It is customary on these occasions to express pleasure at having been fortunate enough to secure an Adjournment debate to discuss a matter of great importance. I am grateful for the opportunity, although I express regret that it has been left to a Back Bencher to raise a matter of enormous concern not only to the north-west of England but to the nation's scientific community. I regret also that we are having to debate the matter in Westminster Hall; I believe that it should have been accorded the prominence of the Floor of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, it is an important matter that deserves proper parliamentary scrutiny.

The Prime Minister spoke to the north-west group of Labour Members of Parliament about the Government's decision to site the new synchrotron in Oxfordshire rather than in Cheshire, but it is not good enough to address members of only one party; it is a matter of concern to all parties as well as to people in the north-west and elsewhere in Britain. I am pleased to have the opportunity to bring the matter to Parliament, as we can ask the Government to give a fuller account of their decision.

I welcome the Minister for Competitiveness. I have a high personal regard for him. I venture to suggest that he has been sent here this morning because his ministerial colleagues, too, have a high regard for his abilities. However, I am sorry that the Minister who made the decision, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Minister for Science, is not able to account for it to elected Members of Parliament. It is an alarming and regrettable trend that Government decisions are made by unelected Ministers who are not directly accountable to the House of Commons.

All parties in the north-west are angry about the decision to site the synchrotron project in Oxfordshire rather than in Daresbury, where the existing synchrotron is sited. We agree with Peter Hetherington's assessment in The Guardian on 22 March, when he said that the move was

a defining moment for the government, and a kick in the teeth for northern MPs.

I give full credit to hon. Members of all parties who have made their position clear and fought their corner for the north-west. I see that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) is present; although he is constrained from speaking, I certainly give him full credit for having fought for his constituents within Government. [Interruption.]

Order. There was no need for a sedentary comment. The hon. Gentleman was making a perfectly ordinary reference. The Whip is constrained from speaking; it does not help if he intervenes from a sedentary position.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was being complimentary; perhaps I should not have taken the trouble.

I know that other hon. Members have made an important contribution. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) described the decision last week as short-sighted, damaging and unimaginative and said that the Government must think again. She added that Lord Sainsbury should reconsider his position as a Minister. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) described Lord Sainsbury's comments as arrogant and dismissive. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), speaking on Monday evening, said:

If ever there was a mixed message to a region, the north-west received one on Budget day.—[Official Report, 27 March 2000; Vol. 347, c. 62].

I seek to be broadly non-partisan by trying to give credit to Members of all parties. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) has raised the matter in the House, and my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) has been battling hard on the issue since his election last July. He has asked me to apologise for the fact that a binding commitment means that he cannot be here this morning.

The issue is not just regional but, perhaps most importantly, scientific. The scientific community is baffled by the decision. Professor Woolfson, who chaired the 1993 review that led to the original decision to build the new Diamond synchrotron said in a letter—I think that it was to The Times—that he was dismayed by the decision. He said:

Daresbury … where the UK built the first dedicated synchrotron source … was identified as a world centre of excellence … Users from many countries benefited from the expertise of the resident staff.

He added that more was achieved there than could be achieved with more advanced synchrotrons elsewhere.

Professor Woolfson continued:

many staff will take early retirement or lucrative jobs overseas … rather than move to Didcot with its high housing costs and UK salaries. It will take a decade or more to build up a team with the competence … and effectiveness that exists at Daresbury … It is disingenuous of the prime minister to say that there is no north-south divide. There is … and the Diamond decision has made it wider. Other things being equal the government should give preference to northern areas. In this case, other things are not equal and the northern site is, for many reasons, far the better. I fear that a dreadful mistake has been made.

The man whose report instigated the development of the new Diamond synchrotron project is firmly of the opinion that the Government have made the wrong decision and that the siting should have gone to Cheshire and not Oxfordshire.

Even those who have backed the siting at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory frequently say that the case is tenuous. The Prime Minister has said that the scientific case is "marginally in favour" of Oxfordshire. Lord Sainsbury, answering questions in the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs last week, said that the French Government and the Wellcome Trust favoured the decision "on balance" but "not overwhelmingly."

The French Government told the BBC that they did not favour one site over another. Following the dismissal of the French Minister, Mr Allegre, it is likely that the French Soleil project will proceed. A distinct possibility is that the French Government will want to withdraw from the Diamond project.

The Government have sought to hide behind the Wellcome Trust, but in evidence submitted to the Select Committee on Science and Technology a couple of months ago, the trust made it clear that it wanted to hold an open competition for the selection of the new synchrotron site. On 19 January 1999, the trust said in its evidence that the Office of Science and Technology agreed that an open competition would be acceptable.

On 28 April 1999, the OST proposed that the new synchrotron should be located at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory site near Oxford. The OST was the first to suggest that that should be the site, not the Wellcome Trust, which favoured a full open competition. The Committee noted in the minutes of evidence that the trust said:

After much discussion the Governors agreed that the RAL site was an acceptable compromise.

The trust's understanding was that that was the jointly agreed site, until it received a letter from the Secretary of State on 4 October 1999, which said that there were

only two credible sites in the UK for this project, RAL and Daresbury,

and that he was

minded to site the new Synchrotron at Daresbury.

The director of the trust responded to the letter on 7 October, noting that it had been persuaded by the OST to accept its proposal in favour of RAL. Further, the director said:

if the new synchrotron is not located at RAL, the Wellcome Trust would wish to explore some form of non-exclusive competition to identify an alternative site for the development of the new synchrotron radiation facility.

The Secretary of State replied on 11 October, dismissing the idea of an open competition, stating that there were only two sites. He concluded by saying that he was still minded to locate the new synchrotron at Daresbury.

On 15 October, the director of the Wellcome Trust said that several institutions around the country had approached the trust, suggesting an interest in siting the new synchrotron. Whether they could present a credible case if encouraged to do so has not been examined. The Secretary of State responded on 1 November. He stated that he

did not see any benefit from undertaking a new competition for the site

and that he had

decided to site the new synchrotron at Daresbury.

Who insisted on Oxfordshire? We know from the French Government that it was not the French and we know that the Wellcome Trust's preference was for an open competition. We know that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry did not insist on that location, because he announced on 1 November last year his decision to site the new Diamond synchrotron at Daresbury. The insistence came from somebody who is even closer to the Prime Minister than the Secretary of State: someone who has close personal links with him and who has never had to face an election, as I noted at the beginning of the debate. I am speaking of Lord Sainsbury, who pressed for Diamond's location at Rutherford Appleton early last year, initially through the Office of Science and Technology. Why did he press for that site? I doubt whether any hon. Members who are present and who represent the north-west know; I also doubt whether anyone outside the magic circle around Downing street knows the true answer.

On 19 March, The Observer pointed to a web of connections, back-scratching and potential conflicts of interest. It referred to

Concerns that the charity wields undue influence over government

and said that there were a number of close links between the trust and Whitehall. It went on to state:

Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir Robert May … works in the same Oxford University zoology department as Professor Roy Anderson, one of the key governors of the Wellcome Trust board.

It pointed out that Wellcome funds a scientist at the John Innes centre, which shares a site with the Sainsbury laboratory in Norwich, and that they have a joint venture company to exploit their discoveries. It also told us:

The Wellcome Trust is paying for a key employee to work inside the Government's Office for Science and Technology.

If the decision remains unchanged, it will take more than £500 million out of the economy of the north-west and send it to Oxfordshire. That is a spectacular instance of regional policy operating in reverse. It will take the newest and most high-tech jobs either to the south of England or overseas to other synchrotron facilities, and move a major scientific institution out of the north-west. I shall cite the words of a constituent of mine, Professor Young, of the Manchester materials science centre at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, who wrote to the Prime Minister on 13 February. He stated:

Daresbury is of major benefit to our region. Its loss would have a profound effect upon employment and upon the north-west science base.

There is no compelling scientific case for a move to Oxford, but there is a compelling regional case to keep the new facility in Cheshire. The reasons given by Ministers are contradicted by those at whose door they are trying to lay the blame. It is unacceptable for such important national decisions to be taken by a small coterie around the Prime Minister without explanation or debate. I hope that this debate will force greater accountability and openness on a Government who frequently prefer to deal in secret. If there is a genuine public policy reason for the decision to abandon Daresbury and to site the Diamond synchrotron in Oxfordshire, then let us hear it today. If not, let the decision be changed.

I did not appreciate the comments with which the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) began his speech, when he complained that Labour Members had been leading the campaign for Diamond at Daresbury and had been speaking to the Prime Minister about the matter. He said that it was not good enough to address only one party in the House. I would have appreciated his active participation in the campaign for Diamond at Daresbury at an early date, before the decision was made. Instead, he has waited until now, when he has the opportunism to criticise after the event. Does the Tory Front-Bench team support his decision to site Diamond at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory? I shall give way if the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) wants to clarify her party's position.

I am here today to examine in detail the process by which the Government reach important decisions. The issue is of great importance to people in the north-west and in Oxfordshire. I am concerned not about the location but about the integrity of the Government's decision-making process and its lack of transparency.

The hon. Lady is not prepared to answer my question; instead, she diverts us with red herrings. Does the Tory Front-Bench team support the siting of Diamond at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory?

I do not have the background information on which the decision was made. It is in order to obtain that information and make a judgment that I am seeking clarification from the Minister.

The hon. Lady has made my point: either the Conservatives are behind the times and resort to opportunism and criticism, or they have not been paying attention for the past nine months when everyone else has been making a case to locate Diamond at Daresbury.

I have a final question for the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman.

Order. The hon. Lady should be making a speech. This is not Question Time.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but it remains the case that the Conservative Front-Bench team has not spoken in favour of Diamond at Daresbury.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

No.

Synchrotrons accelerate electrons to a speed close to that of light and act as sources of intense radiation over a spectrum ranging from X-rays to the infra-red. It is appropriate to cast some light on the science. Synchrotrons are used by physicists, chemists and molecular biologists to study atomic structure and movements in a vast number of different types of matter, from semiconductors in computer chips to living muscle. They are not science fiction; they are engines that are essential to scientific, technological and, in our knowledge-driven economy, economic success.

Synchrotrons are not merely high-technology machines with exacting specifications. It is not possible to put a synchrotron in a box, label it and send it somewhere else. It will not function without a high- quality team of scientists and technicians. Daresbury laboratory, although on the outskirts of my constituency, is an important part of it. It has been the home of British synchrotron science for 25 years. One of the few good things about the process of choosing a site for Diamond—the third generation synchrotron that will replace the current machine—is that is has made evident the worldwide reputation of Daresbury scientists and technicians among the scientific community of synchrotron users.

The Daresbury staff provide world-class experimental and computational facilities. Their outstanding performance has been endorsed by some of the world's leading scientists. The director of research at the European synchrotron radiation facility at Grenoble said that Daresbury staff

have an international reputation for innovative design and technology.

Dr. Binns, chair of the synchrotron radiation source surface science user group, and Professor Norris, chair of the SRS user forum, said:

Daresbury has been the site of all synchrotron radiation development work in the UK for over 30 years and now employs a world class team of machine physicists and engineers … there is an innovative detector programme led by the scientific research staff which will put the UK at the forefront of instrumentation for synchrotron radiation experiments.

Professor Margantondo, co-ordinator of the European round table for synchrotron radiation, explained that

a synchrotron laboratory is not merely a collection of instruments. Its ultimate success relies primarily on the competence, creativity and stature of its staff and users … acquiring such a multi-faceted competence at an international level of excellence takes decades—and the result is a resource of invaluable importance. Every expert in the field would agree that Daresbury laboratory constitutes such a resource. I would like to mention in particular the domains of spectroscopy and surface science in general, as well as structural techniques. The worldwide reputation of Daresbury laboratory is virtually unmatched in these areas.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to detail the hundreds of similar comments from world-leading scientists commending the laboratory's staff. Nobel prize winners, directors of international establishments, university vice-chancellors and senior synchrotron users have been vocal in their admiration of the Daresbury team over many months. I am extremely proud of the staff at Daresbury who have been able to generate such support for their campaign.

Thanks to the quality of the scientific research and technical support at the laboratory, the first Nobel prize awarded for research work at a synchrotron X-ray source—of which there are 40 in the world—came to Britain with the award of the 1997 chemistry prize to Sir John Walker. Daresbury research scientists are heading research teams on £15 million-worth of research programmes. One of the most exciting is led by Dr. Rob Lewis, a constituent of mine, who is developing a revolution in the early diagnosis of breast cancer. He is using the powers of the rays of the synchrotron to spot tumours as small as a full stop.

The research team is entirely based in the north-west and has taken five years to build up. Its work is vital. I have raised its significance directly with my noble Friend Lord Sainsbury and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and at the highest levels of Government. I am determined that the work will continue and that we should give it every support. It could save thousands of women's lives and it must be protected and given a secure environment in which to develop. Furthermore, it is essential that all scientists and technicians who are responsible for Britain's international success in structural biology and physical and material science have a secure future and can continue to use their skills and creativity in the interests of British science in the public sector.

Two weeks ago, the Government took a decision to locate Diamond, the third generation synchrotron, not at Daresbury laboratory, but at Rutherford Appleton laboratory near Oxford. That is a bad decision. It has undermined the confidence of Daresbury staff and has put the future effectiveness of Britain's synchrotron science at risk. The Select Committee on Science and Technology investigated the issue of location for Diamond and found nothing to choose between the two sites on science grounds, deciding that other factors would have to be taken into consideration.

Like many of my Labour colleagues in the north-west and on the Select Committee, I expected those other considerations to include two essential factors: the critical importance of the Daresbury staff in the design, building and operation of the new machine—they represent the total repository of Britain's synchrotron science—and the key importance to the regional economy of a synchrotron in the north-west. Science and research drive the new economy and our region is still struggling to create new industries after the wholesale destruction of our manufacturing base under the Tory Government. Biotech industries are a key part of our future success. We are good at them and that must be recognised.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry told the Wellcome Trust in a letter of 4 October that he was minded to site Diamond at Daresbury because of all the factors that I have mentioned. The Wellcome Trust, a partner in the project to create the third generation synchrotron, decided, in secret, unilaterally to veto the siting of Diamond at Daresbury and to insist that it should go to Rutherford Appleton laboratory near Oxford—or it would withdraw its partnership. Why? Who knows? The Wellcome Trust has not been prepared to meet local Members of Parliament or north-west civic leaders to discuss the issue.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Not now.

In their public and private utterances, Wellcome representatives have exhibited a prejudice in favour of Oxford that seems to have been grounded on the opinion that Rutherford Appleton has a better scientific culture, but when pressed for evidence they have provided none. They have mumbled about scientists drinking coffee together in Oxford, but we have perfectly good coffee in the north-west. After considerable prevarication, during which it gave information to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) that it was not prejudiced in favour of either site, the Wellcome trust issued a statement on 23 November, which said:

On the basis of the evidence made available to us, the Wellcome Trust has concluded that the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), in Oxfordshire, has a number of advantages when compared with the Daresbury Laboratory as the site of the new UK-French synchrotron.

Our preferred option wa to carry out a site solicitation exercise between a number of sites in addition to Daresbury and RAL. We were persuaded that such an exercise should be constrained to the two Government sites only and we believe that there is a stronger scientific case for locating the synchrotron at RAL.

I am afraid that the trust has not been able to demonstrate that stronger scientific case.

It is clear from the hon. Lady's remark about mumbling over coffee that she is not aware that the director of the Wellcome Trust, in his evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, of which I am a member, gave a full and clear account of the reasons why the trust favoured the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman chooses to speak on behalf of the Wellcome Trust. It has been considerably advantageous to him that the trust took the position that it did. I listened to all the evidence given to the Select Committee, and the main points made by the director of the Wellcome Trust were rather vague scientific points, for which he could not produce any evidence. I was taught that science is about theory, creativity, imagination and testing the evidence. I have not seen the Wellcome Trust testing the evidence. In fact, I issue a challenge to the Wellcome Trust to meet local Members of Parliament to explain its position because, frankly, it appears to have been using science like a drunk uses a lamp-post—not so much for illumination as for support.

If I am wrong, I shall be happy to hear the trust justify its position. I am shocked that the representatives of the Wellcome Trust, who are senior scientists, are not prepared to defend their case in public. I am also surprised that the two professors from London university. two professors from Cambridge university and three professors from Oxford university who make up the majority of members of the Wellcome Trust, are not prepared to explain the scientific evidence for their case. I assume that it is because they do not have a case to explain and are more interested in the quality of wine at the high table than in the quality of science. I find that shocking.

The actions of the Wellcome Trust have damaged the credibility of the decision-making process and cast considerable doubt on the probity of its involvement in that process. I would be very happy for the trust to set the record straight. I also challenge it to publish the minutes of the board meetings at which the decision was made, because I should like to know who participated in the decision-making process and whether any interests were declared.

On the subject of setting the record straight, I raised the matter with the Government before the decision was taken, on behalf of both constituents who work at the site and scientists who use it.

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but I would have been happy to have had his support on the issue, to which many Labour Members have devoted considerable effort. I want to put on record my thanks and the thanks of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale, who is unable to participate in the debate, and of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Mr. Twigg), for the extensive support that we received from north-west Members, as well as from members of the Science and Technology Committee.

Several outstanding issues must be addressed following the bad decision that was made. It is essential that the SRS at Daresbury can continue to operate fully while the new instrument is built. That depends on the continued availability of and Government commitment to the current technical support and scientific research teams at Daresbury. I should like to thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who has agreed to meet representatives of the staff teams soon to discuss their future and the support action that the Government will take to ensure that Daresbury laboratory has a future. It is essential to build confidence in its continuation, to back that with an investment programme and to secure for the research scientists and technicians a future that will recognise their career needs.

It is essential that we develop a strategy in the north-west and build on the co-operation of the research universities, business, local government, regional development agencies and the research institutions that have up to now supported the campaign for Diamond at Daresbury, and need to be drawn on to ensure that science in the north-west develops an international reputation for the future. It is essential, too, that we build a third generation synchrotron that is of international excellence, on time, within budget and without a dark period. Many of us will observe closely to ensure that biosciences do not go through a dark period because of an unwise decision to site the laboratory at Rutherford Appleton.

Above all, it is vital that the north-west should develop a strategy on science that builds on and complements the excellence in the regions. It must be explicit, it must have the Government's full support and it must not be distorted or taken off track by intransigent partners with vested interests. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to address all those issues and to ensure that the Government respond positively.

It is an honourable tradition, Mr. Chairman—

Order. May I correct the hon. Gentleman? While I am in the Chair, the form of address is Mr. Deputy Speaker. When I am replaced by Mr. O'Hara, he will be addressed as Mr. O'Hara or Mr. Chairman.

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for drawing my attention to that important point of protocol.

It is an honourable tradition of the House that all of us speak for our constituencies. I understand well why hon. Members from constituencies in the north-west spoke as they did, but we—and the Government—also have a responsibility to think in terms of the national interest.

I am the Member of Parliament for the constituency in which the Rutherford Appleton laboratory is situated. My motive for speaking today, and the line that I have taken in previous debates, will therefore be thought by hon. Members from the north-west to be easily explicable.

How many of the hon. Gentleman's constituents came to him to demand that the synchrotron facility be removed from the north-west and located in his constituency?

The answer is not very many. I will say more about that. No doubt what I am about to say will be interpreted by Members with north-west constituencies as simply an expression of constituency sentiment, but I assure them that I do not approach these important matters in that way. Our area of Oxfordshire has very high employment and there is considerable prosperity. We are part of the wealth-creating sector of the British economy. There are considerable pressures on housing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) told the Chamber. I therefore spend much of my time resisting new developments in my constituency to try to avoid excessive development in our part of the world. Accordingly, I do not approach this matter in a narrow, particularistic, constituency way.

I might add that I have some personal experience of such decisions. I know that there is no greater back number than an ex-Minister, but I have twice been Minister with responsibility for the research councils, in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. I also have some personal experience of taking such decisions and of the interests that are involved. It is against that background that I make my comments.

The Government have been saying, as today's debate has revealed, that the scientific arguments for location at the Rutherford laboratory are marginal. I do not agree. The Government are taking that line, as in the press release issued by the Department of Trade and Industry at the time of the announcement, because it was the only explanation that they could find for the delayed decision: delayed in the face of the powerful lobby from the north-west. The only plausible explanation for the delay was that the scientific case was marginal, so that was what was said; but I believe that the scientific case is overwhelming, and that is why I have supported the project coming to Oxfordshire.

The arguments supporting that case concern central scientific facilities. The Rutherford laboratory offers the United Kingdom a central facility for large scientific instruments, which play an increasingly important role in western European and international science. Such an arrangement is beneficial because it reduces overheads: it will be possible to run the new synchrotron at the Rutherford laboratory with a substantial reduction in administrative and technical overheads, and additional money will thus be available to invest in science. That is a powerful argument for locating such instruments on a single site.

Sometimes, the arguments for central facilities are dismissed in the belief that those using them are merely taking coffee together or drinking wine at high table. Such meetings are important, even if they are easy to caricature, as the hon. member for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth) demonstrated. They permit cross-fertilisation and synergy between diverse user communities: those also are powerful arguments for central facilities.

There is also a local argument in relation to the Rutherford laboratory. The decision to invest in the early 1980s in the spallation neutron source of Isis machine at the Rutherford laboratory was an earlier important Government decision on scientific investment. That machine is approaching the end of its useful life and a successor is needed. Such a machine will cost a great deal, so international partners are needed. Locating the synchrotron in the Rutherford laboratory alongside that new machine will help to enable the laboratory's financial and user base to be broadened. The presence of the synchrotron in the Rutherford laboratory will help to broaden the potential international appeal of the other new machine that will be required in due course.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that Diamond is being taken away from the north-west and sited at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory so that that laboratory can justify its future existence? Surely, if the science is as excellent as the. hon. Gentleman says, it can be undertaken without taking science away from the north-west?

I support the decision partly because it strengthens the position of the Rutherford Appleton laboratory as a national and international centre of excellence.

The supporters of the Daresbury laboratory are, in effect, arguing that national and international centres of excellence should be dispersed and broken up. That is the logic of their case regarding central facilities such as the Rutherford Appleton laboratory and our elite universities. However, national and international trends are in the opposite direction. Money and scientific manpower are scarce, and there is increasing competition between research centres throughout the world. We must therefore invest more in our national centres of excellence, not less.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that centres of scientific excellence in the north-west should be dismembered and that the south-east should be the ony part of the country to have such centres? Is he seriously offering that as a proper policy for this country?

Having a national centre for excellence for such machines is a proper policy for this country. There happens to be one such centre in my constituency, so that is where this kind of investment should be concentrated.

The debate about centres of excellence is important. However, concentrating science in a small number of sites reduces the competition essential to scientific progress.

I agree that there is a problem with competition, but the real competition is not within this country: it is international. The significant competition is between the Rutherford laboratory and other centres in Europe and around the world. The Government have rightly strengthened our national position in the context of that international competition.

I wish to make a mild complaint—it will be made more vociferously by other colleagues—about the way in which the decision was handled. The Government received clear scientific advice from people who—despite what the hon. Member for Warrington, South said—had no axe to grind. It came from Government scientific advisers, from the director general for research councils and from the Wellcome Trust.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is wrong for the Wellcome Trust to use its financial muscle to dictate policy to the Government? Does he accept that such people have a duty to declare their pecuniary or professional interests before taking decisions and that, by not doing so, they have destroyed all credibility regarding their views on this matter?

I shall say more about the Wellcome Trust in a moment. However, I do not believe that Wellcome Trust members had any interest in the matter: indeed, they had less interest in it than the hon. Gentleman and many of his colleagues. The Wellcome Trust is an independent third party and makes a valuable contribution to British science; he should treat it with more respect. I shall return to its role in a moment.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is no inherent intellectual capital in a machine? The true intellectual capital is in the people who worked on these issues in Daresbury for 25 years; and he should show them more respect.

The hon. Gentleman does not understand how Daresbury works. Central facilities are run by local people there—and I pay all due tribute to them—but they are used by people from all over the country and all over the world, and will continue to be so used in future. May I say to the hon. Members who have intervened that I am not speaking for the Government, though it may sometimes sound like it? Their comments would be best addressed to Ministers who have responsibility for these decisions.

The Government received clear scientific advice from their advisers and from the Wellcome Trust—a completely independent organisation, as I said, with no axe to grind. They were then faced with a strong campaign—we have seen a manifestation of its strength this morning—from north-west Members of Parliament and trade unionists. It was perfectly reasonable for them to campaign but, frankly, the spirit behind it was, as they say in America, the spirit of the pork barrel.

In the face of that campaign, the Department of Trade and Industry deferred the decision. Consequently, the scientific argument was lost to view and pressure was put on the Wellcome Trust to change its position. Pressure was also pushed upwards within the governmental system to No. 10 Downing street. Let me tell my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West that the decision was not taken by Lord Sainsbury, excellent man though he is. It was a personal decision taken by the Prime Minister. It is deplorable that our Prime Minister was put in the position of having to take that decision, but I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating him on the strong, sensible decision that he took. It is precisely on such decisions that the quality of a Government can be judged.

The Government faced, as I said, a vigorous campaign by their own Back Benchers. All sorts of populist themes—north versus south, for example—were deployed, and they had to be countered by esoteric, scientific arguments. In that context, the Government and the Prime Minister decided to do the right thing.

Rover is in the news now. In the late 1950s—

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government had little choice but to take the decision because they were blackmailed by the Wellcome Trust? Does he think it right that the Wellcome Trust should use its financial muscle to get a decision that the Government do not want to take?

I do not regard what the Wellcome Trust did as blackmail. The Government did not have to do what it wanted them to do; they had only to find the money to replace that of the Wellcome Trust, but they chose not to do so.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I want to continue my speech.

The Government took a sensible, rational decision on which I congratulate them.

In the late 1950s there was an argument about the siting of a new car plant, which is now part of Rover. In the face of populist campaigning, Harold Macmillan's Government made what he cynically called in his diaries "my judgment of Solomon". As his Government was providing a subsidy, he decided that the plant should be in two different places. That is one of the many reasons why Rover has not been effective, and both plants are probably now closed. Macmillan's Government took a bad decision in the face of populist pressure; in the face of similar pressure, this Government have taken the right decision.

However, the Prime Minister's decision was made in an unsatisfactory way, because of the growing centralisation of Government, especially in relation to science. There used to be a basic principle of scientific autonomy, which was a reflection of the autonomy of our universities. There was a structure within which research councils were genuinely independent, which was co-ordinated by the Advisory Board for Research Councils. It was a mistake—I say "mea culpa" because I was involved in preparing the 1993 science White Paper. In 1992, the Government abolished the Advisory Board for Research Councils because it gave Ministers more power. Giving more power to Ministers to take such decisions has exposed them to more political pressure, which is not always well advised. We need a mechanism for more independence and autonomy in decision taking about science through a structure such as the ABRC and the research councils.

However, there is a ray of light: the emergence in Britain of the Wellcome Trust, the largest scientific charity in the world. It is genuinely independent of Government, has its own financial resources and can make an important contribution to rebalancing the process of decision taking, reinforcing the autonomy of the scientific community rather than the politicising of decisions.

It is ill advised, apart from being stupid, to blackguard the Wellcome Trust, because it is now, and will continue to be, an important partner for Government and university science, and not only in this country. We should remember that it could spend its money outside this country—the terms of its trust allow it to do so. It behoves Parliament to treat the Wellcome Trust with greater respect. It was a bad decision to leave the argument about scientific merits out of the picture; the Government have left themselves with little alternative but to say "We had to do it because Wellcome was putting a pistol to our head." That is not a good way to treat an important partner.

I hope that hon. Members from the north-west will now give up their attack on the Wellcome Trust. It has behaved honourably and reasonably, according to the terms of its trust, which were explained to us in the Science and Technology Committee by the director, Dr. Dexter. It is concerned with science and not with regional policy.

I congratulate the Wellcome trustees on taking a clear view of the scientific balance of argument for this country and on standing firm in the face of an unpleasant and personal campaign of abuse. I should like in particular to congratulate Dr. Dexter, the director of the Wellcome Trust, on his firmness and courage on this matter. Now that the Government have stripped out the autonomy of the scientific community in this country, it is just as well that the Wellcome Trust is around to keep the Government honest. I should like to end by congratulating it on what it has done.

I too, hope that the debate will shed some light on how a decision came to be taken that is wrong for science, wrong for the country and wrong for the region. I hope that it will also accelerate efforts to restore confidence at Daresbury and throughout the north-west and among scientists across the country. I hope that it will help to ensure that the north-west is not treated in that way again.

This is an issue for science. It is an issue about the national interest. It is also an issue about the region. When the regional development agency introduced its first regional economic strategy last year, it identified the importance of establishing a strong science base. That was fundamental to developing our economy and it is one of the reasons why the decision that has been taken seems to fly in the face of common sense and of the knowledge and commitment in the region.

The strategy must build on the sad legacy left us by the previous Government, in which Government-backed research funding supports 10.5 times more jobs in the south-east than in the north-west and 71 per cent. of the budget for research is spent in the south-east. We want to change that. It must be a source of great disappointment that the change has not yet been possible.

Clearly, we should establish the facts. The facts are that there was no strong scientific case for transferring synchrotron investment from Daresbury to Oxfordshire in the south-east. A recent survey showed that 80 per cent. of users of Daresbury wanted the work to stay there. Furthermore, it has been shown that it would have been cost-effective to stay there. A detailed research study by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that it was cost-effective to stay in Daresbury and that moving to Oxfordshire would incur more costs and make the project more vulnerable to skills shortages. Professor Woolfson, who chaired the committee on the new synchrotron, confirmed that a dreadful mistake had been made in the decision to move from Cheshire to Oxfordshire.

One of the grave concerns highlighted is the lack of consideration given to the regional impact. The impact is on jobs, on scientific expertise and on the joint work currently carried out by the laboratory with hospitals, research institutions and businesses throughout the north-west. The important issue of cancer research has been highlighted; great steps are being taken to make new discoveries and to improve our work on cancer research. It would be criminal if that work were to be stopped. Important industrial research is also being carried out, particularly through the centre for surface science at Liverpool university. That university was the first in the country to operate a beam line directly with synchrotron research. That research is now vulnerable, partly because the people leading the team are being sought by other research institutions, abroad as well as in this country.

The question of the Wellcome Trust deserves examination. We need much more clarity about its role in the decision. We need to know not only what it said—although it is difficult to find out what it said to the Government—but what role it played. If outside partners are to fund scientific and other research we need to establish what their role is, what points they are making and what interests they represent.

This is a sad debate, which should not have been necessary, but it is on a matter of grave importance to science and confidence. It is also important in ensuring that the national interest is served by developing all the regions and considering matters such as the Daresbury laboratory, which is a centre of scientific excellence. We should recognise that the national interest is served by developing centres of excellence, not running them down.

I hope that the concerns expressed and the evidence adduced will ensure that greater attention is paid to the need to preserve scientific excellence and the scientific knowledge base in the north-west. I also hope that the working party that has been set up with the North West regional development agency and the Department of Trade and Industry, with the support of Members of Parliament, will quickly identify additional projects and bring new research into the north-west. It is essential that progress be made quickly. We need to boost confidence, to show those who work at the sharp end in the north-west that their skills are valued and to recognise that the needs of the people in the region and the country can be served only if we develop excellence wherever it is found.

I support what has been said by the hon. Members for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) and for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth). Although there might be differences in tone, the sense of shock—almost grief—about the loss of the Daresbury facility has spread across the parties and is powerfully felt in the north-west. That loss has not produced a synthetic row; it has hit the foundations of confidence in the future development and growth of the north-west. Although I understand the remarks of the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) and the interests that he represents, I hope that he will not underestimate the genuine and sincere anger and bitterness that the decision has produced.

In 1967, I started work with the then Runcorn development corporation. Daresbury is on the fringe of that area. That was the first time that I encountered the facility. In 1981, I was elected to Cheshire county council, and Daresbury was then in that county. I served on that council with the hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Twigg), who is here today. It is fair to say that Daresbury has always been a symbol of technological and scientific excellence in that area. Now that I represent Hazel Grove, some 25 miles away, I still feel a sense of identification with the work done at the facility. Some of my constituents work there and have corresponded with me.

Perhaps the hon. Member for Warrington, South was a mite ungenerous in the way in which she considered the all-party support for the project. I have corresponded with Ministers and have copied that correspondence to the chief executive of Halton council. I have made it clear that I fully support the location of the Diamond project at Daresbury, as hon. Members from all parties have done during the past year or so.

The synchrotron was sited at Daresbury for geological reasons—the site had unusually horizontal strata—but the current synchrotron is not horizontal but vertical, and its characteristic tower can be seen from many places in the area. It is sad that, after two generations of excellence, the third generation of possible excellence will be taken away from Daresbury and the north-west and located in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wantage.

I was the Minister who decided to locate the second generation synchrotron at Daresbury. It had nothing to do with my constituency; the issue was the scientific advantage.

Perhaps it will mollify north-west Members somewhat to know that, even if the hon. Gentleman is now the apostle of darkness, there was a time when he was the apostle of light. It is a pity that the conversion happened that way round.

I should like the Government to reverse the decision, although I called it irreversible in business questions last week. If Labour Members could persuade the Government to reverse it, I would be delighted. We should concentrate this morning on what to do next as on how on earth we got to where we are now. The decision is difficult to understand from the north-west perspective. Despite what the hon. Member for Wantage said about the project and his theory about scientific centres of excellence, it is difficult for us in the north-west to accept the decision, bearing in mind the site and the dedicated work force in an acknowledged area of excellence with academic links that have been properly described as international. Whether one flies from Tokyo to Daresbury or from Tokyo to Oxford is irrelevant. Indeed, Daresbury is nearer to Manchester airport than Oxford is to Heathrow. Some of the arguments are difficult to comprehend and display ex post facto reasoning by those who support the change.

It is especially difficult to see how a Labour Government could have made such a decision. When necessary, I am a critic of the Government, but I should have thought that they took regional policy seriously. The decision to change the site would have been more explicable if the hon. Member for Wantage were still the science Minister. He has made it clear that, had he still been in that post, he would have made the same decision. I would have expected better from a Labour Government with a commitment to regional policy and to doing something about the north-south divide. Perhaps I should not have been so optimistic.

I turn now to what we may call the Wantage argument, which is that it would be a good idea to have one major scientific centre of excellence. Presumably, that means one centre in the United Kingdom, not in the European Union or the world; the argument does not have any boundaries when a process of centralisation has been started. On the one hand, the hon. Gentleman argued that it would be good to have such a centre in Wantage, while on the other he argued that he did not want political centralisation of decision making about science and that that had been a mistake and a process in which he regretted participating. There is a dichotomy between the idea of decentralised decision making at the political level and centralised outcomes at the scientific level.

What does the north-west do next, given that we have lost £500 million of investment potential as a result of the decision? We will have not the high-tech capital investment that was expected but a highly skilled research and technology work force with time on their hands. I hope that the Minister will tell us what will happen in the future and not only talk about how the Government reached their decision, although that would be of interest. What alternatives do the Government propose for the north-west? What will be the replacement structure for maintaining our research and technology lead in the north-west? How do the Government propose to fill the gap and how will they compensate the north-west and mitigate the blow?

I have listened to many ministerial responses in debates such as this. It is possible to produce warm words, to soften the blow and to sound full of consideration and compassion, but what we need is a clear, positive programme of action and investment. That is what I want to hear from the Government.

The Daresbury facility has done long and valiant service, and is still providing good service—its current projects were mentioned earlier. The synchrotron project may have been lost, but it is now vital for the Minister to explain how the north-west will keep its research and technological lead in the next decade and the decades beyond.

Unlike hon. Members who have spoken so far, I clearly do not have a constituency or regional case to make. My purpose is to identify how Government decisions are made; the process that was examined to enable the Government to reach their decision; and, on a wider front, how those considerations may influence the Government's thinking and policy making in terms of scientific clusters around the country.

My reading of what has happened is that the Government are starting to make decisions about clusters. I am not necessarily challenging that, but if it is to be subject to input from a range of people—not only politicians—it is important that the Government spell out the policy on which they now seem to be embarking. The hon. Member for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth) asked me what my decision would have been and whether I think that the right location has been chosen. A decision about that can be made only by those who have analysed all the evidence and heard all the representations before making a judgment.

As a former Minister, I am well aware that when such a judgment is made, not everyone will be pleased. At the very least, it should be possible to account for the way in which the decision was reached. That is lacking in the decision that was made in this context, not least because in the run-up to the announcement—we have heard that it was somewhat convoluted—every public pronouncement by the Secretary of State and others, particularly when he gave evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, suggested that he was "minded" to locate the project at Daresbury. The decision was suddenly reversed—apparently by the Prime Minister. I challenge not the outcome but the lack of transparency that would enable others to look at how the process was carried out and determine whether it was the right decision.

Does that mean that Conservative Front Benchers have no view about regional policy or about where the Synchrotron should be?

The hon. Gentleman is confusing the issue. I hope that the Minister will throw some light on the matter. If such decisions are to be made, are they to be made in future on the basis of regional policy and the regional importance to the significant scientific community in the north-west, or are the Government now embarking on a policy of scientific clustering in different locations? It is important that the House knows that. I will come in a moment to a quotation from Lord Sainsbury's press release that indicates that he has already a view of what the dynamics of scientific research and work in the north-west should be. It is important that that decision is shared with the House and others outside it.

No answer.

North-west Labour Members are upset because they have spent three years prefacing everything that they have said with, "May I congratulate my hon. Friend?" Now they find themselves saying, "May I criticise my hon. Friend?" I see that they have a problem.

It is strategically important for the scientific community to know whether the decison will drive decisions made by the future Government on science. I think that the Government are now determining where scientific clusters will be located. If they are, they must share that information with the House so that we can examine the way in which they form their judgments and the overall strategic plan for not only Daresbury or the north-west, but the United Kingdom.

There has been a lot of confusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) has done well to bring the matter to the attention of the Chamber. The reason why Rutherford Appleton emerged as a possible site is not clear. The Wellcome Trust released a statement on 24 November suggesting a preference for Rutherford Appleton, but Nature reported in November that it did not have a preference. The Secretary of State appeared to firm up his view that Daresbury should be chosen in his many comments to the Select Committee on Science and Technology. He said:

This was always going to be a decision (in terms of the location) that was going to be taken by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

The fact that the matter has been taken out of his hands and No. 10 has made the decision is of concern not only on this issue, but to future decision making.

I hope that the Minister will give us a substantive reply to the point to which I keep returning: are the Government starting to determine where scientific clusters will be located in the United Kingdom? The Secretary of State told the Select Committee:

One of the reasons why I indicated in my letter of 1 November that I thought Daresbury was the preferred site was that there was expertise that already existed in relation to the synchrotron at Daresbury and there must be a risk of disruption and of losing people if there is a decision to locate somewhere else.

On scientific grounds as well as on regional ones that I know are important to hon. Members in this Chamber, the Secretary of State seemed to have been persuaded that that would be the decision. However, Lord Sainsbury of Turville outlined his decision in a press release on 13 March. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) suggested, Lord Sainsbury referred to additional money that he would put into the northwest as a sort of compensation, stating:

I have asked Dr Bruce Smith to chair a team to review the options for capitalising on the strengths of the science base in the North West, for example in the biomedical sciences, looking at how we might exploit Manchester's "health corridor", and Daresbury's strength in instrumentation.

That is all well and good, but do the Government intend, from the centre, to determine the location of scientific clusters? Are they looking for where organic growth in certain disciplines occurs, and will they therefore relate future decision making and policy around the clusters, however small? I believe that many people would like an explanation about that. It is not sufficient to toss a bit of money somewhere as a short compensation policy. If the Government intend to establish scientific clusters around the country, they must have an overall national strategy; an ad hoc, regional approach is not good and will not serve the purpose.

We would welcome a much broader debate on the subject, so that we can uncover why the case was taken from the Department of Trade and Industry and the decision made in Downing street, and on the Government's policy—I hope that there is a policy, because it would be outrageous to make such decisions without an overall strategic view—on clustering and the promotion of specialisms throughout the UK.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady). It is evident from the speech of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) that the Conservatives wish to engage in one of their favourite sports: running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. I am sure that she will accept that the energy and drive in the campaign for Daresbury came from Labour Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall), who for obvious reasons has had to work behind the scenes, and has done so tirelessly. It is important to recognise the work done by my hon. Friends in the north-west on the issue.

I pointed that out myself. It is important that we recognise that hon. Members from all parties in the north-west share that point of view. There are strong feelings about the issue in the north-west and all hon. Members who sought to put the case should get the credit.

The fact that my noble Friend Lord Sainsbury is not replying to the debate was remarked on; around 400 years of constitutional history would crumble if a Member of the other place even attempted to walk into Westminster Hall.

The siting of the new synchrotron has been a topic of enormous interest and concern over the past few weeks. The debate has enabled some issues to be fully aired. While I appreciate the huge disappointment of hon. Members in the north-west, it is important to stress that the decision to build a new synchrotron in the UK is good news for the future of British science. It is a major long-term investment in our infrastructure, costing approximately £200 million in capital and £500 million in total over the next 25 years. It represents the largest single investment in science for more than a decade. The regional issues are of course a subject of great debate and tension, but the issue is a national one and it is good news for the UK.

Our aim is to build the best possible facility for synchrotron users and create an environment in which we can stay at the forefront of global research in important scientific fields, such as our increasing knowledge of the human genome—the building block of all life—biotechnology, development of new drugs, new plastics, textiles and electronic materials. The partnership that we have secured with the French and the Wellcome Trust is the best way of achieving a facility that has the leading-edge capability that current and future synchrotron users will demand. By working together, we can build a larger and more specified machine than we could afford by ourselves. We also bring in the technical expertise of our partners to help to design and develop the best possible machines.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will if I get time at the end, as long as I have answered all the important points raised in the debate.

This is the first time that the UK has hosted such a collaborative international scientific facility. The French Government have shown great commitment to the project, cancelling plans for their own third generation synchrotron, Soleil, in order to join us. No evidence suggests that those plans have changed. Indeed, the French Goverenment will meet the other partners next week. Officials have assured us that the change in the French Government has not affected the project.

The factors involved in choosing the site made the decision difficult. We are fortunate in the United Kingdom in that we have two locations, Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton laboratory, which both offered viable sites for the new synchrotron. Indeed, the Select Committee on Science and Technology concluded that it had no preference for either site and that both sites were equally acceptable. We therefore faced a dilemma. The decision might not have taken so long had the competition from both sites been less than equal. It has been a difficult decision. The key criterion in selecting the site was what would be best for UK science, bearing in mind the fact that the facility is designed to last for the next generation—at least 25 years. In addition, the project is a partnership, which, like all partnerships, involves negotiation and compromise. Although we had to take into account our partners' views, they are by no means the only reason why we reached that conclusion.

Will the Minister give way?

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

We consulted users three times in the past 15 months, as it is they who will ultimately carry out research on the machine. They concluded that they require a world-class machine for a wide range of structural science research in the UK. Although they want a high-quality machine, ultimately the focus must be on the quality of science that the machine enables.

Demand was expressed for a strong science culture on the site and an environment in which researchers from different scientific disciplines could work closely together. On the basis of our officials' advice, the Government decided that that can best be achieved at Rutherford Appleton laboratory, which already has other major facilities using, for example, neutrons, lasers and nuclear magnetic resonance. In addition, we need to continue to invest in support technologies using, for example, low temperatures, vacuum technology and high magnetic fields, which can be shared among the different facilities on the site.

Co-location at Rutherford Appleton laboratory will prevent duplication of activity and encourage more efficient use of funds. Both our partners favoured the Rutherford Appleton site, and as part of a partnership we had to take their views into account. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West mentioned a comment made on Radio 4 by an attach?t the French embassy that was entirely refuted a few days later in a letter to The Guardian from the French ambassador. Our French partners expressed a clear preference for Rutherford Appleton.

The Government's final decision was based on a wide range of information provided by consultants and synchrotron users. The official Opposition have criticised the Government and in particular my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who would plead guilty to the charge of carefully considering and analysing Daresbury's bid. He considered many other factors in addition to the scientific case before reaching his decision. It is right and proper for him to have undertaken such thorough analysis.

We held three consultations with synchrotron users, in January, May and December 1999. The final review was held at the request of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The Office of Science and Technology contracted ADD Consultants in June 1999 to carry out an investment appraisal of options for the site of the proposed new synchrotron radiation facility. ADD Consultants is an independent company that provides technical consultancy and training services.

The Office of Science and Technology contracted Allott and Lomax to carry out the survey of both the Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton sites in December 1999. Allott and Lomax is an independent engineering consultancy based in Manchester. The Wellcome Trust employed its own firm of consulting engineers to survey both sites.

The studies showed that both sites could accommodate the new synchrotron physically and would obtain planning permission. The financial appraisal showed that Rutherford Appleton was marginally favourable. The consultation with users about the location issues showed that physicists using synchrotrons believed that there were advantages in locating the new one alongside the Isis neutron source.

In the Science and Technology Committee, the Secretary of State said:

in the survey that we conducted before Christmas what was particularly interesting was that the life scientists, who are the ones who are likely to use the new synchrotron perhaps more than the physical scientists, did not feel strongly about its location alongside ISIS at all.

Why did he change his view?

In a process of analysis and in carrying out the consultation that he commissioned in December, my right hon. Friend obviously had due regard to all the evidence. We went back over several consultation periods precisely because of what the hon. Lady has mentioned. However, while both Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton laboratories offered excellent sites, Rutherford Appleton was preferred for four key reasons. They were: first, the potential for operational, technical and scientific synergy between the new synchrotron and the other facilities on the site—especially Isis; secondly, the potential to produce a world-class international research centre, drawing together a range of scientific and engineering disciplines; thirdly, the sharing of many technical functions, such as accelerated design, magnets, pulse powers and support functions including security, safety and administration; and finally, its proximity to the biosciences expertise at Oxford university, the medical research council units, including the mouse genome centre on the adjacent Harwell site, and the national nuclear magnetic resonance centre. The basis for the decision was nothing but what would be best for British science. It was a difficult decision, but the Government believe it was correct, and it is, as was said in the debate, irreversible.

Many hon. Members raised questions about the future of Daresbury laboratory and the north-west, whose staff made a crucial contribution to the existing UK synchrotron source, the SRS. The design, construction and commissioning of the new synchrotron project will take about six years to complete. The current synchrotron source at Daresbury will continue to operate during and beyond that period, giving, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth) said, a period of light rather than dark. United Kingdom users will thus have continuous access to X-rays and instrumentation. The research councils are currently investing £5 million in new beam lines, so that service will be maintained at the highest level during that period. It is therefore anticipated that most of the current staff will remain employed at the Daresbury laboratory to support its effective operation. We also plan to use the expertise at Daresbury in many aspects of the new synchrotron project and so will take full advantage of the knowledge and skills built up there over many years. The very important work on breast cancer mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South is one reason for our belief that Daresbury has a viable future.

We shall not rush into decisions on Daresbury's longer-term future. It will be one of the topics considered in the review of the north-west science base announced by my noble Friend Lord Sainsbury on 13 March and due to report by the end of September. The first meeting was held yesterday. The review will consider how best to capitalise on the skilled people and assets of Daresbury and will also consult the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils.

The strengths of the north-west are built on its chemical, pharmaceutical, aerospace and nuclear industries, which deliver 18 per cent. of UK manufacturing output. The Government will contribute £25 million to the work of the task force and will look to strengthen further the science base in the north-west by contributing to the funding of a feasibility study to consider the potential for a biotechnology core technology facility worth up to £25 million—a further £25 million for the north-west. The Government are extremely concerned about the impact on Daresbury and the north-west and—

Order. We must proceed to the next debate.

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate an issue that is of great concern throughout the country, for reasons that are not difficult to see. During the past 10 years, more than 4,000 bank branches have closed, and it is predicted that another 4,000 will close in the next five years if the banks do not change their approach. We are heading fast towards 172 BC—Barclays closure day, on 7 April, when it plans to axe 172 branches at a stroke.

Two of those branches are in my constituency. Regarding the one at Oulton Broad, I have advised my constituents to take the advice given by my hon. Friend the Minister a couple of weeks ago and vote with their feet, because there are still a couple of other banks in that community. In the case of the second proposed closure, in the Kirkley area of south Lowestoft, my constituents are unable to follow that advice because Barclays is the last bank in south Lowestoft. I should add that Lowestoft, a town with a population of 65,000, is cut in two by a river and joined only by a lift-up bridge, so it has two distinct communities, but Barclays has not recognised that because it does not consider such matters of detail in any community.

That part of Lowestoft is a single regeneration budget area, and the Government and other public bodies are contributing £20 million of public money, together with much hard work on the ground, to regenerate the area. By definition, a single regeneration budget area has a high proportion of vulnerable people, including elderly people. In addition, it has high unemployment, poverty and poor health. However, the area is also a commercial area. Many small shops line the A12 as it runs into Lowestoft, and there are plenty of other small businesses. Those shops are struggling, but they are hanging on because their proprietors believe in the regeneration process and can see signs of progress in their community, three years into a seven-year programme, the object of which is to create jobs, impove housing conditions and enhance the built environment.

Barclays is walking away and abandoning the area, as it is abandoning other parts of the country. It is saying, in effect, that it does not believe that regeneration will work, or that it does not care whether it works. Its decision to move out of the area will undermine confidence in the regeneration process and in that part of Lowestoft. Its departure will also present practical difficulties for small businesses. It will require shopkeepers, who often work on their own, to travel further to do their banking, and to take a higher security risk or incur extra costs in delivering their takings to the bank.

I said that Barclays was walking away, but it would be more accurate to say that it is running away, because it has given its loyal customers only a few weeks' notice that it is closing their bank. That is a kick in the teeth for those customers and the community in which the bank is situated. Barclays is leaving elderly and disabled people to fend for themselves. What thought does Barclays have for Mr. Philip Baldry of Southwell road, Lowestoft? Mr. Baldry is blind and his dog is specially trained to guide him to that bank. What does Mr. Baldry do now?

The reaction of the community is strong. People are appalled by Barclays' actions. The local paper, the Lowestoft Journal, has run a campaign, the like of which I have never seen before. In an unprecedented move, the editor put his own letter on the front page. Mr. Ernie Skepelhorn, who lives in the area, has organised a petition, which must be the easiest one ever compiled because people are queueing up to sign it.

Like other hon. Members, I received a letter from Barclays Group public affairs. It began by explaining that it had decided what to do. There was no question of consultation. How would Barclays react if the Government conducted their business in that way? It would want to be consulted.

I asked a Barclays manager to come to Lowestoft. When he arrived, I asked what criteria were used for closing branches. It was clear that they were national, narrow and financial. I asked whether a local appraisal had been made of branches. He said yes, but did not have the details with him. It was obvious that the decisions were taken simply on the basis of maps and head office statistics; they show a narrow focus and a centralised approach. The manager said that an automatic telling machine might be provided—which, of course, would come with the charges that Barclays would like to impose—or that people could use a supermarket or Marks and Spencer, which does not exist in the area. He refused to talk to the media or local people. I had to cajole him even to receive the petition. But now I know why, and I know that Barclays is guilty of a cynical disregard of its customers.

When the manager left, I saw a pile of documents in my car that belonged to him. I could not resist looking at them.

Must be a trainee Whip.

This is not a laughing matter.

I found a closure kit on a project called Closure 2000. It included an inaccurate local briefing document, which said that my area had just received objective 2 European funding for a future programme. There was no mention of the SRB programme, which has been under way for two or three years. The briefing told the manager that

Bob Blizzard MP is likely to argue that he and the local council [please note—Mr. Blizzard is leader of the local council].

I know that one or two hon. Members retain their seats on councils, but I do not know of one who is the leader of a council. I gave that up in 1997 when I entered the House of Commons. Is that the quality of information on which Barclays bases such decisions? The briefing document did, however, admit that branch closure sends out a negative message about the economic viability of an area. That is my case.

The papers included a branch closure staff guidance pack. It contained some gems. It told staff:

We strongly recommend that you role play some of the more difficult questions with your colleagues before using them in a live situation … Where it is perceived that hotspots are developing the ARM should advise Head Office at the earliest possible stage.

Well, Lowestoft is certainly a hotspot, and I bet that it is not the only one.

The document described strategies for staff to dissuade customers from complaining to their Member of Parliament or starting a petition. They have not been very successful. It said:

If a customer says that they are going to contact the local media—do not make any comment.

The guidance pack posed questions, including

Is there a possibility of the branch remaining open?

to which the answer was "No." There was, however, a chink of light because it said:

This decision is unlikely to be changed.

I stress the word "unlikely". To the question,

Why weren't we consulted?

staff were to respond:

This is a business decision.

My visitor from Barclays said that he would pass on my message, but closure was not his decision. I meet more Barclays executives on Monday, but not the man who will take the decision on closure. I shall ask them to work with the Government in the regeneration process. If the SRB works, there will be increased business for the branch. Shops will thrive and there will be more small businesses, tourists and employed local people. I shall ask Barclays to put the regeneration programme to the test. It should grant a stay of execution and give the SRB a chance. It should sit down and discuss with the Government how a bank can be retained in this fragile regeneration and rebuilding process, to avoid damaging confidence.

There should be a breathing space for other solutions to be examined. How about a shared bank? Different utility companies seem able to share the same pipe or cable these days, so why cannot the banks share? Currently, they cannot share even an automatic telling machine without charging each other's customers. Am I asking too much of the banks in requesting that they take a wider view of social responsibility and consider branches in the context of local communities? It is not as though banks such as Barclays cannot afford to do so. Two weeks ago, Don Cruickshank told us that the banks are making excess profits of about £5 billion a year, and Barclays is part of that.

Barclays is currently running an advertising campaign and is spending millions of pounds on television. One cannot open a daily newspaper without seeing a huge advertisement. I am told that a double page in The Times costs £80,000 a go. The advertisement tells us how big the company is, and yet it is downsizing its branch network. We are also told that it is undertaking the biggest educational sponsorship scheme in the United Kingdom, which illustrates its support for communities. In light of what is actually being done to communities, that is a public relations stunt. Real community support would consist of keeping branches such as that in south Lowestoft open. That is support that counts.

For too long, the banks in this country have had a culture that is not customer focused. Do hon. Members remember the battle to get banks to open on Saturday mornings? Do they remember when banks used to close at 3 o'clock in the afternoon? The current circumstances are no better and, as very few large banks remain, they have unreasonable power in the market.

The banks say that the current network of branches is not viable, but comparisons with mainland Europe produce some very interesting numbers. I am told that there are 170 branches per million people in this country. If building societies are included, there are 260 branches per million people. However, there are 400 branches per million people in Italy, 600 branches per million people in Germany and 900 branches per million people in Spain.

I was pleased last week when the Chancellor signalled his intention to use the Don Cruickshank report. He invited the Post Office and the banks to work together to offer basic banking services to all. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to challenge Barclays and other banks to reconsider closures in regeneration areas. SRB is a specific and definable criterion, and I dare say that other hon. Members will find other criteria. Will my hon. Friend join me in asking Barclays to halt the immediate closure of such branches? Will he insist that it meets representatives of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions to discuss the impact of local branches in regeneration processes and how to avoid the damaging of confidence and the imposition of further burdens on small businesses? Those results would definitely follow if the local branches closed.

I am making a practical suggestion. Regeneration is about tackling serious problems and is a vital process in which the giant banks should play a serious and responsible part. At a time when we know that the banks are making excess profits, we must not let them get away with such damaging closures. If they will not co-operate, we will have to consider measures such as regulation or a windfall tax. That might focus their outlook and make them ask whether they are big enough to change their minds.

We are all indebted to the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) for bringing forward this matter for debate. I pay tribute to him for the way in which he presented his case and congratulate him on having secured the debate. All hon. Members will be happy to use the disclosures from the back seat of his car that he has revealed to us. His arguments apply not only to parts of East Anglia that are covered by regeneration programmes but to those that are not. The debate gives East Anglian Members the chance to express some of the outrage felt locally about Barclays bank branch closures. In my constituency, where the East Harling and Feltwell branches are to close, the issue is regarded as one more nail in the coffin of rural life. People in rural areas feel that they are becoming among the most disadvantaged in society.

Despite the handy role-play advice that the hon. Member for Waveney disclosed was given to Barclays bank employees, the bank must have been taken by surprise by the fury and intensity of the local reaction. There was a sit-in at Terrington St. Clement, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner). Uniquely, it was organised by people over the age of 70. Cheese sandwiches were provided through the bank's letter-box. It lasted five hours and was lovingly chronicled in our local media, including the Eastern Daily Press. Afterwards, bank employees had to have time off for the stress imposed on them by the 70-year-old participants. That must have been one of the "hotspots" referred to by the hon. Member for Waveney in his excellent speech.

We have seen an array of banners at Brundall, which I believe is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson). We have seen pickets in Lincolnshire. In my constituency, we have had much protest, furious letters and complaints about the way in which Barclays has announced its proposals for the branches.

It should be remembered that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk and the hon. Member for Waveney will know, Barclays is a bank that has generations, and, indeed, centuries of connections with East Anglia and, in particular, with Norfolk. For many Norfolk people, Barclays is their bank, certainly for those above a certain age.

My constituent, Mr. Dudley Stammers of East Harling, has banked with Barclays at the branch in East Harling, as did his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather through the generations. The only information that he was given was a leaflet stuffed into his hand as he left the bank a couple of weeks ago. I am extremely surprised that bank employees have apparently been given advice on handling the situation. All that one might say is that it was not extremely successful.

We all know that banks are commercial organisations and that, increasingly, people will use cashpoint machines. Interestingly, this week the banks changed their mind regarding charges for the use of the machines. We know that, increasingly, people will use telephone banking and the internet. However, for many, those are not an option. For people running small local businesses grouped around isolated rural communities, there is no time to travel to lodge cash with a bank some distance away. With falling numbers of police, there are also understandable security fears when people must take large sums back and forth in their car.

Parents at home with their children might like the opportunity to go to a bank in a nearby town but do not have the time. People at work and, especially, the elderly do not have the opportunity to bank elsewhere. Increasingly, those for whom the price of petrol—it is now £4 a gallon—has become an intolerable burden must think once, twice or three times before they get in the car to go to the nearest market town to do their banking.

As I said, the role of Barclays bank in Norfolk has always been pretty special. As the hon. Member for Waveney pointed out, the bank would still like the public to believe that it provides a special service and that it wishes to lavish care on its customers. We know also, from Barclays' annual report, that this year £200 million in bonuses has been paid to top executives.

It is interesting to note that Barclays can spend large sums to persuade the public of its enthusiasm for local businesses and to demonstrate the role of banking in regenerating communities or keeping them going, yet still pull the rug from under them. It must be obvious that an active bank branch brings business to a community, even a small one, because people who use the bank will spend money and undertake other business in the community. The closure of a branch pulls the plug on the economic activities of an area.

At the moment, rural people are disadvantaged. Many local post offices are under threat. People in Norfolk face council tax increases that are three times the rate of inflation. Agriculture is in its worst straits since the 1930s. Petrol now costs £4 a gallon and people in rural areas regularly face a 15-mile round trip to visit the doctor. We can do without a well known bank pulling the rug out from under us like that.

How much more heartening it would have been if the hon. Member for Waveney had been able to find in the filched material that was left in his car a clue that the bank wanted to consider other ways of providing a service. Instead, it contains a list of instructions on how to fob off concerned and genuine questions of the sort posed by the hon. Gentleman. How much better it would have been if Barclays had spent a moment considering how it might co-operate with local post offices and with other rural regeneration schemes instead of saying no when asked whether it was going to think again about closure. I believe that it should think again.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) on securing the debate and on the strident efforts that he has made on behalf of his constituents to halt the disgraceful tide of closures announced by Barclays. Other hon. Members who represent constituencies in the region have also spoken out against the closures.

It was somewhat ironic to hear the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) speak about pickets and sit-ins. Politics has indeed turned on its head if Conservative Members are found to be supporting such welcome direct action. We may have lessons to learn from one another.

The debate is timely. Only yesterday, we launched the all-party group on banking. I was pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney and for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) and many other hon. Members from across the political spectrum were present to give their unstinting support to resisting the tide of financial exclusion that threatens to engulf many communities, not only in rural areas but in urban and small, deprived inner-city communities.

Undoubtedly, of all the major national banks, Barclays is the most unresponsive to both public and political pressure. It is clear that Barclays intends to proceed with the closure of 172 branches, despite the fact that there is almost unprecedented political activity in the House over the matter. Some 300 Members of Parliament have signed early-day motions condemning bank closures generally and Barclays' activities in particular. As I speak, there are about 20 early-day motions on the Order Paper.

The all-party parliamentary group on banking exists not to legislate but to work together to explore options and bring pressure to bear on the banking industry to try to make it more accountable and more responsive to customers' needs. The present tide of closures is taking place at a time when the banks are securing record profits. Last year alone, the United Kingdom banking industry made a net profit of £20 billion. Paradoxically, profits are going through the roof while the branch networking is systematically butchered.

Many solutions need to be explored. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney said, there is a prospect of banks being regulated if they do not put their house in order and show similar concern for customers as for shareholders. Perhaps the Minister will be able to hold out such a prospect when he replies. Other options have been outlined today and in other debates. If only the big four banks would agree to talk to one another. At the moment, there is a sort of race not to be the last bank left in any town or village, because it is obvious that the last bank to close will take the flak from local communities and their democratically elected representatives. If a community is not large enough in major banks' terms to sustain four branches, what would be wrong with their sharing facilities and processing one another's customers, at least leaving those communities some access to basic banking services?

Although the current flak is, rightly, being directed at Barclays, the other high street banks that my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney mentioned are also deeply into this game. Even after Barclay's current closure programme is completed, NatWest and Lloyds TSB will have closed still more branches since the 1990s. The campaign should be directed fully at the four major banks and the problems that they are creating generally, although one solution would be for them to get together to provide facilities in communities.

My hon. Friend makes a telling, accurate point. We are singling out Barclays for our vitriol today but it could easily be sprayed around at all the big four banks and at the United Kingdom banking sector in general. However, one bit of good news has just come to light. Following the takeover of NatWest by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the proposed closure of 250 to 300 banks has been put on hold. I understand that that decision was taken as recently as yesterday. Sixty fairly well advanced closures will go ahead but 140 to 190 branches have been reprieved. How long this will last remains to be seen.

The other purpose of the campaign is to provide not only a strong voice in Parliament for local communities that are threatened with financial exclusion but a strong voice for customers, whom the major banks singularly ignore in their relentless search for even greater, more obscene profits.

Another ray of light—at present there are only rays—is the excellent report by Don Cruickshank, the Treasury adviser, who began an inquiry into financial exclusion. Hon. Members need to study some of the report's recommendations to ensure that it does not gather dust in Treasury filing cabinets or elsewhere. I look forward to working with other hon. Members to that end.

The most likely solution, with which I hope the Minister will deal in his response, is to use the 19,000-strong post office network. It has shrunk by 1 per cent. over the past few years and we cannot turn back the clock: modernisation will take place. Automated credit transfer will have an effect on the post office network and it is pointless for Labour Back Benchers to deny it, but other options are available to strengthen the Post Office.

The Post Office is perhaps the best loved of British institutions. We need to get the banks talking to each other and to be responsive to public and political pressure. That could produce capital investment in all our major post offices and sub-post offices, which could provide at least basic banking services to our constituents who want access to their own money.

Is it not another bitter irony in the saga of Barclays' total disregard for its customers that it engaged in an experimental project in Cornwall to establish whether post offices could take over some of the banking services denied to its customers, yet did not wait for the outcome of the experiment before engaging in what my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney discovered has been defined as Closure 2000? That provides another example of Barclays' total failure to deliver to some of their most loyal customers.

Barclays is guilty of the worst cynicism. I am sure that Cornwall was picked for the pilot project because it was furthest from the London-based media.

Credit unions have been promoted as social banks in deprived communities such as Salford, yet those experiments, worthy as they are, do not stop for a moment the advance of the savage closure programmes. We must make these pilot schemes more than regional experiments and place them at the top of the agenda. It is our role as parliamentarians not only to raise issues but to propose solutions. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk certainly touched on possible solutions in the offing.

Many groups are affected by bank closure, and the elderly and people on fixed incomes are the worst affected. I am pleased that Help the Aged has joined forces with the campaign for commuity banking services and the new all-party group to add its voice to the outcry against the tide of financial exclusion.

I wish to end by telling a story about my constituency to illustrate how, just once, we managed to force a major national bank to back down and listen to people, especially the elderly. Last spring, rebellion was in the air in Reading, West. It is a fairly prosperous constituency at the heart of middle England. A major national institution had incensed a wide coalition comprising small business men and women, jobbing builders, the elderly, the blind and the disabled—in fact, just about everyone who does not rely exclusively on cash machines for all their financial transactions. I am talking, of course, about Lloyds TSB—the bank that used to like to say yes.

Lloyds TSB faced a storm of protest when it announced the closure of the only bank left in the village of Theale, just outside Reading. To add insult to injury, the full automation of two further district branches and the partial automation of its central Reading branch were proposed. It was part of an ill-fated national pilot scheme to see whether bank customers were ready to deal solely with robots rather than people. My constituents' reaction was hostile, to say the least. I was proud to spearhead a campaign aimed at sinking that pilot project once and for all. I had no doubt that if Lloyds TSB got away with it in Reading, wholesale automation would have been introduced in thousands of other communities throughout the country. It was a nasty glimpse into the future.

Reading is the capital of the Thames valley, is at the cutting edge of e-commerce and is probably the last place to wish to resist progress. Yet for all the advance of internet banking and the increased use of ATMs, how on earth is a blind person supposed to use a fully automated bank? What use is a cash machine that will issue only £200 a day to a jobbing builder who needs money to pay labourers and buy materials? What about the shopkeeper who loses a day's interest on deposits? Hon. Members may be interested to learn that it takes four days for a robot to process a cheque and three days for a human being. So much for progress!

There are many elderly people in my constituency who simply do not trust putting their hard-earned savings into a hole in the wall—and why on earth should they? I like campaigning—it is one of the reaons why I am in politics—but seldom have I had as much pleasure as I have had in directing the protests and anger of my constituents at the arrogant Lloyds TSB executives who were seeking to use them as guinea pigs in their constant search for even greater profits.

At times, the big four banks seem almost oblivious to the terrible publicity that they generate for themselves by pursuing their policies of branch closure, cash machine charges and excessive profiteering, yet just this once we forced them to back down. I do not know whether it was the horror of being picketed by scores of blind and disabled people on national television. Perhaps it was having their nice little House of Commons summer reception gatecrashed by a particularly belligerent MP and his staff. Was it the threat of being exposed for breaches of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995? Whatever it was, I am pleased to report that the Lloyds TSB executives eventually caved in and cashiers were reinstated in Reading. I hope that the efforts of hon. Members and others working together will force the banks to see sense and give communities and their customers the level of attention that they currently give to their shareholders.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) on securing this Adjournment debate. I welcome the fine contributions by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) and the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter). Indeed, it is strange to see so many of us who are roughly of the same generation and who have at times been on different sides. I look at the Minister: 30 years ago, we stood on different sides of a barricade. I suspect that, on this occasion, we are all on the same side.

Like other hon. Members, I wish to bring to the attention of the Chamber the deep sense of outrage in my constituency about the closure of two Barclays bank branches at Reepham and Brundall. I have had campaigns in the past: people have written to me about a wide range of issues that have upset them, such as the national health service and hunting, whether for or against, but seldom have I heard such genuine, deep anger. It has been expressed not only by the people in those two communities, but by people throughout my constituency, including those who can easily find alternative means of banking.

The protests that I have received have not been in the Luddite tradition of refusing to face up to progress. Nearly everyone recognises that it is a highly competitive world and that the banks must adapt to new technology of one kind or another. However, it seems to many people that Barclays has got it wrong. It may be taking the brunt of the blame for decisions also taken by the other banks, but in this case it has shown a degree of crass stupidity that only a political party in terminal decline can ever show. At different stages the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties have all witnessed that.

As the hon. Member for Waveney pointed out, the debate has focused on the effect of Government regeneration policies on bank branch closures. I want to say at the outset that in Norfolk, we feel out on a limb. We feel neglected, and there is a danger that the Government's well-intentioned policies of regeneration may be seen by many people in Norfolk as policies of degeneration, which will cause things to get worse. The closure of branches by Barclays must be seen in the context of many other things that have happened to rural communities such as those in Norfolk in the past decade, and which have accelerated during the past three years.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk spoke about the crisis facing farming. There is a real crisis in my constituency. One need only see the pig farmers' picket a few yards from the Room.

As hon. Members have said, we must bear in mind the closure of sub-post offices. The Government's decision in May 1999 to scrap the previous Government's Horizon project for paying benefit using swipe cards will have a major impact on post offices. Forty per cent. of rural sub-post offices' income comes from benefit payments. Many rural post offices will close as a result of that decision. As hon. Members know, in many communities the post office effectively subsidises the village shop. Between 1992 and 1997, 99 sub-post offices were closing annually. Now, 235 are closing every year. On 5 February, the Eastern Daily Press reported that more than 20 village post offices in Norfolk and Suffolk had shut in the past 12 months.

Hon. Members' worthy proposals on the alternative of combining banking facilities and sub-post offices may not be workable. So many sub-post offices may close while we are trying to achieve that, that communities such as Reepham and Brundall will end up without a bank or sub-post office.

Does my hon. Friend accept that there could have been a means of saving some rural post offices, had more thought been given to Barclays' operation in such matters? A partnership might have been formed that would have given post offices an additional function. That could have saved some post offices, although it is undeniable that many have closed.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Once again, we confront the worst kind of short-termism.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if postmasters, newspapers and pensioner groups keep saying that post offices are going to close, that will undermine confidence in post offices and cause some customers to abandon them in favour of a bank? Should we not encourage people to use post offices to stop them closing?

; I fully endorse what the hon. Gentleman says. Unfortunately, however, more and more sub-post offices in my constituency are closing. Indeed, this Friday I am attending a meeting about one that is under threat.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk said, Barclays' decision has provoked outrage in Norfolk. My constituents in Reepham and Brundall have contacted me by letter and telephone. They are extremely angry that the decision will be implemented—as the hon. Member for Waveney said—on 7 April, whatever anyone says. Barclays is in, "I hear what you say" mode, which is a polite way of saying, "I don't give a damn what you say."

Consultation has been lacking and there is genuine fury that the announcement has, unfortunately for Barclays, come at a time when the bank's profits have increased by 30 per cent. to £2.5 million. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk said, the directors have had a small windfall. A massive new advertising campaign with a famous British actor appearing—presumably for a large fee—to say how wellBarclays is doing rubs salt into the wound. Another bank claimed that it was a listening bank. At least Barclays has spared us that; if it took such a line, it would be lynched.

What will the closures of the branches of Barclays in Reepham and Brundall mean to those communities? I live in Reepham, a market town of about 4,000 inhabitants which is used by many in surrounding villages. Individual customers and local family businesses bank there. The nearest Barclays bank is 8 miles away in Aylsham, constituting a round trip of 16 miles. So there is an immediate impact on many individuals. Mrs. Joyce Cox, secretary of the Reepham Patient Care Fund, told me that she wrote to Barclays' branch manager in Aylsham saying that the fund would have to use its small coach to bring disabled customers to it. She wondered whether Barclays would make a small contribution to the cost of the extra petrol. In reply, she received a letter saying, effectively, "I hear what you say."

Brian Robertson, our local butcher, has said that the closure will affect the way in which local businesses bank their cash, not only because of the disruption caused by taking money to another bank but because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk said, they feel insecure and are worried about increasing instances of robbery and muggings.

The impact on Brundall, a large village to the east of Norwich on the River Wensum, will be similar but with a particular degradation of tourism. The bank offers a service for holidaymakers, and local people, such as David Green and Kiki Angelbath, fear that the closure will have a detrimental effect. The combination of bank branch closures and the threat to sub-post offices—a point made by George Johnson in Reepham—will produce degeneration, not regeneration, in rural communities.

I want to emphasise a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk. It is indeed a deep irony that Barclays bank has a direct Norfolk connection, with the families of the Barclays, the Gurneys and the Buxtons. They were 18th-century Quakers who went into banking not only for commercial reasons and to make a profit, but to provide a service for the farming community, based on deep Christian beliefs. They had a commitment to social welfare.

The plea of my constituents in Reepham and Brundall, expressed by the vicar of Reepham, the Rev. Michael Patison, is not that Barclays should be an extension of the welfare state, but that it should reconsider its decision to close its branches in Reepham and Brundall and in other constituencies. The banks should consider the strong cross-party feeling shown in this debate and realise that it may affect the future of banking and the legislation that may be introduced.

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) for securing this Adjournment debate. As in the previous, shorter Adjournment debate on this subject, every hon. Member who has spoken has adduced a litany of experience on the serious impact that the proposed closure of bank branches by Barclays will have on our constituents.

Mine is not a rural constituency, but the proposed closure of the Hampstead Heath branch of Barclays will have a serious impact on an area where people have prided themselves on managing to maintain a strong sense of community and have worked extremely hard to maintain the village atmosphere. We have many small shops that are entirely dependent on Barclays; it is the only bank in that part of my constituency.

Although the Hampstead Heath branch may not seem a million miles away from the branch in Hampstead village, the latter is at the top of an extremely steep hill. Although the distance is not far, some of those Barclays customers who will be most strongly, even doubly, affected find it extremely difficult to reach. They have been Barclays customers all their life and have shown their loyalty. They are now pensioners, and the bank that they have entrusted with their savings, which they believed would deliver a high-quality service, is now betraying them. I do not think that that choice of word is too extreme.

The proposed closure will also impact strongly on all the small businesses in the area, because they are largely based on cash transactions. Barclays argues that going on-line will solve their problems and that, in future, the technology will be such that hole-in-the-wall machines will be able to take cash as well as provide it, but they will not be able to deliver change, which is intrinsic to the businesses about which I am speaking. Hon. Members also mentioned the perceived rise in the potential for crime, which is of great concern to my constituents. To most people in this Room, the withdrawal of a small amount of money may not seem fraught with the potential for danger, but for pensioners that small transaction involves a large amount of money. They are genuinely afraid of being able to withdraw cash only from a hole in the wall.

I was one of several hon. Members who recently attended a meeting in the House with the directors of Barclays bank. As the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) said, their policy seems to be, "We hear you, but we are not listening to what you say to us." The suggestion that there is a potential, if not for increased crime then for an increased fear of crime, was pooh-poohed by the directors, who said that they would introduce closed circuit television cameras in the hotspots. How many attacks must be carried out before the directors of Barclays bank, who seem to have closed their ears to what their customers tell them, introduce the type of security about which they were speaking?

Many hon. Members mentioned degeneration. If the small businesses in my constituency are denied a full range of banking services, it will affect their customers. Most people in this day and age do not have the time to fly like butterflies between venues to different services; there are not enough hours in the day for them to do so. If the bank goes, the customers will move to another bank and spend their money in other shops and cafés and on other services. That will lead to degeneration, which happens in urban areas, too. Degeneration in rural areas was described in graphic detail, and urban areas, too, are desperate for regeneration. Changes are being made, and small and medium-sized businesses are the major job creators in my constituency.

The popular perception is that no one in Hampstead and Highgate is less then a millionaire, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are serious and grave areas of major deprivation in my constituency, as there are in all urban constituencies. Barclays' proposals are another serious blow to areas where people have worked extremely hard, giving their time and efforts to retaining the sense of community by caring for one another. They are trying to maintain the principles, mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk, that energised the bank's founders. How far has that bank slipped?

At the meeting with directors of Barclays that I mentioned earlier, hon. Members were told that because of modernisation and the apparent desire of everyone to opt for on-line banking, Barclays would provide a high-quality service to most of its customers—not to all of its customers; certainly not to those who have been most loyal to the bank over the years, but to "most" of its customers. There was no concomitant sentence stating that the charges to those customers who had less than a high-quality service would be reduced.

The Cruickshank report alleges that the banks have vastly inflated profits. "Bankbusters", on television, gives many examples of incompetent high street banks overcharging their customers. I strongly add my voice to requests for the Government to examine high street banking. If banks continue to treat their customers in such a cavalier way, the next step may be to examine regulatory procedures such as those in, for example, the United States of America, which has community regeneration legislation under which banks must make a major regenerative contribution to their customers if they intend to close their high street branches. Mention has been made of the outrage felt by customers about the complete lack of consultation. Customers knew that the branch in my constituency was to close only because of a notice in the window.

At a meeting with Members of Parliament, Barclays bank directors were categorical that they wanted the closures to take place in six weeks. They said that assistance would be provided to people who have no confidence in, or knowledge of, on-line banking and that additional services would be available for customers with disabilities. I have written to Barclays requesting information about such services—but answer comes there none.

The case that was presented to me about the bank closure in my constituency was based on Barclays saying that customers were leaving the branch and that there was no longer a requirement for counter services. In less than half a day, two of my most active constituents, who have been protesting about the closure, obtained more than 800 signatures from people who wished the branch to be maintained. I hope that the bank will have listened carefully to the contents of this morning's debate, because being a big bank in a big world—the excessive amount that it is spending on advertising has already been mentioned—will be of no value if its excessive activities abroad reduce the potential for jobs and small and medium enterprises to flourish. Or is that how Barclays wants the future to be? Does it want to be a big bank everywhere except the United Kingdom?

I must be mellowing in my old age, because I have not advocated direct action since the days of the poll tax. It was always non-violent direct action that I supported, but given the contributions from some surprising quarters this morning, perhaps I need to reassess my position on bank closures. The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) claimed that we were not luddites. I must say in response that the luddites have had a bad press and I suggest that he reads the work of the historian, E. P. Thompson, who attempted to redress that position. At the time, luddites were faced with horrendous situations.

What is so obnoxious about the bank closure programme is that we have a growing economy. It surprises me how well the economy is doing, because it seems to be expounding third way proposals of which I am not an advocate. Bank activity is growing, yet banks are closing their outlets. The automated credit transfer system will add to the numbers of accounts with which the banks will be dealing and will add to the needs of those who require regular access to local branches.

The problem relates to not only Barclays bank, but major banks throughout the country, some of which will have reduced the number of branches even more drastically than Barclays will have done after 7 April. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) said, it would be a good idea for people to sign up to the remaining bank in their community. It is easier nowadays to transfer entire accounts than it has ever been. That is useful, but all the banks in Killamarsh in my constituency have disappeared. Many people moved from their Killamarsh NatWest branch to Barclays, and were devasted when Barclays announced that it was to leave neighbouring Eckington. Many people are affected by inertia and do not bother to transfer, so banks lose out. I faced that problem when TSB moved out of Dronfield, where 1 live, and I retain my Lloyds TSB account despite great inconvenience. Lloyds TSB always rings people in the most inconvenient way, asking them to go and discuss their financial position.

There are many problems, but I had better allow other hon. Members to speak.

I pass my congratulations to the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), who has clearly struck a raw nerve in many constituencies, including mine. I shall try to make my contribution different by considering the big picture. It surprises me that people should be taken aback at what is happening.

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a shareholder-value revolution in the banking industry. Banks were once not primarily driven by their shareholders. Barclays was owned and run by old Quaker families with a paternalistic tradition. Until the mid-1980s, many banking outlets were dominated by the mutual movement; the Library shows that that was the case in about 35 per cent. of outlets, but the figure is now less than 15 per cent. Now the banks are primarily driven by the need to add value for their shareholders. That has some positive consequences, not only for the shareholders; large business or private customers with good credit ratings clearly do well out of the more abrasive environment.

That culture also has considerable costs, and I am not referring only to branch closures. One of the biggest costs is borne by the workers. There are far fewer of them, and they have less job security. Amid all the legitimate concerns about Longbridge, where, I think, 9,000 jobs are at risk, we might overlook the fact that approximately 30,000 jobs are at risk from the merger of NatWest with the Royal Bank of Scotland. The jobs are not so concentrated, as they are part of the fallout of the closure of bank branches across the country. There are also implications for pensioners, as those of us who were involved in the battle on the Floor of the House to hold up the Lloyds TSB merger until pensioners were properly looked after will know. Costs are primarily and most visibly being paid in terms of the contraction of the branch network.

Time is short, and the emphasis of our discussion is to try to find constructive solutions, so I shall suggest three approaches. The first is to build on growing competition in banking. We live in a tough, competitive environment, so we should make it work for the bank customers. There is not a great deal of competition in the retail sector at the moment; there appears to be, but customers do not often vote with their feet. Statistics suggest that people are more reluctant to change their bank than to change their husband or wife, so there is a low rate of mobility between banks.

The hon. Gentleman's argument is well constructed. The tenor of what he says is that people have a choice, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) and the hon. Member for Waveney have said that that is not the case in rural areas.

The intervention is right. A problem in rural areas calls for social banking, as I shall mention in a moment. People have greater choice than they realise, whether in reaction to poor service or in protest at bank closures. People could and should express that choice. Unfortunately, the Cruickshank report, which was designed to highlight the competitive problem, focused more on wholesale than on retail banking. Some major changes must be made to the portability of accounts to give consumer power, which is needed to make competition work properly. I hope that the Government deal with that.

Let me move to the second point, which was mentioned in the intervention. Competition can go only so far. It cannot address the problems of social or financial exclusion. Only social banking can do that. Although there is a clear, identifiable need for social banking and some effective campaigning for it—led by, among others, the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter)—community banking is a concept that has not yet found a practical expression. Credit unions are an obvious vehicle for that, but although the Government have talked eloquently about them for three years, the proposed reform package is still bottled up in the Treasury. Credit unions are smothered with regulatory controls, which the Treasury has not yet found a way past.

The other fundamental problem, which has been touched on, is the post office network. We are not dealing with a static situation. The decline of the post office network is accelerating. The network has been declining at the rate of about 200 branches a year. In the current financial year, there have been 400 closures, in anticipation of automated credit transfer. Unless a mechanism can be found for replacing the £400 million of income earned by the post office network, that rate of attrition will increase and the most important vehicle for social banking will be lost.

If the post office network is to be sustained it needs an income stream. The hon. Member for Reading, West suggested a windfall tax. That measure has a varied ideological pedigree: I believe that it was Lord Lawson, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who first introduced one. Another idea that has emerged during the debate is the need for a social banking system to be subsidised; it obviously cannot operate on a profit-making basis. If those two proposals are put together, with the windfall tax providing revenue that would be ring-fenced instead of disappearing into the Treasury, that would provide a mechanism for solving the problem.

My third and final argument concerns regulation. Several hon. Members have said that if the banking system does not change its behaviour, it may need to be regulated to stop the process of bank closures. I would argue that that is necessary, but should not happen in a highly politicised way.

I have suggested a clause in the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which is passing through the other place, that would oblige the regulator to ensure that banks comply with the needs of vulnerable customers—the aged, the disabled and those isolated in rural areas. So far the Treasury has not accepted that, although the Department of Trade and Industry has accepted a similar obligation on the utilities. A general power of that kind would impose on banks a requirement of the type in force in the United States, mentioned by the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson). It would also provide flexibility because it would not be unduly prescriptive.

Therefore, a combination of intensified competition, the creation of consumer power by enabling people to switch their accounts more readily, a boost in the arm for social banking and some regulatory restraints on the operation of banks, might address the concerns that were so eloquently presented by the hon. Member for Waveney.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard). It has been an interesting and topical debate. I particularly congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his work as a private eye during his interview with the local Barclays branch. It would be interesting to see what memorandums are now flying from Barclays central office to branch managers, instructing them not to leave piles of papers on their desk during interviews with Members of Parliament. His remarks about the branch closure staff guidance pack make the procedure seem clinical—a world apart from the image of Capatin Mainwaring and the local bank branch.

It is a topical problem, with all the debate about automated telling machine charges, post office benefits changes and the formation yesterday, which the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) mentioned, of the parliamentary banking group. It is not just a question of BC—Barclays closure—on 7 April. Lloyds TSB has started a closure programme with the recent takeover of the National Westminister bank by the Royal Bank of Scotland. Many more closures of all kinds of branches are likely.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) said, the problem is not just rural. Certainly, rural areas are becoming some of the most disadvantaged areas for services. My constituency is largely urban and consists of parts of Worthing. It has a population of 100,000 that is made up of "villages within a town". At present, Worthing has the largest number of Lloyds bank branches per head in England. However, I confidently predict that, within the next couple of years only 50 per cent. will survive.

Barclays has also been closing branches in villages that are part of Worthing where they were the last branch. The closures have been carried out suddenly, with minimal consultation that has caused maximum disruption, particularly in Worthing with its higher than average number of elderly and disabled people. My right hon. Friend mentioned the 70-plus protests in her constituency, the fierce local reaction and the stress that had been caused to staff. She has seen nothing yet. If that tide gets under way, it will not just be 70-year-olds, it will be 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds, and a few 100-year-olds in my constituency. The figures for the past 10 years make interesting reading. Since 1990, 130,000 jobs in high street banks have gone, and as hon. Members have said, 4,000 branches have closed. In September 1999, Deloittes predicted that one third of the remaining 11,000 bank branches would close by 2005, and that many sizeable communities would be left without a bank.

The takeover of the National Westminster bank by the Royal Bank of Scotland came with a threat to cut floor space by half, and 850 of the 1,700 NatWest branches may be under threat. Let us hope that the news that the hon. Member for Reading, West brought us has delayed that decision, but ultimately those branches are under threat. It was rightly pointed out that this country gets a raw deal. High street banks in the rest of Europe fare much better. We have 170 banks per million people. France has 440 banks per million people, while Spain has 900 per million people. There has been much protest in the House about what is happening. The hon. Member for Reading, West underestimated the problem. There have been 28 early-day motions so far this year, 13 of them condemning Barclays, three condemning Lloyds and two condemning both banks. To date, they have attracted 563 signatures. It is a widespread issue.

Banks are not just buildings; they are at the heart of a community. They provide a vital service to many small firms. Solicitors' firms, for example, use overnight safes. Shops use overnight safes and, as my right hon. friend the Member for South-West Norfolk said, they face a serious security problem and may lose out on interest if they cannot bank their takings locally on the day of trading because of time pressure. Building firms that need to provide ready money for their employees may also experience problems.

Banks constantly fob people off with science. They say that the whole world is changing and that internet and telephone banking services are available. At the moment, Barclays has some 650,000 internet customers of one description or another and 1 million customers who use telephone banking. However, I suspect that many of those customers use the branches, too. There are still many people who are not on the internet and do not bank by telephone, particularly the elderly.

As the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson) said, it is offensive that Sir Anthony Hopkins appears in an expensive television advertisement, backed up by other media advertising, talking about being Mr. Big in a big world, for big business. Well, what about the little man? What about ordinary individuals who make up such a large proportion of a bank's customers? It seems the most enormous public relations gaffe to be talking about "thinking big" when banks are closing small branches that serve big communities in little villages and parts of towns.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his contribution, but does he not think that it is entirely appropriate that Sir Anthony Hopkins was selected to feature in the Barclays advertisement? After all, he made his reputation in "The Silence of the Lambs" by eating people.

I am grateful for that contribution, which I saw coming. It is almost a question of dog eats dog in this instance.

I want to touch on the issue of urban regeneration, brought up by the hon. Member for Waveney. Urban regeneration is all about increasing jobs and enhancing the environment and housing. Communities are not just a group of bric boxes; they need centres and facilities—especially for young people—shops, transport links, health centres and doctors. In walking away, as the hon. Member for Waveney put it, Barclays, Lloyds and other banks seem to have delivered a large vote of no confidence in the whole regeneration process, both in urban and rural areas. It is a severe blow to the aim of increasing facilities for people, a severe blow to the aim of attracting businesses into newly regenerated areas and a severe blow to those businesses already in the area, which may be clinging on by the skin of their teeth.

I am sure that banks could find other roles within communities—as business advice centres, for example—that accentuate the provision of customer services offered by them until now. There is interaction between banks and post offices, as several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate, said. It seems crass that Barclays is carrying out a three-month trial with 270 branches of the post office in Cornwall. Surely, we need to see the results of those trials before the BC cataclysm starts in the next couple of weeks. It makes one wonder whether that is just another PR red herring from the bank, which is not really listening, although it claims to do so.

Many hon. Members made comments appropriate to the experiences of people in their constituencies. My right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk mentioned the security element of transporting cash and the cost of travel, especially in rural areas. The hon. Member for Reading, West said that the closures come at a time when banks are reporting record profits, so it represents an extraordinary PR gaffe. Certainly, in the case of Barclays, which has behaved worst of all in terms of not consulting Members of Parliament before launching the closures, it is a case of saying, "I hear what you say" without actually listening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) said. I must congratulate my hon. Friend on mentioning so many business men and traders in his short speech.

The debate has been interesting. The hon. Member for Waveney has done the House a service by raising the subject, and I hope that any representatives of banks who are here today or who read reports of the debate will take notice of what has been said. The problem caused by the closures is complex. There will be a problem of unemployment, a problem of access denied, especially people with disabilities and the elderly, such as Mr. Baldry, who was mentioned by the hon. Member for Waveney. Another piece of the mortar that keeps communities together is being chipped away and the communities of the future, which should be regenerated, will suffer yet another setback. It signifies a vote of no confidence in the regeneration of less well-off areas in both towns and rural areas. Banks should do much better and listen properly.

I conclude by quoting a sobering statistic. In this country, more than one in three people change their spouse, yet fewer than one in five changes their bank. Perhaps, in the area of banking, there will be a higher rate of divorce, or threatened divorce, unless banks prove to be a more loving partner.

We have had a good debate and it is evident that hon. Members of all parties have strong feelings about its subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) has raised an important issue. I have a distant memory of his constituency, as I was a waiter at Pontin's in Lowestoft in a previous incarnation. The right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) treated us to an entertaining—I do not lose sight of the importance of this matter—account of the sit-in that occurred in her constituency. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) treated us to a terrifying vision of what might happen in Worthing if direct action were to spread that far.

As has been said, banks play an important part in the stability of local communities. I am sorry to say that in their drive for greater profits—it was pointed out that their recent profits have been huge—they are abandoning any sense of social responsibility. Increasingly, banks are interested only in servicing the prosperous, and the latest round of Barclays closures serves only to illustrate that trend. No amount of exhortation from me or any other politician is likely to make the slightest difference to what are essentially hard-nosed commercial decisions, although I am happy to join my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and others in their plea for Barclays to review plans, especially for closures in regeneration areas. The most useful role that the Government can play is to help to develop alternatives. That is why it is important that the Post Office remains in the public sector and why we are encouraging it to invest heavily so that it can provide customers in small or poor communities with a range of financial services that were hitherto provided only by banks.

One alternative that is becoming more widespread is the development of agency agreements between banks and post offices. Such agreements provide local post offices with additional business that can be crucial to sustaining viability and a valuable public service and are, therefore, a double benefit for the community. The Government are committed to maintaining a nationwide network of post offices. We have already embarked on an investment programme worth almost £500 million, to equip all post offices with a modern, online computer system enabling them to extend the banking facilities that they can offer on behalf of banks and building societies. That will be of considerable value in rural and urban areas from which the banks have withdrawn.

Only two weeks ago, we debated in Westminster Hall the closure of banks in Northumberland, at the other end of the country. Particular reference was made to the town of Belford, where a local bank—I think that it was a Barclays branch—was being closed. However, the local post office already had an agency agreement with two or three other financial institutions and was providing their services. A clear alternative was therefore available in that small town, and I hope that such arrangements will be emulated in other parts of the country. The Post Office already has successful agency agreements with the Co-operative bank, Lloyds TSB and Alliance and Leicester for the provision of free banking services to their customers. The services include both withdrawals and paying in, and many post offices now offer foreign currency exchange, which shows that such arrangements can work to the mutual satisfaction of the banks, the Post Office and their customers.

I shall not tell the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) that I hear what he says about post offices, but I take this opportunity to restate what the Government have repeatedly made clear: anyone who wants to continue collecting their pension or benefit from a post office will be able to do so. I add one other point: it is no good signing petitions calling for post offices or banks to stay open if their services are not used. People must make use of local services or they will disappear. That applies to post offices as much as to banks.

As hon. Members have mentioned, Barclays is carrying out a three-month trial in 270 post offices in Cornwall to see how its services can be delivered. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson) and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that it is particularly unfortunate that the bank has nevertheless decided to proceed with its major programme of closures before seeing how the experiment is working. I said when this subject was last debated that I regard that action as premature.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said that banks currently enjoy a high level of customer loyalty. They cannot expect that to continue if it is not reciprocated. A number of banks have recently attracted a good deal of adverse publicity over their plans to charge for withdrawals at cash machines. I am glad to see that they are now reviewing that plan in light of the public's anger. That is a demonstration that public opinion can, with a little help from the Government, make a difference, even with such apparently hardhearted institutions. Banks cannot, on the one hand, argue that branch closures make commercial sense because more cost-effective banking services can be offered by other means—telephone, internet, direct debit, cash machines and so on—and, on the other hand, expect their customers to pay higher charges for using those so-called more cost-effective technologies. They cannot have it both ways.

At the end of the day, the banks' customers must themselves make a commercial decision. If their bank fails to continue to meet their banking needs, they may consider transferring their business to one that does, either directly at a local branch, or through an agency agreement with the local post office. That sort of market pressure sometimes works. Some hon. Members will recall that in the 1970s, Barclays was forced to rethink its investment in South African defence bonds. Many local authorities that had bank accounts with Barclays and many individuals—including me, although I doubt whether the withdrawal of my modest account made a great deal of difference to the bank's corporate strategy—forced the bank to review its attitude towards its investment policy.

That sort of popular uprising can sometimes work, when appealing to the better nature of the banks might not. I note that Members of the National Assembly for Wales are calling for the closure of the Assembly's £3 billion account with Barclays. That ought to ring a bell or two in the appropriate quarter, even if what we say in Parliament does not have quite the same impact. That could easily spread, unless Barclays starts to take more interest in the welfare of its customers. Only yesterday, for instance, the banks involved in the Link network succumbed to public pressure.

It is disappointing to see Barclays closing branches in an area where the benefits of the Government's investment of public money in regeneration are just beginning to bear fruit. As I said, such a move can help to undermine the viability of local shopping and commercial centres. There can be little doubt that such closures will represent a setback for the SRB partnership, because it will restrict access to banking services for local people and businesses. Unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident. Other areas that have benefited from the investment of public money in regeneration schemes are being hit by Barclays bank branch closures. We should also bear it in mind that, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) said, not only Barclays is at fault. Barclays has been mentioned a lot, and rightly so, but other banks are doing the same.

I am only too happy to add my voice to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and the other hon. Members who have spoken this morning, in calling on Barclays bank to reconsider its strategy. However, I am under no illusion—the most effective pressure on Barclays is likely to be customers voting with their feet.

I feel fortunate to have secured a debate on the national health service and people with chronic long-term illness. As a former general practitioner—

Order. Hon. Members and members of the general public must leave the Room as quietly and, preferably, as safely as possible.

As Someone who continues to practice in the NHS, I think that the subject is important and I feel privileged to raise it in the Chamber. I recently heard an interesting definition of the difference between hospital medicine and primary care. In hospital medicine, the conditions stay the same and the faces change; in primary care, the people stay the same and the conditions change. That is the point—the vast majority of chronic illness is managed in primary care. More than 90 per cent. of people using the NHS access it through primary care. Most people with chronic long-term illness are managed and treated in primary care.

In the United Kingdom, one in three people suffers from a chronic disability or illness, but the subject has not impinged enough on the recent debate on the future of the health service. As a recent World Health Organisation report commented:

If a new virus were expected to infect millions of citizens on the scale that chronic illness affects people world wide today, a public campaign would be launched immediately to mobilise scientific resources.

Perhaps because chronic illness is so pervasive and familiar to us all, we have ceased to deal with it with the urgency that it deserves. Many people view chronic complaints such as arthritis as a condition that is the natural consequence of old age. National voluntary organisations, such as the British League against Rheumatism and the National Society for the Relief of Paget's Disease, have experienced enormous difficulty in persuading the public to view the complaints as genuine diseases, rather than simply afflictions of the old.

The majority of people in this country perceive disease as something that is acute, treatable and of specific duration. Chronic complaints rarely fulfil that definition but, although many conditions are life threatening, they seriously affect the quality of an individual's life, preventing them from doing many of the things that most of us take for granted.

There is no reason why the maintenance of individuals' quality of life and the management of the pain and suffering experienced by those with long-term illness should not be seen as a priority in the health service on a par with acute conditions. Unless that happens, there is little chance of persuading the public of the impact and importance of long-term conditions.

The interest of people with long-term medical needs has been represented for the past 10 years by the Long-term Medical Conditions Alliance. That is the umbrella body for national voluntary organisations working to meet the needs of such people. More than 700,000 people belong to its 111 member organisations. It aims to ensure that the voice of people with long-term illness is heard and to provide support to its members.

Working to identify and distil common issues across a wide range of conditions has been a considerable task, for which the LMCA and its director, Judy Wilson, deserve the highest praise. The efforts to promote the interests of the members at national level and to instigate a debate on the subject have been extremely important and have served to identify and focus attention on the key areas of health service provision that are in need of review. Despite that huge contribution, many patient organisations feel that they are not always valued or sufficiently used by professionals or policy makers in the NHS.

The organisations have a large role to play in the shaping and monitoring of health service policy development. Ensuring that their role in supporting the health service forms part of a long-term strategy, in line with the 1998 compact on relations between the voluntary sector and the Government, would help to strengthen the relationship between the sector and the health service. The experience of people suffering from chronic illness confirms that, although the NHS is skilled at treating people with short-term or acute illness, there is no consistent, reliable mechanism to coordinate their treatment, which is based both at hospital and in the community.

Clearly, links between services and their integration need to be improved, both on the ground and at policy and planning level—between health and social services, acute and community services, and primary and secondary care. Greater emphasis on multi-disciplinarity is also necessary, so that the care of each individual is not focused exclusively on the medical model of care. Continuity between medical services for adolescents, adults and the elderly is not properly managed. We need a more cohesive and integrated approach.

Despite the prevalence of chronic illness, the general public and even health professionals can be ignorant about what it is and how it should be tackled. Sufferers of chronic illness, including people with physical and mental ill health, are frequently on the margins of society. We lack the knowledge and experience of their conditions that would allow them to play a full and active part in society, with rights and responsibilities. That sense of isolation and alienation needs to be challenged.

Long-term chronic illness does not merely have an impact on people's health; it affects their careers, relationships and social existence. Many people feel obliged to give up their jobs or feel severely constrained in what jobs they can take. They often need employers to be flexible, but many companies struggle, or are unwilling, to provide that support. It is vital that the problem is recognised by the Government and that ways are found to relieve specific pressures and tackle the challenges faced by people who suffer from long-term illness.

Chronic illness should not be confused with long-term care. A small number of people, especially the elderly, may need long-term care at the end of their lives, but most people with chronic illnesses are not in permanent care and are responsible for the management of their illnesses. They often receive insufficient support and guidance because their general practitioners and other health professionals lack information about their condition and how best to live with it. We must ensure that doctors have access to basic information about conditions and that they are aware of local support groups and national voluntary organisations that help sufferers.

The LMCA does a valuable job on behalf of people with long-term illness. It also publicises the work of its 111 member organisations. Nevertheless, it urgently needs the active support of the Government, the medical establishment and the wider community to ensure that the issue is given national prominence. Such specialist groups recognise that helping people with chronic illness involves more than diagnosis, treatment, cure and discharge. The health service is effective at servicing a condition by providing the requisite drugs and treatment to stabilise the advancement of chronic illness, but it is not as well prepared to deal with the wider issue of helping an individual achieve a full quality of life and take responsibility for his or her well-being.

In addition, people with chronic long-term illnesses often suffer from more than one complaint, although the severity of each condition fluctuates and is rarely stable. The acute sector or general practice is not always equipped to cope with the nature of long-term illness. Part of the problem is that the consultation procedure treats patients as consumers rather than as proactive individuals who are capable of taking a lead in their own treatment. The person with a long-term condition should be fully involved in deciding how treatment should be administered. He or she should be more than just a passive recipient of treatment.

The problem has been recognised by the Government who set up the expert patients task force, which is chaired by the chief medical officer. Its purpose is to design the new expert patients programme to consider the role that chronic disease sufferers can play as experts in managing their diseases. An expert patients programme for arthritis has been piloted and the Government are funding a programme for people with different conditions, which is co-ordinated by the LMCA. The programme arms patients with the knowledge, skills and motivations needed to take control of their illnesses and manage their symptoms. It allows people to develop skills to control feelings of anger and depression and to manage diet and exercise routines. Such help means that people will go to the doctor less often, use services differently and feel physically and mentally better.

The programme could be extended so that the sufferers of long-term medical conditions play a more active role in the training of health professionals. That would enable them to treat sufferers more effectively. Given the wealth of experience and expertise that expert patients have, it is not unrealistic that they should have a greater role in shaping how patients are treated. Patients are often the best experts. We could all learn from and share in their knowledge.

Although the programme is valuable, and despite the publication of the White Paper "Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation" and coverage in the national press, too few people are aware of it. Aside from question of publicity, a key issue is that of service variation by geography and by age and background. It is a matter of concern to all national voluntary organisations. People with long-term conditions should in principle have equal access to the most effective medical and non-medical treatments, drugs and complementary therapies, where appropriate. I am sure that the work of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will ensure that, as new treatments become available and new therapies are evaluated, they will be made available to all. I welcome that development and I expect the future to show us what can be achieved.

Despite what I have said, diagnosis and referral by GPs still varies substantially, while access to specialist clinics and services, including nursing care and physiotherapy, often depends on where one lives. There is also evidence that older people and those from certain ethnic minority or lower income groups do not enjoy equality of access with the rest of the community.

At a recent forum on the health of ethnic minorities in the borough of Gravesham attended by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) and I, I raised ethnic minorities' access to health services. Too often, cultural and linguistic barriers between the health service and the ethnic minority communities prevent the latter from using the health service to the full. Often, someone whose first language is not English finds it difficult to understand explanations, or to obtain suitable written information. Gaining access to, using and benefiting from services is thus more difficult. Consequently, the illnesses of people from ethnic communities are sometimes diagnosed and treated later than those of other people. Efforts have been made to improve consultation with ethnic minorities and to bring services, including screening services, into the community. We need to build on that success, specifically with respect to long-term medical care.

Before this morning's debate I made a presentation at the Royal Society of Medicine on the Government's national health service framework for coronary heart disease, as part of cholesterol awareness day. I met my colleague Dr. Ian Banks, who is chairman of the men's health forum and a spokesman for the British Medical Association on men's health issues. We discussed the fact that men often find it difficult to obtain access to health services. They do not necessarily make the best use of GP services, go for screening or otherwise get the best from the service.

Many of the changes that are needed would involve changes of emphasis and education rather than huge amounts of money. Our discussion concerned making men aware of the small incremental life style changes that could make a huge difference to their health. It is difficult to bring about massive changes to people's life styles, but small changes often make a big difference, without upsetting people's lives too much. I hope to continue to work with the men's health forum to find out what we can do to improve men's health simply by education programmes and making them aware of services. I am sure that we could bring about significant change by doing that.

The Commission for Health Improvement is an important innovation and I hope that it will help to realise the Government's commitment to ironing out service inequalities in the NHS. It must ensure that those inequalities are eradicated from every aspect of the service, including provision for sufferers of long-term illness. One way of tackling the holes in the service would be to develop and enhance the role of the specialist nurse. That should not be seen as a means of delegating to nurses work that should be done by doctors, but as a means of building on nurses' important work in the community in the treatment of people with long-term conditions.

Nurses' work often focuses on the whole person. Their interest in each individual is not exclusively medical and that is ideal for the treatment of such patients. The role of nurse prescribers and nurse-led clinics should be encouraged and expanded. I am pleased that the Government are expanding the role of nurses throughout the health service, with a widening of scope and increased availability of specialist nurses.

I spoke yesterday on the subject to the chairman of the Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley Healthcare Partnerships primary care group, Dr. Alasdair Thomson, a fellow GP. He told me that in the Dartford and Gravesham area it has already been possible to employ a specialist multiple sclerosis nurse and an additional epilepsy nurse. Work is now being done on the possibility of employing a Parkinson's nurse. Such initiatives are important and show how nurses with specialist skills can help people to make their lives more productive and make less use of services.

Much of what I have described makes sound economic sense. It is not a drain on resources or an additional cost to the health service. The Royal College of Nursing sent me some data on work done by Professor Sir Brian Jarman at Imperial college on the difference that nurses can make in the use of health services, in particular those who specialise in Parkinson's disease. They can reduce morbidity, mortality, the risk of fractures and falls, the amount of hospital in-patient time, nursing home costs and costs to social services as a result of health service investment. Professor Jarman estimated that between £300 and £500 per patient per annum could be saved on the treatment of Parkinson's disease by the use of specialist nurses.

I am not advocating a huge increase in extra health service resources, but a more focused use of those resources. We must ensure that they are tailored to the need of the patient. I want them to benefit the patient's as well as the nation's health, while not putting excessive and huge burdens on the health service. It is a matter not of throwing money at the problem, but of simply changing emphasis and ensuring that the right people with the right skills are put in touch with the right patients, to the benefit of everyone.

Also, the Government need to recognise formally the importance of chronic long-term medical conditions by the establishment of a ministerial responsibility for long-term medical conditions to oversee reforms in the service, ensure a more holistic approach to the needs of sufferers and raise the profile of chronic illness with both the Government and the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) on securing the Adjournment debate. He has considerable expertise on health issues. I hope that I am not taken ill in the Chamber but, if I were, I can think of no better place than in an Adjournment debate with my hon. Friend.

Order. Let me caution the Minister. He will discover that, on the whole, politicians who are doctors should be avoided at every level.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford is right to stress the importance of the management of chronic illness as an aspect of health care. One in three of the population suffers from a chronic, long-term condition. Patients who live with long-term illness are usually knowledgeable about their condition and are often in the best position to manage their illness with the help and support of health care professionals and other agencies, such as local authority social services.

As my hon. Friend said, in acute illness the object of health care is to return people to their previous states of health, so that they can resume their everyday life. With chronic illness, patients' lives and frequently those of their families are changed, often for ever. Our aim in treating chronic illness is to ensure as far as possible people's ability to continue to live independent and enjoyable lives. I welcome the debate, not least because it gives us a chance to set out the Government's policy on caring for people with chronic illness.

I reassure my hon. Friend that the other Minister of State at the Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), has ministerial responsibility for long-term chronic illness. The Chamber may question why I am answering this debate, but that is a private matter between him and me. I hope that I can effectively represent his work.

We have set out our aims to build a new national health service—one that is faster, fairer and more convenient for patients. It is a radical programme of change to transform the NHS, keeping it true to its values—based on need, not the ability to pay. The new NHS will be barely recognisable by the time that we have finished our 10-year programme of modernisation. A key part of that is a more patient-centred national health service with greater patient and public involvement in service delivery. We are integrating that principle into national policy through our reforms. It is happening through new organisations such as primary care groups, initiatives such as health action zones and Department of Health initiatives such as the patient-partnership strategy.

Users and carers are represented in new organisations such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Commission for Health Improvement. They are involved in developing the national service frameworks. People with chronic illness, in particular, have much good advice to offer those organisations based on their personal experience of local services.

I pay tribute to the work of the Long-Term Medical Conditions Alliance and its director, Judy Wilson. The merits of the organisation are well recognised in the Government and it gives us a great deal of help in formulating policy for people with chronic illness.

The Chancellor's announcement last week of significant extra investment for the national health service—an average of 6.3 per cent. in a four-year period in England—is tremendously good news for everyone who uses the NHS. It will provide resources for modernisation, which need to be coupled with change in some of the elements that my hon. Friend described.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister described five challenges, or themes, in improving the national health service: partnership, in ensuring that the different elements of the system work together; performance, in improving productivity and clinical performance; developing the professions, the entire national health service and the social care work force; patient care; and the prevention and avoidance of ill health. In taking forward that work, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has created teams to examine how those challenges can be met and will add a sixth team to consider patient empowerment as an essential part of a modern health system. Alongside that work will be a work force planning review designed to ensure that the national health service has the sort of work force that it needs to deliver for patients—a work force who can deliver services that are more flexible, skilled and customer driven.

My hon. Friend mentioned specialist nurses and I commend the local initiative in his area. Such nurses have an important role to play in the management of chronic conditions. The number of posts is a matter for commissioners and providers at local level and forms an integral part of their planning for the needs of local populations. There is no doubt that people with chronic illness can benefit from access to a wide range of nursing services, including practice and district nurses, who may be able to refer to specialists such as continence nurse specialists and MS nurse specialists, for example.

I hope that the work force review will strengthen local work force planning so that needs identified in local health improvement programmes, including those of people with chronic illnesses, are properly reflected in the training and employment of appropriate staff, including specialist nurses.

In the new approach to the new national health service, it is important to improve the way in which we aim to deliver services. Too often, people with long-term chronic conditions have been made to fit themselves around the way in which care is provided locally, regardless of whether that meets their individual needs. To overcome that approach, we have developed as part of our reforms the concept of long-term service agreements between commissioners and providers, based on the concept of pathways of care and recognising that patients at different times in their lives will need care and support from primary care, secondary care and social care. By developing services around the pathway of care, we expect the service to be much more flexible and to put the individual patient's care at the heart of the system.

That new approach will develop in time. At local level, people will inevitably have to concentrate on a limited number of local priorities each year, but it will produce better arrangements for patients. That approach will reinforce the need for the seamless working of health, social services and other agencies such as housing, which my hon. Friend discussed.

We must break down the barriers between the national health service and social services. The Health Act 1999 put in place much of the legislative framework that is needed for closer working between the health service and social services. Those new powers will provide opportunities to improve services for people with chronic illnesses. People living with chronic illnesses know only too well how failure to deliver the right package of care can result in frustration and unnecessary difficulties in the activities of daily life.

Clinical governance will underpin much of the Government's quality agenda. It is a means by which standards will be raised and it will form the basis for monitoring and evaluating quality improvements in the national health service. It will play a key role in providing a health service that improves the overall standard of care that it delivers, reduces unacceptable variations in treatment and ensures that decisions about care and treatment are supported by up-to-date evidence of effectiveness.

As part of the process of clinical governance and our wider drive to tackle variations in treatment in care, it is important to focus on chronic conditions among others. Let me provide some examples. Good work intended to raise standards of care in chronic neurological illness was launched by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Health recently. An innovative neurology programme for GPs was developed by the British Brain and Spine Foundation in collaboration with the university of Bath. It developed after in-depth research to establish GP needs and it aims to improve early diagnosis, case assessment and management and referral for secondary care. It was supported by a research grant from the Department of Health.

The programme focuses on the six most commonly seen aspects of general practice and provides a unique opportunity for United Kingdom GPs to enhance their skills in a crucial area of medicine. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford will view that as a practical example of recognising the need to tackle variations in referral rates and the management of different conditions. He is right that we must ensure that it applies to all members of the community, including the black and ethnic minority population. He rightly referred to some good practice in the system, but it remains patchy. As we mainstream our equal opportunities and diversity agenda in the Department of Health, it is important to iron out any differences in the quality of services received by different members of the community.

Diabetes is relevant to the whole population, but its incidence is higher among the south Asian population. It is a chronic condition for which we are developing a national service framework to set out clear standards for care and treatment. More than 1 million people in the UK have diabetes and it is predicted to increase significantly in the next decade. Diabetes and its complications account for at least 9 per cent. of health care costs. At the personal level, it is not properly managed and long-term complications—blindness, renal failure, lower limb amputation and cardiovascular disease—can be severe.

There is considerable evidence throughout the country of variations in the organisation and quality of diabetes services. Our plan is to develop a national service framework for implementation within the national health service in spring 2002. It will set national standards, define service models and put in place strategies to support implementation and delivery. It will also set out performance measures against which progress in an agreed time scale will be monitored. The expert reference group for the NSF is adopting a patient-centred approach. As well as including two people with diabetes and the chief executive of the British Diabetic Association on the group, it is considering how else to access views and information from service users.

I have provided two examples of approaches to tackling variations in the quality of service. I agree with my hon. Friend that one of the most important and exciting ways for the Government to work with people with chronic illness is the development of the concept of the expert patient. Research shows that patient-led self-management schemes have beneficial effects. Improved health, a better ability to communicate with health professionals and fewer hospital admissions will result if patients are informed about their condition, know where to receive a treatment and have greater control over it.

We have established an expert patients task force, led by the chief medical officer. It is developing an expert patient programme for people with chronic conditions, which is likely to lead to more lay-led self-management programmes, the strengthening of professionally led, condition-specific, self-management programmes and the integration of aspects of the current self-management programme into the planning of the future health system. It will give advice on how self-management programmes for people with chronic diseases can be brought right into the main stream of the national health service rather than remain a fringe activity. We hope to receive the recommendations by autumn.

Some professionals might initially view the programme as potentially threatening, but it will not replace patients' needs for informed advice and treatment from health care and social care professionals. I am pleased that health professionals in the task force have underlined that approach.

My hon. Friend made an interesting point about using patients' expertise in professional training. I recognise that this is done in some areas, but there is scope for improvement.

I shall concentrate on the global scene. Before I present my arguments in favour of strengthening political and economic ties with the United States and the North American Free Trade Area in particular, I should make it clear for the benefit of any mischievous journalists who might read this speech, let alone listen to it—let alone any mischievous Minister who might be sitting opposite me—that this debate is most certainly not about our leaving the European Union. I shall argue today for a positive and additional step to be taken that I believe will benefit the British economy. If taken, it will secure jobs and generate increased jobs for the benefit of all in this nation.

This debate is timely. Two significant events have taken place in the past couple of weeks. First the Institute of Directors, which is not known for its Euroscepticism, published a detailed report entitled, "EU Membership, What's the Bottom Line?" Graham Leach from the IOD's economics department conducted a detailed cost-benefit analysis of our EU membership. Incidentally, I am asking the Government to do just that in my Analysis of Costs and Benefits (European Union Membership) Bill, which is on the Order Paper.

The IOD analysis is deeply disturbing. Despite all the advantages, including the single European market, the inward investment that we have enjoyed from Japan, Korea and elsewhere, the influence that we have exercised in Brussels—or not—and most recently in Lisbon, our EU membership is still, it would seem, a net drain on British resources. According to the study, the net cost of EU membership to each family in Britain is at least £1,000 a year, perhaps double that. That money could be spent on pensions, schools and the health service in Staffordshire as well as in the rest of the UK. Sadly, the Government are in no position to disagree because they have not conducted their own analysis. Perhaps they fear the answer.

First, may I challenge the Government and the Minister in particular to enact the provisions of my Bill? There should be no no-go areas for knowledge and free debate. The second event in the past two weeks has been the visit of the International Trade Commission from Washington DC at the behest of the United States Senate Finance Committee. It is conducting its own cost-benefit analysis into the advantages of the UK joining NAFTA. The visit is significant, although not because it will lead anywhere in the short term; it will not. Sadly, a Senate committee can no more dictate to the White House than a Commons Select Committee can dictate policy to Downing street.

However, this inquiry demonstrates that there has been a sea change in attitude in the United States regarding economic relations with Britain. For years, the United States showed no interest in such ties with Britain. Harold Wilson's sensible overtures in that direction, from 20 or 30 years ago, were rebuffed. However, as the song goes, "The times they are a'changin"'. Technology and changed practices have seen to that. It is now cheaper to phone anywhere in the United States than France. It is cheaper to send a container of coal, or anything, to New Jersey than to Nuremberg. We share the same commercial and civil law. We share the same language, the same heritage and the same way of doing business. As I am sure the Minister will confirm, that already leads to huge mutual investment in each other's countries. I shall say more about that later.

There could be more mutual trade for our mutual benefit. Growing voices in Washington DC and beyond see the potential benefits of Britain joining NAFTA. That would create a bigger market with an even bigger gross domestic product than the European Union.

In the darkest days of the war, before Pearl harbour, Winston Churchill said that the United Kingdom and

the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out across the future. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling.

How appropriate that Churchill, the product of an Anglo-American alliance should have foreseen another so fruitful. So firm was his belief in "the special relationship" as he christened it, that he vowed that with Europe and the Commonwealth it should remain one of the three interlocking circles with which future British foreign policy should be concerned.

As Churchill foresaw, the broad strategic interests of the United States and the United Kingdom continue to run together. Those interests lie in the preservation and promotion of peace, democracy and free trade. Our two nations are inextricably bound in the effort to secure those interests. Over the years, there has been cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the World Trade Organisation and other forums to secure those ends. It has not been easy, however. The growing pressure in continental Europe towards greater harmony of purpose, or federalism, is straining those ties at political, military and economic levels. The United States and the United Kingdom share enormous mutual interests for the benefit of us all, but they are being jeopardised.

In trade terms, the United States and the United Kingdom share, and are continually replenishing, a colossal mutual investment. In 1997, as in most other years, the United States received the largest share of total foreign direct investment—more than 30 per cent.—not from Japan but from the United Kingdom. The total UK investment in that year amounted to some $18.3 billion; in north America as a whole, our net direct investment in the past decade has been double our investment in the European Union, and that huge investment is reciprocal. Indeed, more United States outward investment goes to the United Kingdom than to any other country. In the past decade, net direct investment in the United Kingdom by United States and Canadian firms was one and a half times that of net direct investment from the European Union. In 1998, United States capital outflow to the United Kingdom was $35 billion compared with $75 billion to the rest of Europe combined. What is left of our overseas territories received an additional $5 billion in that year, more than Portugal and Spain combined.

The importance of our trade with the United States should not detract from the importance of our European markets; by the same token, we must not exaggerate or over-privilege our trade with Europe at the expense of that with the United States.

Will my hon. Friend reflect on that fact that the European Union's total share of world trade, excluding the United Kingdom, has fallen by 11 per cent. since 1992, while the UK's has increased by 9 per cent., mostly to NAFTA? In that time, the United States has created 13 million jobs and the euro zone has lost 700,000.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It shows that Europe has much to learn from the United States. As I shall say later, it seems that at present Europe is trying to exclude the United States, at Europe's cost.

Some vested political interests claim that European markets account for 60 per cent. of our foreign trade, but the Office for National Statistics pink book reveals that the true figure is a shade over 48 per cent., and even that, valuable as it is, can hide almost as much as it reveals. For example, a substantial portion of our trade with Europe takes the form of goods, such as motor cars, which are exported immediately, often to the United States. Those substantial re-exports constitute trade through, rather than with, Europe. That should not be used to exaggerate our economic reliance on a continent with which the United Kingdom has a massive trading deficit, probably as a result of the matter mentioned by my hon. Friend.

The telecommunications revolution and computing—especially the rise of the internet—have closed the gap between the UK and US economies to the point that it is vanishing altogether. Dominated by a common language, the internet represents the death of distance once predicted by the makers of jet airplanes and express trains. The cheapest international call that one may make from the United Kingdom is now not to Ireland, Germany or France but to the United States. A tunnel may traverse the short distance to Calais, but a new cyber tunnel across the Atlantic affords far speedier access to the United States.

Anglo-American relations are as fused in the defence of democracy as they are in trade and technology. Thrown together in two world wars, the United Kingdom and the United States went on to form an alliance against communist expansion, which came into practical effect during the Malayan and Korean campaigns. Between 1975 and 1989, our two nations stood alone among major western countries in devoting more than 4 per cent. of gross domestic product to defence and exerting financial pressure on the Kremlin that eventually brought Gorbachev to the negotiating table and the cold war to an end.

A firm mutual belief in confronting one's enemies characterised Anglo-American defence relations throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I shall give a brief history lesson to illustrate the reciprocity that marked Anglo-American defence relations between 1980 and 1985. In January 1980, the Conservative Government rightly announced support for 160 US nuclear missiles to be stationed in the UK to counter the threat from SS20 missiles deployed by the Soviet Union. In 1981, Britain declared its wholehearted support for President Reagan's plan to set up a rapid deployment force to be dispatched to trouble spots throughout the world. That force was the forerunner of today's rapid reaction forces.

In 1981, the United States sold the United Kingdom second-generation Trident missiles at a considerable discount, I am happy to say. The US also provided crucial assistance to our Falklands campaign in 1982. In 1983, we contributed military support to a US peacekeeping force that prevented Syria engaging in the Lebanon conflict. Such an engagement would have been disastrous. The well-revived Anglo-American relationship then went on to manifest itself in a host of different areas in the second half of the 1980s.

So much for the past, the cold war is no more and defence expenditure—although higher in the UK and US than in continental Europe—has been slashed. What of the present? When a poll for The Economist in November 1999 asked who was the UK's most reliable ally in a crisis, 59 per cent. of respondents cited the United States, despite the ending of the cold war. Only 16 per cent. of respondents paid Europe that compliment. Similarly, when respondents in the American social attitudes survey are asked who is their most reliable ally, they reply, year after year, that the honour of that status goes to the UK, above even Canada.

Regrettably and unnecessarily, the special relationship between the United Kingdom and United States—so long the linchpin of world security—is coming under strain from growing European integration. In trade and defence, the mutual interests underpinning the Atlantic alliance have been ill served by EU policies targeted, sometimes unashamedly, at challenging or frustrating the United States.

The repeated attempts of former EU Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan to secure a free trade agreement between EU and NAFTA countries collapsed as a result of French fears about US dumping. Sadly, many politicians in Paris are hostile to such a deal ever being concluded. Rather than link with a genuine free trade area, such as NAFTA, or press for free trade agreements through worldwide bodies such as the WTO, the European Union has chosen to secure bilateral trade deals between itself and smaller economies. By creating a patchwork of varying trade deals throughout the world, the EU seeks not so much free trade as favourable terms with parties too weak on their own to resist its protectionist demands.

Even the United Kingdom has suffered from the protectionist instincts of some EU countries. As recently as 16 March, manufacturers of milk chocolate in the UK, including the well-known brand of Cadbury's in the west midlands, learned the good news that its product is to be allowed into certain European markets for the first time in 30 years. Hurrah for British chocolate!

What about defence? European nations have been making drastic cuts in expenditure at exactly the same time as they seek to create, as the President of the European Commission Romano Prodi has made clear, a fully fledged European army. According to President Chirac:

The object of the European defence identity is to contain the United States.

That is some quote—quite extraordinary. Speaking in Paris in December, Chancellor Schroder echoed President Chirac's comment, stating:

whining about US dominance is not good enough. We have to act.

Such anti-American rhetoric may go down well with continental audiences but it certainly does not reflect British interests. The UK might not have cause for concern if the anti-American streak within European integration remained rhetorical. Yet, as Dr. John Hulseman, senior European affairs analyst at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, pointed out:

We need to stop thinking that European rhetoric isn't serious, that it is just a cultural eccentricity. Rather it reflects the honest beliefs of a people that have very different political and economic agendas from our own."

The difference between the Anglo-American and the Continental perspectives to which Dr. Hulseman referred surfaces time and again whenever crucial interests are at stake. In December 1999, France abstained from a crucial vote in the UN Security Council on sanctions against Iraq. On 18 January, France allied herself with Russia and China in opposing Anglo-American moves to appoint Rolf Ekeus, a Swede with great experience of arms control, to oversee the destruction of Iraqi weapons.

Each of these cases—and there are so many more—exposes a fundamental mismatch between the Anglo-American emphasis on free trade and active defence and the continental tradition of military equivocation and economic protectionism.

However, there is an historic opportunity now to narrow the gap between our treaty commitments to the EU and our cultural and historic commitments to the United States. The opportunity to narrow this gap is being created not in London, and certainly—of course—not in Brussels, but in Washington DC and elsewhere in north America. I repeat that I am not convinced that the US Senate Finance Committee will lead to our joining NAFTA; indeed, this is not possible without a change being made to the treaty of Rome. However, there is a nexus of events and circumstances that we would be foolish and irresponsible to ignore.

If the IOD and other economists are right, and there is no net benefit—indeed, a cost—to our membership of the EU, we must renegotiate our terms of membership. We owe that to our farmers, fishermen and pensioners and to the wealth creators in our society. Expansion in the EU to absorb the eastern European states, which I welcome, will worsen the cost-benefit outcome for Britain unless we renegotiate our treaty obligations to the EU. Such renegotiation is therefore urgent, and should include the repatriation of Britain's right to enter into its own individual bilateral treaties with other nations.

Let me make it clear that renegotiation is not a code for withdrawal; it is a code for commonsense economics. I remind the wishy-washy folk in the Foreign Office—I hope that the Minister is not one of them—who say that renegotiation is impossible that Mrs. Thatcher knew that in Europe, as elsewhere in life, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Britain is a major contributor to the EU budget.

The current position is unsustainable. The future without renegotiation will be impossible. I am not driven by anti-European feelings—I speak French and German and have friends in those countries. I understand the reasons why Europe, which has endured two European wars in the past century, causing border changes and huge migration, wants to move towards political integration. That is natural, but what is right for continental Europe is not right for Britain. Even my French friends refer to "les Anglo-Saxons", automatically linking Britain with the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They instinctively understand what is logical and right.

Britain's membership of NAFTA, while staying in a looser, freer EU, is both logical and right. My purpose is not to argue for any specific option under investigation by the United States Senate. I call upon the Government and the Opposition to prepare and reflect upon specific proposals to move the special relationship forward for the benefit of all our people and to shield it from anti-American pressure.

Although Anglo-American relations may, as Churchill put it, roll on like the Mississippi, even that great river has several forks in its path. If the United Kingdom's membership of the EU is not to constitute such a fork, we must act now for all our sakes. We must actively investigate how to strengthen that relationship, the success of which is vital to this country and, as history records, the world.

It is usual to give a customary word of congratulation to the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) on securing the debate. His tenacity in pursuing causes is well known and appreciated with serious affection.

I shall comment on the points that he makes in the few moments that he has left me to reply. First, he suggests joining the North American Free Trade Area, but that is not a good idea. Secondly, he suggests renegotiating the treaties of Rome and Maastricht, but that is a disingenuous cover for withdrawal. Thirdly, he suggests that the benefits of joining NAFTA would greatly outweigh those of our EU membership, but the benefits of being in the EU greatly outweigh those of joining NAFTA. Fourthly, the Americans prefer us to be in the EU, not to withdraw from it.

I did not say that we should join NAFTA instead of the EU. I am surprised that the Minister fell into that trap.

If the hon. Gentleman will give me a chance to reply, I shall tell him precisely why it is not possible to join NAFTA without withdrawing from the EU, which the International Trade Commission acknowledges in its terms of reference. Crucially, those terms of reference refer to the EU, but that point is missed because the Opposition say that they will construct a purely hypothetical model.

It is disingenuous of the hon. Gentleman to argue that we could remain in the EU if we were to join NAFTA. He acknowledged that changes to the treaty of Rome would be needed. He sat through the Maastricht debates. He is simply pretending that we can be members of both. He argues that that would bring us closer to the EU, but he does not say that joining NAFTA would inevitably mean leaving the EU, with disastrous consequences for jobs, trade and foreign investment in Britain. I would prefer it if the hon. Gentleman openly said, "Let us leave the EU and form other relationships", because that is the implication of his arguing that we should join NAFTA. Let him say openly that we should leave the EU.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the report published by the Institute of Directors. The press release of 14 March, which launched the IOD report on the costs of EU memberships, states:

There are no simple solutions. Withdrawal from the EU to the EEA—

the European Economic Area—

would expose the UK to regulation without representation. This is why the IoD argues that the UK should remain within the EU and fight for radical reform from the inside.

That is what our Government are doing. It is what the Prime Minister did at the Lisbon summit last week.

Joining NAFTA would mean leaving the EU, as it would be incompatible with the Single European Act that set up the single market in 1987 under Baroness Thatcher. We do not intend to join NAFTA and leave the EU. It would not be in our interests because more than half our overseas trade is with the EU—59 per cent. of our exports and 54 per cent. of our imports. NAFTA now accounts for only 16 per cent. of our exports. That does not include our total trade with the EU, which is £240 billion, as opposed to £79 billion with NAFTA. Not only big exporters are involved: 30 to 40 per cent. of Britain's small and medium enterprises now do business with the EU.

The European single market comprises 372 million customers, or 38 per cent. of world trade. Three and a half million British jobs depend on that trade to some extent. The EU will be enlarged to more than 500 million customers and will be the largest market for trade and investment in the world. Leaving it would jeopardise foreign direct investment. More than 44,000 jobs were generated by that investment in the past year. I cannot imagine companies choosing to invest in the UK to gain access to NAFTA the other side of the Atlantic. The UK would not be an investment springboard for entry to NAFTA, so leaving the EU and moving to NAFTA, for which the hon. Member for Lichfield argued, would jeopardise our economy.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister keeps saying that I said and implied that, but I made it clear that I did not do so.

The hon. Gentleman—

Order. Please could we pretend to be civilised? That is not a point of order.

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. The argument will not stack up. He cannot argue for our joining NAFTA without our leaving the EU. He does not seem to recognise that, but everyone else does. Our relationship with the United States is of fundamental importance. Our political relationships are strong. The Government of the US have warmly welcomed the European defence initiative, which strengthens rather than undermines the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Our economic ties with the US are stronger than ever and 40 per cent. of all US investment in Europe is in the UK already.

It is because we are in the European Union that our influence in the US is so strong and significant. Our Government play a full role in Europe and are deeply engaged in shaping it, and that is why we are strong partners with the US. Raymond Seitz, former US ambassador to Britain, said:

if Britain's voice is less influential in Paris or Bonn, it is likely to be less influential in Washington.

In his book, "Over Here", he said:

the option of leaving the Union altogether … is a flimsy proposition, unlikely to gain much traction except with the graspers of straws … Standing between America and Europe … was never either-or. It always had to be both … If Britain is not part of important European decision-making, it is less likely to be important in American decision-making, and vice-versa. If Britain is aloof from developments on the continent, it is bound to be more marginal in America.

That is why we are engaged at the heart of Europe, shaping the agenda of the future, as the Prime Minister demonstrated at the Lisbon summit. We are building a truly single market, driving forward a modern agenda and using technology as a means to generate employment through innovation, enterprise and imagination.

The hon. Member for Lichfield may now gain a reputation as a straw grasper, but I suspect that he is an outrider for the Leader of the Opposition, who is covertly campaigning to join NAFTA. That is merely a covert strategy to withdraw from the EU, which is why the Foreign Secretary spelled out that the Tories are prepared to jeopardise British jobs to justify their extreme anti-European prejudices.

At the beginning of the new millennium, millions of people are criss-crossing the globe, seeking asylum from war, disease, starvation and economic collapse. That is the context in which all western European countries are experiencing a rise in the number of asylum seekers. The majority of asylum seekers find asylum within their own regions, whether in Africa, the middle east or the Balkans. Only a minority find their way to western Europe, America or Canada.

The number of asylum seekers has risen as a result of civil war and economic problems around the world. A fair, efficient, transparent legal system must be at the heart of meeting the challenge of that sad army so that asylum claims can be dealt with. Hon. Members and perhaps even Ministers may believe that a more punitive line is in order. Whatever one's views on asylum seekers, fairness, efficiency and transparency must be at the heart of the system for dealing with claims.

My hon. Friend the Minister will not need to be reminded that we inherited an extremely bad position from the Conservative party. However, I do not want to detain the Chamber on the iniquities of the previous Administration. Three years into a Labour Administration and with a general election in sight, it is appropriate and necessary to examine our stewardship of the issue.

Ministers have addressed the matter and done many good things, as my staff and I have seen for ourselves. For example, we welcome the Members' hotline, and are grateful for the helpfulness and enthusiasm of those staffing it. Sadly, however, it cannot deal with asylum cases. We welcome the fact that a backlog squad has been set up, which, as we have seen, is enthusiastic and well led and managed. Unfortunately, however, it does not deal with asylum cases.

We welcome the reforms of the initial consideration unit, which, as we have witnessed, is enthusiastic, well led and doing good work. However, I remind Ministers that more than 100,000 asylum seekers are waiting for their application to be processed. That figure may not be exact, but I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will provide me with the most up-to-date figure.

I remind Ministers that the backlog of asylum seekers has risen under the present Government. Last May, when the Immigration and Asylum Bill was in Committee, the backlog stood at about 70,000, and it is distressing that it continues to rise. It is important to put on record the problems for individuals and communities caused by delays in dealing with asylum cases. Uncertainty about what people are to do with their lives sometimes continues for months and years. This morning, I interviewed a series of asylum seekers, many of whom have waited for months and even years for their case to be resolved.

Practical problems are also caused by such delays. People cannot get driving licences, have difficulty claiming benefit and cannot travel abroad to study or for a family funeral. The Minister's constituency adjoins mine and its population is similar, so she will be aware that people experience many practical difficulties as a result of the delay in dealing with asylum cases.

Furthermore, the biggest incentive for people to make an unfounded in-country asylum claim is the long delay in processing such claims. People have known for a long time that at the end of the road—they may have applied as a student and many times subsequently—making another asylum claim will effectively give them several more years in the country.

Ministers have much to say about unfounded cases, so one of the most effective actions that they could take would be to choke off unfounded in-country applications, often made in good faith on advice from solicitors. I know that Ministers have acted against the worst immigration-advising solicitors. One of the most effective weapons against ill-founded in-country claims would be to deal with delays.

Next week we expect—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the implementation of the system of voucher-based support for new asylum seekers, and forced dispersal, which were debated at length in Committee and on the Floor of the House. The Minister and her officials who have read Hansard will know that I contributed extensively to those debates. Over and over again, we were reassured by Ministers, "Yes, the voucher system amounts to less in total than income support"—that means people living below subsistence levels—"but only for two months initially and six months if there is an appeal." The argument behind the voucher system and forced dispersal is that people will be in the system only for short periods. Ministers promised that on the Floor of the House, and it provides another reason to focus on delays in dealing with asylum cases.

As I said earlier, the backlog of asylum cases has increased—almost doubled—during the Government's period of office. There have been some improvements. I understand that the most recently available monthly statistics show that the number of cases successfully dealt with increased from about 2,000 to 8,000 per month. The greater speed in dealing with new cases is obviously welcome but it does not help people who have been waiting in this country throughout the 1990s for their asylum cases to be dealt with.

One way of increasing the speed of dealing with new cases is to dish out a 14-page standard evidence form and not give people enough time to fill it in. When it is not filled in properly or gaps are left, a technical refusal is made. That amounts to pushing up the numbers by sleight of hand. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments about that.

Let me remind my hon. Friend the Minister, who is new to her position, of the commitment made by her predecessors to clearing up the backlog and reducing the time of decision making. Her predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) said on 4 May in the Special Standing Committee considering the Asylum and Immigration Bill:

Our target is to reduce the time … to two months for an initial decision and a further four months for an appeal.—[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 4 May 1999; c. 1245.]

He later said:

The Government have committed themselves to reducing the time taken to process asylum applications. We have set the target of bringing that time down to six months and below.—[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 18 May 1999; c. 1601.]

The Minister will also be aware of the report signed by management consultants brought in by the Home Office, which was published last year. It states:

At present, delays occur at each stage of the asylum process. These are primarily caused by; process inefficiencies, a lack of resources and a lack of cross directorate prioritisation. If there were no backlogs and adequate resources were available, we consider that process inefficiencies alone would prevent IND from achieving the two month target.

I now want to ask the Minister some specific questions. If she is unable to reply to them in our debate now, I would be grateful if she would write to me.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, in the rush of dealing with cases, there is an overwhelming presumption against many asylum applicants from countries that are democratic on the face of it—they have independent legal systems—but in which the reality on the ground is different? I am thinking of the treatment of Roma people in the Czech Republic, which is a democracy on the face of it, but allows Roma people to suffer constant race harassment and attacks. I am worried that hardly any Roma cases have been granted asylum because of the presumption to which I referred.

I agree with my hon. Friend. I, too, am deeply concerned. This morning, I met one of my constituents, a Jewish gentleman from Georgia—one of the former Soviet republics—who has applied for asylum here. He is an Orthodox Jew and wears the full costume of that religion. He has lived here for eight years. When he went back to Georgia, he was subjected to appalling harassment because those ex-Soviet republics have a history of antisemitism. However, technically, Georgia is a democracy. It issues statements declaring that it is against antisemitism, so the Minister has refused to grant this man asylum and he does not know what to do. He is being sent back to a society that has a history of persecution of Jews going back to the 19th century, but, on the basis of the technical nature of the state of Georgia and the statements of its Ministers, he is going back to certain persecution. I personally brought his case to the Minister's predecessor's attention and was extremely disappointed by the response.

We were promised in May last year that the backlog of cases would be cleared by April 2001. Is the Immigation and Nationality Directorate on target to clear the backlog by spring 2001? When we debated the subject of backlogs in waiting lists, and delays, we were promised by my hon. Friend's predecessor in Committee that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate was recruiting new staff. When I asked him how many new clerical staff would be recruited, he could not tell me. Can the Minister now say how many clerical staff have been taken on since May last year, which was the last time I raised the matter? If not, will she write to me? I should also like to know how many new decision makers have been recruited?

I would welcome any information about the position with the computer system. Many past delays have been connected with Siemens and the computers. Is it true, as my staff and I have been told, that new applicants for asylum will not be given a full interview until 2001? If so, that makes nonsense of the promises given to hon. Members a year ago that the processing time for new claims would come down to two months. Are 29,000 asylum files to be sent to Glasgow? It seems extraordinary—given that, in the coming weeks, my colleagues and I will be asking questions about asylum seeker cases—that, during that time, the files will be somewhere on the Ml. If they are to be sent to Glasgow, when will they be returned so that work on them can begin?

The burden of my comments has been about the backlog of applications because I and other hon. Members know that an increasing number of asylum seekers have been waiting for some years for their applications to be determined.

I want to ask about the situation with travel documents. There used to be a same-day service for people seeking travel documents, but as far as I know it no longer exists. We hear constantly from constituents who have applied for travel documents. Recently, relatives of Turkish earthquake victims were unable to travel because they did not have documents. People who have to study, take jobs or attend funerals abroad have the same problem.

We have been told off the record by IND staff that the number of travel documents that are lost is a disgrace. Why, then, when departmental staff suggested that, as part of the process, people applying for travel documents be charged an extra fee to cover their return by recorded delivery, management turned it down? There would have been no cost to the IND and it seems a very practical suggestion that would have got round the problem of documents being lost, but management did nothing. When will the Government introduce an effective system for tracking lost travel documents? Staff have suggested to us that a bar code could be used. Each week in my advice sessions I see people who may have a family emergency or illness but are unable to travel because of what is happening in the travel documents section.

I have to touch on the general question of the ministerial case-working team. We understand that the team is only now dealing with letters sent to them in October and November. Members of Parliament have a democratic responsibility to take up issues on behalf of our constituents. It really is not good enough that the IND is only now dealing with cases that go back to October. We believe that there is no monitoring in the ministerial case-working team and that individual case workers have no targets. I think that I speak for every colleague who deals with nationality case work when I say that something must be done about the number of staff and, more importantly, about management, monitoring and targets, to enable Members of Parliament to obtain replies to their letters within a reasonable time.

When we write to the Department, we have to wait four or six months, or longer, for a reply. People come back to us week after week, but what are we to tell them? When a member of my staff asked a member of the ministerial case-working team, "How long is it taking you to deal with our letters?" he or she replied, "How long is a piece of string?" I put it to the Minister that that is not a satisfactory response to Members of Parliament who are trying to carry out their democratic duty.

My final point concerns the work-in-progress queue. The majority of the work with which my office currently deals relates to immigration and nationality matters, most of which involves asylum cases. We often find when we ring the Members' hotline that work is in the work-in-progress queue, so when my staff visited Croydon, we asked to see that queue. Let me tell hon. Members what the work-in-progress queue is. It is a basement in Croydon in which thousands of files are piled up. We were told that all work that was unfinished at the time of the move to C block from Lunar house—we know that the location has recently changed—was dumped in the basement. My members of staff saw those dumped files with their own eyes.

It is not good enough to tell Members of Parliament and their staff on the telephone that cases are in the work-in-progress queue when they are merely in a basement. If the Minister did not see those files on her recent visit to Croydon, she should return and ask to do so. We saw them.

Although I have expressed my concerns—which are shared by many other hon. Members—about what is happening, to the asylum backlog in particular but to immigration and case work generally, I pay tribute to the hard work of many of the members of staff involved. The Minister should encourage staff to make suggestions. We visited Croydon a week after she had been there, but staff told us that they were not encouraged to speak to her and that they felt that they could not make practical suggestions. Attitudes vary from team to team, but the teams to which I have specifically referred are well led and have enthusiastic and motivated staff. However, that was not true of all the staff who we encountered in Croydon.

During past months, there has been rising hysteria in the popular press about asylum seekers. Such hysteria sheds more heat than light on the subject. I could not leave the debate without putting on record my distaste for the tone in which politicians and the media discuss economic migrants. I entirely accept that many people who apply for asylum are not asylum seekers under the Geneva convention rules. However, to talk about people who have left collapsing economies, disease, dislocation and chaos and who are trying to do the best for their families as if they are a criminal underclass does no credit to the acute fears and pressures that sometimes force people to cross the globe to Europe to seek a better life for their children and families.

The Minister's family still lives in my constituency. With our background, she and I should have no truck with people who say not that asylum seekers do not meet the terms of the Geneva convention—we know that many of them do not—but that economic migrants are a sub-species of human being. Many asylum seekers have to be turned down at the end of the day, but their demonisation and the extent to which Ministers seem to think that they have to outbid the Conservatives on this issue cause great distress to many people. I suspect that those people include many of our supporters and constituents, who do not expect to hear Labour Ministers adopting the tone of Tony Ministers when speaking about asylum seekers.

The issue is complex. Next week, the Government's new support arrangements will be introduced, involving the voucher system and forced dispersal. I shall keep a close eye on those arrangements; not only do I believe that they will cause unnecessary suffering, I am not persuaded that they will work. I wanted today to talk about the processing and management of claims in Croydon. The situation is not new and is not unique to this Government. Minister after Minister has investigated immigration and nationality and has been reassured by senior officials who say that this or that is being done. Year on year, myself and other hon. Members who deal with such case work see increasing chaos.

It is not too late for Ministers to tackle the problems. Some good initiatives have been started, but more are needed. It is unfair to asylum seekers, whether they are Geneva convention compliant or not, to engage in rhetoric about unfounded claims when the core function of Government—to deal with claims quickly, transparently, fairly and within the law—is not being carried out.

I await with interest the Minister's response to my specific questions, but she may rest assured that this is not the last occasion on which I shall raise the subject.

I will start off on a note of agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), whom I congratulate on securing today's short but important debate. However, I take issue with the context in which she placed her concluding remarks. The Government want to honour our international obligations under the convention to those who flee persecution and seek asylum. The concept of asylum is an honourable and ancient one, which I, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Government want to preserve, but in order to do that we must say that those who make unfounded applications will be swiftly returned.

My hon. Friend omitted from her speech any reference to the worldwide criminal smuggling of people, which is helping many people to make large sums of money from others who are especially vulnerable. It is a pity that she did not mention that.

I did not mention worldwide smuggling because, as far as I understand, Ministers have no responsibility for that, so it would have been pointless to raise it.

I believe that we have a responsibility for the consequences of smuggling and should try to combat it, along with other like-minded Governments. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be lucky enough to secure another debate in which to raise that issue, on which occasion I shall give her my full and considered response.

My hon. Friend is right to say that delays and perceived delays in the system encourage people to make unfounded claims, which is why certain measures have been implemented. She is also right to mention the role played by unscrupulous advisers and solicitors and to emphasise the need to eradicate backlogs from the system. I put on record my thanks to her for speaking about the hotline staff, and I am pleased about the visit that will take place. Let me assure her that I visit Croydon frequently; my route there is well worn. I am virtually not only immigration Minister, but Minister for Croydon. I assure her that I encourage staff to speak to me and I visit all the teams. I recently attended the forum that has been set up to enable staff to speak to management. I also recently attended a meeting of the unions there, and I meet them regularly. There are no difficulties in that area.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Vantage point report. That report is fairly old, but we have recognised its recommendations. She also mentioned some recent cases. I believe that it is invidious to mention individual cases in this sort of forum, but I say to her and to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that such cases do not involve only a decision by the Home Office. A case goes to an adjudicator and to a tribunal both independent bodies set up by Parliament.

The issue of the perception of the human rights situation in various countries frequently arises. The Home Office was due to set up its own evaluation unit. I should be grateful to know what progress has been made on that and what assessment is made of newly democratised countries in which there are still human rights abuses.

As my hon. Friend will know, we publish our country assessments, so they are available for everyone to see. We do not rely only on reports from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We also consult non-governmental organisations, Amnesty International, Oxfam and a range of organisations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington spoke about dealing with Members' asylum cases. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North will be pleased to know that we are setting up a case management unit specifically to deal with such cases. That will be warmly welcomed.

In the short time left to me, I shall deal with some of the difficulties. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington is quite right that the debate is about the present Government's record. However, we are still suffering from the plans made by the previous Administration to reduce the number of posts by a total of 1,200 in anticipation of the efficiencies that will result from the introduction of a computerised casework system. She will know that the Public Accounts Committee criticised that as an overambitious project. We are recovering from those plans. I know that much remains to be done by the present Administration, but we have done a lot already.

Last year, we began a substantial programme to increase the number of staff. That has already resulted in hundreds of additional staff, and more are planned. New working processes have been developed to speed up the time taken to decide applications without compromising quality. Those processes seek to obtain the maximum amount of information from applicants at the outset. Pilot exercises at Heathrow and Dover are testing new procedures for port applicants. Substantive asylum interviews are conducted on the day of arrival, and an e-mail link to the Croydon computer system enables case papers to be sent electronically, which enables quick decisions to be taken.

Partly as a consequence of those changes, but also as a result of the massive intake of staff, the number of initial decisions has increased enormously. I do not know that only because I am a Minister. The profile of cases in my constituency is similar to my hon. Friend's, so I know the problem from my own case work. In February, 7,840 decisions were made—the highest monthly total ever recorded. As a result, the number of decisions now exceeds the number of new applications. The backlog of cases is therefore beginning to reduce.

The February total of just over 103,000 is still too high but, for the first time since March 1998, it has reduced. I am not complacent about that. There is much more still to do, but it is an improvement. We expect to make significant inroads into the backlog by late spring, and we aim for a substantial reduction by April 2001. We have all but cleared the backlog of pre-1993 cases, and we expect to clear the backlog of 1993–95 cases by the summer.

I reassure my hon. Friend on one point. She spoke about asylum cases being transferred to Glasgow. They are being transferred for recategorisation. That is necessary to allow us to reorganise about 29,000 cases in the case allocation unit so that we can identify work screens for them. However, that exercise will last for only three weeks; the files will be back in Croydon by 17 April. We want to speed up the work as much as we can.

My hon. Friend mentioned the targets for new cases, particularly new family cases, under the new scheme, which will be introduced on 3 April. We started using targets for new family cases at the beginning of November 1999, and we are already meeting those targets for new applications from families with children. The new processes and the increase in the number of staff are designed to ensure that, from April 2001, most new claims are decided within two months, as envisaged in the immigration and asylum White Paper. We are already doing exactly what we said that we would do.

There is a great deal of work yet to be done. I am grateful for what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said about the commitment and enthusiasm of the staff, who are working incredibly hard against a difficult background. We are making progress, which is shown by the record number of decisions. We are beginning to deliver a policy that is firm, fair and fast, a policy that recognises the needs of genuine claimants while deterring those who would seek to abuse the system. Those who make unfounded claims are the enemy of the genuine asylum seeker.