Hertsmere that since last summer, we have begun a massive recruitment programme to boost staff numbers. We are taking on 850 extra staff. They include 250 asylum decision-makers, who have already been recruited, and more are planned. We are close to achieving 4,000 asylum decisions a month, and we are aiming to make 8,000 a month by the late spring. All that takes time, but even at current intake levels those additional resources should enable us to make major inroads into the backlog.

I pay particular tribute to the staff of the IND. They have made a massive effort to recover its business from the depths of last year. That commitment and the additional resources that we are providing will help to consolidate the recovery.

I echo the Home Secretary's tribute to the staff who deal with that huge amount of work. However, the present system gives rise to serious concern about the work that is being done. Does he accept that some of those who sit on tribunals as adjudicators are not working at all at the moment because they are not being given any cases? That is because some of the files that have been transferred from Lunar house to the Whitgift centre as part of the great reorganisation are sitting in a basement, untouched because they are said to be surrounded by asbestos; they are not being processed at all. Is not it still the case that the system is not working, even though many people want to do the work?

I accept that the system is certainly not working as well or as fully as it should, and it will be some time before it is working fully. However, it is getting better. There has been a significant improvement in the departments and arrangements for which I am responsible and those for which my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is responsible.

rose—

rose—

I have given way a great deal. I know that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall make progress.

We have set a target that from April 2001 most initial asylum decisions will be made within two months, and most appeals decided within a further four months. We remain committed to those targets. Indeed, I am pleased to tell my hon. Friends that we are already meeting those targets for families with children. Following a debate on the Immigration and Asylum Bill, we have given priority to such applications, and since November most of them have been decided within two months.

The interim asylum support scheme is already in place and there has been much more dispersal as a result, easing pressures on London and the south-east. The full scheme will come into force from April 2000. Support, mainly in kind, will then be provided with minimal cash. Dispersal will be on a no-choice basis as regards location.

Returning to removals, at the end of last year I announced our plans to open a new reception centre for asylum seekers at Oakington, near Cambridge, providing up to 400 additional places. Applicants who are transferred to Oakington will be required to reside there for about seven days while their claim is decided, and their application will fall to be refused on non-compliance grounds if they leave without permission.

Subject to relevant permissions being granted, new detention facilities are also already planned for Aldington in Kent, Heathrow airport and Lindholme, near Doncaster. Those alone will create an additional 400 places and will reduce the immigration service's dependence on places in Prison Service establishments. A further expansion in the immigration service's detention estate, to cope with the increasing number of removals that we are expecting to achieve, is under active consideration, along with the establishment of reporting centres, which will ensure that contact is maintained with applicants throughout the process.

I am very concerned about the question of removals. I ask the Home Secretary carefully to check his figures for 1998–99 and for how many are expected in future. Official figures that I have obtained show that in 1998, only 350 failed asylum seekers left as a result of deportation. That figure was in a written answer, which I can show him now.

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but the figure cannot be as low as 350. As soon as I have finished my speech, I will get the information to which he is referring and ensure that the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Homsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), deals the matter when she replies to the debate. I can tell him that, in the current financial year, 35,200 people have been removed from this country.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I have dealt with the matter.

The right hon. Gentleman has not dealt with the matter; I have the figures here.

I have dealt with the matter. I am always concerned to ensure that there is agreement on figures, but that cannot be reached across the Floor of the House. There is a huge difference between 350 and 35,200, which needs to be sorted out—the figure is certainly not 350—in more detailed discussion. Perhaps I should invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to establish a numeracy hour for Conservative Members.

I come to the issue of charges for clandestines. In 1987, the previous Government introduced civil penalties, at £2,000 a passenger, on airlines that carried passengers who had inadequate documentation and no permission to enter the UK. That system has worked, but there is a gaping loophole in its scope because it does not extend to buses, coaches or trucks. Partly as a result of that, there has been a huge increase in the number of clandestine asylum seekers coming through sea ports, particularly Dover—something else that has added to the pressure on that port.

Under our new Act, we are extending the civil penalty to bus and coach carriers, and creating a new civil penalty for all clandestines found in the back of freight trucks. The system will work fairly for those who take the necessary precautions. I fail to understand how, on one hand, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald can use the emotive language of calling us a soft touch, while on the other opposing such a common-sense policy, which builds on the controls that the Conservatives initiated.

Will the Home Secretary give way?

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

Not least because of a large immigration case load as a constituency member, I am well aware that the service that the IND has been providing to hon. Members has fallen short of the standard that they have a right to expect. We are determined to correct that. In order to provide a much better system through which hon. Members and their staff are able to contact the IND, a new dedicated telephone service has been established. Staff will be available between 9 o'clock in the morning and 6 o'clock in the evening to answer the inquiries of hon. Members and their staff and to check the progress of any case. Where a case is found to be straightforward and can be easily resolved, that will be done, and quickly.

To return to the question raised by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), I am pleased to say that the position in the integrated casework directorate, which deals with non-asylum matters, is improving. More than 60 per cent. of applications are resolved within a few days of arrival, all public callers in Croydon are seen on the same day, and about 800 Home Office travel documents are delivered each week, compared with 100 a week in August.

We recognise the scale of the task to restore the integrity of the asylum and immigration system. There can be no quick fix, and we have never promised one. We are putting in place the foundations to ensure that the system is fairer, faster and firmer. The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 should, over time, deliver real changes. We are devoting the resources needed to deliver substantially higher output. Against the degradation of the system under the previous Government, we are investing an additional £120 million in the immigration and nationality directorate over this and the next two years.

If the changes introduced by the Conservatives—their two flawed Acts, their computerisation that went wrong and their staff cuts—had worked, the major reforms on which we are embarked would not have been necessary. However, they are necessary, and it is a mark of the continued policy failure of the Conservatives that their contribution to our legislation was not to strengthen it, but to weaken it by opposing penalties on hauliers with clandestine entrants hidden on their lorries and by calling for a £500 million extension of cash payments to asylum seekers.

We are getting on with restoring the asylum and immigration system to proper integrity, so as to ensure that it deals firmly, fairly and swiftly with asylum and immigration applications. We are repairing the damage that the previous Government did to that system with their cuts in staff, their computerisation and their failure to provide proper financing. Having listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, I can tell her that the British people will need far more than the nonsense that she served up this afternoon if the Conservatives are ever again to be elected to govern.

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"believes that both the last Government and the present Government have failed to respond properly to the asylum, immigration and nationality demands made of this country; is aware of widespread discontent with the delays in processing immigration applications and that the number of unprocessed asylum applications has doubled over the previous two years to a total of over 100,000; takes very seriously the Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts (HC 130), which criticises the Government's mismanagement of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate and the fears of local authorities about the practical difficulties associated with the asylum-seekers dispersal scheme; calls upon the Government, which has now been in office for over a thousand days, to take more effective and urgent action to reduce the backlog of unprocessed applications and to improve the effectiveness of decision-making; believes that the necessary staff should be employed immediately so that good-quality decisions can be made quickly, and that the interests of applicants and taxpayers alike can be met in a system which treats every applicant fairly; and supports the Commission for Racial Equality agreement, signed by all three major party leaders, not to use problems in the immigration and asylum systems in ways which could damage community and race relations.".

It comes as an unexpected pleasure and surprise that, for the first time in my years as a Member of Parliament, on a Conservative Supply day, a Liberal or Liberal Democrat amendment has been selected for debate. At the end of the debate, the choice will be between one Conservative policy and one Liberal Democrat policy, which might explain why the Government amendment was not selected—if it had been, the choice would have been between two conservative policies.

The Home Secretary was kind enough to alert my office to the fact that there had been a technical hitch with the Government amendment. As I told him just before the debate stated, we had already noticed that something had clearly gone wrong because we had seen the Government's amendment on a previous occasion and voted against it then. I know that the Government suffer from amnesia, but to put the same amendment before the House twice in three months strikes me as somewhat excessive. However, it is not inappropriate that, in a debate on the poor administration of the Home Office, the Home Office has not even managed to get the right amendment on the Order Paper.

I thought that he would say that.

I thought that the Home Secretary would think that I would say that. As I told him previously, I hope for his sake that things can only get better.

I have been looking back at debates on what became the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. In large measure, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), with the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), dealt with that legislation for the Liberal Democrats. On Second Reading in the House of Lords, the current Attorney-General, then a Home Office Minister, said:

"Immigration and asylum are among the most sensitive and difficult issues. Decisions in individual cases can mean the difference between life and death … We want to uphold this country's long-standing tradition of giving shelter to those who flee persecution."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 1999; Vol. 603, c. 177.]

I start on a non-partisan and non-party political note by saying that our job when we debate such issues is to rise above jingoistic politics, which are often too easily resorted to. We must try to deal with a matter that is hugely important, not only to all our constituencies, but nationally and internationally. Over the generations, many of the great contributors to British life have been the children of immigrants. Many of those who have given most have been the descendants of refugees. Many Members of Parliament have sprung from families who fled persecution in other parts of the world.

I entirely concur with the Government in saying that it is not normally the attitude, behaviour or competence of the UK Government that is the largest single determinant of the number of people applying to settle in this country, either as immigrants or as asylum seekers. They come here principally because of the politics and pressures prevalent in other places in the world. We are not immune from those pressures, nor should we be. We have to behave responsibly and play our proper part in the world.

It is quite wrong of the Conservative Opposition to suggest that the number of asylum seekers shows whether the Government are a soft touch. I heard the Leader of the Conservative Opposition make his allegations today. The number of applications from people coming to Britain has gone up, as it has in almost every other country in Europe, for self-evident reasons. Only someone who has not read a newspaper or watched a television news bulletin in the past 10 years would imagine otherwise.

Did not the hon. Gentleman listen to the Home Secretary? Did not he hear the Home Secretary say, in answer to my question about the fall in the number of asylum applications in Germany, that the reason for that fall is the fact that there are effective arrangements in Germany for dealing with asylum applications? In other words—the Home Secretary did not use these words, but it comes to the same thing—he said that the number of applications had fallen in Germany because Germany was no longer a soft touch.

Those were not the words that the Home Secretary used. I listened to the exchange. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who is a former Home Secretary, knows that immigration into Germany during the 1990s was often from countries immediately to the east of it and from Turkey in large measure. The pattern of immigration to Germany in the past few years was different from the pattern of immigration to Britain.

Of course, the measures taken by a country have an effect. The Home Secretary was right in what he said to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

The pattern across Europe is revealed by the figures for the 13 European countries, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman can obtain from the Library, just as I did. The UK rate for asylum applications last year per head of population was 9.8 per 100,000, compared to an average of 9.5 per 100,000. Germany had a slightly higher number last year than we had. Yes, its rate is now going down, and yes, ours is going up, but it would not be wise or reasonable to suggest that that is entirely or largely due to the measures adopted by the country in question. They are a factor—

That is what the Home Secretary said.

I do not believe that, and the record will show that that was not the case. I was present for the exchange between the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Home Secretary.

The Home Secretary has on previous occasions accused me and other colleagues of being woolly liberals. Many of us who deal with immigration and asylum matters are far from woolly liberals about those issues. We have constituencies with huge numbers of asylum seekers and immigrants. I checked the figure this morning. There are just under 3,000 refugees being looked after by my local authority, and large numbers in my constituency. My office receives a significant number of new immigration cases every day, as do those of some of my hon. Friends around the country.

We come to the issue first from our constituency experience. That is why we are critical of the present system. People can wait for up to six years for their cases to be dealt with. People hand in their passport for a new permission to stay to be approved, and they do not see their passport for weeks, months or sometimes years. Documents handed in are lost and not found. Documents are not returned. One Department does not know that another Department has transferred the case to it to be dealt with. The case does not get to the tribunal for weeks to be dealt with so that the appeal can be heard, because the papers get lost in the system.

Those are administrative problems, but behind them are real people with real concerns. There are people in refugee camps waiting to join their families. There are people who want to come on a visit, like the person who wanted to come from Sierra Leone to see his dying mother but never made it because the system would not process the application in time, and the mother died while he was still waiting for his case to be dealt with in Sierra Leone.

From all over the world, the experience is that the system is not working. That is not in the interest of the asylum seeker or the rest of the community, because it builds up the number of people who are literally waiting in a queue, some of them on our doorstep, and it builds up the cost.

Let us be clear that none of us in this country is being overrun by immigrants or asylum seekers. The hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Prosser) and his constituents, and those in London boroughs have borne the brunt of large numbers, but compared with many countries and the numbers with which they deal regularly, asylum seekers constitute a small additional burden on this country. A rich, western country should be able to deal with that competently and fairly.

It is true that there have been significant increases in numbers in recent years. The Home Secretary was right to say that we must be careful to get the facts right. Approximately one third of asylum seekers are accepted for settlement on the first request. After appeal, approximately half are accepted. It is not an abuse of a system for people to try, even if they are rejected. That is why the system exists. It is comparable to a court. It is not an abuse of the jury system for someone to want to go to Crown court, and it is not an abuse of the immigration system for someone to try to come to Britain. In both instances, some cases are turned down.

Of course, some people enter the country illegally, and they should not; others remain illegally, and they should not. However, we should not punish those who often come from traumatic backgrounds simply because others try to sneak through when they should not. Doing that is comparable to punishing 25 good pupils in a classroom for the behaviour of five naughty pupils. That is not the right way to run a system; indeed, it would be illegal.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government's use of the words "abusive" and "bogus" is unhelpful? Those expressions whip up the media. An unsuccessful applicant for a job is not necessarily a bogus applicant. If applicants are refused entry, it simply means that they have not fulfilled the IND's strict criteria. The terms "bogus" and "abusive" also attach blame to people who are fleeing or trying to better themselves.

My hon. Friend is right. In his short time in the House, he has gained huge experience of immigration matters, not least because Campsfield is in his constituency.

Let us consider the international background. We should not duck the facts: this continent is experiencing the worst refugee crisis since the second world war. There are 1 million displaced people in Europe. European applications have increased by 20 per cent. in the past year. Our figures tell a story: the largest number of applicants come from former Yugoslavia. That is not an accident, but the consequence of civil war. People come here after losing their families, homes and everything they ever possessed. There are hundreds and thousands of people in refugee camps in southern Europe. I have visited central Africa, where there were refugee camps of tens of thousands of people. We must consider our position against that perspective.

As the Home Secretary said, we signed the United Nations convention in 1951. There has since been an updating protocol. The key element of the convention is that this country must treat every case on its merits. That is the test. We must look at every case, without lists for fast treatment and lists for slow treatment, or cursory treatment for some and not for others. All asylum seekers, no matter where they come from, must be considered on their merits.

The Liberal Democrats believe in a firm and fair immigration policy, which must be non-racist and non-discriminatory. There should also be a policy on asylum, and it should honour our legal and moral obligations, not deter or penalise genuine asylum seekers. Ultimately, we must be able to say that when somebody needed us, we were there; that when people justifiably needed to come to Britain, we let them in. We join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to those in the IND who have laboured under huge pressure and who are almost always as helpful as possible.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) had to leave the Chamber; she apologised to me before she left. The criticisms are therefore made in her absence, but they apply to the motion.

Three documents show clearly that the current problems preceded this Government. I pray in aid those documents, all of which are available to hon. Members and date from last year. The first is the evidence given to the Special Standing Committee on the Immigration and Asylum Bill in the spring of 1999 by the Public and Commercial Services Union, which described the problem with which it was trying to deal. It said that it believed

"that the Committee's consideration of these provisions"—

that is, those in the Bill—

"needs to be fully informed as to why the time limits set appear to be wholly unrealistic. The grounds for this belief include:

• —the rise in the asylum backlog during 1998
• —the reduction in IND staff during the same period, in preparation for the 'computerisation' of casework …
• —the delay in the delivery of the I.T. system
• —the transitional problems currently being experienced in IND and their repercussions in the medium term
• —doubts about the anticipated longer-term efficiency gain…
• —the insufficiency of the additional funds made available to IND following the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review."

The PCS concluded that it

"firmly believes that unless the implementation of these provisions are accompanied by the investment of significant additional resources in the form of extra staff, further delays and backlogs are inevitable, jeopardising not only the viability of this particular strategy but the main aims of the Bill, in general."—[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 22 March 1999; c. 448–49.]

That was the union's evidence and it was clear.

As the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald is clearly aware, the Public Accounts Committee more recently produced two other relevant documents in the autumn. One looked into the Home Office IND casework programme and the other was on improving the delivery of Government information technology projects. They are both damning indictments of the system as set up, the failure to provide the resources and to plan for an increase in the number of people who would arrive, and the absolutely mad—those are my words—decision to move the whole operation while changing the operating system and at the peak of demand.

If ever anything was bound to have caused complete confusion and add to the backlog—and it did—it was that administrative change last year. The incompetence and failure to plan adequately began under the Tories and they failed. The number of people who were not picked up and should have been and who were told to leave but were not deported was no better under the Conservative Government than it is now, and the system was no more competent, as I know from personal experience. Therefore, it is a bit rich to say that the problem is the fault of this Government since 1997.

However, the PAC did not let the Government off the hook. The PAC and its report made it abundantly clear that the Government did not respond quickly or adequately enough and that they could have done. The PAC was very critical indeed. The truth of the matter is that every increase in the number of cases that are not dealt with increases the trauma of the person in the queue, who may be a valid immigrant seeking asylum, as well as having two other harmful effects. It increases community tension—the longer the queue and the larger the pool of people, the more tensions and pressures are put on the system. As great a folly, however, is that it costs everyone more.

The PAC made the case explicitly. The cost of processing an application is of the order of £400. The cost per month of keeping a family here in the queue is of the order of £1,000 more than that. Therefore, it is in no one's interests to have a huge number of people waiting and we do not have the resources to deal with them. It was a terrible mistake not to have anticipated these problems, as the Government failed to do, and not to have provided resources and investment.

Sometimes when we argue about resources, for example for the health service, the Government reasonably say, "Well it takes three years to train a nurse and seven to train a doctor, so we can't suddenly sort out all the problems." The Home Secretary knows that it takes between three and six months to train people to deal competently with IND cases in the Home Office and that after that time those people will be as competent as those who were dealing with them before. The system can be turned around quickly. It is not an impossible task and it must be tackled.

I have some questions and propositions for the Government. There are still huge pressures on the system. First, we need to know whether the cost of the system that the Government have introduced—the asylum support directorate national system, which will come into force in April—is still per person or per unit administratively much more expensive than the system that is being replaced. If that is the case, it will have immediate knock-on implications for additional resources.

Secondly, the Home Secretary said a moment ago that he still hoped that most of the cases could be dealt with in the target of two months by April next year—four months for appeal cases. Will the right hon. Gentleman be more specific? Are the Government on course to deliver that target? From now on, will the backlog reduce and the target time come nearer?

Thirdly, we always criticise the Government for choosing the waiting list test for hospital beds and treatment. The number of people on the list matters little. What matters is how long one waits. The issue is not how big is the backlog, but how long one must wait for one's case to be heard. What is the present average length of wait for a case to be dealt with? If that is not decreasing, we are not winning the battle. If the time that one has to wait for one's case to be processed and for an appeal to be dealt with is not decreasing, we are not moving forward.

Finally, there is great concern about the provisions for local authorities and their ability to provide under the interim system dispersal places for asylum seekers. The authorities are keen to help, but they do not appear to have come up with places. There is even greater concern that after April there will not be places to enable the new system to work. When the Minister of State replies I should be grateful if she told us how far short we are of the number of guaranteed places that are necessary if dispersal is to happen. It is no good to plan the dispersal of refugees from Kent, south London or Islington if there are no places to receive them. That is not an acceptable policy and it must be changed.

Our position as expressed in our amendment is straightforward. We believe that one must start by trying to reduce globally the number of people who become refugees. Good foreign policy, diplomacy and conflict resolution will play their part in reducing the sorts of crises that we have recently seen on our continent. Those require us to work internationally and not put our head in the sand and be little nationalists. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) said, it is no good Conservatives using language that suggests that everything will be fine so long as we look after our own and that anyone else can come second.

We have to be ruthless about reducing the waiting times. That is in everyone's interests, not least those of the taxpayer, and that has to be a priority.

Also, we are nearing the Budget. The Prime Minister always accuses my hon. Friends and me of wanting more money. The truth of the matter is that investment now in good-quality staff to process the cases in the system will save money in the medium and longer term. There has been movement in that direction, but if we are to make progress, the Chancellor must put his hand into the contingency reserve in the Budget, and the comprehensive spending review needs to produce more money for the IND. We find money quickly when there is a war in Kuwait or southern Europe, for example. We have no problem with paying for the troops to go there. When a war somewhere else has a knock-on effect for us, however, we find it more difficult to respond.

Finally, as the Home Secretary was kind enough to say, the former leader of our party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), signed with other party leaders, at the request of the Commission for Racial Equality, a document which stated that when debating immigration and asylum matters we must be particularly careful to ensure that we say and do nothing to harm race and community relations in this country. The test of the right policy and the right approach will be passed by the politicians who rise above the temptation to foster party advantage and racial disharmony and argue for immigration and asylum policies that allow Britain to honour its obligations and those who come to us for help to be dealt with quickly and fairly in their interests and in ours.

rose—