When I heard last Thursday that the Speaker had granted me one and a half hours' debate on Her Majesty's Government's policy on military action against Iraq, I rang the Foreign Secretary's office to suggest that the subject was of such importance that he should follow the precedent set by Douglas Hurd when he was Foreign Secretary and addressed the question in a Back-Bench Adjournment debate on Lockerbie.

We completely understand that the Foreign Secretary could not consider attending the debate today because of the sad events surrounding the death of his father. I would like to express my condolences to him on his personal loss. People often forget that politicians are human, and that we all have personal grief. The loss of a parent is traumatic, however confident and advanced a person may be.

This debate should take place on the Floor of the House of Commons, not in Westminster Hall. Given what the Prime Minister said to the Australian media, he has a duty to hold a full-dress debate with his parliamentary colleagues—he should not just make a statement. He should make a proper speech that outlines his thinking, as Harold Wilson did almost every three weeks.

What the Foreign Secretary proposed in an article in The Times yesterday, and what the Prime Minister is reported as having said in Australia, is of overwhelming importance and concern. It is frankly horrendous to many of us. If there is to be a war, it must surely be a "just war"—in the words of Aquinas. We should consider those words: one of the conditions of a "just war" is that everything possible should be done to avoid war. That means talking to the Government and people of Iraq.

The Prime Minister is quoted as saying that the Iraqis are not like us. My experience is that they are very like us. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) will recollect that their foreign affairs group met us when we went to Baghdad in 1994. Halfway through the meeting in the Baghdad reception building, my hon. Friend told me that he was the only person of 16 in the room who had not been educated at a British university and did not have a British university degree. Britain has been the second home of those northern Arabs for a long time. Thus there is every reason to hold discussions—which, I am informed, they want very much indeed—on terms of dignity and good sense.

The idea that we could attack and that there would be a Northern Alliance situation—the Northern Alliance might be the Shia—is a crackpot one. Those of us who visited the great mosque of the Shi'ites at Kerbala and have been elsewhere in Iraq know that it is not that kind of society. I deeply regret that no British Minister and, as far as I know, few in the current diplomatic service have been to Iraq. I say this to the Foreign Office: for pity's sake, listen to some of the former British ambassadors, including Sir Stephen Egerton and Sir John Moberly, who urge great caution. If people do not have direct experience of Baghdad, they should at least speak to those who served there with distinction for many years.

These are not maverick views. Others, including Iran, are appalled at the idea of bombing. Four years ago, my wife and I went on holiday to Iran. One striking feature of that country is the war memorials to the terrible Iran-Iraq war that can be seen not only in Tehran, but in Rasht, Hamadan, Kashan, Isfahan, Shiraz and Yazd. No one has greater cause to loathe Saddam Hussein than the Iranians, but the Iranian Government believe that a military attack, particularly a bombing attack, would be counterproductive. They, who have every reason to be critical of Saddam Hussein, are against such action.

Last week, I was in Tunis, because the Foreign Minister of Tunisia—the most moderate of all Arab countries—requested that I visit him. I am authorised to say that that man, who is a former ambassador in Washington and has been Foreign Minister of Tunisia for 11 years, is wholly against an attack of the kind that is contemplated. That view is shared by Kofi Annan, who says publicly that no attack on Iraq should take place at the present time. Incidentally, if there is to be any action, it should be taken through the United Nations. The idea that we can change matters in Iraq by a bombing attack is preposterous.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) and I went to Belgrade. The bridges are still down at Novi Sad, and the old buildings of the Austro-Hungarian empire have been left completely unrepaired. The Pancevo chemical complex is still a danger, and Zastava is just twisted metal. The Government promised that they would rebuild the Balkans, but there has been very little rebuilding.

How much good has bombing done in Afghanistan? It has not caught bin Laden. On 12, 13 and 14 September, when there was great sympathy for the United States throughout the Islamic and Arab world, some of us wanted a proper intelligence operation. However, bombing went ahead and may be counterproductive.

The idea of bombing Iraq is ill conceived, unwise and, some of us think, wicked. If there are to be 200,000 ground troops, I suggest that someone come to the House of Commons and ask the duly elected Members of Parliament for their view.

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said thus far. Does he agree not only that there is widespread concern across the House and in the country about the prospect of a bombing campaign against Iraq, but that Britain's Muslim community, which was so concerned about the bombing of Afghanistan, would find such a campaign very hard to accept?

As my hon. Friend represents Hackney, North and Stoke Newington she can talk with more authority than I can about the Muslim community, so colleagues should take the point from her.

I believe that speeches should be short, so I end with this plea: as a matter of urgency the Prime Minister should set out the Government's thinking, at length and in a proper speech, not in a statement. It should be the kind of speech that Harold Wilson and James Callaghan used to make regularly to the House of Commons—an interruptible speech to prove a case that I believe could lead to terrible consequences for this country.

I shall be brief, as I can see that many hon. Members want to speak. I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) by asking the Minister at the very least to take on board a number of points and to pass them on to the Prime Minister who has the principal responsibility for addressing them in a debate of the whole House.

First, the Prime Minister must understand that a war against Iraq would not be a war against terrorism. Despite the assertions made in the United States immediately after 11 September, there has been no evidence to connect Iraq with those terrible events. It would be wrong to seek to extend presumptions about the action in Afghanistan as though they applied equally to Iraq. Such action would be seen as an act of war perpetrated by the United States and supported by us. It would break the international coalition against terrorism, and the consequences of that in terms of international agreement, let alone regional destabilisation in the middle east, are awesome.

If the Prime Minister is intent on going to the United States later this month, there is not much point in his going to see President Bush, but a great deal of point in going to see Kofi Annan. Any action in respect of Iraq must be UN led with a fresh UN mandate. Rather than being driven by an outbreak of daisy-cutters, we need an outbreak of diplomacy. In the 10 years of peace since the war against Iraq finished, Britain has spent an average of £5 million a month in undeclared continuing war. The United States has spent a great deal more: it now amounts to £7 billion. Not one penny or cent of that has been spent on diplomacy.

We must engage in direct diplomatic links. There is a compelling case for the UK at the least to send someone such as Lord Levy to Iraq to discuss security and inclusion, which relate to internal scrutiny. As I understand it from discussions that my hon. Friends and I have held during the past week, that is not off the agenda for Iraq. Iraqis constantly tell us that the situation is like rolling probation. There have been inspections, but no lifting of sanctions throughout the whole period. There was an open-ended sanctions regime demanding inspections wherever, but not one jot of movement towards the complete removal of those sanctions. We must therefore offer something that has genuine meaning to Iraq.

If we also argue that the pretext for any military action would be either the continuing defiance of UN resolutions or the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, we should be aware of just how tentative the ground is on which we would stake out that claim. If we are not to apply it equally, we should not apply it at all. Israel is in breach of several UN resolutions. No matter how much I disagree with the current Israeli regime and its treatment of Palestinians, I would not suggest that it provides a sufficient basis for bombing Israel. We do not apply the same logic to Iraq—Iraq is said to be different.

Ownership of weapons of mass destruction is another criterion, and we know that Brazil and Ukraine possess such weapons. We also know that America and the United Kingdom are likely to endorse the US plan to extend national missile defence, which will be an act of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, about which the rest of the world feels deeply uneasy. Does that provide a legitimate basis for the right to use weapons against us in a military attack? Absolutely not. The failure in our understanding stems from the fact that our thinking has been entirely military-driven, rather than diplomacy-driven.

The Minister must take back to his Cabinet colleagues the reality that any Prime Minister of this country who signs a blank cheque of endorsement of American military action will be signing up to George Bush's war—the war of his daddy's ego—and such a cheque will not be sanctioned or supported by other parts of the international community. Wherever the Prime Minister makes his announcements about UK involvement—in Australia, Washington or elsewhere—he will end up walking down that path alone. What will be perceived throughout the country as a declaration of war against Iraq will be opposed by large sections of opinion—not just the Labour party, but the public as a whole. Many will choose not to endorse that course of action.

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I want to point out that the previous contribution was commendable in its brevity. Many hon. Members are trying to catch my eye: it would help if contributions were kept as brief as possible, so that not too many people will be disappointed.

I shall be as brief as possible. I echo the comments of the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), when he spoke about the importance of talking to the Government and people of Iraq. I recall spending considerable time trying to secure an answer from the Foreign Secretary about whether he had spoken to the Government and people of Afghanistan after 11 September. Eventually, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), replied that the information had been placed on the website—not an effective way of communicating with any Government or people. That is not exercising the diplomacy that is so important for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many people will not understand the degree of trust and the length of the chain of trust required to secure the support of the British people for any action that may follow the Prime Minister's revelations in Australia. Our electors have to trust us. Opposition Members have to trust their leaders and they are happy to do so. I am pleased to trust my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith). They have to trust the Prime Minister, who has to trust the President of the United States. A long chain of trust should be built up if military action is to gain support in this country, but I fear that it is not being built up.

Before the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) reaches a conclusion he should talk to the former Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who has been to Iraq. That is something that divides those who have been to Iraq from those who have not had that opportunity.

I accept that entirely. I was about to say that I can trust my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex because I know him personally. Not all my constituents know me personally and I—even less my constituents—do not know personally the others in the chain of trust.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that trust must be earned? It cannot be demanded. President Bush has not yet shown that we can trust him.

The hon. Gentleman made exactly the point that I was about to make, without personalising it—that trust must be earned by the President of the United States in the way in which he deals with international issues. He successfully earned our trust following 11 September; it is not so clear that he has done so today.

Similarly, the Prime Minister must earn our trust. I do not wish to make partisan points, but it is difficult for some Opposition Members to trust the Prime Minister as we would wish to do. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow said, it would help enormously if the right hon. Gentleman came to the House and made the case to the British people for the action that he will support. An act of statesmanship and courage is needed to bring round the mass of people who are not convinced either way. They hear appalling reports of what is going on in Iraq and observe the curious behaviour of nations that may be the targets of Iraq, but they hear little or nothing from the Prime Minister.

Labour Members will recall what it was like in the 1980s when President Reagan bombed Libya, with the support of my right hon. and noble Friend the Baroness Thatcher, which I believed she was right to give at the time. Labour Members felt then that the chain of trust had not been built up or was not being sustained.

Some of our constituencies have large Muslim communities. The chain of trust was difficult to sustain throughout the Afghan war. It will be even more difficult now and we will lose the trust of Muslim communities if we bomb Iraq.

The hon. Lady puts it as clearly as I would have done. My concern is not only about the Muslim communities; we need to trust the Prime Minister. In a constituency such as mine, where less than 10 per cent. of the electorate voted for the Prime Minister's party at the last election, large numbers of people do not automatically expect to trust him. Labour Members did not trust the Prime Minister in the 1980s and neither did many Labour voters. I am desperately concerned that unless the Prime Minister comes to the House, goes on television and explains himself, it will not be only the Muslim communities that are fearful of the consequences and unwilling to trust his actions.

I understand perfectly that the Prime Minister may think that he has more urgent and important things to attend to, but on this occasion he must secure the trust of the British people for any action that he decides to support. Whether we think it is right or wrong depends on what the Prime Minister says, and so far he has not said it.

First, I congratulate the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) on securing the debate on this important subject. He spoke with his customary eloquence and passion and, although it will not surprise him to hear that I do not agree with every particular, I know that he also spoke with sincerity.

The central issue that we must determine is in the form of a question—is it possible to deal with rogue states under the auspices of Security Council resolutions, and is Iraq a serious enough threat to warrant the type of action that seems to be under consideration? If the United Nations is to deserve continue to enjoy a good level of support, it is vitally important that Security Council resolutions and the sentiments that the UN attaches itself to, in this issue as in others, are taken seriously and amount to more than mere words on paper.

Courtesy of the Prime Minister, who has given me rather more time for such things than I previously had, I have recently been reading more of what one of my hon. Friends—who shall remain nameless but is present today—calls improving texts. One issue that I have examined more closely is the role of the League of Nations in the 1930s. Historians are disputatious on such matters and it is often difficult to claim a consensus, but everyone agrees that the failure of the League of Nations was based on its failure to act against the expansionist tendencies of Germany in the 1930s.

Although I do not make any direct comparison, if an institution such as the UN is to represent everything that we want, it must have respect. It must be known that those countries that support the UN and everything that it stands for consider Security Council resolutions to be more than mere words.

rose—

I shall give way to my hon. Friend in a moment, but I do not intend to give way further as I am anxious to make progress and be brief.

The question of whether the matter is serious enough to warrant action against Iraq was summed up in an article in The Times yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. He stated:

"The international community's most pressing demand is for Iraq to allow UN officials to return and inspect his weapons programme. Saddam broke his own word, and has been in breach of his international obligations, since he effectively threw out the UN weapons inspectors three years ago."

That is the crux of the matter and we should take my right hon. Friend's words seriously.

My hon. Friend mentions UN Security Council resolutions. Resolution 1284, adopted after several months of painstaking negotiation in December 1999, provides exactly the way out of the problem. As he says, if the Iraqi Government had been prepared to engage with and carry through the resolution, there would have been increasing official exports of oil and the prospect of the sanctions ending within a specified period. The conflict could have been resolved. Unfortunately, those of us who have visited the border with Kuwait and seen the need to provide protection to the Shias in the south and the Kurds in the north, know that unless that UN approach is followed, we will have to protect large numbers of people in the region from Saddam Hussein's aggressive intentions for many years.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention—a rare one because he made my next point for me and my speech will be probably that much briefer as a result.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction of different kinds. No reasonable person can doubt that Iraq's deplorable human rights record deserves attention. Nor can there be doubt that our security is threatened by what might happen if no action is taken. What should be done? The Foreign Secretary's position, as outlined in his article in The Times, and the words spoken by the Prime Minister, point us in the right direction. I have no difficulty in supporting them, nor would I if it became obvious that an appropriate form of intervention was necessary.

However, I believe that my hon. Friend the Father of the House has a point about the role of Parliament. A debate and a vote on the subject are not constitutionally necessary—there are plenty of precedents to the contrary—or politically essential. I do not believe that there is an issue of trust, although I accept that we must take into account the many links in that chain, not least the position of Muslims in our country. However, it would be worth debating and voting on the subject, as it would have two consequences. First, it would demonstrate that our parliamentary democracy gives serious consideration to such matters, debates them, weighs them in the balance and then makes a decision. I am sure that any such decision would be one of which the Government would approve. Secondly, provided that the argument was put properly—I am sure that it would be—it would demonstrate that there was overwhelming support for the sort of action that is likely to be proposed. I should have no difficulty supporting the Government and I am sure that most Members would feel the same way.

In summary, there is a case for action, but it must be cautious, considered and carefully weighed, and it would be wise to consult the House before it is taken.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), the Father of the House, on securing the debate. I agree that it is timely. I endorse his view about the fact that it is being held in Westminster Hall. The fact that we have held this debate should not be used as a barrier or excuse to prevent the matter from being debated on the Floor of the House, where it properly belongs.

This is the first occasion on which I can recall it being so crowded at this end of the Chamber in a Westminster Hall debate. Normally, when I attend Westminster Hall I see a row of Government Back Benchers who are keen to sit close to the Minister and make helpful speeches and interventions. There is a gulf between the tone of Government Back Benchers' contributions and what we have heard from Ministers in the press in the past few days, which is well represented by the physical gulf between them today in Westminster Hall. I feel some sympathy for the Minister, who is out on a limb in the face of all the aggressive pacifism from this end of the Chamber.

On the reference to pacifism, I wear the tie of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

I take the hon. Gentleman's chastisement in the spirit in which it is offered. I have been a Member since June last year and am deeply conscious that, in the company of hon. Members such as the Father of the House, I am a parliamentary minnow. I therefore approach the subject with some humility. I may not have learned much since last June, but the one thing that I have learned is never to say never when dealing with such issues. That would be my general approach to the question of military action against Iraq. I would not say never, but I would say not now and certainly not until a lot more has been done to resolve several of the festering sores that exist in Israel Palestine, for example, and Kashmir—situations that we were told would be taken seriously and dealt with properly in the aftermath of 11 September and on which little more than token progress and efforts have been made. To launch a bombing attack on Iraq now can do nothing but harm to the standing of western nations in the middle east in attempting to resolve situations such as that in Israel Palestine, which seems to get worse with every day that passes. Our bottom line must be that nothing can be done without the full authority and approval of the UN. There can be no departure from that as the baseline for future action.

After 11 September, we were promised a war against terrorism. Like several Members and people in the wider community, I felt uneasy with such rhetoric—I kept several of my reservations to myself and perhaps I was wrong to do so. We did so because we were promised that it would be more than a war against Afghanistan; it would be a war against terrorism, and the challenges of globalisation, which allow western developed nations to exploit the vulnerability of undeveloped and developing nations, would be taken seriously. We were told that the problems of poverty and the conditions in which support for terrorism can be allowed to grow would be taken seriously. I have seen precious little of that since the bombs started falling on Afghanistan. Unless and until I see signs that the Prime Minister is prepared to take those challenges seriously, if he comes to the House of Commons to ask for support, he will not find it from me.

The Father of the House referred to the Prime Minister's speech that suggested that Iraqis were not like us. I beg to differ. Cut them and they bleed like us, kill their children and their parents grieve like us. We must remember that what we in this House say and decide will have a human impact. That must be justified in any action that we take. The thrust of Government policy and the tone of their recent pronouncement must be deeply regretted.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) secured this debate. I am dismayed that once again we are not having it on the Floor of the House and that we might be being led into military action without any serious debate. I was alarmed by both the Prime Minister's statement in Australia and yesterday's article in The Times by the Foreign Secretary.

I tabled an early-day motion this week to express the feeling of deep unease among Members on both sides of the House, about which we are hearing today, at the prospect that Her Majesty's Government might follow and support the United States' military action against Iraq. The motion states that we agree with Kofi Annan, who has warned that further military action or an attack on Iraq would be unwise at this time. There is a real danger, of course, that that could threaten the coalition that we have built up to fight terrorism, which would be a disaster. The Governments of some Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Indonesia, have taken great risks with their own populations. They could face a backlash if their militant groups turn round and say, "Well, you could never trust the west. We told you so."

We are about to hear huge spin about how many weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq. When we receive the dossier, no doubt we will read that some such weapons are more sophisticated than those in the Pentagon. I expect that, and I shall read about it with interest.

I do not think that there is a United Nations resolution that gives the Americans the right unilaterally to take action while we run alongside as little bag carriers. The United Nations Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—I am sure that it has faxed or written to everyone—agrees with me. It says:

"We certainly do not believe that at present a UN security council mandate exists authorising the type of military action that is currently being discussed regarding Iraq."

It continues to say that it is not convinced that that is the best way forward. However, it does insist that we get the weapons inspectors returned by using all means that we can, including diplomacy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) said.

Last week, I attended a meeting of NATO parliamentarians with the Russians—we now have dialogue with them again. The Russian Federation Members from the Duma were totally against unilateral military action in Iraq, as were other European Members of Parliament of all parties. The Russians pointed out that they are in a good position to help to negotiate the return of the weapons inspectors, and we should take up their offer. I know that such help is on offer because I spoke to people from the Russian embassy yesterday. Why are we not using that? Why is it sacrosanct to use military action rather than diplomacy?

I was born into a party that was proud that conflict resolution and peaceful methods were at the heart of every part of its foreign policy. I know that some of us who signed the early-day motion were described as the awkward squad, but many Labour Members who signed the motion are not the usual members of the awkward squad. We do not believe that the Prime Minister has the right unilaterally to make us support unilateral action by the United States. The party that I was born into has a proud record of seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts, but, at present, it seems that we go to war at the drop of a hat.

I agree with what the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) said. If we support the Prime Minister, who loves his children dearly, when he sends war planes to bomb another country, we must accept that other people who love their children and whose humanity is exactly the same as ours—whether they are in Iraq, Afghanistan or Yugoslavia—will often end up picking up little body parts because of that action. That is why I totally oppose such action and I urge the Minister to use diplomacy and seek a peaceful solution.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the issue that the Father of the House raised. During the action in 1991, I was horrified while people in the American Cabinet sat round calculating how many lives would be lost. It was calculated that about 63,000 lives would be lost and 319,000 people would be injured. The Americans asked Scotland to calculate the beds that would be needed if the war continued. The figure was something like 7,500 beds for long-term casualties, and they wanted 500 beds a day. The Americans spent something like $500 million dollars a day on that war and it was costing Britain about $4 million.

Biochemical weapons and long-range missiles were discussed. The other night, I asked the Minister which countries have the capability to produce them. Does Syria have that capability, or Iraq, or Iran, or China, or Japan? I had also asked NATO that question. It said that it could not name a specific country, but some of them might have those capabilities. However, the Minister knew better than NATO—or the United Nations, or any other organisation and country that was sitting around the table, including the Americans—because he named North Korea.

There are many countries outwith those to which I have referred that have a lot of biochemical weapons. Great Britain, America and Russia have polluted the waters. If we are really worried about biochemical weapons, we should focus on the 387,000 tonnes of polluted matter that is being dumped into the North sea and in places such as Denmark, Sweden and the Baltic states. They were told that the 50 years was up in 1997, and, as far as Russia is concerned, the matter was declassified. We could have an ecological disaster, regardless of our worries about countries such as Iran. America and Britain have asked for another 20 years before they declassify the matter, but they should be concerned about what is going on in the Baltic and the North sea as the Russians have discovered that there have been explosions in some of the ships there. That has implications for marine life and we do not want the food chain to be affected.

If America were really interested in peace, it would not withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty by using article 15. That caused the Russian Federation and the rest of Europe to hold up their hands in horror and NATO was not a great help, because it was a shrinking violet.

I was listening to people talking about the United Nations. I was disappointed in it the last time and I have been disappointed in it for the past 30 years, because we would not have the chaos in Palestine and Israel if it implemented the resolutions that have been on the books for 33 years. That concerns me.

We are listening to a right-wing, reactionary American Government and they are dictating to us. Does anyone honestly think that that is right? They did not ask the UN or NATO or anyone else when they bombed Iraq the last time. As a socialist and a pacifist, I am opposed to sending boys—especially from Scotland—to die in the sands at 17 years of age, when they are not old enough to have a drink in a pub. It is sad that we are calling them heroes, when 2,000 veterans of the last war are suing the Ministry of Defence to get compensation for injuries that they received.

I am against all wars and I do not have any admiration for Tony Blair, Bush or the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. The only people who suffer in wars are the poor and the defenceless. It is time, as socialists and as a Labour Government, that we showed the way, not by dropping bombs, but by sitting around the table to create a situation in which a world government can be set up to stop the war from happening.

We can now laugh about the non-proliferation treaties because nobody is abiding by them. That—and especially the NMD system that America is going to put up in the sky—has implications for countries such as India. I have always said that one has the right to defend one's country using reasonable defences, but one does not have that right with regard to nuclear defences because everyone is involved, such as European and world organisations. The Americans do not care. They do not even pay their affiliation fees to such organisations—in fact, they have just paid their affiliation fees. They do not really care about Britain, or anywhere else. They just take their own decisions.

It is a case of like father, like son. When Bush's father was in power, America invaded countries as if it was peanuts. It intervened in Grenada, Nicaragua and Panama for instance. I am against that. I hope for a strong, vigorous attack against our Government— against those Ministers who are pontificating about war and killing, although I think that it was President Chirac who said that shields are not as mighty as swords.

My hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) spoke eloquently about the United Nations. For the avoidance of doubt, I must say that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has stated explicitly that there is no authority and no justification for launching a war against Iraq. Given their public statements, the majority of members of the Security Council of the United Nations are likely to express themselves similarly. Just as Britain and America did not ask for United Nations authorisation to launch the previous war against Iraq in December 1998—a time to which I shall return—my hon. Friend must know that the United States has no intention of seeking Security Council authority before it launches the war against Iraq. If he is worried about the integrity and importance of the Security Council of the United Nations, he should be on our side of the argument, not on the Government's side.

If my hon. Friend reads tomorrow the report of what I said, he may find that he is misrepresenting my words. I chose them carefully.

I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said, as I always do. I clearly recollect that he was anxious for the credibility of the United Nations to be maintained and believes that its centrality to world events is extremely important. As a member of the Labour party, how could he think otherwise? The last organisation in the world that is likely to authorise George Bush's attack on Iraq is the United Nations. If I am right about that, I look forward to receiving support in the Lobby. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) was right to say that the matter of opposing the war should be dealt with in the Lobbies and in the Chamber.

If the answer to the political crisis in the middle east were the overwhelming use of force, blood, ire, fire and war, General Sharon's Israel would be the most peaceful place on earth. For 17 months, his Government have launched overwhelming fire power at Arab nationalist aspirations—at the Muslim and Christian people of Palestine. The friends of Israel shake their heads to the embarrassment of those sitting next to them, but no one in the Chamber is in any doubt that the policy of war, war rather than jaw, jaw as a means of resolving political disputes is the policy of the Government of Israel.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) that in the list of countries that possess weapons of mass destruction, that occupy other people's land and disobey United Nations Security Council resolutions, the one country that he forgot to mention was Israel. It is sitting on top of a mountain of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, which we know about thanks to the brave Jew, Mordechai Vanunu, now in his 15th year in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. As well as sitting on top of the land of other people, in defiance for decades of international resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is also sitting on top of a mountain of weapons of mass destruction. Yet the only sanction contemplated against Israel is forcing it to take part in the Eurovision song contest.

I am astounded that people are seriously contemplating launching another war in the middle east, at a time when, in Afghanistan, the American forces are engaged in—and I quote last night's news bulletins—

"the heaviest fighting of the war".

The most intense confrontation of the Afghan war is taking place this week, yet we are discussing whether to start a new war alongside it.

There is already another war in the middle east. The holy land is on fire. People are being killed by the dozen—sometimes, two dozen—each day. F 15s, F 16s, tanks, heavy artillery, mortars, kalashnikovs and stones are filling the air of the middle east and threatening to drag the region into total war. Yet on top of that conflagration, we are seriously discussing starting another middle east war at the same time. We would have to be insane to depart down that track.

Let us be clear about the scale of the war. Bloody and disastrous though the Afghan war has been, it is a Vauxhall conference war. Another war would be a premier league war, with weeks, if not months, of carpet bombardment of Iraq, followed by an invasion of an Arab country by 200,000 foreign solders, most of whom would be American. Some who invade Iraq may be British. The figures are not mine; that is the Pentagon's own plan. Those foreign soldiers will crush military resistance, including civilian militias, town by town, city by city, village by village. They will occupy and garrison that country and install a puppet government there. That puppet government will be sustained for an unlimited time. That is the enterprise that we are discussing.

Who can sanely contemplate such action? It is not Labour policy; 86 in 100 Labour MPs, polled by the BBC's "On the Record" programme, expressed opposition to such a war. Only seven in 100 Labour MPs expressed support for it. One Government personality said to a friend, "I wonder who the seven were." The policy is American. It is the policy of a right-wing, republican American Administration. I say to Labour colleagues who contemplate supporting the George Bush war mark 2 that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Baillieston (Mr. Wray) was right: the White House is not a Clinton White House; it is not a third-way White House nor is it a social democrat White House. It is the Reagan-Bush era White House reconstituted.

What sort of Labour Member of Parliament will support in the Lobby a war launched by such a grizzly crew? What justification is there for launching such a war? Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorism on 11 September. Ministers repeatedly made that clear. They said that they had seen no evidence linking Iraq to the terrorism on 11 September—but they tried so hard, did they not? There were anthrax flasks, and meetings with Mohammed Atta in Prague airport that turn out never to have happened. Whatever happened to the anthrax flask that Atta was supposed to have given? We know now that the anthrax used in the attacks on the United States was American anthrax sent by an American lunatic who was probably a former employee of the US Government. The propaganda canards are being dragged out. We have seen them all.

You will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we were told in the Chamber about the five-year-old boy who was imprisoned for throwing a stone at a picture of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. When we asked for further details, the Foreign Secretary referred us to the Defence Secretary. When we asked the Defence Secretary, he referred us to the Minister of State. When we asked the Minister of State, he took shelter behind the protection of intelligence sources.

We all know about the babies in the incubators in Kuwait city and the professional public relations firm that was hired in the US to build the propaganda case for war. The daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador posed as a nurse. She said that she had watched Iraqis in a Kuwaiti hospital unplugging incubators from the wall, which killed the babies, and shipping those incubators north to Iraq. We found out only later that she was a professional actress and that the whole stunt had been paid for as part of the war propaganda.

We remember the presidential palaces. The former Member for Hamilton, South, now the Secretary-General of NATO, held up a map of my constituency in the Chamber and said that the palaces were larger than the area of Paris. However, when they were mapped, they turned out to be smaller than Paddington. We were told that all sorts of weapons of mass destruction could be found in them. When the UN inspectors searched them, they found not so much as a bow and arrow.

I say two things to hon. Members who suspect that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction. Scott Ritter—the former senior official of the arms inspectorate—who spent years in Iraq destroying weapons, told an audience in this Chamber that Iraq had been effectively disarmed by 1998. He also said that that meant that every child who had died under the sanctions since then had died under false pretences, and that the campaign on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was the longest running hoax in the international community. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow nor I know what weapons exist in Iraq or in any other country. However, Scott Ritter is in a better position than either of us to know whether Iraq has such weapons, as he spent years destroying them as an employee of the United Nations Special Commission.

There is a better way. Last week, Iraq told Britain that if it believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it should send a team of weapons experts to Iraq. Why was that offer dismissed so out of hand? Why was it laughed off as a propaganda ploy or a game? If we make allegations about a country, why do not we take up that country's invitation to send anyone we like for any length of time that we like?

My hon. Friend has spoken eloquently about the need to maintain the United Nation's authority in the matter. Does he believe that Britain can act unilaterally as a weapons inspector? Should not that be done under the auspices of the United Nations?

Hear, hear.

I am glad that the Minister said, "Hear, hear" to my hon. Friend's intervention because I want to ask the Minister a blunt question. If Iraq readmits the United Nations weapons inspectors, whom the British and American Governments withdrew, does he agree that war in those circumstances would be unconscionable? I invite him to rise in response to that point, or at least to deal with it in his speech. The House should know whether the war is off the agenda if Iraq admits those weapons inspectors.

I talked about a five-year old boy in the context of Iraq. Yesterday I spoke to a five-year old Palestinian boy on the west bank. I asked him what he was doing in these horrendous days when play and school were impossible. He told me that he was gathering a pile of stones. When I asked him why that five-year old boy said, "I am going to be a martyr. I dreamed that I went to heaven and God was there and we played and he gave me sweets and chocolate." That is the prevailing mindset among children in the middle east about the current conjuncture of events. I warn the Government that to launch another devastating war in the middle east on top of the war already raging there will bring forth a torrent of hatred and bitterness against us that will never subside.

I doubt that I can match the eloquence of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway), but I will seek to emulate his clarity. No Government committed to the security of their citizens can sensibly exclude in all possible circumstances the use of military force. But the use of military force should be a last resort. In saying that I echo the words of the Minister when he replied to an Adjournment debate on Monday.

Military action should never be undertaken without clear and realistic political objectives that are capable of achievement. The duty of a Government in their foreign policy is to secure the interests of their citizens, even if at the expense of alliances. Those are not my sentiments alone. I heard them expressed by Mr. Richard Perle at the Munich security conference just a few weeks ago.

Yesterday in The Guardian Hugo Young wrote:

"Saddam Hussein is an international criminal, brutal to his own people and an unrepentant enemy of any world order the UN attempts to invigilate."

In the capitals of the middle east there is little or no sympathy for Saddam Hussein and his regime. But we know that there is considerable sympathy for Iraqi citizens who have paid a terrible price for Saddam Hussein's intransigence. Since December 1998, when the UN withdrew its inspectors because Richard Butler was not satisfied that they could do their job properly, a strategy of surveillance, containment and deterrence has been effectively pursued against Iraq.

As has already been said, there is no evidence to link Baghdad with the events of 11 September. Nor is there any published evidence of the chemical, biological or nuclear capability of Iraq, but it would be reasonable to conclude from past history that there is a strong probability that such capabilities exist or at least are being actively pursued. There is nothing to indicate that any of Iraq's neighbours, with the possible exception of Kuwait, would provide political backing for military action or host nation support for military operations.

If Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction it would, if attacked, use them against its adversaries or the allies of its adversaries. If Israel were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, or even with conventional weapons, retaliation would be likely. Its failure to respond under heavy American pressure during the Gulf war is unlikely to be repeated. If Israel were attacked, by whatever means, the prospect of an Israeli nuclear strike in return cannot be ruled out.

The most immediate cause of instability in the middle east at present is the terrible escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Military action against Iraq would severely increase the already formidable difficulties of launching a peace initiative. However, if Russia could be persuaded to enter into dialogue with Iraq, Security Council resolution 1284 could still provide the basis for the return of the inspectors and a regime of targeted sanctions. We should surely pursue that option. Speaking last week at the London school of economics, the Secretary-General of the UN used delicate diplomatic language when he described military action as "unwise".

On the basis of all those facts, conclusions and inferences—none of which is unreasonable—we cannot claim that the case for military action against Iraq has been proved. We cannot conduct our foreign policy on the basis of the principle "my ally right or wrong". The United States has never done so. The events of the 1956 Suez crisis demonstrated that; US unwillingness to support the pound, which, as a reserved currency was under severe pressure, was a compelling factor in causing the United Kingdom to withdraw from that ill-fated and ill-conceived adventure.

At 2.44 pm on 12 January 1991, the US Senate passed a joint resolution to authorise the use of US armed forces pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 678. In short, it authorised the commitment of US forces in the Gulf war. That resolution was passed by only five votes—by 52 to 47. Among those who voted against it were Senators Sam Nunn, Robert Byrd and Daniel Pat Moynihan, none of whom could be described as fainthearted about ensuring that US interests were other than paramount. That vote tells us that—albeit some 11 years ago—to express reservations about the use of military forces against Saddam Hussein cannot be described as anti-American or appeasement. Before the UK lends its support for action against Iraq, hon. Members must be satisfied that there is no other course.

I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) for securing this debate. He has shown a sustained interest in the subject and, although I am rarely in total agreement with him, his long-standing concern for the region reflects especially well on him, as it does on the House. I join him in extending condolences to the Foreign Secretary on the sad death of his father.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq refuses to acknowledge international norms or its own international agreements. It is run by a regime that oppresses its own people and appears intent on developing weapons of mass destruction—we would be naive to see them as being merely defensive in purpose. Iraq under Saddam Hussein represents a clear danger to international security and regional stability and represents a clear affront to human rights—a point about which I would have thought Labour Members would feel especially strongly,

We must be clear that discussion about Iraq is entirely separate from the events of 11 September and nobody seriously attempts to link them in the United States or the United Kingdom—the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) was absolutely right about that. Anyone who tries to establish a link fails to realise that it is a red herring. The events of 11 September may have sharpened perceptions of the various threats posed to international security, but we would be foolish to claim a direct link. Those horrific events changed United States psychology and revealed a new vulnerability. They brought home the fact that the US would rather act to prevent disaster than react when disaster occurs. That is the judgment that it must now make about Iraq.

Containment has been our first aim in tackling Saddam Hussein. It is the policy that we have followed so far—with some success—but we must face the reality that containment alone is not enough to defeat the evil of the Iraqi regime and its weapons programme. Saddam Hussein is abusing the patience of the world and is developing far more destructive potential than he has yet possessed. We must question whether it is any longer realistic to pursue the policy of containment and whether that policy is sufficient to guarantee the safety and security of Iraq's immediate neighbours and the wider world. In an article that I am sure all will want to read in today's Daily Express, The Prime Minister says clearly that containment is now insufficient.

As we assess the latent threat that we face from Iraq, we should not rule out any course of action. I visited Washington in December and was reassured by the mature, intelligent and open way in which those at the heart of the Bush Administration were considering all the options and weighing them up before taking action.

Has not the Prime Minister the duty to come to the House of Commons with his parliamentary colleagues to say the same thing?

On that, I sense that we are all in agreement. Yes.

Conservative Members support the Prime Minister in his determination to tackle the issue and not shy away from it, as some would wish. His full support for President Bush shows an appreciation of the gravity of the issue and we await the outcome of their talks in April. There is clear and present danger and we must face it. Saddam has ignored United Nations resolutions, misused the oil-for-food programme and tortured and killed his people. The no-fly zones are an important policy for protecting the Kurds. I should like to discuss them, but we are squeezed for time and I know that the House will want to hear from the Minister.

There are those who question Saddam's capacity to produce the chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons that we feel are a growing threat. I say to them, where are the thousands of tonnes of precursor chemicals, suitable for chemical weapons use, that are still unaccounted for? Saddam Hussein has not yet complied with UN Security Council resolution 687 regarding inspection, so what is he hiding?

Recently, it has been suggested that Saddam Hussein might once again be prepared to admit inspection teams into Iraq. We would welcome that, but let him say so to the UN and prove to us that it is a realistic option. In the absence of that progress, our options include military action parallel to that undertaken in Afghanistan but, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow says, on an altogether different scale. We should not think that some rebel force, similar to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, will take that military action. On that, too, the hon. Gentleman was absolutely right.

If we or the Americans were to use the Kurds as pawns, they would be massacred. It would be wrong and reckless to sacrifice them on the altar of our ambitions to topple Saddam Hussein. If we are to topple him, we must look for other means, which must include winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and not simply expecting to win through force. As in Afghanistan, we must always remember whose country it is. We must also be certain to win the peace as well as any war. That means considering a post-Saddam Iraq before we act. We must consider reconstruction, humanitarian aid and the massive difficulty of filling the political vacuum left by the regime of a dictator.

We must be firm in our resolve that there can be no support for any form of separatism or any breakaway state. The integrity and unity of the Iraqi state is a must for regional geopolitics and for the continuing viability of the country. We do not want a triangular split into Sunni, Shia and Kurds. If there is to be a change of regime in Iraq, it must be achieved quickly and cleanly. We should be clear that Arab opinion will not tolerate a long, drawn-out campaign, but demands, if it is to tolerate any action, a rapid and decisive conclusion. We must make it clear that effective and conclusive action would constitute liberation, not invasion.

If, as I believe, the Government have considered Iraq's long-term requirements, they should enjoy our support—the support of all those who have a long-term, serious view of what is needed and of those who genuinely have the interests of the Iraqi people at heart. Those who continue to argue that containment is sufficient must answer the charge of naivety.

I congratulate the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), on securing the debate.

I apologise in advance as I do not intend to take any interventions. I have barely 10 minutes to respond to hon. Members' questions and to put Government policy on the record, especially in the light of the 16 minutes taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway).

First, I shall take head-on the points raised in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow began by making a point that, strangely, is often made when a debate has been secured on an issue: he complained that we never have enough time to debate these things. That view was echoed by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who spent all his time addressing that matter rather than the subject.

I do not need to remind hon. Members that the Prime Minister has spent more time in the House answering questions and making statements than either of his two predecessors. I shall bring the matters raised by my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman to the attention of my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.

The Father of the House talked about proposals; there are no proposals, only speculation. The hon. Gentleman said that everything possible should be done to avoid military action; I agree with him. He urged the Government and the international community to talk to the Iraqis. As I am sure he knows, Kofi Annan is tomorrow holding a meeting with an Iraqi delegation in New York and we await the outcome with interest. Our doors are always open to the Iraqis with whom we have contacts in this country and at the United Nations. However, we have nothing to say to them in private that we do not say in public. We wait to see whether they are serious; Saddam Hussein has embarked on charm offensives before and they have come to nothing.

I was grateful to the Father of the House who, in contrast to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin, at least quoted Kofi Annan accurately. He included the phrase "at the present time" in the Secretary-General's views on military action.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) made the point that this has nothing to do with the war on terrorism. We do not quite agree; Iraq is a state sponsor of terrorism. But, we make no secret of the fact that our main concern about that country is its determination to build weapons of mass destruction and the threat that it poses, not just to its neighbours, but to the rest of the world.

My hon. Friend urged the Prime Minister to speak to Kofi Annan. The Prime Minister speaks to him on a regular basis. He called for an outbreak of diplomacy; I am not sure where he has been for the past 12 years. Britain has been in the lead as the architect of the oil-forfood programme and in trying to get a new sanctions regime instituted at the United Nations, which we are confident will be done in May, having won support from the Russians. It is wrong to suggest that Britain has been inactive on the diplomatic front.

My hon. Friend questioned whether there would be any legal base in the hypothetical circumstances that there is military action. The legal view, with which I have some sympathy, is that Iraq is in flagrant breach, not just of United Nations resolutions, but of the ceasefire agreement that it entered into at the end of the Gulf war, which makes that cease fire no longer valid. My hon. Friend went on to say that other countries possess weapons of mass destruction. That is stating the obvious, but he must accept that Iraq is unique in the history of the world in that it has used chemical weapons against its neighbours and its own people, killing tens of thousands in both cases. He went on to suggest that any action against Iraq would break up the international coalition against terrorism and would go down extremely badly in the Arab world.

It is worth making the point that all Labour Members who have spoken in the debate in opposition to the Government's policy opposed our policy in Afghanistan and opposed our policy in Kosovo. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. They also raised the spectre of a disaster in the Arab world over Afghanistan—and look what has happened. I know from my contacts with leaders in the Arab world as recently as last week at the Gulf Co-oporation Council and the EU summit at Grenada in Spain that, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said, there is no love lost between the Arab countries and Saddam Hussein. If anything does happen, their main concern is that it works.

I am grateful for the sympathy of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), but I do not need it. He suggested that the layout in Westminster Hall meant that the Government were isolated. That was a rather bizarre statement, coming immediately after a supportive speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) and a supportive intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes). The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said some wise things about the middle east, but he suggested that, before there was talk about taking military action against Iraq, we needed to solve every other problem in the world. That is a strange argument.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) spoke about the Labour party being the party of conflict resolution. Yes, we are the party of conflict resolution and peaceful solutions. But she and her hon. Friends have to ask themselves—as they failed to do in the instances of Kosovo and Afghanistan—what do they do, faced with a brutal, dictatorial regime that is building a weapons of mass destruction programme and threatening its neighbours and us? It has used those weapons on its neighbours and on its own people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Baillieston (Mr. Wray) spoilt his argument about United States isolationism because he said that he had no confidence in the United Nations either. I do not know where that leaves us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin made his familiar views known in his inimitable way. Some of the good points that he made on the middle east peace process would, I believe, carry more credibility if he had not made a career of being not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years.

Why do you not give way on that slander?

We are not discussing—

The Minister is a liar.

Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that statement.

The Minister told a lie about me.

Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that statement.

Why? The Minister told a blatant lie about me. What else could I do. What else can I call it? I demand that he withdraws the allegation against me.

Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw immediately.

An allegation of dishonourable conduct has been made against me by the Minister. It is an assumption in the House that Members are honourable gentlemen and ladies. His imputation that I am a mouthpiece for a dictator is a clear imputation of dishonour. He is the one who should be withdrawing, not me.

Order. I have no alternative, but to report this matter to the House. I must immediately suspend the sitting for 10 minutes.

May I apologise to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) for taking 10 minutes from his debate? The situation was unavoidable. I shall report the circumstances to the House at 3.30 pm or thereabouts.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I fancy that we may not need all the time available, so the otherwise unfortunate circumstances of this morning may not be disastrous. By good fortune, our debate is relevant and topical because we must decide relatively soon how the next European parliamentary elections should be handled, what system should be used and what the criteria should be.

I remind the House that on 10 November 1998, during the passage of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, the then Home Secretary—the present Foreign Secretary—gave an explicit assurance that the system would be reviewed in light of the 1999 experience and also moved a Government amendment, which I shall quote in full, because it is extremely important:

"(1) The Secretary of State shall appoint one or more persons—

(a) to review the operation of the systems of election provided for by section 3 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978 as substituted by section I of this Act, and

(b) to make a report to the Secretary of State within six months from the day of appointment.

(2) The Secretary of State shall carry out his duty under subsection (1) within one month from the date of the first general election to the European Parliament which takes place after the coming into force of section 1.

(3) The Secretary of State shall lay a copy of any report received under subsection (1)(b) before each House of Parliament.".

The right hon. Gentleman went further, telling the House:

"I must make it clear that a review of the operation of the system does not simply mean a review of the counting process. If this House and the other place approve the amendment, the review will consider whether the closed list system itself operated satisfactorily."

He also promised:

"If the review concludes that the closed-list system is the wrong system as it has produced all sorts of perverse results—and if that is what Parliament finally accepts, and I hope it is—there will be huge pressure on the Government to change. In any event, there will have to be a debate on the result of the review."—[Official Report, 10 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 207–8.]

In the event, the amendment was not accepted.

Hon. Members will recall the to-ings and fro-ings between the two Houses before the Bill finally reached the statute book, but the review was entirely internal to the Home Office—the Government looking at their navel, not an independent, outside review inviting evidence from other interested groups or parties. It was not completed in the six months specified, and there has been no debate until this morning.

The internal review used unequivocal terms:

"The question of the precise type of voting system is obviously a political one which it would be inappropriate for us to try to answer".

Incidentally, that completely negated the statement of the Minister in the other place in answer to my noble Friend Lord Greaves on 4 December 2001. Will the Minister confirm that, as yet, there has been no independent, objective and comprehensive review of the system?

Almost immediately after the 1999 election, a number of myths were peddled by opponents of representative electoral systems. First, Labour reactionaries blamed their poor performance on the system. By a curious coincidence, there was on the same day a by-election under the first-past-the-post system in Leeds, Central. That election had a much lower turnout. In the European election, there was a gap between the parties that reflected the gap in the country, which, had first past the post been used, would have given the Conservatives 60 per cent. of the seats for only 36 per cent. of the vote.

Some Conservatives naturally preferred a system that would have given them that undeserved advantage, although I must say, in fairness to the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), that Conservative Front Benchers argued strongly for open lists during the latter part of the Bill's passage. I anticipate that that will remain the position of their party.

Others claimed that the system caused the low turnout—23.1 per cent. However, it can hardly be said that such a poor turnout was the result of the system, given that, on the same day, the turnout for the Leeds, Central by-election was a disgraceful 19.6 per cent. So, on a day on which two systems were used, that for the European election was marginally more successful.

However, everybody in the House must take low turnout seriously, particularly because we have experienced further disappointments, so I would like to refer to research done since the European election. Official research undertaken on behalf of the Home Office identified a number of factors accounting for the poor turnout—lack of campaign activity during the European election, electoral fatigue after the Scottish, Welsh and council elections, less media coverage, a general trend towards apathy and a feeling of remoteness from the political process—but failed to find any substantial resistance to the system. For example, 89 per cent. of voters found the ballot paper easy to use and the proportion of spoilt papers, which is a good indicator, was lower than in the 1997 first-past-the-post general election. In an Office for National Statistics survey, 95 per cent. of respondents said that the new voting system had no bearing on their decision as to whether to vote.

Research by NOP found that voters were doubtful about the system for a different reason: they saw the regional closed list as evidence that candidates would put party loyalty before loyalty to the electorate, which might have been a material factor in increasing scepticism and discouraging voting. That view was reflected in debates on the Bill. All in all, the official research concludes that the electoral system had a neutral effect on turnout.

Nothing in the subsequent report by the Independent Commission on Alternative Voting Methods, which is more to do with the mechanics of voting, suggests that changing the arrangements on postal voting, e-voting or telephone voting or other tinkering with the traditional polling arrangements can compensate for the perception that voting does not make a real difference. That is the biggest single factor on the issue of turnout.

In parenthesis, interesting evidence from the 1999 European parliamentary elections came from the experience in Northern Ireland. Electors were already familiar with a representative system, as they have had the single transferable vote for some time, and turnout on the same day in the same election was a comparatively respectable 57 per cent.—two and a half times that in the rest of the UK, which suffered from the closed list system.

In those circumstances, it is no surprise that the Labour party's national executive committee accepted soon after the 1999 European parliamentary elections that the closed regional list was unsuitable for elections in Britain.

I hope that the Government, with the non-party Electoral Reform Society, to which I pay tribute, will now consult widely on a voting system for the 2004 European parliamentary elections, which must achieve the following three essentials. First, it must allow voters to choose candidates, not just parties. Secondly, it must be broadly proportional and avoid wild distortion. Thirdly, it must maintain a link between MEPs and areas of the country, presumably in multi-Member constituencies.

The most voter-friendly system, best able to meet those criteria, is undoubtedly STV, as used in Northern Ireland. It enables voters to rank all candidates within and across parties and to take account of all the factors that they think important. Each candidate, not just those lucky enough to be at the top of the list, has a reasonable chance of being elected. All candidates, including those who think that they might be marginal, would have to work for their support before, during and after the election.

The STV system also reduces the power of the party hierarchy and rebuts accusations of control freakery, which have become part of daily comment on politics in recent years. Under the STV system, success depends on the candidates' appeal to the wider electorate, not on rewards for party loyalty. The system also offers opportunities to independents. Most important, however, no vote is wasted. If the first-choice candidate is knocked out, the vote is transferred to the next preference and so on. Voters need not choose among a list of candidates whom they do not support, and their wishes will not be completely wasted.

Let me give an example, in parenthesis, of what I mean. In the south-west, in 1999, a very popular, active and high-profile candidate, who had served as an MEP, was pushed down the list. The system did not register the fact that he appealed across parties, rather than, for example, simply to Liberal Democrats. Under the previous regime, Robin Teverson was seen as Cornwall and Plymouth's MEP, but that counted for nothing under the list system, because he could not appeal for support among members of other parties on a non-party basis. That was a tragedy for the system and for our part of the country.

STV is obviously the most voter-friendly system, and experience in Northern Ireland gives us a useful and demonstrably successful precedent. However, a fully open list system is worth considering, and the Conservative party took up that position in 1998. The open list system has some features of STV, and the determined voter can break away from the order of preference that the parties dictate. Votes count for the party of one's choice, however, so voters may find themselves helping to elect candidates whose views they do not support.

It must be absolutely clear that the closed list system is firmly discredited, and I hope that the Minister takes this opportunity to say that on the Government's behalf. Indeed, it was discredited to a considerable extent, even before it was used, in both Houses and among Members of all parties. It was accepted only reluctantly so that a measure could be placed on the statute book in time for the election. Unless the Government want to increase cynicism and contempt for artificial party discipline, they should say that the closed list system has been firmly rejected as inappropriate to this country.

Semi-open lists are not much better. To start with, they are incredibly complicated, but that is not the real problem. Voters put an X next to their preferred candidates on a party list, but, unless a lot of people do that and the list changes dramatically, the outcome will be no different. That means that only exceptional candidates have any chance of beating the rank that their party gives them. They would require strong individual support, which is almost impossible to achieve in large areas. Large constituencies are inevitable, and they are likely to become bigger when the EU is enlarged and the number of MEPs reduces. The electorate would be likely to view such arrangements as something of a confidence trick played on them by the parties. Let me give an example.

Let us suppose that 80 per cent. of a party's vote comes from loyal party voters over a wide area who simply put their X on the party list. The other 20 per cent. might come from voters who favour a candidate who is popular because he or she is something of an individualist. Even if that candidate has a much larger personal vote than candidates at the top of the ranked list, he or she simply could not be elected. That would be seen as cheating the voters.

It might be suggested that we should consider alternative vote plus, the system advocated by the commission headed by my noble Friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Had the sequence of events been different—if the commission had been able to report well in advance of the devolution legislation—there might have been merit in adopting a standard system for Scotland, Wales, Greater London and so on. Frankly, that was not an option at the time, although it would be appropriate if one were trying to elect the same sort of bodies, as would have been the case.

AV plus is designed to provide a strong local constituency link and broad proportionality. The former, which would inevitably involve duplication and confusion with the roles of Westminster Members of Parliament, is not especially desirable. Indeed, there would be resistance in the House to a system that emphasised the constituency connection, and MPs would fight such duplication and confusion.

As the 2001 general election amply demonstrated, the most powerful turn off for turnout is the perception that one's vote does not matter. Much comment on that election has been about the average turnout, which was an extremely disappointing 59 per cent., but the perceived foregone conclusion is the big disincentive, as can be shown by disaggregating the figures. What matters is not only the average across the country, but what happened in different constituencies.

For example, in Winchester my Liberal Democrat colleague had a majority of only two in 1997, and every vote seemed to the voter to be extremely valuable. The turnout there last year was 72.3 per cent. In Liverpool, Riverside, a traditionally safe seat for the Labour party, there seemed to be little chance of change and the turnout was only 34.1 per cent. The average disguises such wide variations. Taken with the overall perception that the Labour Government were likely to be returned, the incentive to vote in apparently safe seats for all parties was at an all-time low. I can demonstrate that from my experience.

When I was first elected to the House in 1974, my majority was just nine. The electorate had seen that the result was likely to be close, and turnout was 83 per cent. I am glad to say that, last year, my majority was rather more comfortable and well in excess of 9,000. However, it was difficult to persuade my electorate that the result would be terribly close, and I am sad to report that turnout fell to 63 per cent.

In the next European Parliament, we want to ensure that our representatives have a respectable democratic mandate. If we are to achieve that, we must devise an electoral system that gives the voter real choice, minimises wasted votes and affords votes equal value. Such a system would put the people rather than the parties back in the driving seat.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) on securing the debate and, as chair of the all-party group on electoral reform, I am grateful to be able to make a brief contribution. Before the debate, I heard the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) say, "Oh God, it's the pro-proportional representation lobby." I have to plead guilty, but it is important to make one or two points about debates on the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 and what resulted from of it.

No doubt for the best of motives, it has been said that the system of election adopted under the 1999 Act was favoured and pushed for by Members of the House from all parties who, over the years, have supported the more proportional systems. As we discuss reviews of that system, it is important to state that that was simply not the case. If hon. Members read the debates on the legislation, including my contribution on 25 November 1997, they will see that those people said that there were problems with closed lists.

Ultimately, an amendment that called for a review of the system was tabled by hon. Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who have been notable in their support over the years for a more proportional system. There was concern among those who generally support such a system and those who support first past the post about the closed list system as drawn up in the Bill.

Before I move on to the changes that might he made to that system, we should go back a stage. The valid criticisms that people make of the electoral system that was adopted, especially the closed list system, sometimes lead them to look through rose-coloured spectacles at the system that existed before. Let us remember that, under the previous system for elections to the European Parliament, constituencies often did not reflect real communities and were often not generally known in their area. I lived in part of Birmingham that would have been described, geographically, as west of Birmingham, but the European constituency was called Birmingham, East. Such constituencies often did not reflect anything real.

There is logic in considering the region as the basic unit of election for the European Parliament, as that makes sense in terms of the way in which Europe operates, including the disbursal of European funds and programmes. The regional dimension is vital to that, so considering the link between the European Parliament and the regions is sensible. Whatever criticisms we may make of the precise form of electoral system adopted for the 1999 Act, a regional basis for elections should not be rejected out of hand. There is a great deal of merit in the idea.

I ask supporters of first-past-the-post electoral systems, who object to closed lists on the ground of democracy, to reflect on the fact that an electoral system based on first past the post also results in a closed list. The only difference is that the closed list has one name on it per party, rather than several. It is argued that, if there are a number of names on a closed list, voters are denied the choice that they have under first past the post with single-Member constituencies, but that does not stand up to close scrutiny.

My other point about those rose-coloured spectacles that people sometimes put on relates to turnout. The hon. Member for North Cornwall rightly alluded to the matter. If we consider turnout before the last European elections, we may make some interesting discoveries. It is often said that adopting a more proportional system that ties numbers of European parliamentary seats more exactly to votes cast for the parties has led to a drop in turnout, but the evidence for that does not exist.

Before the adoption of the proportional system, Britain was virtually unique in Europe in electing MEPs in first-past-the-post constituencies. If we consider turnout for the 1994 elections, we see that Britain did not come out well compared with other counties. Turnout was 90.7 per cent. in Belgium, 52.5 per cent. in Denmark, 60 per cent. in Germany, 59 per cent. in Spain and 52 per cent. in France. The percentage in the Netherlands was low at 35.6 per cent.—lower, just, than in Britain, where turnout was 36.4 per cent.

The argument that adopting a more proportional system leads to lower turnout does not stand up to scrutiny. Turnout was low in 1994 and appalling at the last elections under the changed system of parliamentary electoral arrangements, but, interestingly, the drop in turnout for those elections is roughly the same as that for general and local elections. Percentages are dropping across the piece. That is not meant to be comforting. The issue should and does worry all politicians, and the drop represents people's profound disconnection with the political process, but it is not related to the introduction of more proportional voting arrangements.

It is important to get those things on the record, but not everything in the garden was lovely during the last European elections. Turnout was appalling and people rightly had deep reservations about adopting a closed list. That has been given more graphic meaning in the past 24 hours. There is a problem with a list system that does not allow the voter to record any preference for specific candidates of the same party. What happens if circumstances change after the election?

A gentleman named Richard Balfe was elected a Labour MEP on a Labour list at the previous European parliamentary elections. We read, in a rather strange statement, that he has joined a different political party. Interestingly, he joined the Conservatives. It is no surprise that that has received a lot of media coverage—it does not happen often.

When the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) defected from the Labour party recently, there was an argument about whether, as one elected a Labour MP, he should stand and fight as a Liberal Democrat or resign his seat. It seemed to me that there was a good argument that he should pursue the latter course. However, at least he could argue that people voted for him personally. How far his constituents voted for him rather than the Labour party is an interesting question—perhaps we will see the results of his decision at the next general election—but he could say that people voted for the individual whose name was on the ballot paper, against which they had put their X. He played down the importance of the fact that his name had "Labour" printed next to it. I disagree with him on that, but we can resolve the issue in due course.

In the European parliamentary elections, however, although the name Richard Balfe was on the ballot paper, the individual voter could not record any preference whatever for him. There is a powerful argument that, when he decided, for his own reasons, to leave the Labour party and join the Conservatives, the voter became disfranchised. Mr. Balfe was not elected as an individual, but because he was on the Labour list. He probably needs to consider his position as a result, but his situation says something about the operation of closed list systems that we need to consider seriously.

There is also the issue of fairness. The relationship between the individual voter and people seeking elective office of any kind is important, and there is a great tradition in British democracy of retaining that link so that the voter can acknowledge the importance of party, but connect on an individual level. It is rather fanciful to suppose that political systems can operate in this day and age without organised political parties, but political parties are made up of people. Not all candidates have the same qualities or views, even within the same party. We should protect the voter's right to recognise that and to express preferences, particularly in multi-Member systems. The credibility of the electoral arrangements adopted for the European parliamentary elections suffered from that link being broken.

In the run-up to passing the 1999 Act, several alternatives were proposed. The hon. Member for North Cornwall alluded to the fairly minimalist idea that became known as the Belgian system. In most cases, it achieves proportionality on the basis of parties and it usually ensures that the ranking of party lists prevails in elections, but it does allow the voter to record a vote against a candidate if he or she wishes. The previous Home Secretary was greatly exercised about naming famous Belgians in that debate, and about Mr. d'Hondt, whose name frequently appeared.

It was decided not to adopt that voting system, but if we are reviewing arrangements for European parliamentary elections we should at least consider it. However, I agree with the hon. Member for North Cornwall that it is not the only option we should examine. A range of electoral choices and systems are available, and he is right to say that, at this stage, we must consider the principles on which the system should operate.

One principle that we should support is a voter's right to vote for a candidate as well as a party. That can happen in different ways. The second principle appears radical when suggested in this place, although one would not think that it should be. The system adopted should broadly reflect the number of votes cast for a party in the number of seats it secures. That might be thought to be common sense, but it is all too often seen in this Parliament as radical and outlandish. It is a principle that should be upheld in any review of European parliamentary electoral arrangements.

The third principle is the most difficult, but perhaps, in a way, the most important. The arrangements that we adopt must reflect, support and encourage a reconnection of voters with the political process. That is the real challenge for us all. No electoral system in the world, whether that of Mr. d'Hondt or anyone else, will alone ensure a reconnection of voters with the political process. Electoral arrangements alone do not do that. They can help, but I put it no more strongly than that.

If we provide that help, we must ensure that we move on to the next task. If we are elected to the House on an ever-dwindling proportion of the vote, we shall all suffer. More importantly, democracy will suffer. When democracy suffers, the whole political system, voters and citizenship suffer too. That possibility is faced not only by this Parliament, but by the European Parliament, for whose elections turnout is already low and worsening, to judge from recent examples. We need to turn our minds to the issue.

Wisdom on this subject is not the monopoly of any one political party. All too often we need to examine how we go about our affairs in this place and in political debate, and consider how we contribute to the disconnection.

It seems to me that all too often the press contribute to the disconnection of politics from the citizen. If the press wish to promote real debate, they should examine some of the ways in which they go about their affairs. The issue is partly about making voting easier in all kinds of ways, although on the basis of experiments that have been carried out so far, the impact of that approach seems limited. We can all do something, but that reconnection is most vital. I hope that the review of European parliamentary electoral arrangements will take place promptly and will reflect the principles of voter choice and representation, broadly linking the numbers of votes cast to seats gained. Most important of all, it should contribute towards reconnecting the citizen with the political process.

It is a pleasure to engage in this debate—a debate that I remember fondly from the previous Parliament. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) on raising the matter. He made the important point that if there is a review, it should be open and the subject of widespread debate, rather than being an internal matter for the Home Office or the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. One factor in that decision may be the Government's embarrassment about how things have turned out.

I remember the European Parliamentary Elections Bill ping-ponging backwards and forwards between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and certain phone calls being made by the then leader of the Liberal Democrats to Downing street to say how important and totemic the issue was, and that it should form the basis of co-operation between Liberal Democrats and the Labour Government. Eventually, the Government pushed through the legislation, and I can remember a cheer on the Floor of the House, not from the Labour or Conservative Benches, but from about 20 Liberals, who waved their Order Papers as if the Bill were a milestone to be welcomed.

Listening to the debate today, one gets the impression that people are defensive about the system that has been pushed through. The tone of the debate has been to try to explain why turnout is so low and to argue that it is apparently not the fault of the system. The key point is that European elections are different from every other election. When people turn out for a general election, they turn out to elect a Government. If people turn out for a council election, in most cases, they turn out to elect an administration to run a local authority. I am unsure what people think that they are doing when they turn out for a European election, because the division of seats between parties does not have a dramatic effect on people's lifestyles. I am not sure that people connect politically with the system of government in Europe, which is why low turnouts are inevitable.

In addition, I suspect that the general antipathy towards Europe means that there will always be low turnouts, although it is clear that the turnout under a closed list system was lower than under the original firstpast-the-post system. I like first past the post. It is simple and ensures that a Member is linked to a geographical area. Although the European Parliamentary Elections Bill was much criticised when it went through the House of Commons on the basis that the constituencies were large and unwieldy, I thought that it worked quite well.

In my constituency, there was a Member for Dorset. In the next-door county, there was a Member for Wiltshire. That meant that there was a county council, half a dozen local authorities, branches of the National Farmers Union and the Women's Institute, and a definite link between organisations and the elected representative. On the whole, people knew who their Member was, and if there was a problem, they knew who to get hold of. There was also a link between the Member elected to the European Parliament and the half a dozen Members of Parliament for that area who would discuss problems and correspondence among themselves.

The then Home Secretary—the present Foreign Secretary—said that the constituencies were far too large and not sufficiently representative, but the Government then managed to give us a system of constituencies with millions of voters. If there was any logic in saying that a Dorset or Wiltshire constituency was too large, there is little logic in having Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Dorset lumped together. I do not believe that it is possible to act as a representative of such an area.

We have gone backwards. Having introduced the 1999 Act and abolished those large European constituencies, the Government introduced the Greater London Authority Act 1999, which, under an additional member system, created large first-past-the-post constituencies in London that meant twinning London boroughs. If that size was unacceptable for Europe, it is inconsistent to have first-past-the-post representatives for two London boroughs, because they are similar in size to the former European constituencies. I suspect that the Government's views change depending on what objectives they have at the time. First past the post worked pretty well.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) is right about the closed list of one, but that allows people to vote for individuals. The hon. Member for North Cornwall made a good point about Mr. Teverson. It is ironic that, had the system been first past the post in the west country, it is likely that at least two Liberals would have been elected. Changing to a list system, in the west if not in the country as a whole, was a disadvantage to them.

I raised another subject with the then Home Secretary several times. If the principal driving force of the system is proportionality, and if people have ticked the box that says, "Conservative", "Liberal Democrat", "Labour", "UKIP" or whatever, what happens when someone switches party? Those Members will not have been voted for personally; they were on a party list. I asked the then Home Secretary about that before the Bill went through the House, but he did not want to address the issue.

The first Member to switch party was Bill Newton-Dunn; he was elected as a Conservative but switched to the Liberal Democrats. The second Member to switch was Michael Holmes, who was leader of the UK Independence party but fell out with its two members and decided to become an independent Member in the south-west. We come next to the far-sighted and extremely principled decision of Mr. Richard Balfe to join the Conservative party, which brings our proportionality back to what it was before Bill Newton-Dunn left us.

It is a poor system if although people have voted for a party, the Member can switch sides. I believe that such a person should be disqualified. Otherwise, it makes nonsense of proportionality. Because by-elections are not held, if Mr. Bill Newton-Dunn, Mr. Michael Holmes or Mr. Richard Balfe were to die, they would be replaced by someone else from the party list that the Member was on at the time of the election; someone would automatically move up the list. Proportionality would thus be restored.

The dilemma with a closed list system is that allowing Members to switch parties at will makes nonsense of it. I agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield that if someone has been elected as Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, and it was his name on the ballot paper, it is a respectable position to argue that people voted for him—expecting him to use his judgment. However, that argument is less respectable when people have simply voted Labour, and it would be interesting to see what would happen.

The only Member to have switched parties in my lifetime who thought it reasonable to go to his electorate after having changed party was Bruce Douglas-Mann, in the constituency of Mitcham and Morden. He switched to the Social Democratic party, and decided to stand again because he had gained a small majority in 1979 with the help of his Labour activists. Having done the honourable thing, however, he lost his seat to my former colleague Angela Rumbold. Those who switch parties may not necessarily wish to follow that precedent.

There is a general problem with the closed list system. I believe in first past the post, because the rules have been adequately drawn up. Turnout under the closed list system will inevitably be low; unlike the first-past-thepost system, in which candidates had to get their party workers out on the streets, the large regional area constituencies probably led to a lower turnout.

Today the Liberals trotted out their policy for a single transferable vote in multi-Member constituencies, except where there are natural geographical boundaries. I have never been a great fan of STV. We used to use it a little for university elections, but I do not think it is used by any country apart from Malta and southern Ireland.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the single transferable vote is now used for the election of some Members of the European Parliament in the United Kingdom, because it is used in Northern Ireland?

rose—[Interruption.]

Order. There seems to be an electrical fault of some sort in the microphone system, or a loose connection somewhere. I can give hon. Members that professional advice free.

So long as you assure me that it is not the Iraqis, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I seem to remember that the Australian Senate uses STV to some extent. The biggest problem is that the system requires competition between candidates of the same party. If we moved to an open list system or STV, a great change of culture would be required, especially if the constituencies were geographically large. Also, individuals rather than parties would have to run campaigns. In terms of expense, and in terms of our culture in the UK, that would not go down especially well. In Ireland, individuals' children or grandchildren often inherit constituencies, because party machines have been built up in specific areas to win STV contests. I am not sure that I am a great fan of STV.

There is a respectable argument for the German system, and if we were to depart from first past the post—my first love—and use it for London, Scotland and Wales, it would be sensible to stick to that one system. People would at least have a chance of understanding it. The proposals for the European election were unacceptable, and the system has proved to be poor. Most people would prefer change. My preference would be for first past the post, but moving to smaller regions and open lists might increase public choice. Electoral systems must ultimately be for people, not for party machines.

Another problem caused by closed list systems for large regions was how the parties selected candidates. None of the parties felt happy about the manner in which we had to select and then rank candidates for specific contests. That left a nasty taste in most of our mouths. We ought to review and change the system so that it is more publicly acceptable.

The Government have given us an unacceptable system that needs reform. Change will best be provided by open debate and dialogue between members of parties in the House, rather than internally and quietly. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the Government will be far more open about the electoral system that our people deserve.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) on securing the debate, which is exceptionally timely. He drew attention to the fact that Opposition parties should not have to bring this matter before the House. Instead, the Government should seek the views of the House and lay their proposals before us. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will make up for the deficit of the failure to carry out the promised review.

In lieu of that, and before we consider what we should do in future, it is worth being realistic about the good and bad points of the 1999 election. For the first time, an election was held across the whole United Kingdom using proportional representation. The implementation of that system throughout the UK was a close-run thing. Hon. Members suggested that it was by no means certain that it would happen at the time. However, it did happen. The Liberal Democrats unashamedly welcome that, and hope for a widening of the application of proportional representation to our electoral systems—for this place among others—in the years to come.

The most obvious of the good outcomes of the change is that a much more proportional result, in party political terms, was achieved than ever before, whether for European or other elections. Secondly, regional balance was provided. I make that point because the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) alluded to the situation in the south-west. That is fine, but I come from the north-west, where the chances of a Liberal Democrat being elected in a non-proportional system are approximately zero. We now have a fair representation of all the parties in all the regions.

I would not want the House to misunderstand the importance of such fair representation. It is no good for democracy if all the Conservatives come from the south-east of England, all the Labour Members come from the north of England and all the Liberal Democrats come from the south-west. We need the benefits that regional balance has brought.

Another result of change, although perhaps not everyone would agree that this is a positive outcome, is that it has allowed a measure of gender balance in representation. There has certainly been an opportunity for my party to attend to that in a conscious and determined way, resulting in an exact 50:50 split between the sexes. The vagaries of first past the post, for instance, often make that difficult to achieve.

Changing from first past the post to the closed list system that was used in 1999 brought about some clear good outcomes. However, some other effects that are sometimes assumed to be negative have proved, on examination of the evidence, to be neutral. Certainly, the effect on turnout was neutral. There was a substantial fall in turnout between the 1997 general election and the 1999 European election. One could draw the conclusion that that had something to do with the system. However, study of the figures for the 2001 general election shows that that fall was part of an overall pattern of decline.

The Minister might want to reflect on the idea that a reduction in turnout between the 2001 parliamentary election and the next European election equal to that between the 1997 general election and the 1999 European election would imply national turnouts in the low teens for the next European parliamentary election. The Home Office's internal report makes the point that there is no evidence of an impact on turnout as a result of the change that we are discussing.

The second way in which the impact of the change has proved to be neutral is related to the question of whether the electorate were confused, whether they could discriminate, and whether the new arrangements affected the way in which they cast their votes. The Home Office report contains useful figures, and its finding is that voters were not confused. Only a small minority said that they failed to understand the system. The proportion of spoiled votes was lower than in the preceding general election, and there was little evidence that any voter failed to go to the polling booth because of confusion about the voting system—still less because of worry about a very large ballot paper.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall made a point about the Leeds, Central parliamentary by-election, which took place on the same day as the European election. Some myths have been built around that event, but it is worth examining the facts. Almost exactly 13,000 votes were cast in the by-election, and, to within 20 votes, the same number were cast in the same constituency for the European election on the same day. There is every indication that it was the same 13,000 voters who went to the polling station in Leeds, Central, were given two ballot papers, and put them in separate boxes.

Interestingly, the outcome was not the same in the two elections. The voters of Leeds, Central did not vote for the political parties in the parliamentary by-election in the same proportions as they did in the European election in the same constituency area. Those figures are on the record and easy to find. In other words, the voters of Leeds, Central went into the polling booth, were given two papers and deliberately voted differently in the parliamentary by-election, in which they were sending a new MP to Parliament, from the way that they voted for their Member of the European Parliament.

That is interesting and should dissuade us from the view that the electorate does not know what the hell it is doing. The electorate is quite smart. I will make a point that is not particularly to the advantage of my party: in Leeds, Central our result for the parliamentary by-election was substantially better than our result for the European election. In all conscience I must say that that was because the voters of Leeds, Central were less impressed with our approach to European policy than they were with our approach to national policy.

I am not revealing any great state secret there—one can see the evidence in any MORI poll—but my point is that, far from being confused by having two voting systems and separate programmes put in front of them, the voters were able to discriminate. I want to nail down the argument that, by introducing a proportional system, we have somehow confused people into not voting, or putting their vote in the wrong place.

Having said something about the good outcomes, and having, I hope, dispelled some of the myths about the neutral outcomes, I should say that there have been some poor outcomes. The hon. Member for Poole says, quite rightly, that there was much waving of Order Papers on the Liberal Democrat Benches when a proportional system was introduced, but it is no secret that we argued strongly that that system should have been better. The system that was introduced is, comparatively speaking, fair to political parties, but it is not fair to voters. The voters, who, as I said, are quite smart, know that well.

All the matters under discussion today could have been presented in the form of an official Government report for consideration by the House, in preparation for the next election. It is a matter of great regret that a full review has not taken place. The Home Office conducted a review that said some useful things, but did not collect evidence in a proper consultative way. There has been no opportunity to debate the outcome. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall very properly made the point that, had things gone to plan, such a review would have been a legal requirement under the Bill. It appears to have been a fluke of the timing of the second Bill that that requirement was not built in. It is disappointing that the Government have not felt able to hold such a review.

The Liberal Democrats would like to see the single transferable vote extended from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom. That would provide the opportunity to choose between new and old Labour candidates, pro and anti-Euro candidates, men and women, Lancashire and Cheshire, and between Merseyside-based and Manchester-based candidates, in a way that is not open to electors under a closed list system.

Will the Minister introduce a review? Even if he does not, will he abandon the closed list—and if he abandons the closed list, will he ensure that we adopt the single transferable vote? Will he and his Government, for goodness' sake, let go of the candidate selection procedure, so that the popular conception that politicians are in control of the voting system can be ended and the people put back in control? We also need to raise awareness of the significance of the European Parliament and ensure that voters understand what it does.

The hon. Member for Poole made a number of highly relevant points. However, in reply to his point about by-elections, closed lists and standing down, I should point out that the system works for the lower House in Australia, where the Chief Whip of every party holds a letter of resignation from every Member, and may submit that letter if a Member changes party.

Do not give them ideas.

For every illness there is a cure, and for every cure there is an illness. When we make our claims, we must be careful how we proceed.

To follow what the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) has just said, I agree that we should be careful, especially when we make suggestions that Chief Whips might be listening to. One never knows where one will end up.

The last time the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), the Minister and I debated electoral issues was during proceedings on the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill. I am pleased that that legislation has been enacted. I mention it because at that time, there was much unanimity of view on the importance of that legislation. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove commented on how proportional representation systems have enabled parties to achieve a better gender balance. However, parties should not rely on proportional representation to improve gender balance. It is essential that all parties in this House—especially mine, given its record—work hard to ensure that more women enter the House, so that women are better represented.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall has raised a valid subject. Like other hon. Members, I want to comment on some of the issues relating to individual electoral systems for the European Parliament and elsewhere. However, the core issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised is the fact that the Government gave a commitment to review the electoral arrangements for the European Parliament, but so far have not done so.

I refer hon. Members to a written answer that the Minister gave the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on 26 February. The hon. Gentleman asked the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions about

"the timing and structure of the proposed review of the new voting systems for the devolved administrations and the European Parliament and the report of the Jenkins Commission."

The Minister replied:

"In our manifesto, which sets out our intentions for this Parliament, we said we would review our experience of the new voting systems for the devolved Administrations, the European Parliament, and the London Assembly along with the recommendations of the Jenkins report to assess whether changes might be made to the electoral system for the House of Commons. That remains our intention. The timing and structure of any review has yet to be decided."—[Official Report, 26 February 2002; Vol. 380, c. 1181 W.]

The next round of the European parliamentary elections will be in 2004, so the Government will have to get their skates on if they are to conduct an open review of the type that every hon. Member will welcome. They will have to act swiftly if there is to be a genuine assessment of the voting system that was introduced before the last European parliamentary elections, and changes are to be made if the review implies that they are necessary. Yet again, I fear that the Department is too taken up with other matters, and is not addressing the real issue.

There is a need to review. This is not just about closed lists; I hope that the Minister will respond to a report from some months ago in a national newspaper that the European Commission was considering the introduction of transnational party lists as a voting system for the European parliamentary elections. Those of us who do not like the concept of party lists for the elections in the United Kingdom believe that transnational party lists are even more likely to alienate the electorate from wanting to vote.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall suggested in passing that those who opposed proportional representation did not believe in representative systems of election. In fact, the first-past-the-post system, which I believe in, is a representative system, although it does not fall within the category of proportional representation. I would not want the debate to go by without challenging the suggestion that systems other than proportional representation are not representative.

The hon. Gentleman commented on the impact that the closed list system had had on the Conservative party's results in the 1999 European parliamentary elections. He acknowledged that those who were on the Opposition Front Bench during the passage of the European Parliamentary Elections Bill had argued for an open list system. He added that our party would have won more seats under the first-past-the-post-system—but our concern is to support the system that we believe will provide the best representation for the electorate and the best means of developing a Government who can govern and take decisions in the interests of the electorate.

My party has both gained and suffered as a result of the systems of proportional representation in different parts of the country. We continue to oppose proportional representation for the European Parliament and to support the first-past-the-post system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poole made clear.

My hon. Friend also said how bad the system that the Government had introduced for the European parliamentary elections was. They introduced a closed list system, which increased the control of political parties over the electoral system and reduced the feeling among the electorate that they were connected to those who represented them in the European Parliament.

I accept the evidence, such as it is, as regards the low turnout in the European parliamentary elections. The quantitative research carried out by the Office for National Statistics did not show that the turnout was connected to the voting system, as anyone who reads the Library note on the subject will see. On the face of it, that was the result of the research, but I wonder whether it is true. When I was canvassing during that election, people would ask, "Who is my candidate?" When I explained that there was a different system and they did not have an individual candidate, they immediately turned off, saying, "I want to be represented by an individual who I know and who I can go to."

One fact that became apparent from the low turnout in the European parliamentary elections was that people did not feel connected to the European Parliament and did not, therefore, feel a desire to vote for it. I suspect that the closed list system that the Government introduced will lead to increasing apathy and to an increasing lack of connection between the electorate and the European Parliament, whose Members they elect. Turnout could be adversely affected if we continue to use that system. Indeed, people still ask me, "Who is my Member of the European Parliament?" I have to explain that the Conservative party has allocated individual MEPs particular geographical areas, such as the county of Berkshire, so that they can build up a relationship, and people can feel connected. The system goes against the building of such relationships, however, and does not provide the electorate with the same degree of connection.

My party continues to believe that the first-past-thepost system is the best way to enable members of the electorate to feel that they are voting for an individual who will represent them, whatever the elected body. That system requires a party to have a wide appeal across the electorate, rather than simply to gain votes on the back of appeals to narrow sectional interests, as is the case in some proportional representation systems. This is not only about the zindividual, but about the need for a party to have a set of policies that appeal widely across the electorate.

The Government should keep their manifesto commitment to review the electoral arrangements for the European Parliament. The fundamental issue for the debate has been that the Government have failed to keep that commitment, but I continue to support the view that the best system for elections to that Parliament is first past the post.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) on securing the debate, which has produced some interesting contributions. Clearly the issue will not go away. I am grateful to all hon. Members who took part for their advice, although it will be no enormous surprise when I say that not all of it can be accepted.

In such debates, there is a sense in which we move towards having a philosophical seminar on the practical utility of Kant's categorical imperative as the basis of an ethical system. I am interested both in Kant's categorical imperative and in elections, so I welcome that. However, we need to ensure that we consider not only the philosophical basis of what we are discussing but its utility, as several contributions have emphasised.

In terms of utility, I was a little perplexed by the suggestion that a change in the system would put votes back in the hands of people rather than parties. I wonder what parties mean in such a view of the world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) said, parties are collections of people who work within the democratic process for positions and ambitions. Parties are about people. We might paraphrase Voltaire and say that in a democracy, if parties did not exist it would be necessary to invent them. The idea that we could somehow produce a system that checkmated the influence of parties by offering a greater good than them does not have great bearing on the utility of electoral systems, which is what we ought to be thinking about.

Several hon. Members suggested that Members of the European Parliament could have a read-across from Members of Parliament in terms of their constituency responsibilities. I wonder about the genuine utility of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield reminded us that even under the previous system, MEPs were not exactly known by every member of every household. Indeed, it is difficult to see how they could have been. Hon. Members have pointed out that under the proposed expansion of the European Community, the number of our MEPs would be reduced to 72 from 87, but the idea that even 72 MEPs across the country could have similar individual connections with constituencies, as if there were a direct analogy with Members of Parliament, is fanciful.

My hon. Friend suggested that in terms of how Europe and its debates work, there was a strong philosophical case for allying representation in the European Parliament with some regional basis, and that has some salience. As hon. Members have pointed out, however, the issue is essentially political. I cannot see the immediate philosophical objection to different electoral systems for different forms of representation, for example. The idea that we must have the same system for Parliament, the Greater London Assembly and European elections does not have a great basis in fact.

One could say that the advocates of the single transferable vote are the Plymouth Brethren of the PR firmament, and tend to regard other forms of proportional or semi-proportional representation as lesser moral activities. However, there is something to be said for taking a pluralistic view of how systems work and considering the relationship between desired outcomes and representative institutions.

Does the Minister not think that there is value in having consistency between the systems that operate for the same election in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom?

I did mention the Plymouth Brethren element of the debate.

Certain factors associated with the electorate and the system in Northern Ireland enhance the value of using the single transferable vote in Northern Ireland. However, my general point was that for elections to a particular assembly that is directly related to the people whom it represents, and is seen to be making decisions immediately adjacent to those people, one might consider a system different from the one that is appropriate for electing a number of members to another assembly, other members of which are elected from elsewhere.

As for utility, I was interested in the logic of the suggestion that there should be resignation notes in the Whip's locker, especially under a system in which people are elected through party lists. However, that leads us to the further philosophical question—Burke's question, in fact—of whether a person is a representative or a delegate. If people are representatives they should be able to change their minds—but that opens up other problems.

The hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and others talked about declining election turnouts. Indeed, the Home Office review indicated that there was no direct connection between the new system and the decline in turnout. Many hon. Members have rehearsed the arguments about turnout. It is true that turnout for European parliamentary elections is distressingly low throughout Europe. As hon. Members have said, it is up to all of us to think more widely about how that decline can be reversed, but the idea that one method of electing people to one parliament will turn things around is fanciful.

The debate has concentrated on comparing the closed list system with the open list system but the first election that was held under the new system is not exactly ancient history; it took place only three years ago. At the time, we had extensive debates about the merits of the two systems. The system worked in the election. The publicity put out by the Home Office ensured that public knowledge—both of the fact that an election was to take place and that a new proportional system would be used—was high. About 57 per cent. of the electorate knew that they would be voting in a different way, and there was no suggestion that anyone did not vote because they preferred to vote using a different system. The closed list system is not discredited. Indeed, it continues to operate in several European countries, where there is no ferment of discussion about whether it should be abandoned.

The closed list system has several advantages for voters. It is simple and easy to understand. It relates well to previous systems with which the electorate are already familiar. One vote for the party of one's choice is a familiar scenario for most voters. It produces a proportionate result—an important change that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) has welcomed. Although some might argue that the complexities of the d'Hondt method might tax the best mathematicians, I suspect that members of the public are not especially concerned about what method will be used to count the votes. The electorate know that the top candidate from each party is likely to get in. It is, therefore, possible to defend the closed list system. So far, it has been used for only one election, which is hardly a fair trial. We adopted it only three years ago and have operated it only once.

The Labour party's manifesto commitment was to review the Jenkins commission recommendations for Westminster elections. The question from my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) included all elections, but if the hon. Member for Maidenhead reads the Labour party manifesto commitment, she will see—

Order. The next debate is on medical liability.

Thank you, Mr. Beard. I congratulate you on your elevation to the Chairman's Panel. It is nice to meet again in a different environment.

I look forward to the debate. It seems from opening a newspaper or listening to the radio as though everything that can go wrong with this country's health care system is going wrong. We have filthy and germ-infested hospitals, our surgeons are incompetent and our nurses uncaring. Things are so desperate that the Leader of the Opposition has to raise an individual case with the Prime Minister before taking the time to check out the facts or speak to the hospital involved. However, in my experience, most national health service treatments work well, most doctors are good at what they do and most patients leave NHS care not only unharmed, but substantially better than when they entered it.

The recent Wanless report, which focused mainly on NHS funding, contained an interesting finding. People who are asked whether they are satisfied with the NHS are more likely to say that they are satisfied if they have recently been in hospital. That is an important piece of information. We are more likely to see the positive aspects of our health care system if we have direct—not indirect—experience of it. However, there is no point in denying that things do occasionally go wrong in the NHS. Some people are distressed and alarmed by the level of care that they or their relatives receive, and, indeed, sometimes things go badly wrong. We may all remember the case of 18-year-old Wayne Jowett, who had the wrong drug injected into his spine and died some weeks later. We certainly remember the terrible and unforgivable details of the scandals surrounding Bristol Royal infirmary and Alder Hey children's hospital, and Harold Shipman's incomprehensible violence. The Guardian's headline today is "Drug mistake led to baby's heart failure". On one or two occasions, events in hospitals and the health service go sadly wrong.

Those cases are examples of things going wrong, but they are all very different. Various mistakes are made in the health service. There is simple human error, which will always occur, no matter how regrettable its outcomes might be. There is incompetence and negligent failure to pick up on doctors who are out of their depth or who consistently let down their patients. There are criminal evil-doers who wilfully and recklessly damage people in their care. Individual failures and the inability of the system to pick up on those failures play a role in all those categories.

It is difficult to estimate how many adverse events occur in the NHS. A study conducted in two London hospitals found that about 10 per cent. of patients admitted to acute hospitals experienced an adverse event, about half of which were preventable with current standards of care. That is also the picture that I gained following an analysis of the local Norfolk and Norwich hospital.

The debate about problems of medical error must be held on two premises. First, errors will occur. No matter how hard we try, we occasionally get things wrong. One of my friends who is a consultant recently told me that hospital practice should operate under the presumption of Murphy's law, which states that whatever can go wrong, will. There are some lessons in that for the organisation of hospitals and for patient care in general. Processes must be analysed to establish what can go wrong, and strategies of prevention need to be considered.

Secondly, if things have gone wrong, that is hugely distressing for all the parties involved. It should be recognised that no system of dealing with medical errors after they have occurred, whether it be straightforward litigation, mediation, no-fault compensation or a complaints procedure, can do away with that basic fact. There will be conflict, dissatisfaction and irritation no matter which system of compensation and redress is devised. The people who advertise so-called alternative ways of conflict resolution sometimes forget that basic fact.

We must try to do several things. We need to prevent mistakes—and resulting harm—wherever possible, and to help those who have suffered through a medical error quickly, proactively and cost-effectively; and we must do those things in ways that do not demoralise and undermine health professionals at their place of work.

Someone who has taken part in complaints procedures and independent reviews has told me that he has witnessed consultants angrily storming out of meetings about a complaint against them, and immediately joining their team in the operating theatre to conduct major surgery. That cannot be in anyone's interests.

We must guard against surgeons becoming unwilling to operate on high-risk patients; and that is happening. If doctors focus on their position in a league table rather than on what is best for their patients, something is profoundly wrong.

That checklist serves to highlight that the NHS, and the politicians responsible for the NHS, can do better in many areas. For a long time, no quality assurance systems were in place, and patient safety was dealt with in uncoordinated and haphazard ways. The Government have started to implement a proper patient safety agenda to address those problems. The Health Act 1999 set up the Commission for Health Improvement, which carries out clinical governance reviews. There are now national service frameworks for many conditions and treatments. In 2001, a new National Patient Safety Agency was established to collate and monitor a central register of all adverse events within the NHS. The NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Bill has introduced a new body, the Council for the Regulation of Health Care Professionals, and it has also abolished the community health councils—which some of us have had debates and disputes about—and replaced them with the patient advocacy and liaison services, which we are examining, to see how effective they will be.

Those are great measures. They address prevention, and the design of health care to ensure that it is safe and satisfying for patients, and they ought to be welcomed. However, those measures were introduced recently, and more needs to be done.

By way of offering an example of what further measures should be taken, let us consider the case of injecting a drug that must only be used intravenously into the spine, as happened to a young man named Wayne Jowett with fatal consequences. Two cancer drugs, vincristine and methotrexate, got mixed up. No proper system of reporting and collecting such incidents has been in place in past years. Over the past 10 years, 10 people have died in these circumstances. If one thinks of the amount of injections that are given in hospitals every day, or the amount of times that those particular cancer drugs are injected, that figure is not very high. However, each case represents a huge tragedy, particularly as this mistake—a simple human error—is so easy to prevent.

It would be technologically easy to design the respective syringes and needles in such a way that only intra-spinal drug syringes could be used with intraspinal needles. It is incomprehensible to me—and to people who work in hospitals—why that has not happened: it seems to be one of those cases where the drug companies point at the needle manufacturers, and vice versa, but why on earth do the Medicines Control Agency or the Medical Devices Agency not intervene? What are they for, if not to make medicines and medical equipment safer?

It is a good idea to standardise best practice, but no health practitioner can know and memorise 300 or so written procedures for every conceivable treatment. That, more than anything else, highlights that the NHS is in dire need of investment in proper information dissemination and storage systems. Too many accidents happen because a practitioner does not have, or cannot find, information that is theoretically available.

No one present cannot have seen, and been shocked by, piles of patient notes—unconnected heaps of paper floating around in cardboard files. Essential, life-saving information is hidden away among stacks of irrelevant—and sometimes decades old—correspondence. Vital information about a patient can be hidden in a welter of waste paper. It is astonishing that a safety-critical process such as health care depends on a documentation system that has changed little in two centuries.

A huge investment in information technology for the NHS is needed. A functioning electronic patient record is essential to the reduction of clinical misjudgement caused by lack of information. One of the longest running electronic patient record systems is in the oncology department at my local hospital, the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. It has served the clinicians there for at least eight years, and it has been demonstrated twice to the Department of Health, but it has not received a flicker of interest. We cannot afford to ignore the under-investment in information dissemination systems in the NHS any longer.

In fact, the solution does not lie with small-scale EPR systems, but with the development of a national medical records system that is maintained on a secure backbone using common and non-proprietary datasets and applications through the wired-up NHS. The NHS information technology strategy that exists must be implemented urgently. I remember the disaster following the introduction of IT systems into the Home Office's passport section, and the thought of a similar occurrence in the NHS sends shivers down my spine. It must be possible to muster the expertise and commitment that is required to get the NHS wired up.

There is a strong economic incentive for bringing the NHS up to speed and into the age of information technology, although I hope that that is not the only argument to which the Department of Health will listen. The Wanless report argues for that.

Medical errors are extremely expensive. Department of Health figures show that the NHS spends £400 million a year on settling claims for negligence. The money that is spent on negligence cases alone would be sufficient to fund the work of a large health service trust for an entire year.

We must rethink what we need to do if things go wrong. I welcome the Department of Health's decision to establish a clinical negligence working party to draft a White Paper on medical negligence and liability.

I shall mention a few more core facts. Last year's Audit Commission report shows that the cost of litigation to the NHS in the vast majority of cases exceeded the value of the settlements that were reached. For every £10,000 that was spent on an average case, the subsequent compensation settlement was £5,000.

In 1999, the Select Committee on Health found that 70 per cent. of claimants came out of litigation feeling dissatisfied and, especially, that many of their questions remained unanswered. Under the current system, it is hard to obtain remedies other than financial compensations, such as prevention of recurrence, apologies and the opportunity to discuss issues with the other side.

Legal aid is available to only 48 per cent. of the adult population in medical negligence cases. One must be either very poor or quite wealthy in order to access the civil justice system. Additionally, medical negligence cases take longer than any other cases before the High Court.

The threat of litigation has profound effects on staff morale and the culture of clinical institutions. Professor Ian Kennedy's report on the Bristol Royal infirmary children's surgery scandal points out that we need a culture of change. A culture of openness and cooperation will not be achieved in the shadow of an adversarial and defensive legal system.

I will be interested to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister about the Department's ideas for tackling those problems. Is the Department contemplating a no-fault compensation scheme, which was recommended by Professor Kennedy? 'Will the Minister listen to the worries of patient groups that no-fault compensation does not do away with the problems of identifying whether an error has occurred and of public and personal accountability?

The often-quoted New Zealand example shows that no-fault compensation cannot be given to anybody who is unhappy with the outcome of health treatments. People who receive treatment are ill, and it is necessary to distinguish between an operation that could not help a patient and an operation that was botched. If we give up that distinction, medical compensation may become unsustainable. The New Zealand model is continuously adapted to consider such problems.

Is the Minister considering the use of mediation as an alternative form of conflict resolution? How would mediation relate to litigation? Could people access the courts after they had tried mediation?

Some people argue that an extended and more flexible complaints procedure could offer the solution to the problems that I mentioned earlier. However, if compensation was made available within complaints procedures, which the National Audit Office suggested in 2001, they might become as defensive and adversarial as court procedures are at present.

I realise that we are examining a complicated problem for health service providers, patients and politicians. I doubt that there are many easy answers. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us about the lines of thinking that the Department of Health pursues. The problem is major to the NHS, and if we do not solve it, we may increase the cynicism that people have towards our health system.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) on securing this important debate on medical liability and clinical negligence. It is an important subject and my hon. Friend has made some significant and thoughtful points.

The national health service treats thousands of patients every day. It treated more than 12 million patients in England in 1999–2000 alone. Additionally, 43 million patients attended out-patient clinics and more than 14 million visited accident and emergency departments. My hon. Friend is right that with so many patients being treated, clinical errors are sometimes inevitable. When things go wrong, it is important that patients can take the appropriate action and that there is a simple, clear and transparent system for dealing with their concerns quickly, effectively and with the minimum trauma. My hon. Friend is right that there are two aspects to this. It is about learning from mistakes to prevent their repetition and about ensuring that patients get proper redress, explanation, and response.

Under the current system, compensation for harm or injuries suffered as a result of clinical negligence is, in general, paid only where legal liability can be established. Compensation is payable where it can be shown that there has been negligence either by act or omission, there has been harm, and the harm was caused by the negligence. Each claim for compensation will need to be considered on its own merits. Where an agreement between the parties involved cannot be reached, the issues can be resolved only through the civil justice system.

The Government believe that NHS patients who have been harmed or injured as a result of clinical negligence should be able to obtain correct and full compensation. That applies equally to NHS patients treated in the independent sector or overseas and those treated in NHS hospitals. The need to reform the handling of clinical negligence cases was illustrated by the criticisms of the present system in the National Audit Office report published in May 2001, to which my hon. Friend referred, "Handling Clinical Negligence Claims in England".

The report highlighted the increasing number and cost of claims, including legal costs, the length of time it takes to settle claims and the problems caused by the existing separation of the complaints and compensation systems in providing the remedies that claimants say they want. In particular, it pointed out that legal and other costs of settlement can often be greater than the settlement itself for some smaller-value claims. The summarised accounts for health authorities, NHS trusts and the NHS litigation authority show that expenditure by the NHS on clinical negligence for the financial year 1999–2000 was £373 million.

The costs of clinical negligence are rising for a number of reasons. Examples include recent House of Lords and Court of Appeal judgments, which have had implications for compensation levels in general. Several factors need to be taken into account. The numbers and costs of clinical negligence claims are significant concerns to the public, the Government and the NHS. We said in the NHS plan that we intend to make further changes to the system for dealing with clinical negligence to try to address those concerns. My hon. Friend asked a series of questions about the Government's present thinking. I will try to set out for him some of the issues that are being considered at this stage, but he will understand that conclusions have not yet been reached.

The chief medical officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, is chairing an advisory committee, drawn from patient groups and the medical and legal professions, to consider possible options for change. The public have also had an opportunity to make their views known. We are taking an open-minded approach to a wide range of potential measures and are not ruling anything out at this stage. However, in considering what reforms may be necessary, the chief medical officer's advisory group is exploring a number of specific areas for reform, including no-fault compensation.

No-fault compensation would remove the need for a claimant to show negligence. Previously the Government have not been convinced of the need to introduce such a system on the grounds that it might not make the process of resolving claims any less adversarial, because disagreement over compensation would remain, and it might not address patients' concerns about receiving an adequate explanation of the events that led to the injury. Such a system would not necessarily reduce the increasing number of claims or the costs to the NHS.

Different factors must be taken into account. We want to develop a no-blame culture in the NHS and need to take account of the issues raised in the report on Bristol Royal Infirmary, which my hon. Friend mentioned, and measures that are being implemented following the chief medical officer's report "An organisation with a memory". We must consider all those factors in reconsidering no-fault compensation.

Another area for evaluation is the interface between complaints and claims. Currently, these are seen as separate processes, but the CMO and his advisory group are considering whether a more intelligent, responsive and patient-focused approach to complaint and claims handling is needed. That might be to provide joint remedies that are more closely tailored to individual claims and complaints, including financial, nonfinancial and practical measures that would quickly address concerns. As many people have commented, a poorly handled complaint can result in a claim that could have been resolved at a much earlier stage in the process.

We are considering the role of mediation and other alternatives to dispute resolution through the courts. My hon. Friend talked about the issues surrounding mediation. As hon. Members may know, the NHS Litigation Authority, which manages most claims for the NHS, is working with the Legal Services Commission to develop a joint strategy to promote greater use of mediation. Since May 2000, the NHSLA has required solicitors representing NHS bodies in claims to offer mediation in appropriate cases. The findings of that initiative are being considered as part of the chief medical officer's work to find out whether more can be done to encourage mediation as an alternative approach.

The final main area in which reform is being considered covers the way in which compensation awards are paid. We are considering carefully the relative advantages and disadvantages of using structured settlements or periodic payments instead of lump sum awards. Periodic payments allow for part of an award to be paid in tax-free instalments for the duration of the claimant's life. As periodic payments can be reviewed, such a system could help to ensure that any changes in patients' circumstances or needs are accommodated and that assistance is better tailored to their requirements.

Those broad areas are being considered. Clearly, a number of complicated issues are involved, but the intention is to announce the outcome of the CMO's review later this year. Other issues which my hon. Friend mentioned are also at stake. There are ways to reduce clinical negligence costs in the meantime. It is important to prevent clinical errors from occurring in the first place. The NHS must respond in a way that prevents such errors and respond to errors appropriately so that we can learn from them.

There are other ways of changing the clinical negligence system. We must ensure that money spent on claims goes to the patients who deserve it and not on spiralling legal costs. The NAO has acknowledged the steps that have been taken by the NHSLA and the Legal Services Commission to improve the speed and quality of claims management by rationalising access to better legal advice for claimants and defendants. We must build on that work to ensure that claimants get timely access to the compensation that they deserve. At the same time, we have to address the increase in costs for the NHS.

Perhaps most important, we need to continue the work that is under way on reducing clinical errors in the first place. A series of new mechanisms are in place to ensure that we prevent errors and create the right learning culture—rather than a blame culture—across the NHS, as set out in the CMO's report "An organisation with a memory". One development from that is the new independent body, the National Patient Safety Agency, which was established in April last year. It operates a new national reporting system to record adverse events, the problems to which my hon. Friend referred, and also near misses, which should certainly be included even though adverse consequences may not have happened. We must ensure that lessons learned in one part of the NHS are properly shared with the entire service.

The new National Clinical Assessment Authority will also provide a fast response to concerns about doctors' performance and a central point of contact for the NHS where such concerns have arisen.

Before my hon. Friend proceeds with discussion of the new structures—and they are welcome—will she spend a minute on medical technologies? Sometimes the wrong tubes are fitted, the wrong anaesthetics administered and the wrong syringes made available to patients, but it is possible to outdo any potential mistakes technologically. Labelling is another serious problem requiring thorough examination. Is that being done?

My hon. Friend is right that technological solutions can prevent repeated errors. We must ensure that when new technologies become available they are in place to respond to adverse events and near misses. It is sometimes obvious that technology should be introduced in response to problems. It ties in with the need to respond to events taking place throughout the country. A national reporting system to pick up and respond to such events is part of the overall picture. Otherwise, a particular problem could arise in one area and the lessons to be learnt from it not reach other parts of the NHS. A local response may not be noticed across the NHS.

Part of the problem is picking up problems, but my hon. Friend is also right that the technological solutions should be in place. He mentioned particular examples, so I will write to him with the details of the responses in those sectors. New technology is part of ongoing work and it is important that the right systems are in place to learn from mistakes and prevent their repetition.

My hon. Friend also mentioned clinical governance, which is crucial at the local level for raising early concerns. Clinical governance provides NHS organisations and health care professionals with a framework for quality improvement that will, over time, develop into a single coherent local programme for assuring and improving the quality of clinical services.

My hon. Friend also rightly mentioned the Commission for Health Improvement, one of whose functions is to help the NHS identify and tackle serious or persistent clinical problems. Information about clinical negligence claims is considered by the Commission in the context of, its clinical governance reviews of individual NHS organisations.

Considerable work is being undertaken across the NHS with the aim of learning from problems and preventing their repetition, and resolving the difficult issues surrounding medical liability and clinical negligence. No simple answers can be found, but it is widely felt that improvements can and must take place. We need to reflect on the issues and debate them fully, but the reforms must take place. The aim is to improve the current system of handling and responding to clinical negligence claims. We expect those who are harmed or injured to receive appropriate and adequate compensation, and an apology and an explanation of what went wrong where costs are reduced. That would cause less trauma to all involved. I look forward to discussing these issues further with my hon. Friend as we set out what changes must occur throughout the NHS in the interests of patients and the medical profession, including clinicians.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of level crossings. As so often happens, I started to deal with a specific local problem, but have become aware of a wider issue that should be drawn to the attention of hon. Members and the Minister.

The specific problem relates to a Railtrack proposal to change the method of operation of a level crossing at Pooley Green, Egham. Egham is in the north of my constituency and is immediately next to the M25 motorway. The general point that has arisen from my investigation is that there appear to be no constraints on Railtrack's ability to close level crossings, to increase barrier down time or to disrupt road traffic considerably in an area. That is no basis for a genuinely integrated transport policy, and that is why it was important to raise the matter in this debate. I look forward to hearing the Minister's comments.

On 4 October 2000—coincidentally the same day as the Hatfield train crash—an accident occurred on the level crossing at Pooley Green where traffic is frequently backed up on both sides. There is, of course, a yellow box junction on the crossing, and no motorist should enter it until his exit is clear. However, motorists sadly often ignore those regulations. A bus was trapped on the level crossing by the barriers. Fortunately, the bus driver had the presence of mind to get his passengers off the bus and no one was injured. However, the accident could have been serious. Railtrack responded immediately by imposing a 20 mph temporary down line restriction across the level crossing. There are different forward visibility curves if one approaches the level crossing from different directions, and it was not considered necessary to impose a temporary speed restriction on the up line.

Her Majesty's railway inspectorate issued a notice to Railtrack that required it to propose long-term mitigation measures by 27 April 2001. The level crossing is an automatic half-barrier level crossing, and it looks like state-of-the-art technology to my untrained eye. The train activates the barriers as it approaches the crossing, the half-barriers drop and then rise again as soon as the train passes. Currently, the barriers are down for approximately 10 minutes an hour at peak periods, and traffic tails back substantially.

Railtrack unveiled its proposal for the level crossing at a meeting on 12 April 2001. The proposal suggested replacing the automatic half-barriers with manually operated full barriers that would be covered by closed circuit television controlled from the Feltham signal box some miles away. A ringing bell would alert the signalman to an approaching train, and the signalman would look at the CCTV coverage of the crossing as he lowered the barriers. He would then set the signal to clear for the approaching train only when he was sure that the barriers were closed and the crossing was clear. As Railtrack said at the time, the effect would be to increase the peak-hour barrier closure period from 10 minutes to 40 to 45 minutes per hour.

Railtrack announced that it was going to cut off Egham from its hinterland at peak hours for a substantial part of each hour, effectively paralysing commerce and traffic in the town. Considerable concern has been expressed about the proposal, as one might expect. The ambulance and fire services have concerns about emergency response times. The local chamber of commerce is greatly concerned about both the direct economic cost to businesses and the broader cost of road traffic congestion.

Borough and county councillors are concerned about the impact on the town and adjoining communities of traffic avoiding the bottleneck. Bus operators have expressed doubts about their ability to continue the frequency and perhaps even the route of some services if the proposal goes ahead. The Highways Agency has expressed concern that traffic will tail back on to the M25 slip road, and perhaps on to the motorway itself, with significant consequences. There are also environmental concerns about the air pollution resulting from the extra standing traffic.

Railtrack says that it needs to make the changes to lift the temporarily imposed 20 mph limit. That would increase the capacity of the line and allow new train paths to be generated in response to the pressure from train operating companies to lay on more services. Railtrack's view of the world is entirely railway-centric. It does not take into account the external costs that the railway solution imposes on other transport users. Even if a bridge or a tunnel were an affordable solution—and it probably is not—it is unlikely to be technically feasible in that location because of the immediate proximity of the M25, which is on a substantial embankment.

Railtrack held a workshop on 17 April 2001. The borough council was invited, but no one from the highway authority—the county council—was present. Perhaps that is indicative of the problem. During the discussions, no consideration was given to the possibility of maintaining the 20 mph temporary speed limit. I am not suggesting that that is an ideal or optimal solution, but if all transport modes, not just railways, were debated under Railtrack's approach, we would at least have considered the possibility of maintaining the 20 mph limit.

Railtrack is not motivated solely by safety, although that is an important consideration. It is also motivated by the desire to maximise capacity. I held a series of meetings with Railtrack and took a delegation of councillors to see the Feltham signalling centre in operation. From our discussions, I learned that Railtrack could impose a solution without the requirement for consultation and without having to take into account in any structured way the requirements of other road users. I learned that there is no mechanism for determining how to share fairly a scarce resource—in this case the little patch of road that forms the road-rail interface at the level crossing. Once the Secretary of State has approved an order proposed by Railtrack, there is no appeal mechanism.

The switch from automatic half-barriers to manually controlled full-barrier crossings covered by CCTV is a step backwards in terms of technology. Some hon. Members will have been to France, where half-barriers seem to be ubiquitous. They drop at a moment's notice, and a few seconds later a TGV hurtles past at 120 or 130 mph. I find it slightly embarrassing to think that the British solution to the problem is to remove the advanced automatic barriers and go back to a more primitive manually controlled solution. It is bizarre that Railtrack is not required to consider road traffic in the design of level crossings. Apparently, the railway has priority and there is no requirement to balance the needs of road and rail users. Perhaps that leads to a cavalier attitude.

At the outset of this debate, it was suggested that Railtrack would increase the barrier down time to 40 or 45 minutes. Doubt is being cast on that figure—perhaps it will be only 35 minutes. The fact that no detailed analysis has been done, and no definitive figure is available, underlines the lack of any requirement on Railtrack to argue its case. The real problem is that Railtrack is not independent. It has a clear financial interest in enhancing the capacity of the railway and is responding to pressure from train operating companies in dealing with such matters.

Until this issue arose, I was always extremely supportive, as were my constituents, of attempts to improve and increase rail services on the branch line that serves Egham. I have also supported the air track proposal that would bring a rail link into Heathrow from the south-west, possibly using that line. The Minister should be aware that community and political support for improved and enhanced rail services will soon melt away if their introduction will result in disruption.

Representations and responses must be made to the Secretary of State by 24 March. My local authority has just made its response and, in due course, I will urge the Secretary of State to send the proposal back to Railtrack. It must examine the benefits achieved versus the burdens imposed on road traffic and seek alternative methods to reduce the maximum down time at peak hours. However, work is scheduled to proceed in April and I imagine that contracts have already been let. I am sceptical about whether anything can be done at this stage.

The issues that I raise today were mentioned by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron) in a Westminster Hall debate in February 2000. The situation has changed little since then. Railtrack has effectively been nationalised and is a quasi state-run body, rather than the private company that it was in 2000. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the element of direct Government responsibility.

The hon. Member for Lincoln found herself in a similar situation to the one that I described. She received a vague response from the Minister then responsible for this issue, now the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes), who said:

"The transport White Paper announced the…development of local transport plans, which need to address all forms of transport. Local transport plans are important in this context. The part that rail plays in transport provision must be seen as part of the Government's integrated transport policy…There needs to be a partnership between transport operators, local authorities, business, local interest groups and users to ensure that all modes of transport are properly integrated".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 22 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 338WH.]

Those are fine words, but it will take more than a bit of waffle about partnership to resolve a situation in which a cash-strapped, quasi state-owned monopoly with a financial incentive to provide more train paths proposes a change that will impose a considerable burden on a community that has no voice at all. Local transport plans and integrated transport strategies have not contributed very much to the debate in Egham.

The Minister should also give some thought to the effect of the Human Rights Act 1998. Now that Railtrack is effectively a state-controlled organisation, is the lack of ability to appeal entirely consistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of that Act?

Clearly, there are no proper mechanisms in place for resolving conflicts of interest between road and rail use, or for evaluating the costs and benefits of proposals—at least, there is no publicly accessible mechanism. The process appears to be unilateral and controlled by a body with a financial interest. There is no mechanism for forcing Railtrack to recognise and take into account the external costs imposed by a course of action. Although the railway was for many years in decline, that may not have been a major problem in this case. Although what happened recently has not been helpful, I am pleased, taking the medium-term view, that the railway is in a period of renaissance and that we can anticipate that road and rail traffic will to continue to grow. Although the issue that I have raised relates to a change in operating procedure because of safety concerns, the same issues will arise whenever Railtrack seeks to establish additional train paths to accommodate growth in rail traffic. I was genuinely shocked, and so were the councillors involved, to discover that Railtrack could theoretically close a level crossing barrier for 60 minutes in the hour and that there is no formal mechanism by which the other parties interested in that transaction could bring their concerns to the table.

I want to make four specific points. First, I urge the Minister to take a critical look at the application of the 2002 order for the Pooley Green level crossing, which he is about to receive, and to consider asking Railtrack to look again at the proposal. Secondly, I ask him to consider whether it is general practice to retreat, in technological terms, when faced with such problems. It cannot be in the interests of UK plc that Railtrack's response to a problem with automatic half-barriers is to retreat to manually controlled full barriers, thus significantly increasing the down time of the barrier per train crossing. I therefore ask the Minister to consider the possibility of authorising the siting of infringement cameras similar to those used at road traffic lights. Railtrack would install the cameras and keep the revenue generated by the prosecution of drivers or the imposition of fixed penalties to encourage drivers' behaviour to become more compliant with Railtrack's railway safety requirements. I hope that the Minister will seriously consider that proposal.

Thirdly, will the Minister consider the establishment of a proper forum for consultation on procedural change or increased barrier down time? There should be a formal mechanism for Railtrack or the responsible highway authority to come to an agreed position rather than Railtrack simply imposing its requirements.

Fourthly, to inform the process that I have just described, I ask the Minister to consider the possibility of providing a publicly available, independent cost-benefit analysis to review proposals made for changes in level crossing operating procedures, so that the external costs can be fully taken into account. At the same time, I ask him to consider delivering a mechanism for an independent element and a right of appeal in the event of such changes taking place. I emphasise my support for the rail renaissance, but I am worried that in my constituency at least, public support will decline sharply if burdens are placed on communities apparently without a proper process taking place.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) on securing this important debate, on conducting it with his usual forensic attention to detail and on his courteous manner in doing so.

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said, although he lost the plot at one stage and said that Railtrack had been nationalised, which it certainly has not been. I can see from the rueful smile on his face that he does not really believe that, but he made a good point. I am pleased that he agrees with us that the railways are in a period of renaissance and that, perhaps for the first time in 100 years, there has been an improvement in their performance. I thought that I heard him say that a crossing could be closed for 160 minutes in an hour, although the Hansard reporter may have heard something different. We may return to that point later.

I am sure that we all agree on the importance of ensuring the safety of road and rail passengers at points where the two modes of transport intersect. The hon. Gentleman spoke graphically about that. Sadly, wherever railway and road cross on the level, mishaps are possible. Each year, a number of people are killed on level crossings, often in vehicles. In 2000–01, 10 people were killed on them.

We must do everything possible to contain that risk. The public has the right to expect that risks will be properly assessed and appropriate action taken. The type of protection that is provided depends on the prevailing road and rail traffic levels at the crossing, which of course can change from time to time.

The Level Crossings Act 1983 enables my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make an order that may specify in detail the protection to be provided, be it a full or half-barrier, lights or road markings and the railway signalling or other means whereby the train is given the right to proceed over the crossing. The order-making procedure can be used to alter the protection at a crossing in the light of changed circumstances or experience. I think that this is what has happened in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.

The safety of a level crossing, particularly a half-barrier crossing, depends partly on the road user using the crossing correctly. A determined or impatient driver may skirt round a half-barrier, sometimes with disastrous results. If a crossing is regularly misused or for some reason more than usually prone to incidents,

Railtrack, the legal operator of the crossing in the great majority of cases, may need to examine the reasons for the problem and how it can be minimised.

In 1997, the Level Crossings Act was amended to increase the circumstances in which the Secretary of State could make a new order in relation to a crossing. Previously, an order could be made only if the crossing operator—in this case, Railtrack—agreed. Now, the Secretary of State has the power to make an order with or without Railtrack's agreement.

Can orders specify a maximum barrier down time? In other words, can the Secretary of State secure the protection for road users that I am concerned about?

When the Secretary of State takes a decision, the rail and road issues are given equal weight. He weighs the matter up, considering the views of Railtrack, the highway authority and any other authority that is involved. In most cases, level crossing orders are made on the Secretary of State's behalf by the Health and Safety Executive's railway inspectorate. It examines all the circumstances and consults the relevant local authorities, including the highway authority. I think that, on highway matters, Runnymede council is the agent for Surrey county council. The inspectorate generally holds a local meeting to hear the views of local residents, businesses and rail users.

In the vast majority of cases, a solution that is acceptable to the railway inspectorate, users, local authorities and others can be found. In a small number of cases, it may be difficult to find a solution that is acceptable to all. For example, a high level of protection at a crossing, such as a full-width barrier, may result in the crossing being closed to road traffic for longer periods and that may exacerbate road congestion. In such cases, the parties may consider more radical solutions, such as removing the crossing and replacing it if necessary with a bridge or tunnel, which has the great benefit of eliminating most of the risk inherent at the level crossing. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, that alternative is not possible on the site that we are discussing because of the lie of the land.

In the absence of agreement, the Secretary of State may become involved. He would need to take account of the views of the Health and Safety Executive and other interested parties in coming to a decision. I repeat that he must give equal weight to the various views with which he is presented.

The Minister is dealing with a case in which Railtrack has proposed a change in the operation of the level crossing. However, I also want to consider a situation in which an existing level crossing is not being changed, but the barrier down time is being significantly increased because additional train paths are being created. Does the Secretary of State have any power to intervene to set a maximum allowable barrier down time?

As several intricate issues are involved, it might help to make the position clear if my officials wrote to the hon. Gentleman through me, rather than my making it up on the hoof or giving him an incomplete answer. We will then have a complete understanding of the legal situation.

The incident at Pooley Green level crossing at Egham on 17 October 2000 did not reach the media because of the dreadful events at Hatfield on the same day. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that the incident had the potential to be extremely serious. He said that the bus driver had the presence of mind to get the people off the bus. Unfortunately, he did not have the presence of mind not to enter the box on the crossing in the first place, and he put himself and his passengers at serious risk. His exit was blocked by a queue of rush hour traffic heading towards Egham high street and the M25 slip road at junction 13. Within moments of the bus becoming trapped on the crossing, an approaching train started the sequence for the operation of the level crossing. The bus was completely destroyed, and it was fortunate that no passengers were on the train at the time and therefore no injuries. Loss of life and further damage were avoided only because certain events fortunately came to pass.

The Surrey police charged the bus driver with motoring offences and the prosecution was successful. The level crossing is an automatic half-barrier installation and is fitted with road traffic signals. It is operated automatically by the approach of a train. Once the train has started the sequence of operation, the sequence cannot be stopped. I am advised that the level crossing met the required standards when it was last modernised in the late 1970s. However, the Pooley Green level crossing has a poor safety record, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows. Some 11 serious incidents have been recorded that resulted in a total of four fatalities since 1983. Road traffic has increased substantially over this period. Those incidents did not occur because of any fault in the barriers or any action by Railtrack, but because of the way in which road users try to weave through the barriers before the train arrives. That is highly dangerous and puts at serious risk the driver, those on the train and any pedestrians nearby.

As a result of the continuing investigation into the accident, Her Majesty's railway inspectorate discovered that substantial road user indiscipline at the level crossing was causing serious concern for the safety of rail and road users. There was therefore a reasonable likelihood of further collisions. I cannot overstate the importance of motor vehicle drivers acting responsibly and safely. Unfortunately, the drivers who act responsibly and safely on this and some other crossings are in a minority.

Since the accident in October 2000, there has been a temporary 20 mph speed restriction on the down line, as the hon. Gentleman said. The crossing is sufficiently visible to trains on the up line to allow them to operate at the appropriate line speed. A Railtrack employee now staffs the crossing and monitors the flow of traffic. If necessary, he can make an emergency telephone call to the signal box to ensure that preventive action is taken. Under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, Railtrack was asked to take emergency action on 14 February 2001 to minimise risks to the public. That followed an unannounced visit by Her Majesty's railway inspectorate when problems caused by queuing traffic, red traffic light offences and yellow box marking offences were noted on many occasions during the morning peak hour.

I have not had time to cover several issues that the hon. Gentleman raised, and he made some important points. I answered some of the questions that he asked at the end of his speech but, if he feels that I have not covered other matters in sufficient detail, I will write to him.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to debate the important topic of key worker housing in my constituency. St. Albans has the lowest unemployment in the country. As a consequence we have a shortage of key workers and skilled workers. My definition of a key worker is a nurse, teacher, police officer and so on, but I accept that someone who is running a business will consider any employee to be a key worker as companies employ only the people that they need to keep the business running.

The special care baby unit at Hemel Hempstead general hospital was going to be closed down due to lack of staff. One of the prime reasons for not being able to recruit was the lack of affordable housing either to rent or buy. Housing in St. Albans is among the most expensive in the country and the area has one of the smallest rented sectors in the country. Indeed as the local Member of Parliament with a salary two and a half times the national average I could not afford to buy a modest three bed semi-detached house in the constituency. I was therefore pleased when the Government recognised that the provision of key worker housing was vital to many constituencies, particularly in eastern and south-eastern regions.

In the first bidding round for extra funds for key worker housing Hertfordshire did less well than our neighbours. The Tory county council complained vigorously about that. At the same time I pointed out to the Minister for Housing and Planning, Lord Falconer, that our need was greater than almost anywhere else. I was delighted therefore when Hertfordshire came out top in the second round. The Government acknowledged our great need.

It is not just the Government who have been keen supporters and providers of key worker housing. The investment bank Schroders have taken up the cause. A recent article in The Observer states:

"Have investment bankers at Schroders been smoking dope? What else could explain straight-laced money men investing £45 million in building homes for essential workers at below market rents?"

Schroders is making a nice return on its investment. In that instance everyone wins.

I have to point out the hypocrisy of Tory-controlled Hertfordshire county council which complained about the lower than average grant for key worker housing when at the same time it is selling off its own housing stock. Even when I wrote to challenge the leader of the county council about that, he wrote back that before any more houses were sold he would personally have to approve the sale. There was no admission of any inconsistency or thanks for bringing it to his attention or an undertaking that sales would now be stopped.

With the concentration on key worker housing, developers have quickly cottoned on to that and are now substituting key worker provision for general social housing provision. Their reasoning is that key workers are perceived as more preferable neighbours than those housed by registered social landlords. Being cynical, I suspect that developers prefer a police officer to an ex-prisoner being housed. That could add to the selling price of the homes on a development that has key worker as opposed to general social housing. St. Albans council has recognised that preference by developers and has conditioned a recent planning decision specifically prohibiting key worker and insisting on general social housing. That is the subject of an appeal by the developer with everybody awaiting the outcome with great interest.

Councils should include in their district plans a yearly target for key worker housing and an appropriate policy. Once the target has been planned for, councils can refuse further key worker units and insist on the provision of general social housing. Once planning permission has been refused, the planning inspectorate must support that decision if it is challenged by the developers—and there is no doubt that they will regularly challenge. If the planning inspectorate does not support it, it drives a coach and horses through all the local district council's policies and will not help with social, general or key worker housing provision. All participants understand what is possible and what is required.

Our public services are suffering as a result of the lack of affordable housing because they cannot recruit staff. One way of helping is to provide homes specifically for these workers—key worker housing. The Government have recognised the problem and allocated additional ring-fenced funds. All the extra money is for homes for sale, but we should also provide rented homes for key workers.

Finally, I would like to highlight an innovative key worker scheme in my constituency. An office block that stood empty for two years with no potential buyers—despite being actively marketed—has been secured by Try Homes with a view to demolition and building flats in its place. I was approached to facilitate this proposal and, after bringing together Try Homes and Hightown Praetorian housing association—one of the major local suppliers of registered social housing—a planning application was submitted. It included one and two-bedroom flats with shared amenity space and a small office for Try Homes. The site is close to the railway station, city centre and other amenities. It is also in a mainly residential area with a similar block of flats opposite.

The uniqueness of the scheme is that the developers have agreed to keep 40 per cent. of the homes available for key workers to rent. The housing association has put together a package that involves no public subsidy and allows the rents to be borne by an £18,000 annual income, making them affordable for teachers, police officers and all the other key workers outlined earlier. Overall, it amounts to 40 per cent. key worker provision, homes for rent, no public subsidy and affordability.

The scheme has received widespread support within St. Albans—from headteachers, the Bishop of St. Albans, health trusts and many others. St. Albans is at the cutting edge of housing provision and the scheme has national implications. However, local authority planners are not sure whether to recommend approval.

We need much more affordable social housing in St. Albans, as we currently house some families in bedand-breakfast accommodation. We also need key worker housing. The Government are helping with special provision for key workers. I have tried to show how active partnering can provide homes and that the Try Homes-Hightown Praetorian scheme is ground breaking. It will be to our council's credit if it approves it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard) on securing the debate on key worker housing in St. Albans. I am well aware of his extensive knowledge of, and interest in, housing issues in St. Albans and the south-east, and of his successful work in arranging annual conferences on the subject.

I should like to explain the Government's proposals for resolving St. Albans' housing problems, and the general programmes to help key workers and secure more affordable housing, including the planning system. I shall also comment on the tension between providing housing for key workers and increasing pressure on the same funds for general social housing and tackling homelessness. Such tensions are acute in London and the south-east.

I shall not comment on the current council planning application. My hon. Friend has made his case, but the Secretary of State may have an important role and I do not want to prejudice any decisions.

Schools, hospitals, the police and other public services are vital. In London and the south-east, public services operate in a competitive market and have to compete for skilled staff.

My hon. Friend is right to argue that the private sector also experiences problems with recruiting skilled staff. There are skill shortages in some parts of London and the south-east. However, I agree that we should take a narrower approach to key workers, partly because of the role of public services in underpinning the economy. For example, we must ensure that young people leave school with the right kind of skills for today's job market.

My hon. Friend outlined the difficulty and pressure experienced by key workers in finding affordable housing, which is well understood in London and the south-east. I pay tribute to the excellent results achieved by key workers in my hon. Friend's constituency because, despite their difficulties, teachers in St. Albans helped Hertfordshire to achieve GCSE results that are among the best in the country, and the police helped to ensure that the area has the lowest crime rate in the east of England.

Staffing difficulties in the special care baby unit in Hemel Hempstead general hospital were also mentioned by my hon. Friend. He takes a particular interest in such issues because he is a sponsor of the Royal College of Midwives. The West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS trust acknowledges the lack of adequate accommodation for staff that has caused problems in attracting nurses to the hospital, although I understand that a post has not yet been refused specifically on those grounds. The hospital is working with English Partnerships to develop new accommodation for nurses, although it will not be ready until next year. I hope that it will help to meet some of the real pressures on nurses looking for accommodation in the St. Albans area.

In recognition of the difficulties faced by key workers, the Government published the Green Paper "Quality and choice: A decent home for all" in April 2000, which set out our policies on home ownership. It included existing schemes and proposals for a new initiative to help people into low-cost home ownership—the starter home initiative.

The aims of the initiative were to help key workers—especially health workers, teachers and police—to buy homes within a reasonable distance of work, thus promoting a culture of opportunity, choice and self-reliance, and giving people more of a stake in their neighbourhoods; to ensure that key workers could buy homes in areas where high demand and prices may otherwise price them out of communities to whom their services are vital; to support other housing related objectives that contribute to the regeneration or development of an area; and to promote a better mixture of housing tenures to achieve more sustainable mixed income communities.

One aspect of providing housing for key workers in London and the south-east is that housing policies must take cognisance of people's housing aspirations and not force them to live in homes that they do not want. We have identified that many key workers prefer home ownership to other types of housing, so the starter home initiative tries to meet those aspirations.

The Government made available £250 million in 2001–02 and 2003–04 in support of the scheme, which is already up and running. The bulk of that, some £230 million, was made available in the first round. It was allocated to 95 schemes in September 2001 to help 8,000 key workers buy homes within a reasonable travelling distance from their place of employment. The schemes included share ownership, equity and interest free loans primarily for the purchase of existing properties on the open market. New-build schemes were also provided to allow key workers to purchase using starter home initiative equity loans or through shared ownership.

In St. Albans, that meant that Aldwyck housing association was successful in obtaining funding based on a county-wide bid under the first round. It will make offers to key workers, including some in St. Albans, during the next few weeks. I shall ask my officials to ensure that my hon. Friend is kept informed about the allocations.

Additionally, Ridgehill housing association was successful in securing funding. It has worked with Hertfordshire constabulary and is providing police officers with three properties in St. Albans that are divided into smaller units. The units are for rent and will be ready in the next few months. My hon. Friend mentioned the need to provide homes for rent under the starter home initiative. Ridgehill is also providing grants to allow key workers to purchase their own homes. It is working with a police officer in St. Albans who will purchase a property with a grant. It is expected that more grants will be approved during the coming year.

In the wider picture, many of the successful bidders in the first round were registered social landlords. Some developer bids were successful and they will be implemented in conjunction with RSLs, who will administer and claim the grant. Other successful bidders included local authorities, an unregistered housing association and a charitable care and support organisation.

The second round of the starter home initiative involved the allocation of £20 million of the budget as equity loans of £10,000 each to help 2,000 key workers in high-cost areas outside London in which further assistance was required beyond that provided by the allocations that were made in September 2001. My hon. Friend is correct that that round addressed a wider area than the first round, which was heavily concentrated on London. There has been a welcome and positive response to the allocations.

Assistance under the second round of the starter home initiative will focus on people who are able to purchase a home with less assistance than that provided by the first round. I am pleased that bidding for the second round is well under way following guidance that was issued in 2002. As my hon. Friend said, Hertfordshire, including St. Albans, is targeted for assistance. Bids are due back on 16 March 2002, and we will be able to announce the successful schemes in May 2002.

I am aware of the disappointment in Hertfordshire that bids for the first round of starter home initiative funding were scaled back. Indeed, several Hertfordshire Members have written to me about that. Nationally, we received bids amounting to over £520 million. That substantially outweighed the available budget of £250 million, so all large bids had to be scaled back. However, the over-subscription of the scheme highlighted that it was popular and that people required such assistance.

We decided to allocate the bulk of the starter home initiative funding—£230 million—in the first round because it was considered important to get the schemes up and running. That was done by careful evaluation of the bids while taking account of a range of factors, such as affordability of housing to people on modest incomes, the proposed assistance to allow key workers to purchase properties, administration costs and whether additional financial contributions were provided by other sources.

However, in the first round, £7 million was allocated to help 267 key workers in Hertfordshire. The second round includes funding to help a further 127 key workers throughout Hertfordshire—70 nurses and other essential health staff and 57 teachers—with equity loans of £10,000 each. If the bids for the second round of the starter home initiative are forthcoming and gain approval, we will have given £8.27 million of support to help a total of 394 key workers throughout Hertfordshire. Of course, that includes people in St. Albans.

The use of the shared ownership scheme has been especially important because it combines the aspirations that key workers and others have for home ownership with the advantages of low-cost ownership. That has been particularly beneficial for people who might have the prospect of a higher salary further down the line, but who start out on modest incomes.

My hon. Friend has pointed out the kinds of prices and financial pressures that people can face when they are starting out and have to pay for high-cost housing. However, I have visited shared ownership schemes where people who are on modest incomes are able to look at buying their own home—albeit, to start with, they will have a smaller share of the equity. I have visited homes occupied by, for example, a fireman and a teacher, or a nurse and a teacher, who have been able to move out of rented accommodation. I am sure that my hon. Friend knows more than I do about the costs of private sector rented accommodation in the area that he represents, but I know of some people who have been able to move out of expensive private sector rented accommodation in a high-demand, high-value area, and into a shared ownership home, where they find that their net outgoings on housing have considerably decreased, and that they have secured a home for themselves.

Other initiatives are being taken to build on shared ownership—and similar schemes—to ensure that we can alleviate some of the current pressures on key workers in high-demand, high-value areas of London and the south-east. The starter home initiative complements other measures that we are taking. We are determined to help key workers find affordable housing. There has been criticism that the starter home initiative is too small. It cannot hope to provide accommodation for all the key workers who want it, but it has succeeded in doing some pump priming of a wide variety of different schemes that will maximise the amount of affordable housing in London and the south-east.

The Government's determination to meet some of the real pressures on key workers in London and the southeast has been highlighted by the establishment in my Department of an affordable housing unit, with a remit to put into place, by the end of 2002, measures that will significantly increase the delivery of affordable housing within three years. Those measures will include bringing empty properties back into use, and the initiatives that my noble Friend Lord Falconer, the Minister for Housing and Planning, has recently announced with regard to looking at ways of using air space by building above low-rise properties to ensure that we provide more housing units.

A great deal of discussion is also taking place about the use of the planning system to ensure that we procure more affordable housing in any housing development—there is even discussion about requiring that from commercial and other types of development. In London, there has been a high-profile discussion about whether we should be looking for 50 per cent. affordable housing. Under the current planning system, St. Albans' local plan requires housing developments to contain 25 per cent. affordable housing. If those kinds of policies are rigorously enforced, that will help to ease some to the pressures on key workers.

We are consulting on radical proposals for more effective delivery of affordable housing through the planning system. The new tariff-based approach that we are proposing as part of the consultations around the planning Green Paper, and associated documents, will mark a radical change from the current planning system. It will ensure that planning is more responsive to the community's affordable housing needs. In many areas we expect the provision of affordable housing—including key-worker housing, where that is a priority need—to be the main beneficiary of this approach.

Does my hon. Friend agree that key-worker housing should be additional to the 25 per cent. requirement, rather than form part of it? In my constituency in particular, and throughout the east and south-east, there is a great need for key-worker housing. However, we also have an overwhelming need for affordable social housing. I alluded in my brief speech to families living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. That has happened in the past two years, but it did not happen in the 10 years previous to that, and it causes tension. Developers have cottoned on to that need, and are trying to substitute key-worker housing for general affordable housing. We must address that.

My hon. Friend has raised a number of issues, and I shall certainly deal with them. There is no definition of affordable housing, but we do not necessarily mean it to be social housing for rent. It could be affordable housing to buy. On requiring key worker housing from the planning system, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the point that I made at the beginning of my speech. We are considering mixed-tenure developments in order to ensure that we do not have monolithic single-tenure estates like those built in the past, which we are now knocking down.

It is essential that local authorities have a clear understanding of housing needs in their locality. When considering economic growth, provision needs to be made for any consequential growth in the social infrastructure, such as demand for school places and health services. That provision must include affordable housing for key staff. Authorities need to be innovative in how they deliver the right mix of accommodation, as they will often provide private developers to procure it and to consider different types of tenures and financial arrangements within a housing development.

Many innovative approaches are being developed locally to St. Albans. For example, in Stevenage surplus business premises are being brought back into use as flats for letting, and Watford and Three Rivers share funding and letting arrangements for new developments. Authorities need to consider whether they should fund shared ownership schemes if they are needed. They might consider the type of developments being made elsewhere. Private sector developers will engage in quite sophisticated partnership arrangements, both with housing associations and with local authorities, to make sure that they have a range of different types of tenures and prices within one housing development. That would mean that residents did not have the social stigma of being a council tenant or a housing association tenant as opposed to a private owner-occupier.

Spending on affordable housing has increased. Funding for the affordable housing programme delivered by the Housing Corporation is set to increase to more than £1.2 billion by 2003–04. That is almost double the 2000–01 level. Key workers will also benefit from our empty homes strategy and our planning agreements for the inclusion of affordable housing in new developments.

In conclusion, affordable housing provided through development is just one way of maximising the opportunities that lie around us. Many of the initiatives that I have mentioned will result in more and better housing in incremental amounts. Together, those initiatives will make a real difference to key workers in St. Albans and other areas with the same difficulty. I am pleased that my hon. Friend highlighted the fact that it is also important to make sure that there is adequate provision of subsidised social housing for people who need to rent it. Often in discussions about London and the south-east there is tension between the needs of key workers and the need for general social housing. Quite often, the needs of the second group are ignored.

There are no simple solutions to the problem. We need to work with our partners in the private sector, in housing associations and in local authorities to make sure that we get the right type of housing, the right mix of tenures and the right prices. We and our partners need to make the best use of land and investment to create more homes and widen the range of housing on offer. I hope that I have set out clearly some of the Government's approaches, and that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman that the Government are aware of the problems of key workers and are taking action that will specifically benefit his constituents.