I am grateful for the opportunity to initiate an important debate and am pleased to see so many hon. Members in the Chamber. I appreciate their support, as I understand that a substantial voting duty kept them from their beds last night. I am sure that the Government and people of Colombia will take note of their interest in this subject.

I wish to declare an interest in this subject and draw hon. Members' attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. Last February, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) and I were privileged to be part of a group of European parliamentarians who spent eight days in Colombia, where we met representatives of nongovernmental organisations, church leaders, politicians and Colombian Ministers. I was present as the guest of the Scottish International Aid Fund, otherwise known as SCIAF.

Human rights were the focus of our visit. I commend to the Chamber the invaluable work done on such matters, which is supported by United Kingdom NGOs. The United Kingdom enjoys high regard, affection and respect from the people of Colombia partly as a result of NGOs' significant contribution to such work. British organisations provide a high degree of protection for ordinary citizens, local people, NGOs and other organisations by accompanying them in their human rights work. They support some of the most vulnerable people in the world and do so in our name.

I described my visit as a privilege because, like all visitors, I was stunned by the great beauty and diversity of Colombia, and because I was privileged to meet many people of great courage, patriotism and dignity. Our delegation was particularly impressed by those who had been, or still are, victims of violence.

Singling anyone out would be invidious and possibly even dangerous for such people. However, I draw the Chamber's attention to a group of displaced people whom we met in the city of Quibdo in the region of Choco. We met 40 families who had been displaced from their poor rural villages by paramilitary violence and who had taken residence on the wooden terraces of a crumbling concrete basketball stadium. As I recollect, some families occupied only 8 or 9 sq ft of that stadium. They had been abandoned there for two years with no access to work, no hope of integration in the local community and dependent on a European Union charity for the most basic needs of life. Some children in that stadium knew no other life.

We promised that we would not forget those people and that we would bring their plight to the attention of the international community. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East has already introduced an Adjournment debate on the subject and I am sure that none of us present that day will ever forget those people and I dedicate to them my contribution to our debate.

Our debate is timely for at least four reasons. First, by fortuitous coincidence, London is honoured by the presence of Mr. Victor Ricardo, the Colombian Government's high commissioner for peace and their chief negotiator in negotiations currently taking place between them and the Colombian revolutionary armed forces or FARC. We are especially fortunate that Mr. Ricardo has chosen this time to come to the United Kingdom to deliver a progress report on the peace process.

On 28 January, the Colombian Government and FARC representatives reached agreement on the common agenda for change for the new Colombia. It was also agreed that the issues on the agenda should be divided into three main categories: social and economic structures; human rights, international law and international relations; and democratic processes and political structures of the state. It is important, appropriate and timely that, at this stage of the peace process, awareness of what is happening in Colombia is raised within the international community—and it is especially welcome in the United Kingdom.

Secondly, and perhaps not coincidentally with the visit of Mr. Victor Ricardo, EU member states were asked by the Colombian Government to contribute substantial aid to the funding of Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia—described as a global plan for peace, prosperity and a strengthening of the state—was developed by the Administration of President Pastrana to provide $7.5 billion of support for development and the peace process. The Colombian Government hope to secure $3.5 billion from EU member states and other international donors. Spain will bring together the European donor nations, Japan and Canada to a donor meeting in July, which will be held in Madrid.

Thirdly, it is timely to debate these issues as we approach the 56th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at which, once again, Colombia's human rights record will be examined and reported. At the previous session, a strongly worded and critical statement on Colombia's record was issued. The British Government have strongly supported previous commission statements and, over the past two years, the high commissioner's office in Colombia. The time has come for the Government to reiterate their support for both. I am sure that hon. Members will want to debate those and related matters.

Fourthly, the debate is timely because my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) and the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) are to visit Colombia shortly. The hon. Member for Richmond Park—the Liberal Democrat's spokesperson on development issues, who discharges her responsibilities admirably—has not previously visited Colombia and she looks on the debate as a welcome briefing. That cannot be said for my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central who, when a Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, established an enviable reputation, here and in Colombia, for his knowledge and understanding of the country. My hon.

Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East and I were indebted to him for a comprehensive briefing prior to our visit in 1999.

Colombia enjoys the unenviable reputation of being one of the most violent countries in the world. Quite why it has acquired such a reputation is less well known or understood. It is a popular misconception—sometimes reinforced for political reasons by others—that the violence in Colombia is all connected with drugs. It is true that in the 1990s, prior to the election of President Pastrana in 1998, Colombia was subjected to a great political crisis as a result of the use of drugs money in political campaigns, but drugs were not the cause of the political crisis in the country, which has persisted in civil unrest and violence almost continuously since around 1948.

Behind the political crisis of the 1990s lurked a more persistent crisis—a structural crisis of the Colombian political regime and society. Behind the drugs war, another war was being waged against peasant and labour leaders, teachers, journalists, priests, nuns, lawyers, women's rights leaders, human rights workers and ordinary citizens. That war is estimated to have claimed between 3,000 and 4,000 victims every year during the 1990s. Over half the trade union leaders murdered in the world in 1997 were murdered in Colombia—a country in which less than 10 per cent. of the work force is in trade unions. The number of internal refugees or displaced people is reckoned by some to amount to 1.5 million—vastly greater than the number of pre-NATO bombing refugees in Kosovo.

It serves the political purposes of others to portray the Colombian Government as a helpless hostage to drug barons and leftist guerrillas. Although drug barons and guerrillas are responsible for 20 per cent. of the country's violence and regularly violate the human rights of others, Amnesty International and other NGOs estimate that 75 per cent. of the politically motivated murders in Colombia are perpetrated by right-wing paramilitary forces who have proven links with the Colombian regular army. In February 2000, Human Rights Watch published a report entitled "The Ties that Bind: Colombian Military and Paramilitary Links". That report, which was based on investigations by Colombian authorities, presents a persuasive case that army support for paramilitary groups continues.

To compound that complex and depressing picture, the violation of human rights largely goes unpunished because Colombia has an impunity rate of about 97 per cent. Only 3 per cent. of those who commit violence are answerable for their actions in Colombian courts. Most human rights violations in Colombia are carried out with total impunity. Despite the efforts of the public prosecutors office, security forces routinely evade and pervert the course of justice. Military courts that have jurisdiction over investigations into human rights violations by armed forces personnel systematically fail to bring those responsible to justice.

Despite repeated recommendations for improvement, no significant progress has been made in dismantling paramilitary groups or ending their activities, in ridding the armed forces and police of those shown to be actively or passively supporting paramilitary groups, in the reformation of the military penal code to make military personnel amenable to civilian courts or in the basic protection of human rights defenders.

Although I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's point about the links between certain elements of the armed forces and paramilitary groups, the anti-narcotics police, under General Serrano, whom I met the year before last, have a good reputation for cleaning up their act. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important, where we see the roots of recovery, to support those Colombian state organisations that have a good human rights record and to encourage that model to be put in place rather than the old model of unpleasant links between some state organisations and those who are involved in violence?

That is an important point. I am sure that the Minister will confirm that the support provided by the United Kingdom has largely been used to train the forces that the hon. Gentleman mentions, which is to the credit of the United Kingdom. From my limited experience of the country, I know that people in Colombia recognise that our support for the military and the police has tended to be used to train what have become the more respectable forces, which contrasts with the aid that other countries tend to give. I have not met General Serrano, so the hon. Gentleman adds to our collective experience of Colombia, and I am grateful to him for that intervention.

The armed conflict in Colombia, which has dominated the 20th century, has its roots in the social, economic and political exclusion of large sections of its population. That is my essential theme. Those outside the two traditional parties—the liberals and the conservatives—are effectively excluded from Colombia's political structures. In the late 1980s, the Patriotic Union—a legal political party formed by disarmed guerrillas, members of M19 and the Communist party—enjoyed significant electoral success, so much so that it became a threat to Colombia's political elite. In 1989, there was a real possibility that its candidate would be elected in the 1990 presidential election, but he, and all the other presidential candidates, except one, was killed. There followed a political genocide of the UP party. The US State Department estimated that 3,500 members of that party were killed.

Clearly, that is a lesson of history for those guerrillas who have entered the current peace negotiations. Clearly, FARC will not make the same mistake as M19. Even if a negotiated settlement between FARC and the Government were reached, is FARC ever likely to disarm in the absence of pluralistic politics? There can be no peace in Colombia until the political structures generate real political opportunities for everyone.

Disputes about the ownership and control of land have been largely responsible for much of the violent conflict. Even in the 1960s when agricultural reform was in fashion, there was no agricultural redistribution in Colombia. There can be no peace in Colombia without land reform. FARC and the ELN, which began in the 1960s as organisations of about 30 or 40 farmers, are now properly trained armies with estimated forces of about 20,000. Their growth has been deeply related to problems of exclusion. Those who were forbidden to participate politically or were denied access to the ownership of land turned to arms as an answer to their political exclusion.

However, narcotics and drug trafficking have had a role to play. Showing a Colombian passport in any airport in the world will almost guarantee a strip search. To some degree it suits developed societies to demonise Colombia as the cause of all their drug problems, but as anyone who visits Colombia will be told repeatedly, the drugs will not be produced unless there is a market for them. The pressing problem of drug abuse in the developed world cannot be resolved simply by seeking to control illegal cultivation in Colombia, particularly illegal cultivation by very poor people who cannot grow anything else. Everything else that they have ever grown, we no longer want to buy and if we did, there is no infrastructure to get it to the market.

Dealing with demand is our responsibility. While the drugs industry continues in Colombia the problems that it brings to that country will continue. As long as big drug barons can earn $500 million a year from the manufacture and traffic of drugs, they will continue to do so. However, the war in Colombia is about more than drugs and Colombia's problems do not lend themselves to simplistic solutions. The complex circumstances that have brought it to its present position were not created by the government of President Pastrana. On the contrary, his leadership has been crucial in the development of the peace process.

We must support President Pastrana in the promotion of the dialogue among the different parties to the conflict. We must acknowledge and respect the commitment and bravery of those state officials who have taken risks in the pursuit of peace and justice for their country. They are brave people who are sometimes the victims of violence, kidnap and murder. Although we support them and recognise the factors that limit their ability to achieve their goals, we cannot do so uncritically. Peace is not simply a matter of negotiations, nor, as we have learned closer to home, is it simply about ceasefires and negotiations. Peace is about human rights and justice for all. It is about the creation of an inclusive political process.

There has long been a demand in Colombia for greater participation in the peace process by the wider Colombian society. Now that initial progress in the peace process has been achieved, it is time for the involvement of civil society in the debate over substantive social, political, economic and civil changes, as set out in the agreed agenda. There is a significant feeling among civil society in Colombia that they have been excluded from the peace process to date. The irony is that they believe that Pastrana's response was motivated largely by civil society's energy for peace. Ordinary citizens' demand for peace led him to respond when he was president elect and to engage with the guerrillas.

The public hearings proposed for April to discuss economic and social reform are to be welcomed, but as all politicians know only too well, participation and consultation can take many forms. If the peace process is to become embedded in Colombian society, the Colombian people must have ownership of it. If it is to succeed, it must ensure respect for human rights. Those guilty of gross human rights abuses must be brought to justice, and peace must be built on reforms that are designed to construct a much stronger local and regional democracy.

Although I urge our Government to support the concept of Plan Colombia as a vision for the development of the whole of Colombian society, it should not be seen as a proposal that has been born out of democratic discussion or debate. It is the product solely of the Pastrana Administration and it has its weaknesses. Only 0.7 per cent. of its funding is dedicated to the peace process while about 64 per cent. is earmarked for national defence. As part of the funding of that plan, a $1.7 billion package of largely military assistance is currently being discussed in the United States. Colombia receives more US arms and equipment than any other country in the world except Israel and Egypt.

The policy behind those statistics has been described by Amnesty International as similar to the policy that backed death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s. Plan Colombia must not be allowed to fuel the violence and internationalise the war by bringing in the United States on a far greater scale than hitherto. In the context of the forthcoming discussions in Madrid, the United Kingdom, as a donor nation, has the opportunity to fashion a positive aid package, which should involve judicial reform, and could include funds to help the 1.5 million displaced people. It could help crop substitution programmes, which are the real key to defeating the drug barons.

The peace process and the complementary development plan require international assistance. This must come in a form that strengthens the justice process, the peace building, the democratisation of the country and respect for human rights, including the rights of children and women. The last thing that Colombia needs is further militarisation.

I urge our Government to maintain a consistently strong position on human rights in Colombia. There is evidence of a continuing deterioration in the spheres of forced displacement and human rights. In those circumstances, and in the face of new evidence of links between the armed forces and paramilitary groups, it is imperative that the Colombian office of the human rights high commissioner continues to enjoy political and financial support. It is also imperative that there should be consistent international monitoring of Colombia's human rights practices. We are rightly proud of our commitment to an ethical foreign policy: such a monitoring process in Colombia is the least that we can expect from our Government.

As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) said, the debate takes the form of a briefing for me, as I hope to visit Colombia—I am reasonably sure that I will—in the near future. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate.

I have an advantage in that the researcher who is working in my office spent four months in Colombia last year and is constantly bending my ear on the subject. It is appropriate to emphasise one of the comments made by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun. My researcher said that we must remember that the majority of Colombians are decent people. She remarked that, as we worried and sweated while she was out there in that frightfully dangerous, evil and corrupt place, she was constantly meeting lovely people who cared desperately about their country, wanted to see a future for it, and, in fact, lived relatively normal lives. Those of us who are so far away from Colombia need to remind ourselves of that as we discuss that country's problems.

There has been a catalogue of human suffering in Colombia. The war has raged for 40 years; 35,000 people have been killed in the past 10 years alone. Three hundred thousand people have fled their country, and 1.5 million people are displaced, and, as we have heard, are living in the most appalling conditions. I was interested to hear that during one of Colombia's worst recessions ever, it is currently spending less on health and education than Bolivia, which is south America's poorest country. That is a terrible fact to absorb as we consider the prospects for Colombia's future.

A few weeks ago I read an article in The Guardian entitled "Colombians braced for fight on all fronts", which summed up the position for me because, as a newcomer to the subject, I found the stories about Colombia's armed factions as bad as, if not worse than what I had read about, for example, southern Sudan—it is certainly more complicated—although there is a similar pattern. FARC rules 40 per cent. of Colombia, mainly in the south of the country; it makes huge amounts of money from drug trafficking and kidnapping, blows up pipelines, kills human rights activists and terrorises the population. It can afford very sophisticated weaponry, such as fighters, because of its drug trafficking.

The ELN, the Colombian liberation army, controls parts of the north, and also hijacks, terrorises and kidnaps. The paramilitary, commonly known as the headcutters, has strong links with the armed forces in Colombia, which is horrifying—that is what reminded me of southern Sudan. The headcutters are very right wing and have the most appalling record of abusing human rights. They even have links, through the military, with transnational companies working in Colombia. It is true that our companies have difficulties, and that development is essential to Colombia, but we should question the value of such development when those companies have to secure their operations by spurious links with Colombia's armed forces and thus with the paramilitaries.

The army in Colombia has a huge amount of aid from the United States, more than any country except those in the middle east, but nevertheless, it consists mainly of untrained and unmotivated young men, and has a persistent record of human rights abuses.

Having considered the matter in the past few days, I believe that the drugs trade is the single biggest contributor to the misery and chaos in Colombia. FARC and the ELN alone earn $500 million—I am not sure of the exact figure—from cocaine and they tax and protect the coca farmers. The paramilitaries finance themselves growing the stuff and protecting the drugs cartels. The economy is destabilised by money laundering and by discouraging legitimate investment. We must consider ways of dismantling the drugs trade.

There is a huge multilateral package of $7.6 billion to reduce drug production in the next six years. The United States is contributing $1.6 billion to fight the war on drugs; there are three anti-drugs battalions and 63 helicopters are working in the jungle burning and spraying the coca fields, but we do not know whether that will do any good. The war on drugs in south America had a limited success in Peru and Bolivia, where production was reduced, but it shifted to Colombia. I am worried that success in reducing the production of cocaine in Colombia will simply shift it elsewhere, perhaps to the Caribbean. Only recently we had a debate in Westminster Hall on the banana trade in the Caribbean. If the farmers there cannot grow bananas, they will grow drugs. That will mean that drugs production and trade will be even closer to the shores of the United States. Has that been considered?

The confrontation between the US army and the guerrillas in Colombia is building up, which could result in all-out war. is that what we want? The Foreign Office has given £2.2 million to the United Nations worldwide drugs control programme, which includes the aerial fumigation of coca crops. However, that has resulted in a 20 per cent. increase in output in recent years. Is that programme worth while? Who is monitoring drug cultivation in Colombia? What damage does fumigation do to other crops and to the people of Colombia? Can we justify spending 73 per cent. of the budget of the United Nations international drug control programme on this environmental damage, when only 2 per cent. of it is spent on reducing demand?

Another factor is Colombia's appalling infrastructure. That encourages farmers to grow coca crops, which are easy to transport where roads and a proper infrastructure are lacking. Money should perhaps also be spent on the infrastructure, so that the farmers can earn a living by growing other crops.

It is simple economics, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun said, that demand produces the supply of drugs. Western Governments must take a long look at their policies to curb demand. When will we admit that zero tolerance is not working in the west? I am not suggesting solutions, but we should seriously examine all aspects of drug supply and demand, in this country and internationally. Whether we do that through a royal commission or in another way, we must make it a prime subject of concern. While there is demand for drugs from the west, countries such as Colombia will supply them.

What does the hon. Lady think of the harm reductionist lobby in this country and talk of reducing the penalties for possession and use of cannabis? What message does that send to the drug producers in Colombia?

The hon. Lady has highlighted precisely the problem. As soon as we begin to talk openly and honestly about different ways of reducing the demand for drugs, somebody asks about the messages that we might send. I agree with her: we may send the wrong messages, but the matter must be discussed and explored. We must find out the results. We cannot go on as we are.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudon (Mr. Browne) said, we must not reduce a debate about Colombia to simply a discussion on drugs.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) raises a much larger question about the international drug trade. She may know that the Government's work under Keith Hellawell is focusing on drugs supply and demand and on getting to grips with analysing the economics of the drug market internationally. That is a massive problem, which takes in drug laundering and everything else. I reassure the hon. Lady that that wider analysis of the drugs trade is firmly on the agenda.

That is excellent news. I thank the Minister for saying that. It is the first time that I have heard a Minister say that all those aspects are being addressed, not simply zero tolerance, with the use of the word "tsar", which inflames my passions, especially as it comes from what should be a socialist Government. I hate all these tsars that have been set up. I thought that you had abolished them long ago.

Order. I have not abolished anything, much as I would wish to do so.

I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will not prolong the debate on what you might wish to abolish, as I would be here all day.

To move away from drugs, the Government rightly wish to build respect for human rights in Colombia, and that goes to the nub of the problem. Aid is being directed towards good governance, human rights monitoring and, in particular, training the Army to respect human rights. The judiciary in Colombia must be strengthened: impunity for human rights violation is nearly 100 per cent. and a military justice system prevails. That is clearly no good if there is to be any sort of peace brokering. Indeed, peace brokering is useless while there is disrespect for human rights. Any peace would break down in the face of continuing drug trafficking, human rights violations and the lack of a proper civilian judiciary.

Given the problems that Colombia faces, it is interesting that our Government claim to have a foreign policy with an ethical dimension. Britain has recently issued 24 export licences for heavy machine guns and rifles. We know that those licences are for weapons that will go to the Army, which has links with the paramilitaries. I question whether that is a good or ethical policy, and I hope that the Minister can address that.

The Colombian Government have had difficulties complying with the UN commissioner's demands for attention to human rights, although they—and President Pastrana—are to be congratulated, to some extent, on their efforts in trying to address Colombia's problems. At the heart of those problems lies a lack of respect for human rights. The west should support calls for a UN resolution to enforce reforms, and back that with a determined effort to reform the ways in which we tackle the demand for drugs.

I apologise for my voice this morning, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I am afraid that it is beyond my powers to project myself more forcefully.

I pay generous tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) introduced the debate. His reputation for making copious notes wherever he goes, which included our visit to Colombia, has borne fruit in his analysis of the problems faced by that country.

As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) is treating the debate as her first briefing on Colombia, I should like to tell her about my first such briefing. It was given by someone who has many years' experience in dealings with Colombia, who told me that anyone who claims to understand the country and to know the answers to its problems must be lying. The complexity of the problems is such that nobody can fully understand either their causes or their solutions.

Where does one start? It could be with the beauty of the landscape, which is there for all to see; the economy, which is experiencing the worst recession for 70 years; the marked gap betwen rich and poor; the drugs; the guerrillas, paramilitaries and armed services or the weakness of the state and the levels of impunity.

I start, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, in a dilapidated basketball stadium in the town of Quibdo, where, on a clammy, hot, sunny Sunday morning, we met a group of about 300 men, women and children who had lived there for more than two years because they had been forced by violence to flee their homes. The Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement estimates that, in the first nine months of last year, 225,000 people in Colombia were forcibly displaced from their homes—a total of 1.7 million people since the mid-1980s. That has a massive impact on family life, community life and people's livelihoods and sense of security.

The number of killings and kidnappings is chilling. An informative publication from the Colombian Vice-President's office reports that 24,081 people were murdered in Colombia in 1999. It also states that the number of victims of massacres—where three or more people are killed in a single episode—has increased from 1,366 to 1,863, and that kidnappings are increasing.

We must never forget that those statistics represent the real lives, or deaths, of ordinary people in Colombia. Last summer, with my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I met two visitors from Colombia who had been forced to flee the country. One was the elected mayor of a small Colombian town and the other was a partner of the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development. We had an interesting meeting, to which my hon. Friend the Minister might refer in his remarks. The comments that they made as they left the meeting stand out in my mind. They thanked me, and asked me to thank the Government for allowing them to come to this country in an emergency. Within a week of their arrival here, two of their colleagues—another mayor from a neighbouring town, and another of CAFOD's partners—had been murdered. Such life and death situations face the many people struggling for human rights and peace in Colombia.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun said that this debate is timely. I agree with the reasons that he gave, although I might give them in a slightly different order. The 56th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights began last week. The report being presented to the commission is very grave. It states that there are

grave and prolonged occurrences of serious and massive violations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law.

The report details the numbers of internally displaced people, the levels of impunity and the attacks that take place on human rights workers.

We must acknowledge the steps that have been taken—especially during the past couple of years—to strive to improve the justice system in Colombia. I have twice had the privilege of meeting Senor Gomez Mendez, the state prosecutor. When he is in Colombia, he has to be accompanied wherever he goes by about 25 armed guards. His life is constantly under threat because he represents the justice system. His staff face violence on a daily basis, and many have had to flee the country. However, those who work to defend human rights face the gravest threat, and the report of the Colombian NGOs to the United Nations Commission shows that, during the past four years, 36 human rights defenders have been murdered, 100 have had their lives threatened, and 30 more have had to leave. Those are ordinary people defending ordinary human rights who have been murdered or forced to flee their country.

Human rights are not just the end product of the peace process, but an integral part of it. There can be no peace unless we obtain human rights protection for the ordinary citizens of Colombia. Human rights will not just happen automatically at the end of the process; they have to be bound in to the pursuit of peace.

I have been in receipt of letters from his excellency the Colombian ambassador, which have been helpful in updating me on the action taken by his Government in cases of human rights violation. Has the hon. Gentleman had an opportunity to see those letters? If so, does he agree that they are extremely helpful and represents signs of great optimism for the future in Colombia?

I freely acknowledge and pay tribute to those in the state agencies in Colombia who do so much, at great personal risk, to try to reduce the levels of impunity. Senor Gomez Mendez has made great progress in that area. I willingly reiterate my earlier remarks on the advances that have been made. None the less, human rights abuses still take place in Colombia. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure full and active support for the office of the High Commission in Bogota. It is essential that we use it as a window through which we can monitor the progress being made in relation to human rights.

A second reason to agree that this is a timely debate is the publication of the Human Rights Watch report in February, which gave graphic accounts of the continuing relationship between paramilitary organisations and the state armed services. It gave specific details of the 3rd, 4th and 14th brigades that operate in the main Colombian cities and throughout the country. There have been signs of progress. Some leading military figures have been stood down from their official positions, showing that the state is prepared to tackle the relationship. However, there is also concern that as abuse in the armed services is reducing, activity in the paramilitary organisations is increasing. The tie-up between state services and paramilitaries is worrying. It is not enough for abuse in the armed services to fall; abuse by paramilitaries must also fall.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and I spent a lot of time with Monsignor Hector Fabia Henao, director of Caritas Colombia, who is a priest, during our eight days in Colombia. He said:

In late February in El Salado, in the archdiocese of Cartagena, paramilitaries cut the throats of more than 40 people, including one in a church. Investigators said a 200-man death squad murdered the villagers during a four-day raid in the community in Bolivar province, a region fiercely contested by guerrillas and paramilitaries.

He later said that El Salado is not very far from army bases and that it was a problem for him to understand how the army did not know. He argued that it was impossible for such atrocities to continue for four days so close to the army without the army knowing and intervening. I acknowledge that there has been progress, but there is worrying evidence of links between paramilitaries and the armed forces.

The third reason for this being a timely debate is the development of Plan Colombia. It is a $7.5 billion programme with $4 billion to be raised in Colombia and the remainder to be raised by the international community. Let us refresh our memories about Plan Colombia. Its purpose is advancement of the peace process first and foremost, improvement of the economy, combating narcotics, reforming the judicial system and promoting human rights and supporting democratisation and social development in Colombia. The United States Congress is considering a $1.7 billion package, most of it in the form of military aid. The proposal is to train and equip two special counter-narcotic battalions, including 60 or more helicopters.

It is difficult to be sure of the reasons for the United States strong interest in Colombia. It may have a strategic interest following its recent withdrawal from Panama. Again, Colombia has the only remaining Marxist guerrilla force in the world and that may be of interest to the USA. There is also the problem of drugs, the cost of which to the United States is dramatic in terms of human lives—52,000 Amercian citizens die each year because of drug misuse at a cost of £110 billion to the health service and the economy. It cannot be denied that Colombia is the largest producer of cocaine in the world and a major producer of heroin. We understand the concerns, but to view Colombia simply as a drugs problem is to miss the point.

I want to press my hon. Friend the Minister on two points. First, can he tell us about the position of the US Congress on the $1.7 billion package? Everyone assumed that it would go through Congress, but it seems to have become stuck in a Republican debate on tax and spend in an election year and whether it can be afforded. Can my hon. Friend shed some light on that? Secondly. the Americans want a 50:50 split on Plan Colombia under which they will provide half the cash in the form of military aid and other countries, particularly European Union countries, will provide the other half in social and economic development. Plan Colombia should be shared equitably throughout the world. The package is an international responsibility and it is not right for it to be split in that way. Moreover, I am not convinced that that approach represents the correct balance. Earlier, I described the five major headings of Plan Colombia. It is not right to spend half the money on only one of the five objectives, namely, narcotics. I hope that we shall participate in this summer's Madrid summit, which is being organised by Jan Egeland, and that the Government will argue that it is important to get the right balance between the narcotics programme and other aspects of Plan Colombia.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun discussed the importance of consulting civil society in Colombia about the development of Plan Colombia. Unless that plan involves bottom-up development, it will not succeed—it should provide economic livelihoods for its citizens and help local economies to develop.

I conclude my rather hoarse remarks on a positive note—I want to pay tribute to various people who are Colombia's hope for the future. I pay tribute to President Pastrana, who has done much in a short time in difficult conditions, in particular for engaging with FARC. Many counselled against such engagement, but it is extremely important to maintain dialogue, and he has done so. I reiterate my support for the state officials who tried to bring justice to that country with reduced levels of impunity, and in particular for Mr. Gomez Mendez, the state prosecutor. I pay tribute to the human rights workers and community leaders in Colombia who, day in, day out, risk their lives in pursuit of peace.

I also pay tribute to the Churches and bishops, and in particular to Monsignor Hector Fabio Henao, whom I mentioned earlier, who is the director of Caritas Colombia. The churches have borne witness to the need for peace in that country. Before President Pastrana came to office, there was a huge political vacuum in Colombia that was filled largely by the churches, which sought to promote peace in that country. I pay tribute to AB Colombia, which is supported by CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam and other organisations, for its sterling work—it monitors developments daily in Colombia and it brings this country's attention to Colombia's problems. I also pay tribute to the peace brigades, many of which contain volunteers who take great risks in an attempt to realise a more peaceful society in Colombia, for which we all yearn.

There are many signs of hope, not least the fact that a couple of years ago 10 million people turned out to vote for peace in a referendum. However, the greatest sign of hope is the dignity and strength of the displaced people of Quibdo, whose faces I still see. They will be the inspiration—one day—for peace to come to Colombia.

Those who have never been to a country should be succinct in their public utterances about it. I was invited to speak by my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) and for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins); they are friends in a real sense. As chairman of the all-party group on Latin America, which is my locus of interest in this context, I am delighted that they have taken such a serious and deep interest in this matter, and I pay tribute to them for doing so.

I first became interested in Colombia when two stars of English football, Wilfred Manning and Ned Franklin, decided to go to Bogota. That memory dates me somewhat—[Interruption]—nonetheless, my hon. Friend the Minister had better be discreet.

I became seriously interested in this subject when I attended a lecture at the museum of anthropology and ethnology given by Dr. Martin Hildebrandt, then presidential adviser on conservation policy. I remember his description of the keeper of the jaguar, without whose permission people cannot slaughter jaguars or damage their habitat. In the world of ecology, Colombia has a deservedly high reputation for conservation and for its system of managing an extremely valuable ecosystem. As chairman of the all-party group on Latin America, I pay tribute to the Colombian ambassador, Humberto de la Calle—not just because he happens to be present, but because he has been an excellent colleague in London.

I have two questions, of which I have given notice. Yesterday, at a meeting of the British and Colombian chamber of commerce, a case was presented by Sir Keith Morris, Alexander Kennedy, the chairman, and Robert Bedloe, the chief executive. My question for the Minister is how much money is Britian giving to the Plan Colombia?

In September, I led a parliamentary debate to Lima in Peru. We visited the upper Amazon, where the mayor of Iquitos said, "Look, you see our grey ships with their guns on the river. We are not going to fight our neighbours—this is all about drugs. At every airport, you see dogs sniffing every bit of luggage. We are doing everything possible against drugs." That message was reinforced strongly by the expert drugs administration in Lima, and emphasised by President Fujimore. However, they also said that Colombia could not do anything effective unless we did something about anonymous numbered bank accounts in Great Cayman, the Virgin Islands, Belize, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Zurich, and even perhaps London.

I have raised that issue with my hon. Friend the Minister who is present today, with the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), who is taking a departmental lead, and with my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I have even spoken to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in the most friendly way, about the matter. What progress is being made on the issue of anonymous numbered bank accounts, which affects Colombia as much as Peru?

The Opposition share the concerns that have been expressed about Colombia and its peace process. Unlike the hon. Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) and for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins), I have not had the advantage of visiting Colombia; and, unlike the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), I have no current plans to visit the country. I will therefore be brief, which will please the hon.

Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). I, too, commend the good offices of the Colombian ambassador, who has helpfully kept me informed as an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman.

I shall approach the subject of the peace process from a slightly different perspective. I want to probe the Minister on the relationship between the United Kingdom and Colombia. I asked the Library to produce some figures for me. Our imports from Colombia amount to £200 million, compared with exports to Colombia of £107 million, resulting in a UK crude trade deficit of £93 million. To put it in context, imports from Colombia represent 0.1 per cent. of total UK imports, whereas UK exports to Colombia account for 0.06 per cent. of all UK exports. Colombia is outside the list of the UK's top 50 export markets, or sources of imports. Will the Minister tell us what prospects there are for increased trade with Colombia, and whether an export promoter at the DTI is examining those prospects?

Will the Minister tell us about Colombia's position as regards Export Credits Guarantee Department cover? The ECGD moved the country off cover following a review last October, when its credit rating was downgraded owing to a significant deterioration in its economic conditions. That cover is due to be reviewed next October, but is there any chance of a review taking place earlier than that? If not, what can be done to help Colombia's return to ECGD cover?

As I am sure we are all aware, the economic situation in Colombia has been difficult. The country's statistical department says that industrial production fell last year by 16.5 per cent. The only branch of industry to register increased output was oil refining, which went up by 11.5 per cent. on the 1998 figures. The worst performer was the auto industry. However, the country is making great efforts on the industrial front, for example, by establishing four new tax-free export-processing zones. Has the Minister had any discussions with the Colombians about those zones? Does he see any opportunities for British businesses?

There is no doubt that a large number of people are involved in the peace process in Colombia, and I am delighted that business leaders there have expressed support for that process. Nicarnor Restrepo, who is head of the Suramericana Group—a top company—said that business leaders were determined to break the cycle of violence that was blocking economic growth. He described the talks with guerrilla leaders as positive, and hoped that those talks would contribute to national reconciliation. It is a good sign that business leaders are engaged in the peace process; they are to be welcomed as warmly as any other participants in the process.

However, it is sad to read of continuing violence, particularly when it is directed towards the country's infrastructure, for that in turn damages economic health and well-being. Large areas of central and north-east Colombia, including Bogota, had to try to get back to normal after severe disruption from power failures caused by bombing that took out about 300 pylons. That meant that electricity had to be rationed in parts of the country. If the peace process is to succeed, that sort of economic guerrilla warfare must stop, as must the killings.

Two of the speakers highlighted the problem of drugs. I hope that the hon. Members for Wythenshawe and Sale, East and for Richmond Park did not intend to understate the drugs problem emanating from Colombia. British interests and UK citizens are affected by that problem, as are future prospects for business. Not to examine the problems fully is to put our head in the sand. I agree with the Minister that zero tolerance should not be regarded as the only option, but we must reflect on the message sent to drug producers when we subscribe to harm reduction measures and propose either the legalisation of the use of certain drugs, or the lessening of the status of the criminal offence of possessing or trafficking in them.

On previous occasions, I have urged the Minister to consider crop substitution. I asked him a question about it a while ago, but he did not reply. I hope that he has done some research in the intervening period and can now tell me about the prospects for replacing the poppy crop with pyrethrum chrysanthemum; it is much in demand as a natural pesticide and there has been a world shortage of the crop. I hope that the Minister has done some work on the potential for crop substitution and can answer my question.

Will the hon. Lady give me more details about the company in her constituency?

Yes. I have already provided information about it to Ministers in the Department of Trade and Industry and, indeed, to the Minister himself. The company is called Agropharm. My inquiry is genuine and I hope that the Minister can give us chapter and verse in his response. Thus far, his responses have not been full.

Give me a chance.

Well, the Minister knows that I raised the issue on a previous occasion.

Let me return to my theme of the involvement of business men. There is no doubt that armed conflict in Colombia will not end while drug trafficking persists.

Those are the words of Nicarnor Restrepo during chamber of commerce discussions, and I believe that he is right. What plans does the Minister have to boost operations providing counter-drugs assistance and supporting the UN international drugs programme? The UK has contributed £2.2 million, which is only a small sum. I do not know whether the Minister has scrutinised the budgets and examined the possibility of increasing our contribution. Under what review process is he examining expenditure and resources with a view to increasing the UK contribution?

The hon. Member for Linlithgow mentioned drug money laundering. I share his great concern about unnumbered anonymous bank accounts, but, when I was in the Cayman islands last year, I discovered that using a blunt instrument is not the answer. The OECD report into tax havens has created problems for Caribbean islands. We are quick to criticise Caribbean tax havens, but not to praise them. In an international context, the Caymans were asked to discuss with other financial centres their successful schemes to trace the proceeds of drug money laundering and combating financial crime. The Cayman islands are in the forefront of that fight, so I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that and not allow such financial centres to be attacked in a gratuitous and willy-nilly fashion. That is not the answer to stopping the drugs trade.

We all know about the difficulty of peace processes—after all, we are engaged in our own peace process. We should never underestimate the challenges faced by the Colombian Government. The message from today's debate is that we offer as much help, counsel and support as we can provide, but that we will not interfere. We must remember that the peace process belongs to the Colombians. We hope that the peace process will work. We all subscribe to the idea of a new Colombia, in which peace, democracy, freedom and social justice prevail.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) for introducing this debate. By raising this subject in Westminster Hall he attracts British attention to such matters. It is time that the international community had a greater focus on Colombia, so I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate and to hon. Members who have participated in it.

My hon. Friend spoke from the experience of his visit and gave a detailed account of his impressions. Indeed, he conveyed a deep and passionate commitment to the courage of the Colombian people whom he met on his visit. His impression of that courage remains with him and he has brought it before us in our deliberations. My hon. Friend mentioned Colombia's beauty and diversity, but made special reference to its people, and we are grateful for that perspective. He gave a detailed analysis of the causes of conflict and provided a good introduction to Colombia for those who may know nothing about it. He told us about the history and present status of the plan for peace and spoke about a future vision.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) therefore has a good template for her visit, although I acknowledge that she displayed more knowledge of Colombia than most people. The Foreign Office is happy to give information, back-up or support to the hon Lady or any hon. Member who is visiting overseas. Hon. Members have only to ask for such back-up and are entitled to a private meeting in the Foreign Office and a detailed briefing. They can get as much information as they need to undertake such visits. Visiting different places and keeping discussion alive is a good use of Members' time: indeed, we have witnessed that this morning.

As the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) suggested, Colombia's economic potential bears comparison with Brazil and Argentina. The tragedy is that that potential has not been fulfilled. The current problems of violence, drugs, social disruption and great personal tragedies undermine Colombia's potential to become a diverse, prosperous state for all its people and a beacon in Latin America.

We have followed events with great concern, and we hope to consult widely on how best to help. I join my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) in the highly complimentary remarks that they paid to the British non-governmental organisations which have engaged in the country and worked there patiently for some years. Those NGOs establish a British presence in Colombia and their contributions and analyses are important to the Government.

Colombia is no stranger to violence. In response to the hon. Member for Richmond Park, a lack of security is a crippling deterrent to future investment and job generation. To put it crudely, few business men will be keen to visit if they do not feel safe. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, civil war known as La Violencia took place between the conservative and liberal parties dominating the country and cost 250,000 lives. The first guerrilla groups emerged in the 1960s and have been fighting the Government ever since in what is probably Latin America's longest and most brutal internal conflict.

Paramilitaries joined the conflict in the 1980s and it expanded rapidly in the 1990s. In addition to internal conflict, there are high levels of everyday criminal violence. Colombia still has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East mentioned the wider economic context. Colombia has recently suffered its worst recession for 70 years and has endured knock-on effects from the Asian financial crisis and last year's devaluation of the Brazilian real. It has also suffered from the problem of low commodity prices and damage caused by El Nino. In other words, the Colombian economy is under great pressure. Efforts so far to introduce legal crops and support transport networks and marketing facilities have produced disappointing results because investment is expensive. New crops are often not sustainable. It must be taken in the full economic context, which is why it is not an easy strategy in the current economic context.

Will the Minister undertake to write to me again when he has evaluated the sustainability of introducing pyrethrum and the support that farmers would need for that crop?

I have done some work on pyrethrum. It is an insecticide, not a weed killer. We are not involved in any direct crop eradication or spraying programmes in Colombia. In January, I announced that £350,000 was going to an international drug control programme to look at monitoring coca and replacing it with useful crops. It is not clear whether pyrethrum would be used for crop eradication in Colombia, but I will take the matter further in the light of the hon. Lady's interest in the company in her constituency.

The Minister is mistaken. I am talking about using pyrethrum not for crop eradication, but as part of a crop substitution programme. Pyrethrum is indeed an insecticide. It is used, for example, to protect pilgrims to Mecca against attack from various nasty things. This is not about crop eradication, but purely about crop substitution. It is used as an insecticide in other parts of the world and is greatly in demand.

I am grateful for the hon. Lady's clarification. I will certainly take that matter further for her. I will ask the Government's chief scientist to make inquiries into the properties of pyrethrum to see whether it can be used positively. I do not say that dismissively. We should look at modern science and the potential of bio-remedial methods to address the problems.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I had to miss the earlier part of the debate and I should like to make a brief point about crop substitution. Although it is very attractive, one of the simple realities is that unless we, the consumers, are prepared to pay the price to the growers, crop substitution is totally irrelevant because it simply will not exist in those very thin soils.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the risk of embarrassing him, may I say that he did a great job as Minister of State in campaigning for and raising the profile of Colombia? I am pleased that he is here for this debate. I shall do my best to follow his efforts.

Last week I met the general secretary of the Latin American Association of Human Rights, Dr. Juan de Dios Parra, and we spoke about the problem of the vulnerable indigenous communities in southern Colombia. Indigenous peoples represent 1.5 per cent. of the population—some 700,000 people. They are particularly at risk because they are neutral in Colombia's internal conflict and so are targeted from all sides. They are forcibly recruited by FARC and, dare I say it, by the military too. They are at risk from the paramilitaries, who are keen to extend the land under their control to expand and extend coca cultivation.

Four indigenous communities disappeared entirely last year and displacement is increasing. I mention that because this is about real people who suffer as a result of the violence. Only last Saturday night, Colombian TV channels showed reports of a massacre by FARC guerrillas in the towns of Vigia del Fuerte and Bellavista, which are situated on opposite sides of the Atrato river. The police station was destroyed and 21 police were murdered, some at point blank range after they had surrendered. Their bodies were then chopped up with machetes. A woman and her two infants were also reportedly murdered.

I mention that because it is important to see the scale of the violence all around. The reaction of the head of the police and the army in those circumstances was unusually strong. The head of the Colombian police, General Rosso Serrano, was obviously angered and distraught during a visit to the town. He called on all human rights NGOs to witness what was going on. It is important to witness those events, but it is important, too, to keep a clear perspective on the complexity and difficulties that people experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun paid tribute to the efforts of police forces to get a grip on an incredibly difficult situation, when their officers are at risk.

The President of Colombia and his Government face a daunting task. Plan Colombia was published at the United Nations general assembly in September 1999. It is an ambitious set of proposals to tackle disruption, destruction and displacement, a plan for peace and prosperity, to strengthen the democratic state. It includes judicial and human rights strategies, assertion of the rule of law and the promotion of impartial justice for all. The aims are admirable, and, in principle, as hon. Members have said, it is a good thing.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of coca leaf, from which cocaine is manufactured, and acres of land are devoted to the opium poppy, which is turned into heroin. The vast wealth produced by that trade finances illegal armed groups and their struggle for control, and the income that they produce in the region, undermines the search for peace. Drugs and the drugs business—I use that term deliberately—are part of the problem, but not the whole of it.

I am aware of NGOs' statements, including the excellent report from AB Colombia, that there was insufficient consultation with the civil society in drawing up Plan Colombia. That view must be taken seriously, because it is essential that civil society is involved in the search for peace.

The NGOs must ensure that the Colombian Government understand their ideas, concerns and proposals; they, too, have a role to play in designing a positive vision for the future. The Colombian Government, for their part, should take the NGOs' representations into account as the plans are crystallised. We must emphasise that there is a process—

Sir Keith Morris, Alexander Kennedy and Robert Bedloe asked last night if there was any figure for British involvement in Plan Colombia.

We are actively discussing with our European Union partners about the areas to which we could add value. We are not at the point of discussing our contribution in figures, because who does what, when and where is part of the plan's structure. As I shall say later, we are looking for a wider vision for the plan, which will be part of our discussions.

I was asked whether there is any real possibility of peace. The key is to engage all the parties involved. President Pastrana's high commissioner for peace, Mr. Victor Ricardo, is in London now—I believe that he and the ambassador are present in the Chamber to listen to our debate. They have played a tremendous role in furthering relations, which we welcome. I had discussions yesterday at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with Mr. Ricardo, who has been negotiating with the guerrillas, notably with FARC, on behalf of President Pastrana's Government. He and representatives of FARC, who are working towards a common end, toured European capitals last month. The violence may have continued, but bringing the parties together is a symbolic action that is greatly appreciated in Europe. We hope that there will be more talks and joint visits. We would welcome a mission to the United Kingdom if that was thought to be helpful.

We are encouraging the Colombian authorities urgently to tackle the problem of human rights abuses, which were highlighted in three recent reports, from Human Rights Watch, from the United States State Department and from the United Nations human rights office in Bogota. We positively support the initiative and the Foreign Office now contributes substantially to funding. The message in those reports is clear: there is a long way to go in tackling human rights abuses in Colombia. We take every opportunity to condemn the appalling violence perpetrated on the Colombian people by the illegal armed forces. We strongly urge the Colombian authorities to tackle the problem of collusion between the paramilitaries and the armed forces. There is general agreement that the paramilitaries are now a key part of the problem in Colombia. They have expanded at a faster rate than FARC, from several hundred members in 1990 to some 5,000 now. We realise that the police and the forces have to undertake harrowing and dangerous tasks and we do not underestimate the losses that they have suffered. However, there is a need to build mutual confidence in the rule of law for the future of Colombia.

I have written recently to the vice-president of Colombia, Dr. Gustavo Bell, to tell him of our Government's concerns, especially about alleged collusion between the armed forces and the paramilitaries. Once again, we do not underestimate the difficulties of dealing with those problems. Yesterday I spoke again to Mr. Ricardo, particularly in the context of the evidence in the report from Human Rights Watch. I know that the Colombian authorities take these criticisms extremely seriously. They have established a special committee, headed by the vice-president, to address these matters. That is encouraging but, as Mr. Ricardo acknowledged yesterday, more needs to be done.

I stress once more the important contribution that has been made by UNHRO. Once again, we solidly support it. We have given approximately £108,000 towards the cost of running its office. This year's session of UNHRO opened last week in Geneva. There is to be a debate on Colombia, with emphasis on UNHRO's report on Bogota. We are urging our EU colleagues to issue a strongly worded statement of their position on the issue. We must make use of that resolution. We have raised the issue of human rights and the safety of human rights workers especially—that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East. In the past four years, there have been 36 murders of human rights defenders and I raised this with Mr. Ricardo. I pay tribute to the members of the nongovernmental organisations. They have been threatened and abused, and some have been murdered, but they continue to work courageously to defend ordinary people and call abuses to account. People have memories about all those things. They remember names, faces, dates and times. People who murder with impunity will never have immunity in the long run. History and justice will out. We shall use every opportunity to remind our interlocutors of their responsibility to defend and protect those who dedicatedly defend human rights and we pay tribute to their courage.

I will mention briefly the projects for peace that are in hand. This relates to questions asked by the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, and is part of the commitment of the Department for International Development to reducing conflict and building peace in Colombia. In January, almost one third of a million pounds was given to a four-project programme, the components of which are a peace partnership convocation to promote and strengthen partnerships between local and regional governments, public and private sector institutions, NGOs and local communities. The precise task of these projects is to build from the base the possibility of civil society once more. Up to 10 representatives of institutions identified as leaders in local peace-building initiatives will participate in a UK study tour to look at where they can compare notes in relation to base building. That will be important work.

I acknowledge the work done by members of Fiscalia in investigating cases of abuse, as well as the work done by the vice-president's human rights team and Defensor del Pueblo. Their role is unenviable; they too are subject to attack. We support their efforts and are seeking ways of working with them and assisting them in detail.

Colombia's Nobel prize-winning novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, described Colombia's conflict as a biblical holocaust that threatens to consume the country. I trust that time will prove him to have been over-pessimistic. The challenge of resolving that country's problems is intimidating. We have worked quietly but solidly to provide advice, training and development for both Government and nongovernmental projects, and we are ready to do more in collaboration with our EU partners.

I highlight in particular the work of our embassy in Bogota for the support of civil society in Colombia, especially the support that it has given to human rights NGOs and to the peace movement. It is important to continue to maintain our dialogue with Colombia at the highest level. I shall be seeing Jan Egelund, the UN special representative for Colombia, who is coming to the UK tomorrow. I am pleased to announce that the Prime Minister has invited President Pastrana to visit London on 13 April for talks at No. 10.

I have not been able to respond to all the issues that hon. Members have raised. I shall write to those whose points I have missed, especially those on money laundering, about which I shall talk to the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), then follow them through. It is important that Plan Colombia is not reduced to short-term crisis management strategies. It can be transformed into a vision, as this debate has shown. It can form a positive aid and judicial reform package. We are providing small but necessary sums to improve the administration of justice, but what Colombia really needs is a nationwide, inclusive, good governance programme that addresses the complex causes of violence that have been mentioned this morning. As Human Rights Watch states, with proper development and conditionality, the plan could improve human rights in Colombia, so let us back it and add value to it.

The purpose of this debate is to give voice to profound local concern, if not growing anger, about the proposed merger of Rutland and Tresham colleges—[Interruption]

Order. Will those leaving the Chamber please do so quietly?

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Those concerns centre on not only the proposed merger, but on the highly unsatisfactory way in which it has been processed by the Further Education Funding Council. I appreciate that the Minister will be slightly constrained in what he can say this morning, but the value of this debate is that, at least from now on, he and the Department for Education and Employment will be under no illusion about the strength of feeling locally and in nearby Stamford, which is represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies).

Rutland college is based in Oakham, the county town of Rutland. It is essentially a sixth form college for 16 to 19-year-olds, but also contains a small element of adult education; it has a capacity of about 600 pupils. As the only post-16 institution in Rutland, it is fed primarily by the three community colleges for 12 to 16-year-olds in the area: Uppingham, Vale of Catmose and Casterton. To its credit, Rutland college has generally produced good A-level results and it received a good report in a recent Ofsted inspection. It is a relatively popular institution, which sits on its own in the centre of a sparsely populated rural area.

Nothing that I say today should be considered as expressing anything other than a wish to see the college flourish in the years ahead. The origin of the college's desire to merge is entirely financial; any supposed educational benefits are secondary and utterly unconvincing. The whole unhappy episode was initiated by a glance in the crystal ball that alerted the college to the near certainty that it would face a financial deficit in future. There is no crisis now, but it is predicted that, next year or the year after, the college will suffer a shortfall of £100,000 or more. No one can blame the college corporation for taking steps to address that deficit. On the contrary, it has a responsibility to do so, and its chairman, Nigel Chubb, who is an experienced local figure in industry, can only be commended for trying to safeguard the future of the college. However, the preferred solution—a merger with Tresham college in Northamptonshire—and the steps taken to achieve it have set the issue alight.

Every interested party outside the college opposes the merger. Every secondary head teacher is opposed. The school governors are opposed. Most parents are opposed. Nearby Stamford college is opposed. Rutland council is opposed. I am opposed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford, who I hope will speak in the debate, is opposed. The whole world is against the merger, except the FEFC and Rutland college itself—and even the college is not unanimous.

There is no established pattern within which Rutland ever looks south to Northamptonshire. Rutland likes to be self-contained, where that is realistic, but if it wants to associate with a neighbouring area for any reason, it invariably looks to Stamford to the east, or to Melton to the north. People living in villages in the eastern half of Rutland shop in Stamford rather than Oakham. One of the local newspapers is the Stamford Mercury, which also has a Rutland edition. Indeed, the parliamentary constituency used to be Rutland and Stamford. Rutland looks to Lincolnshire or to Leicestershire, never to Northamptonshire.

Tresham is a college in Northamptonshire, with its campus and a series of sites in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough. Last year, a grand total of three students from Rutland went to Tresham college. There is no natural link between Rutland college and Tresham college, and no natural link between Rutland and Northants. Tresham just happens to be there and is thought to be a suitable lifeboat in the face of Rutland college's imminent financial problem.

There is no educational rationale for the merger. Any suggestion that there will be educational gains is a specious and disingenuous justification for a merger that is driven by other reasons—indeed, those other reasons are pretty spurious too. Joining two institutions in such a way is a response to a completely perverse incentive: a financial incentive, which is perverse because it is a response to artificial structures such as the funding formula and the distribution of government money.

The funding formula is peculiar, a deficit is looming and Tresham is there. The colleges might be able to save £50,000 by merging. They think that, by joining together, they will be in a stronger position to lobby the Government for money. No doubt there will be no end of property deals and asset allocation—not to say asset stripping—to get the books in shape. At best, the whole project is merely financial; at worst, it is a most unenlightened response to the perverse incentives that emerge from a collectivist education system and its funding.

It is said that there will be no bussing of students between sites. Perhaps there will be teachers who can bring their expertise to both colleges, but they could do that anyway. Even if the Rutland-Tresham merger were the only option, it would not be an inspiring plan. However, it is not the only option, and the way in which the merger has been driven down this particular cul-de-sac is dubious, to put it mildly—indeed, such a comment would be far too mild. The truth is, I have never seen such a blatant case of bureaucratic bulldozing.

The Minister will no doubt have been assured that the FEFC has followed the proper procedures to the letter. That is not true. If the Minister has been told that, he has been misled. The audit trail of letters and meetings might make it look as though it has done so, but it has merely gone through the motions. I was not born yesterday and I did not come down with the last shower of rain. I am profoundly disturbed by the attitude of FEFC officials, who are clearly so bent on forcing the merger through that they have chosen to ignore all contrary points of view. With regret, I name Christine Frost as one who has incurred the universal displeasure of all those who are opposed to the merger. Her apparently unbending agenda amounts to questionable conduct.

One of the most aggrieved parties is Stamford college, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford. A few years ago tentative discussions were held between Rutland and Stamford colleges, but they were not pursued in detail, partly because the principals did not get on. That has now changed. Merging with Stamford is an obvious option, but it is a complete and utter distortion to say that it has been properly studied this time around as an alternative to Tresham. It has not. If the Minister has been told that it has, he should read the riot act as soon as this debate is over, because he will have been misled again. Stamford is a serious option and in all respects a far more logical one.

In its letter of 21 January to the principal of Stamford college, the FEFC said:

Before arriving at this decision the committee carefully considered the implications for Stamford including the issues raised by the college under each of the Council's criteria. The committee recognised that there would be some impact on Stamford but did not consider this would be significant.

The council's criteria—my elbow! In relation to the number and intensity of local objections to the merger, the letter merely said:

These concerns will be recorded in the minutes and drawn to the attention of the Council.

Let me translate that into real English. That section should have read, "I intend to go through the motions, ignore any objections, dupe the decision makers in the FEFC and press ahead anyway. PS—get lost."

The Stamford option is a compelling alternative. An established pattern of association exists between the two towns, and 200 full-time students already travel from Rutland to Stamford. Furthermore, the Learning and Skills Council, which will soon come into being, will link Rutland with Lincolnshire, so what is the point of preempting that development by creating a merger that will straddle two different learning and skills council regions? The Stamford principal is a go-getting and much-admired figure whose proposals have not been given a fair hearing. His plans have been dismissed, humoured and surreptitiously sneered at by the FEFC, which has not studied the Stamford option properly, but has only advanced the Tresham proposal.

The other aggrieved party is Rutland county council, which is being denied a proper chance to set and shape the future of post-16 education in the county. It is not pie in the sky Rutland nationalism for the council to have a dutiful wish to implement a responsible post-16 education policy for the only institution of its kind in the county. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment, in a policy letter dated 14 December 1999, encouraged the establishment of

an LEA-maintained sixth form centre

but there is no prospect of that happening if the merger proceeds.

Part of the FEFC's claim to have followed the rules fully is its so-called fact-finding visit to Rutland county council on 3 November 1999. Such a claim is deceitful, as the visit was neither billed nor conducted appropriately. The two main councillors concerned—one responsible for lifelong learning, the other the head of the education committee—were not even included. Those in Rutland were dumbfounded by the attitude of the representatives of the FEFC. Christine Frost has become public enemy No. 1, and there is no prospect of anyone in the area who is opposed to the merger trusting her again on such matters.

My dealings with the FEFC have been unsettling. I asked to see the chief executive, but I saw only others. I was promised an account of supportive submissions, but it was never sent to me. I secured an emergency meeting before the FEFC's meeting on 8 March, but I received no subsequent account of it. Hon. Members can therefore imagine my annoyance on first learning about the council's obdurate decision to recommend the merger from a journalist who had received a gloating press release from Rutland college. Only now that I am on the warpath has the chief executive invited me to see him.

The FEFC has shown complete contempt for any genuine process of consultation. It has gone through the motions with its mind made up and trampled over any objection with a shameful disdain. To my regret, I now have no confidence in the FEFC and I have formed an entirely negative view of some of those within it. Stamford college has lodged a formal written complaint. I was advised today that Rutland council intends to move a resolution, as soon as possible, to invoke the process of judicial review. I am almost inclined to issue a writ myself. Regardless of any legal outcome, the merger proposal remains deeply flawed.

It would be nothing short of negligence and administrative vandalism to go ahead with the proposal without considering the Stamford option again, and without allowing Rutland county council to consider the overall future provision of post-16 education. The merger is ill-conceived, ill-timed and ill-considered. It has taken on a momentum of its own against the wishes of almost everybody who has an interest in quality education in Rutland. The FEFC should withdraw its recommendation. Failing that, the courts or the Secretary of State should stop it in its tracks and give wiser consideration to the bigger picture.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for allowing me to intervene briefly in this debate, which I congratulate him on securing. My hon. Friend used strong language, which is entirely justified by some familiarity with the facts and the peculiar circumstances of the case.

My concern is threefold. First, as hon. Members will appreciate, I am concerned about the interests of my constituents. There are about 20,000 people in the town of Stamford, and those in the surrounding villages and small towns take the total population to between 30,000 and 40,000. The proposed merger threatens the de facto division of labour between Stamford college and Rutland college; that, in turn, threatens the future of certain courses at Stamford college, such as engineering and modern languages. It is important that the college should continue to offer those courses, but they will become unviable if only a few people are removed from them.

I am worried not only about Stamford college as an institution, but about the whole town and the surrounding area—especially given that Stamford's only state secondary school in the maintained sector does not have a sixth form. Stamford college is alone in being able to provide A-level courses in the maintained sector. Any reduction in its range of courses—especially the key, slightly harder subjects to which I referred—would therefore be an educational disaster for the people of the area. It is extraordinary that that has not been taken on board by those who have public responsibilities in that context.

Secondly, I thoroughly endorse what my hon. Friend said about the travesty of procedure and consultation that has taken place, and about the extraordinary un-businesslike way in which it is proposed to proceed with the merger without having properly evaluated the alternative of a merger with Stamford. It is elementary business procedure to consider and evaluate the entire range of options before making a decision. Clearly, that has not happened in this case.

Finally, it is astonishing that the authorities should consider proceeding with the merger when public opinion as a whole—not merely that of the locally elected district and county councillors and the two local Members of Parliament—is overwhelmingly against it. If the views of local representatives are not considered to be worth hearing, why bother with the structure of democracy that we have in this country? In any case, the views of local educationalists should be dominant, and local head teachers are apparently unanimously opposed.

I endorse my hon. Friend's comments and ask the Minister to instruct the bureaucracy to proceed with the case in the businesslike, straightforward, dispassionate and balanced fashion that we are entitled to expect of our public authorities.

I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for raising the issue, and recognise the strength of the concerns that have been expressed by him and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies). I assure the hon. Gentleman that we take those concerns very seriously and recognise the importance of the matter to their constituencies.

It may be helpful if I explain a little of the context in which such decisions are taken. The Government regard greater collaboration as an important part of our plans for the further education sector. We want to encourage collaboration between the various providers in the post-16 world to raise standards and to provide better opportunities for all young people and adult learners. That is one of the key driving forces behind the Learning and Skills Bill that will shortly be introduced in the House. We aim to remove some of the barriers to effective collaboration between providers, which include schools and colleges.

Where appropriate, such collaboration will involve mergers. There is still too much wasteful competition between colleges in many respects, and small class sizes can mean that specialist provision is threatened because it is not cost effective to provide it. Mergers can help to resolve such situations and safeguard some kinds of specialist provision. Of course, we recognise that mergers can be highly sensitive issues locally. We have heard much this morning about the process that has been involved in this case, so it may assist the hon. Gentlemen if I explain the details of that process that were overlooked in their remarks.

Mergers between further education institutions must follow a set statutory procedure, which starts with local consultation with other further education providers, local authorities, local businesses, schools and other interested parties. The FEFC has a set procedure for considering mergers and it applies a set of criteria to all merger proposals. The criteria are: first, the educational benefits of the proposals to students, particularly the effect on access and choice; secondly, the implications of the proposal for the future development of post-16 provision in an area, including the potential impact on other further education providers; thirdly, the financial benefits of the proposed reorganisation, particularly in terms of the proposed merged institution's viability; fourthly, the extent of consultation and the consideration that has been given to alternative options—that should deal with some of the concerns that have been raised this morning; and, finally, the likelihood of the proposed reorganisation being successfully implemented.

On the penultimate criterion, will the Minister assure the Chamber that full consideration has been given to the possibility of a merger with Stamford college, and that that possibility has been evaluated as thoroughly as the merger between Rutland and Tresham colleges? Has a strategic plan been developed for the merger of Rutland and Stamford colleges? My information is that no such business plan has been proposed and that no such option has been properly evaluated.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be patient for a few more minutes. I am about to explain that the process is not complete. It is important to complete my outline of the process, after which I should be able to enlighten him about where we stand in that process.

There is a statutory procedure that has to be gone through, after which the proposals and responses to the consultation are considered by the regional committee of the FEFC. That committee considers the local impact of the proposals and hears representations from those who oppose, and those who support, the proposals. In the case of the merger that we are discussing, I understand that the regional committee heard representations directly from Stamford college, Rutland county council and the community colleges of Lincolnshire before considering its advice to the reorganisations committee.

I am sorry to interrupt, but it is not true to say that the representation from Rutland county council was properly heard. The meeting at which the Government suggest consultation took place was a complete and utter sham. It was billed as a basic chat, but it turned out to be the formal consultation, of which Rutland county council had been totally unaware. It was a disgrace.

I take note of the hon. Gentleman's account of what occurred, but it stands as a matter of fact that there was a presentation and the relevant bodies had an opportunity to make their views known.

The regional committee normally considers whether or not the FEFC should publish proposals in accordance with the statutory requirements placed on it by the Secretary of State. They require the FEFC to issue formal notices setting out the proposals, and to allow four weeks for comments. After that formal consultation period, the reorganisations committee decides whether or not to forward the proposals to the Secretary of State for a decision in the light of the responses. That statutory process provides ample opportunity for all concerned to make known their reservations about any proposal. I confirm that the representations made by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton have been sent to the Department. We shall, of course, carefully consider everything that he and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford have said this morning.

When the proposals are sent to the Secretary of State, they are considered carefully, along with all the responses received during the statutory consultation process. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton will be aware that mergers between further education colleges are considered on behalf of the Secretary of State by my noble Friend Baroness Blackstone. I assure the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford that she takes into account all the relevant facts, including the wider strategic and local effects that the merger might have on the community and on other education provision. I assure both hon. Gentlemen that what they have said today will be taken into account by my noble Friend. If, after detailed consideration, she approves the merger, statutory instruments will be laid before both Houses to bring the proposals into effect.

The formal proposal from the FEFC for the merger betweeen Rutland college and the Tresham institute has only just arrived at the Department and my noble Friend will consider it in due course. We have not yet reached the decision-making stage. I am sure that the hon. Members for Rutland and Melton and for Grantham and Stamford will understand that I cannot comment on the merits or otherwise of the proposals before the Minister reaches her decision.

However, the Department is aware of the views of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton on the matter, and they have been taken into account. He has made them known most forcefully, on this occasion and others, and we are considering them along with all the representations that we have received from interested parties. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been involved in correspondence and discussions with officials from FEFC, and I conclude by assuring him and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford that their concerns have been well noted, and will be taken into account when my noble Friend reaches her decision.

We can move on to our next debate a little earlier than expected, as the Minister is in her place and the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), who is to initiate it, is also present.

Perhaps you could give me guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as to whether I shall be allowed an extra four minutes, or whether we shall have to stop after precisely 30 minutes?

I am happy to help the hon. Lady. We can continue the debate until 12.30 pm. The hon. Lady has therefore gained a little time, and I am sure that she will wax lyrical for as long as she sees fit.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I shall demonstrate that the reopened east-west rail link would be a critical and strategic addition to the national rail network; that it would be crucial to relieving congestion on both the road and rail networks; that it would encourage sustainable economic regeneration; that it would be widely supported; and that it could be delivered quickly and would be excellent value for money. However, Government action is required now to ensure that it goes ahead without further delay.

I speak not only on behalf of my constituency, but as the chair of a parliamentary group that contains 30 Conservative and Labour Members of Parliament representing constituencies along the route. I am grateful to those members of the group who are here today. A significant number of other hon. Members—including the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), who has just left—have sent me notes to say that they wished that they could be here to support the debate, but that it clashed with other commitments.

The east-west rail link would run from the east coast ports through either Ipswich or Norwich to Cambridge, Bedford, Bletchley—which is in my constituency—Oxford, Swindon and connections to the west of England. The core of the route, from Cambridge to Oxford, was closed to passenger services in 1968, and to freight in the 1980s. The closures were untimely, as they occurred just before the development of Milton Keynes and the growth of Bicester, both of which would probably have sustained the route and averted its closure. Some of the route remains open; for example, an excellent, though rather slow train service operates between Bedford and Bletchley. The Oxford to Bicester section was also reopened a few years ago. Almost all the track bed remains, although there is a nine-mile gap to the east of Bedford.

My first argument is that the link would provide a critical and strategic addition to the national rail network. The east-west route would provide an orbital route round London connecting all the main rail radials emanating from London and would maximise network capacity by connecting the east coast and west coast main lines. Hon. Members will be aware that there is virtually no spare capacity in the south of England on either of those main lines, so an east-west rail link would provide additional flexibility in the network. It would provide opportunities for both passengers and freight and would allow freight from London to the north to be rerouted, avoiding the east coast and west coast main lines, so it could relieve congestion on other parts of the network around London by diverting some existing services to the east-west route.

The route is crucial if congestion on road and rail networks is to be relieved. I have described its effect on relieving congestion on the rail network. It would also provide a realistic alternative to the current road network, linking town centres across England from east to west. The cross-country road alternatives are not particularly good and anyone who has used them knows that. They are not direct, there is little dual carriageway and some stretches have a poor safety record. The A420 from Oxford to Swindon is popularly, or unpopularly, known as the road of death because of its record of road traffic accidents. Furthermore, many town centres are heavily congested, so journey times from town centre to town centre are much higher. A direct east-west link is an attractive alternative. It would help to achieve a transfer of passengers from the road network to the rail network and it has been estimated that it would save up to 100 vehicle kilometres every year.

It would also encourage sustainable economic regeneration. The Milton Keynes, Northampton, Bedford triangle has been designated an area of substainable major growth. Cambridge, with its high-tech industries, is also under heavy development pressure, as are other sites along the route, including Norwich. The east-west route would make those locations transport nodes in a network from which passengers could go north, south, east or west without having to use the most congested parts of the network. It would allow new settlements and housing developments to be built along the east-west route, with employment, shipping and schools linked by rail instead of just by road. It would serve an estimated additional 400,000 new homes along the route. A feasibility study has shown that regeneration linked to the east-west route would create around 10,000 jobs and it can be calculated that taxes paid on earnings and other economic benefits would return £80 million to the economy.

The route would pass through Bletchley in my constituency. It is an old railway town which has suffered decline since the expansion of Milton Keynes. It has a high unemployment rate with poor health and lower incomes compared with other parts of Milton Keynes. There is a substantial amount of empty office and shop space. However, the moment is now right for the regeneration of Bletchley, because central Milton Keynes is becoming fully developed and developers are starting to look elsewhere. Bletchley could become an important secondary centre, but the east-west route is crucial. Bletchley would be the crossover point of the east-west route and the west coast main line. New settlements along the east-west route would look to Bletchley for work and shops. It would allow full exploitation of the tourist potential of Bletchley park, which is next to Bletchley railway station and was the wartime setting for the decoding of the Enigma codes, which made a huge contribution to the victory against fascism in the second world war.

The east-west route is widely supported. Plans for the route have been developed and sustained during the past five years by a consortium of 35 local authorities, controlled by a variety of political parties. This is a cross-party issue and I pay tribute to the work of that local authority consortium over the years in ensuring that the feasibility study for the east-west route was carried out, putting their money behind the idea and ensuring that the business case for the route was well and truly demonstrated, even if it is not entirely recognised in some places.

The east-west route is a crucial element in the local authorities' transport plans. It has been endorsed as a priority project in draft regional planning guidance for the south-east and east of England planning organisations. It has also been incorporated in the strategic plans of the new regional development agencies for the south-east and east of England, both of which have now become members of the consortium pushing the route and are keen to be involved in partnership promotion.

As I have said, the scheme is supported by a parliamentary group, which I chair, with 30 members representing constituencies along and close to the route. We all have a different constituency argument for stressing its importance, but all the arguments together make the overall case. The route has many things going for it, the last of which are that it can be delivered quickly and is excellent value for money.

Technically, the Bedford to Oxford section, with the Aylesbury link, can be delivered quickly. The track bed already exists and simply needs upgrading to allow travel up to 75 mph. That would be a huge, immediate advantage to my constituency, as the existing Bedford to Bletchley route is hardly any faster than it was 150 years ago. With increased speed, it would become a much more attractive alternative. No statutory powers would be required to open this section, so there is no need for a process under the Transport and Works Act 1992 or a public inquiry. The western end of the project has pre-qualified for the rail partnership fund, which is administered by the shadow Strategic Rail Authority.

The second phase, from Bedford eastwards, would take longer because of the nine-mile gap in the route. There has been considerable discussion in Bedford about whether the route should go through the centre of Bedford or round the outside. That matter has now been resolved, after an exceedingly heated public debate, and there is general support in Bedford for the inner route, serving the town centre. However, that will require a process under the Transport and Works Act 1992 because of the need to fill in the gap.

Several train operating companies are seriously interested in bidding to run services along different sections of the east-west route, which brings me to the funding mechanisms. There has been some confusion about the appropriate funding mechanism. Orignally, the local authority consortium was advised by the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising that it should pursue funding on its own, without the involvement of a train operating company. It is now being advised by the shadow Strategic Rail Authority that such involvement is fundamental to a successful bid. At the same time, the franchise replacement process has added complexity to the issue.

One of the train operating companies is including the west phase of the east-west route in its franchise replacement bid; another is including the full route in its submission. The two companies are running on different time scales, with only one in the first tranche of franchise replacement. As part of the franchise replacement process, the train operating companies will not only bid to run services along the route, but intend to put some of their own money towards the capital costs that would enable the route to be brought into operation.

The Government, and to a lesser extent the rail passenger partnership, have created the mechanisms of franchise replacement to persuade the private sector to invest in the national rail network. The east-west route provides an excellent opportunity, with a number of private train companies seriously interested in putting their money into the system. However, the window of opportunity is very small. Once the franchises have been re-let, there may be no further opportunity for 10 years. The councils and Members of Parliament who support the route cannot afford to let that opportunity to benefit the people and the communities that they represent to slip through their fingers.

The east-west route is in line with Government transport policies and priorities and with their planning priorities. It could be an early demonstration of the benefits of that policy, but the Government must ensure that it goes ahead.

I have four requests, about which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure me. First, I ask the Government to recognise the local, regional and national benefits of the east-west rail link. Secondly, I ask them to support the consortium's initiative in seeking to work in partnership with the private sector to develop major rail infrastructure schemes. Thirdly and most crucially, I ask the Government to instruct the shadow Strategic Rail Authority and the train operating companies to deliver the east-west route in consultation with the consortium, which includes Railtrack, via the franchise replacement programme, or a combination of franchise replacement and the rail passenger partnership, with a commitment from the shadow Strategic Rail Authority and the train operating companies that the west end of the route will be operational in three years and the complete scheme in five years. If my hon. Friend says that she cannot instruct them to do so, I ask the Government to give a clear political steer that that is in line with Government policy and is how those policies should be achieved.

Fourthly, I understand that Rail Property Ltd. is trying to sell some of the sites that are essential to the reopening of the route, especially land near Bedford St. Johns station. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to instruct Rail Property Ltd. to suspend its efforts in marketing those sites until the east-west route has been reopened, when some of them will no longer be able to be marketed. I hope that my hon. Friend can give me those assurances, so that I can pass them on to other hon. Members who support the east-west rail link and the councils that have worked so hard to try to achieve what would be a jewel in the crown of the Government's transport policy.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) on securing this debate, which provides hon. Members with an opportunity to consider the potential of an east-west rail link. She and other hon. Members in the region have worked strenuously to assist the consortium, and she has put her case with characteristic comprehensiveness and clarity. I hope that I can deal with most, if not all, of the points that she has made.

As my hon. Friend has said, the railway between Oxford and Cambridge was closed to passenger traffic in the 1960s, apart from a short section between Bletchley and Bedford. The section between Oxford and Bisector Town station has been reopened to passenger services. Freight services between Cambridge and Bedford also ceased in the 1960s, and those between Bicester and Bletchley in the 1990s. The possible need for an east-west rail link, which would provide an alternative route for freight and passengers to complement and relieve the A14 trunk road, has been discussed several times and is clearly an acute issue for people in the region.

Proposals of varying complexity have been formulated, the most extensive of which is to link Felixstowe and Bristol. However, as my hon. Friend has said, the pivotal sections of line are those from Cambridge to Bedford and from Bletchley to Bicester. Those sections are closed and, as she has said, the track has been lifted in some places.

We in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions are committed to examining the feasibility of the east-west rail link, but it is important that a clear business case is made for such a large and expensive proposal before it is considered for public funding. I understand that the funding gap for the total project would be about £70 million. Possible ways forward include a phased approach to the scheme or a partial reinstatement. Those proposals have been discussed with the Department and the shadow Strategic Rail Authority. A separate proposal has consequently emerged involving the line from Oxford to Bedford. That would entail the reopening of the Bicester to Bletchley line and some improvements and upgrades to the existing track and infrastructure—the so-called western section proposal.

In order to encourage further investment in the rail network, the Government have provided the franchising director with additional funds aimed at supporting new investment proposals that produce wider significant benefits for both integration and modal shift. Most of that money, as my hon. Friend recognised, will be distributed through the RPP scheme. That scheme is designed to encourage and support innovative proposals at regional and local level that develop and encourage rail use and promote integration with other modes, such as those that increase accessibility for disabled people, and more generally improve the attractiveness of rail both to existing and new users. Support for those projects will enhance the quality of services offered by local and regional rail.

RPP bids are assessed on five key criteria identified in our paper "A New Deal for Transport". I will not go into those in detail, but it is important that each bid is judged on the basis of its impact on the environment, on the safety of the network and on the local and regional economy. Consideration should also be given to accessibility for disabled and other people to the network and the integration that would flow from the scheme, both in terms of local and national policy frameworks.

I am pleased to announce that a bid has been received under the RPP scheme for the reopening of the Bicester to Bletchley section of the east-west rail link. That bid has pre-qualified for further detailed consideration. That is the first hurdle. At the moment the franchising director is awaiting submission of a formal bid and business case in support of the proposal. That is necessary so that the bid can be formally assessed against the criteria that apply under the RPP scheme.

My hon. Friend asked whether the bids should include involvement by the train operating company and I can clarify that the consortium was advised at the pre-qualification stage that, while a total final bid would be possible without a train operating company, the involvement of one or more train operating companies would enhance the chances of the formal bid being accepted for funding. That may be particularly important for establishing the business case. When the franchising director receives the formal bid, it will be evaluated against the criteria as outlined and he will make a decision. I understand that new sections of the route would require processes under the Transport and Works Act 1992 to be followed and that could involve public inquiries.

My hon. Friend also mentioned local and regional transport plans. There is obviously considerable local authority involvement in the consortium. Local authorities are required to produce their local and regional transport plans and they should take account of the potential contribution that heavy rail could make to the integrated transport strategy as a whole to improve public transport and reduce car use. In doing so, they need to have regard to the shadow Strategic Rail Authority's developing national rail strategy. If local authorities include the reopening of this line as a priority in their local transport plans it would also enable them to provide financial support as an essential part of the jigsaw. If local authorities include them in their plans it is an important part of the process that hopefully will lead to a successful decision from the point of view of my hon. Friend and other hon. Members.

The franchising director is currently considering the replacement of franchise agreements and is looking for undertakings from companies for continuous improvements for passengers. Improvements in service standards and performance are needed to create an overall journey experience that meets passenger expectations from inquiry to arrival. The director has consulted with user groups and conducted his own national passenger survey.

The franchising director is considering changes to the boundaries of franchising and proposals by train operators for micro-franchising of individual lines and for the extension of the network. We want to see continual improvement and expansion of the rail network, and we welcome all viable schemes that will contribute to the modal shift and to promoting transport that is more environmentally friendly and sustainable. I hope that, under the RPP scheme, the consortium will soon submit a formal bid and business case for the western section of the east-west rail link. If that bid is successful, it will attract further interest and investment in the project.

A rail link between eastern and western Britain has clear economic benefits, and would provide relief for the road connections between the east and west, particularly for the A14 trunk road. We support rail initiatives through the RPP, and we applaud the consortium and our hon. Friends in the region for working towards submitting the bid for the western sector. We have charged the franchising director with assessing all RPP bids against a set of common, published and objective criteria. The formal bid has not, as my hon. Friend suggested, been recieved, let alone assessed against those criteria. Therefore, I can express public support inasmuch as I hope that the consortium will get the bid in. It would, however, be inappropriate for me to say that the bid is wonderful and should be supported, until we have seen and assessed it. That would be wrong, and unfair on other bids that may be in competition with it. I hope that the consortium gets the bid in quickly; we want the matter to progress, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will assist in that.

Another considerable task for which the franchising director is responsible is the replacement of the original passenger rail franchises. He must consider a range of factors, but enhancement of the rail network and the provision of a better service with a greater choice of routes are two important ones. He will review favourably any proposals to add to the existing rail network that are included in bids for replacement franchises, provided that additional public subsidy can be justified on the basis of extra benefits.

The replacement process provides a unique opportunity for reopening new lines. The development of the railway network is an on-going process, and funds such as the RPP will allow the franchising director to consider proposals at any time and to have funding available to support those that meet the relevant criteria whenever they are submitted. Time will not be an issue. The time scales for individual projects depend on the complexity of the project and the timetable for the replacement of franchises, so it is not easy to specify how long a project or a phase of a project will take. If the formal RPP bid for the western secton is successful, I would expect that work to proceed as soon as practicable.

My hon. Friend asked about the marketing of sites. She probably knows that all rail property was subjected to an embargo until three months ago. Any sales are now subject to the approval of the director. I understand that Bedford St. Johns—the station that she mentioned—is not vital to the development of the line because Bletchley to Bedford services currently use Bedford Midland station, although I accept that safeguarding the track bed around Bedford St. Johns is important.

I have applauded the actions of the consortium and I want to see progress, but the ball is now clearly in the consortium's court and further progress cannot be made until a formal bid with a business case is received. I hope that that will be soon.

Order. I am giving the Minister for Public Health time to reach her position. There is no need to suspend the sitting as both the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker), who is initiating the debate, and the Minister are now in their places. We can now move to debate the use of bovine material in non-food products.

I congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your filibustering for a few moments, which was entirely appropriate.

The title of our debate seems as dull as ditchwater, but we are debating an important issue. I gave the Minister advance copies of my questions, which I hope she found helpful when preparing her response.

People often imagine that the risk of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from BSE-infected cows comes from food. I contend that that threat has been overplayed and that the risk from other means of transmission, especially through vaccines, has been significantly and worryingly underplayed. In an answer to a parliamentary question on 8 March this year, the Minister said that the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee

has stated that "BSE and vCJD were caused by a closely similar prion strain, and concluded that vCJD was an acquired prion disease caused by exposure to BSE or BSE like agent."—[Official Report, 9 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 787W.]

As of 31 January this year, according to information to be published by the House of Commons Library on 3 April, we know that 52 people have either definitely or probably died of variant CJD.

An answer to my parliamentary question of 9 March helpfully sets out the hierarchy of risk. Regarding animals with strains of prion, the most risky procedure is injection directly into the brain; the second most risky is injection into the bloodstream; the third most risky is injection into tissues around human organs; the fourth most risky is injection under the skin, but not into the bloodstream; and, the fifth, and so least, risky is ingestion through oral consumption or, in other words, food. On the basis of Government activity over the past 10 years, one would conclude that food was the greatest risk, but in terms of the hierarchy of risk drawn up by the Minister's own Department, it is the least risky option, which is worrying.

The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), when a Minister at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, responded to a written question in March 1999, stating:

There is no scientific proof that BSE can be transmitted to man by beef, but this is seen by SEAC as the most likely explanation, and all our control measures are based on the assumption that it is.—[Official Report, 9 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 186W.]

I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, but those words strike me as worrying. It is not the most likely explanation according to the proper hierarchy of risk, so the policy was based on an entirely erroneous assumption.

The vCJD unit was established in 1990 and is reponsible for monitoring incidence of CJD in the UK, but it too proceeds along a false path. It asks questions of those suffering from vCJD to find a link between the disease and BSE. However, the bias of the questions is towards occupational hazards and diet, not vaccines; other potential causes are virtually ignored by the unit. One vCJD victim was a vegetarian, which suggests that the net should be cast wider. I question the basis on which the vCJD unit is proceeding and the assumptions that underlie its activities.

Eating beef is regarded as posing the least possible risk, yet the current Government and the previous Government adopted a raft of measures to minimise that risk, and no one quarrels about that. The Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (No. 2) Order 1988 banned the use of milk from an affected cow for anthing other than feeding its own calf. The Bovine Offals (Prohibition) Regulations 1989 banned the use of specified bovine offals for human consumption. In 1990, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food issued guidance stating that head meat must be recovered from the intact skull before the brain is removed. The Bovine Offal (Prohibition) (Amendment) Order 1992 prohibited the use of head meat after the skull was opened. I could list other measures that Governments have taken to ensure that the human food chain is as safe as it can be. I do not criticise those measures; they were right to play safe.

However, we must contrast that Government action with the measures that were taken on vaccines which, in terms of the Government's hierarchy of risk, are more likely to transmit BSE than oral ingestion. The right hon. Member for Perry Barr was wrong to say that that is the most likely method of transmission. That is not what is stated in the Minister's hierarchy of risk, which appeared in Hansard early this month. It is nothing new: in 1988, an under secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Alistair Cruikshank, said:

There is probably no risk in drinking milk or eating flesh from animals affected by BSE, but the position is much less clear in relation to brains, spleen and other organs. This raised questions about the safety of human vaccines prepared using bovine material.

There has been a question mark about the matter for 12 years.

In June 1988, a Department of Health official, Dr. Hilary Pickles, said:

The highest risk would be from parenterals prepared from brain.

The Southwood report in February 1989 stated:

The greatest risk in theory would be from parenteral injection of material derived from bovine brain or lymphoid tissue. Medicinal products for injection or surgical implantation which are prepared from bovine tissues…might also be capable of transmitting infectious agents.

That view has not changed: on 21 July 1999, four scientists involved in the production of the Southwood report were interviewed by the BSE inquiry. Sir Richard Southwood was asked if it was his view, at the time, that

the degree of hazard from medicinal products was greater than the degree of hazard that applied in the case of oral ingestion—

a key question, to which he replied, "Yes." Later, he told the inquiry:

We really thought the medical problem was severe…We were very conscious, all the way through, of the worry about the vaccination programme.

There is no doubt that the advice from the experts from MAFF and the Department of Health and Sir Richard Southwood himself in 1988–89 was that there was a risk from vaccines using bovine material.

The answer given by the right hon. Member for Perry Barr was wrong. He is wrong if his understanding is that ingestion is the most likely method of transmission and that contracting the disease is somehow also a matter of quantity because more people eat beef than are exposed to vaccines. That is how his words could be interpreted.

I thank the Minister for her detailed letter dated 14 December 1999, which included statistics. She said:

The vaccines in use at that time—

between 1989 and 1992—

which used bovine material in the early stages of manufacture and as a medium for cell growth were DTP (diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis), BCG, oral polio and measles vaccines.

The Minister continued helpfully to list the millions of vaccines used during that period when it could not be clear that the vaccines did not include bovine material from cows suffering from BSE. The primary courses of vaccine for diphtheria from 1989 to 1991–92 totalled 2.18 million; they included doses given to 2.11 million children aged 2 or under. The reinforcement doses for diphtheria in the same period were 1.72 million, including 132,000 given to children under the age of 4. Primary courses for tetanus cases for 1989 to 1992 were 2.33 million, of which 2.1 million were given to children aged 2 or under. Then the number goes down. I will not read all the figures but in each case, millions of people, predominantly children, were given vaccines containing bovine material from the United Kingdom herd at a time when the herd included cows suffering from BSE.

How many people were vaccinated with those stocks? The Minister gave details of total vaccinations, but this may not correspond to the vaccines about which I am concerned. If the number of these vaccinations that are of concern to me is lower than I thought because the stocks came from Australasia or elsewhere, will the Minister let us have the figure today? The vaccinations that concern me clearly also caused concern to the Minister at the time, and to his officials. Will the Minister say whether records were kept of the number of people who were vaccinated, and will there be long-term monitoring of their health? It certainly does not appear so. What role does the variant CJD unit play in all this? I suspect that there will not be any long-term monitoring. The Minister for Public Health said in her letter to me of 14 December:

It is not known how many vaccines used UK sourced bovine material during this period in the early stages of manufacture and as a medium for cell growth.

It appears that, at the time, insufficient attention was paid to that and that insufficient steps were taken to monitor what was happening. That is most worrying. It is incumbent on the Minister to give us as much information as possible when she replies to the debate, because parents whose children were vaccinated at that time want answers. I do not want to be thought to be scaremongering. Officials have used the word "remote" and I want my concern to be put in context. Important questions remain unanswered and I hope that the hon. Lady will answer them.

I am not clear about whether the use of UK-sourced bovine material at any stage of the manufacture of vaccines is now banned. There appear to be conflicting issues in this respect. In a parliamentary answer on 25 March 1999, I was told:

Bovine material prohibited from use in the human food chain is not prohibited from use in the manufacture of medicinal products, including vaccines—Official Report, 25 March 1999; Vol. 328, c. 378.

It appears that, although guidelines may have been issued, there has been no formal ban. Yet SEAC has stated on the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food website:

From 1993, these control ["measures…to remove from the human food chain any tissues which might potentially harbour infection"]—have also been applied to animal feed, and from 1997, to cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical products.

So is a ban in place, or not? Perhaps the Minister will clarify that.

I suggest that, at the time, the attitude of the Department of Health—the Minister was not in the Department at the time, so she cannot be held responsible in any way—was rather lax in the circumstances. I want to offer a reason for that and query why it happened. In March 1989, the Department of Health sent a questionnaire to manufacturers of medicines or medical devices asking them to identify products that contained bovine material. That was a clear indication that this was an issue. The deadline for replies was May 1989, but by September 1989 25 per cent. of companies had not replied. Why were they not chased? Why were the answers not received by the deadline that the Department set? Why was there so little vigour on the part of the Department of Health when public health was at risk?

In September 1989, the following products had been identified in order of concern. This information, which I will read to the Committee, comes from the Department of Health's internal BSE inquiry document, so the Minister may recognise it. It states:

products with bovine brain/lymphoid tissue as ingredients and administered by injection: 111;

products with bovine ingredients (other than brain/lymphoid tissue) and administered by injection: 135;

tissue implants, open wound dressings, surgical materials, dental and ophthalmic products with bovine ingredients: 27;

products with bovine ingredients and administered topically: 5;

products with other animal/insect/bird ingredients: 131,

products with materials produced from animal material by chemical processes (e.g. Stearic acid, gelatin and lanolin: 156.

Following the risk identified in 1988 and 1989 by officials in the Department of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and confirmed by Sir Richard Southwood, why was bovine material not immediately required to be sourced from countries free of BSE? There was clearly a risk, so why was it allowed to continue in use? Why were existing stocks, manufactured using potentially contaminated material, not recalled immediately, particularly in the light of the Department's own hierarchy of risk, which shows that injections are potentially more damaging to human health than eating food? How quickly could the vaccines have been recalled? What were the stock levels of potentially contaminated vaccines when the 1989 guidelines were issued?

In March 1989 the Committee on Safety of Medicines used guidelines advising manufacturing companies to switch to non-UK-sourced bovine material. That was confirmed in colums 246–47 of Hansard on 19 October 1999. However, on 23 June 1999 the then Minister for Public Health, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Ms Jowell), said:

The precautionary measures introduced in 1989 and subsequent amendments to them did not require manufacturers to prevent the use of existing supplies of medicinal products which had used bovine material in their early stage of manufacture. Neither did the later guidelines issued by the European Commission in 1992.—[Official Report, 23 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 382W.]

There is either a risk or there is not. If the Department thought that there was a risk, why were the products not recalled? If there was not a risk, why were guidelines issued? The middle path seems somewhat odd. Why did the Department of Health merely issue guidelines for vaccines, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had banned potentially contaminated food?

Again, in her letter of 14 December 1999, the Minister said:

The exercise to ensure that all manufacturers were complying with the guidelines—

the 1989 guidelines—

was not completed until 1992.

Three years passed. Why did it take three years to confirm that all manufacturers were using non-UK bovine material in their vaccines, when millions of children were vaccinated during that time? Why were stockpiles not cleared straight away and replaced with alternative sources from elsewhere in the world? According to Hansard of 19 October 1999, only by 1999 were all vaccines in use manufactured without UK-sourced bovine material.

What happened to potentially contaminated stocks of vaccines, allergen products, dental and surgical materials and bovine insulin? Were they used? Were they destroyed? If they were destroyed, how were they destroyed? What has happened to those vaccines? Were manufacturers simply allowed to use up existing supplies, were they encouraged to destroy them or were they recalled? I do not know the answer. Perhaps the Minister will tell me in a few minutes' time. How quickly could the vaccines have been recalled?

We know little about the potential danger. We know that there is a real danger and we also know from the chief medical officer that it could take 30 to 40 years to prove. Therefore, although it may be an historic problem for the Department of Health, it is a future problem for the children who may be vaccinated in this way.

I asked the Secretary of State for Health:

what estimate he has made of the quantity of vaccines held by manufacturers in whose early stages of manufacture bovine material had been used. [Official Report, 1 July 1999; Vol. 334, c. 280W.]

The one-word answer was "None". I find it extraordinary that the Department of Health could not have made that estimate then, given the problems that occurred. I have concentrated on vaccines, but I could equally have referred to allergen products, dental and surgical material, bovine insulin and indeed cosmetics, which I know fall outside the Minister's brief, but which contain bovine material.

Having identified a real risk, why did the Department of Health first appear lax and then not take action to ban products or to insist on recalls, in contrast to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food? I suggest that one reason was that they did not want to cause public alarm, and that that overruled the medical concerns. The Southwood report says that the danger was "remote". I accept that word, although there is a hierarchy that is smudged by recent events.

Giving evidence, Sir Anthony Epstein said that no action was taken

on purpose because the consequences for the vaccination programme, for the use of medicines, would have been quite disastrous.

I suggest that the Department of Health calculated that if it came clean about vaccines, as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had about beef, there would have been a loss of confidence in the vaccination programme. It therefore decided not to come clean, but to take a risk in order to maintain confidence in the vaccination programme.

That is a serious allegation, but it is the conclusion that I have reached from the evidence before me. The Minister owes it to all the children who have been vaccinated, and their parents, to give as much information as possible on the questions that I have asked today, so that we can go forward and plan properly for the next 20 years.

I shall try to answer as many as possible of the questions that were asked by the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker), and I thank him for having made me aware of some of them in advance. He raised some additional points to which I cannot respond now, but I shall follow them up in writing.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on initiating a debate on a very important subject. I know that it has been a matter of considerable concern to him, and that over the past few months he has asked several parliamentary questions about it. I welcome this opportunity to respond to some of his worries and to set out clearly the actions that have been taken in respect of the use of bovine material in non-food products since concerns were first raised about the potential for risk to human health from bovine spongiform encephalopathies, or BSE.

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the events between 1989 and 1993 to which he has referred took place under previous Governments. Nevertheless, I shall give as much information as I can. I take this opportunity to express the Government's concern about the distress caused to sufferers of the truly appalling illness that we now know as variant CJD, and to the families of its victims.

I understand that the hon. Gentleman's primary concern is the potential risk to public health from the use of bovine material in vaccines and surgical cat gut sutures. I begin by reassuring hon. Members that there is currently no evidence to link the use of any medicinal product with variant CJD. Although bovine material is used in the manufacture of some medicines and, indeed, in the manufacture of some vaccines, it is important to note that the bovine material is not an ingredient of any vaccine, but is merely used in the manufacturing process.

I am advised that general manufacturers of medicinal products, including vaccines, avoid the use of animal sourced materials wherever possible. In the case of vaccines, bovine materials are used only to promote the growth of cells, viruses or bacteria during manufacture. Subsequent purification is designed to remove all materials that are associated with the manufacture but are not required in the final product. The manufacturers provide validation of those processes to the Medicines Control Agency.

Since 1989, bovine materials used in the manufacture of medicines have been subject to extremely rigorous guidelines that govern the geographical source of the material, the type of tissue used and the processes to which such material must be subjected to minimise any risk that it may represent. Those guidelines were first developed in the UK by the Government's independent scientific advisory committee, the Comittee on Safety of Medicines—the CSM—together with the Veterinary Products Committee, because the guidelines apply equally to veterinary medicines.

In 1988, when concerns were first raised about BSE, the CSM established a group of experts to consider the implications for the use of bovine materials in the manufacture of medicines—the BSE working party of the CSM. In March 1989, the CSM published guidelines for the pharmaceutical industry on the sourcing and processing of animal tissues, based on the sub-group's findings. Those guidelines addressed the geographical sourcing of the material to be used and assesssed the potential risk from the use of certain animal tissues; it recommended processing practices to minimise the risk from the use of bovine materials.

When the guidelines were issued to industry, manufacturers of new medicinal products were expected to comply with them immediately, and manufacturers of existing products were asked how they intended to comply with them. I am advised that many manufacturers reported that they had already stopped sourcing material from the United Kingdom because of their concern about reports of illness in UK cattle.

That action was taken as a precautionary measure; the risk to public health from the use of bovine material in medicinal products was assessed by the scientific experts of the Southwood committee to be remote and theoretical. A decision was taken that existing supplies of medicines, including vaccines, should not be withdrawn from the market, because there was concern that withdrawal of such supplies without suitable alternatives being provided would result in a serious risk to public health. In the case of vaccines, there was particular concern that withdrawal could lead to a real risk of deaths caused by epidemics of the diseases that the vaccine programmes were intended to address, such as diphtheria, pertussis and whooping cough.

The Medicines Control Agency, which came into existence in April 1989 and replaced the medicines division of the Department of Health, followed up all manufacturers who had reported the use of animal material in the manufacture of medicines until they were able to report that they complied fully with the CSM guidelines. Priority was given in that exercise to vaccine manufacturers. I am advised that all vaccine manufacturers were contacted in 1989 and that they decided immediately to source their bovine materials outside the United Kingdom to comply with the guidelines.

In 1992, the European committee of independent scientific experts—the committee for proprietary medicinal products—issued its own guidelines to the pharmaceutical industry based almost wholly on those that had been developed some three years previously in the United Kingdom. Those guidelines, with amendments made in the light of new scientific knowledge, are still in force today. The hon. Gentleman asked about bans and I am advised by the MCA that it enforces the guidelines and that it will not license products that do not comply with the guidelines.

The hon. Gentleman expressed specific concern about vaccines that remained on the market after the original guidelines had been issued by the CSM in 1989, and he asked how long they might have remained in use. Many manufacturers of medicinal products were already sourcing bovine materials outside the United Kingdom when the guidelines were issued. I am advised that many of the childhood vaccines used in the United Kingdom were manufactured abroad and did not use bovine material sourced in the United Kingdom. Wellcome, the monopoly manufacturer of DTP childhood vaccines, had used foetal calf serum and meat sourced in the United Kingdom, but by February 1989 it had identified a source of materials in New Zealand, so all vaccines manufactured by Wellcome after 1989 used bovine material from New Zealand.

The manufacture of vaccines is complex and takes many months. Material that was manufactured before 1989 continued to be used so that the vaccination programme would not be compromised. DTP vaccine was issued by Wellcome until June 1991, when stock ran out. Single component diphtheria and tetanus vaccines continued to be supplied until December 1991. I am advised by the MCA that expiry of the DTP vaccine occurred in November 1993, so, although most of it would have been used in 1991, it is possible that small quantities may have remained in doctors' surgeries and been used up to the expiry date.

In 1989, vaccines were issued directly by the manufacturers, not bought centrally by the Department of Health, as happens now. Therefore, there are no figures available on vaccine usage for that period. The MCA has assured me that from April 1989, no bovine material sourced in the United Kingdom was introduced as an element of the manufacturing process for vaccines produced at the time.

One aspect that has not been considered previously is the issue of cell lines, some dating back to the 1960s, from which some viral vaccines are produced. For completeness, I have asked the CSM to examine whether there are any BSE-related issues in this area. To provide the hon. Gentleman with the fullest information about the vaccines, it is important to give him the information I received from the MCA. The expiry date for the diphtheria vaccine produced by Wellcome was November 1992, whereas that for the tetanus vaccine was December 1993. The expiry date for the diphtheria tetanus absorbed vaccine was June 1993, and the DTP vaccine expiry date was November 1993. As I said, many of the vaccines will have been used before the expiry dates, but those are the last expiry dates that I have been given.

Does that mean that no vaccines were recalled after the identification of the risk?

I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on that issue, because one of the vaccines may have been replaced. As I understand it, the vaccines that were manufacturered before 1989 were still in use until the latest date that they could legally be used—the expiry dates that I have given.

I should like to explain in more detail how the risk to human health from medicines, especially vaccines, was assessed, and how and why that was translated into action. I pointed out that Professor Southwood's report identified medicines manufacture as one of a number of uses of bovine material. Although the scientists concluded that the risk to man from bovine materials in medicines was remote and theoretical, they also concluded that parenteral products such as vaccines were, by the nature of their application, likely to present the highest risk. We must also remember that, at that time and until 1996, no action was taken against UK beef and beef products, such as those in the food chain.

When considering what action to take, the CSM addressed the question of whether current supplies of medicines, especially vaccines, should be withdrawn. In the light of the assessment of the risk as remote and theoretical, and the fact that the proposed action was regarded as a precaution rather than a response to an identified risk, I am advised that they conclude on the basis of knowledge at the time that it would not be appropriate to withdraw vaccine supplies. There was concern about the risk of emerging epidemics if the public turned away from vaccination programmes. Because of the minimal risk that it was thought that such vaccines represented, there were no plans to monitor usage of existing stocks, or to contact individuals who have received vaccinations.

Even in 1989, however, there was an understanding that there was likely to be a hierarchy of risk. The guidelines identified those materials thought to pose the greatest potential risk. The hon. Member for Lewes is concerned about people who were vaccinated during the transition period—if it can be described as such—when the change to sourcing materials from outside the UK was taking place. As I pointed out, there was and still is no evidence to link variant CJD with medicines or vaccines.

It is not possible to identify for follow-up purposes those who received vaccine during that time. However, we can examine the vaccine exposure of existing variant CJD cases. That has been done by experts from the BSE unit, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control and the Department of Health. Their conclusions stated:

if CJD is the result of exposure to BSE cattle infected material, the vaccines given before the age of 2 appear to have no role in its aetiology to date.

Forty-nine of the 52 cases of variant CJD are in people who were born before 1980 and who would, therefore, have received the vaccines before exposure was possible. The remaining three were born in the 1980s, but, given the long period between starting manufacture from the raw materials and the completion of the finished product, exposure seems unlikely. That analysis will be repeated.

The guidelines that have been in force since 1999 require assurances from manufacturers on sourcing and manufacture. They are accepted by scientific experts as providing a fully effective means of minimising the risk from BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.

I should like to address the concern about surgical cat gut sutures, although I do not have much time. Like vaccines, surgical sutures are essential products from which the health of millions of people has benefited. Absorbable surgical materials such as cat gut were brought under the controls of the Medicines Act 1971. Given the pressure of time, I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on that subject.