Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Thursday 20 April 2000

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

Prayers

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

Contingencies Fund Accounts 1998–99

Ordered,

Accounts of the Contingencies Fund 1998–99, showing:—
(1) The receipts and payments in connection with the Fund in the year ended the 31st day of March 1999.
(2) The distribution of the capital of the Fund at the commencement and close of the year; with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon.—[Mr. Touhig.]

Adjournment (Easter)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Touhig.]

9.34 am

European framework directive 89/391/EEC may not be the stuff of headlines, but, since it was incorporated in our health and safety regulations, it has become apparent that its implementation could threaten the livelihoods of external health and safety consultants. It appears that firms are now being encouraged to use only in-house employees in that role, rather than employ external consultants.

I was alerted to the problem last June by constituents of mine who have run a very successful health and safety consultancy in my area for more than 35 years. They employ 23 people, are very good at what they do and are highly regarded.

For the past 10 months, we have corresponded with Ministers and with the Health and Safety Executive. My constituents have also attended consultation meetings and have met the chief executive of the HSE. However, although many issues have been resolved, it is obvious that the question of to whom firms should turn for advice still has not been satisfactorily resolved.

I understand that the present view in the corridors of power is that what, for want of a better term, I shall call the consultancy culture that developed in the 1980s and 1990s is to be overturned.

Good.

My hon. Friend says that that is good, but I suggest that he listens to what I have to say.

There is a long tradition of self-employment and of small firms in my part of the country, which stretches back to the 19th century. There are very good consultants in my area, who clearly predate what happened in the 1980s and 1990s and who are good at what they do. If we are not careful, they will be swept away, and that will not benefit anyone.

We must stop swinging from one extreme to another. Some consultants who set up in the 1980s may not have been as experienced as they should have been. They charged large fees and did not do a particularly good job, but most people who employ consultants now know what to look for and can tell the cowboys from the true experts.

Another problem is that small firms needing health and safety advice often find that it is not viable to employ their own staff. They prefer to go to another business and buy in the expertise that they need. In some circumstances, therefore, the EEC directive is not entirely realistic.

The Ministers whom we have approached have been very understanding, and, in discussions, the HSE has been very helpful to my constituents. It will now produce leaflets and literature informing firms about the health and safety advice that they must get and where to find it. However, the trade press still seems keen to push the line that firms should no longer use external consultants. The February edition of the magazine Safety Management clearly stated in its first paragraph:

Long-awaited changes to the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations came into force … making it clear that employers should use competent employees for advice on health and safety matters instead of calling in external specialists.

That is the advice being given in the health and safety industry, so it is no wonder that my constituents are extremely worried.

The many small firms similar to the one run by my constituents employ a lot of people, and many redundancies could follow if they are driven out of business and go to the wall. I know that that is not the intention of the Government, who have made it perfectly clear that they are business friendly and want to help small businesses. I am sure that they would say that I am reporting an unfortunate interpretation of the guidelines.

However, I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, who will reply to the debate, will request that his ministerial colleagues keep a very close eye on the implementation of the directive. It will not do my constituents any good if their firm folds, and the future would be very bleak for other constituents of mine who might lose their jobs as a result.

The guidelines are being implemented. I hope that the Government will monitor very carefully to whom firms go for health and safety advice. It would benefit no one if excellent consultancies were driven to the wall.

9.39 am

My constituents would not forgive me if I allowed the House to rise for the Easter recess without raising yet again the issue of the Royal hospital, Haslar. It is overwhelmingly the most important issue in my constituency and in south Hampshire and one of the most important issues facing the Ministry of Defence, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.

The background to the case is well known. In 1994, the then Government decided in "Defence Costs Study 15" that there should be one service hospital—one centre of defence medical excellence—at the Royal hospital, Haslar in Gosport. That decision was implemented over the next five years or so and the job of co-ordinating the work of the Army, Navy and Air Force was proceeding well. Then, on 10 December 1998, the Government announced to everyone's disbelief the closure of the only tri-service hospital as, would you believe it, a measure to promote better services within the defence medical services. It was proposed to close the only hospital that was thought to be a way ahead and to open a new centre of medical excellence somewhere else, as yet unknown.

A year or so later, it has been announced that that centre of medical excellence will be in Birmingham. I have not yet come across a single person serving in the Army, Navy or Air Force who is enthused about that idea. Birmingham has no particular service connection, unlike many of the other places that might have been chosen.

The reaction to the announcement was dramatic. I announced that we would hold a rally and march, and we thought that we might have 1,000 or 2,000 people, possibly 5,000. I was surprised when I heard that the police were planning for 10,000, and in fact 22,000 joined in the rally and march—quite a gathering. It was led by Members of Parliament. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey) and for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Rapson) for joining us on that occasion and to the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth who, on this as on many other things, is giving a local lead. We marched across to Haslar hospital.

All the people in the Gosport peninsula, and virtually all those to whom I speak in the Ministry of Defence, want to see Haslar retained. They recognise that it has outstanding facilities. It has a world-leading MRI scanner, a hyperbaric unit and a burns unit, and £35 million has been spent on it in the past 10 years. To close it would be the most awful mistake. The fact remains, as declared in a number of speeches and in the outstanding publication that has been produced by the Save Haslar group, of which I am the chairman, that there is a case for retention of the hospital. All those arguments remain.

People in the armed forces are deeply worried that the loss of doctors and nurses will continue in the armed forces until Haslar is confirmed as a centre of defence medical excellence. The move to Birmingham would involve moving not only doctors and nurses but the school of defence medicine, which is at Fort Blockhouse adjacent to Haslar. That would cause intense local difficulty.

I have talked so far only about the defence aspects of Haslar hospital. As it is also a civilian hospital that is effectively the district general hospital for my constituency, cases arise daily that demonstrate how much it is needed. Only on Tuesday, I received a letter from an 82-year-old constituent who told me the story of a friend and neighbour who was admitted to hospital for a heart operation. He was prepared for the operation, taken to the operating theatre and then taken back and told that he could go home because no intensive care unit bed was available. His operation was postponed for two weeks. He returned home and the following day his wife died, perhaps as a result of the stress of having her husband home from hospital. That is just one story.

On Monday this week, I received an updating letter from another constituent who lives in Stubbington, but prefers not to be named. In January 1999, she was told that she needed a triple heart bypass and that if it were delayed by up to two years she would have a 40 per cent. chance of surviving. She was told that the waiting time would be nine months. In November 1999, she was told that the waiting time would be between 12 and 15 months. She is now told that it is perhaps 17 months or longer. The hospital hopes to give her a waiting time of 18 months. So in a year, the waiting time for a cardiac operation in my constituency has increased from nine to 17 months. There is no immediate prospect of that lady being given a date for her operation. Civilian cases are being severely postponed and beds are needed that are not available elsewhere. My constituents believe that it would be lunacy to close a hospital that is superbly equipped from both a civilian and defence medicine point of view.

The main reason given for the closure of Haslar hospital is that it is impossible for doctors and nurses to receive accreditation from the royal colleges. I submit that that problem can be overcome. Accreditation is entirely a matter of training and it must be possible to co-ordinate the work at Haslar with that in Portsmouth, Winchester and Southampton, and to provide training in conjunction with other local hospitals. It would be madness for Haslar to close.

My constituents are becoming concerned and several are rather frustrated that the campaign to save Haslar has not resulted in an announcement by the Government that they will change their minds. I should like to send them a message of hope and determination. We believe that we will win. If at this point I demand that the Government state, yes or no, whether they will save Haslar hospital, of course they will say no, that they will not save the hospital; that they made the announcement 16 months ago that they would close it. Faced with such a demand, of course the Government will stick to their guns.

What I say to my constituents is that the facts are changing around us. The intention is to move to Birmingham, but there is no enthusiasm in the defence medical services for such a move. I therefore predict that the move may not take place, or at least will take place in rather different circumstances. It is also intended to build up a Ministry of Defence hospital unit within Haslar and then to transfer that to Queen Alexandra hospital, Cosham. I maintain that that, too, is unlikely to happen. It was intended that the move should happen in about 2002. Now it will happen in about 2005 or 2007—do I hear 2009? I suspect that the move will not take place.

I have received a number of reports from senior personnel who have visited Haslar and have been surprised to see what the facilities are—the MRI scanner and the hyperbaric unit—and to see the administration unit. Haslar administers hospital units deployed in times of emergency. There is a large number of ancillary units within Haslar that it would be extremely inconvenient to move to Birmingham or somewhere else. I suspect that that, too, will be an argument in favour of retaining Haslar.

Two hospital ships are to be constructed. It is logical that they should be based at Portsmouth. Where better than Haslar to link with the hospital ships? I cannot imagine that it would be easy for hospital ships to link with Birmingham. In that and in so many other ways, I suspect that the need for Haslar will gradually become more clear.

Casevacs—emergency casualties removed from the field of operations—can readily be moved to Haslar. There is no space for them in Birmingham and no arrangements have been made for them so far. I suspect that the Government will realise that the failure to fast-track medical treatment for people in the armed forces is becoming a serious problem. Another constituent of mine is a young Marine reservist. While on a Marine operation, he incurred an injury to his back. He will have to wait 18 months to have that injury rectified because he is joining the queue with all the civilians. I suspect that the Ministry of Defence will realise that it will be advantageous to be able to fast-track medical treatment for military personnel. The only way to do that is to have a dedicated hospital.

The health authority has consulted locally on retention of Haslar as an out-patient unit seeing 60,000 patients a year compared with the 55,000 who are currently seen at Haslar. All that consultation procedure is predicated on the cross-link unit being made available by the Ministry of Defence to the civilian authorities. If the cross-link—the centre of Haslar—is not made available, the consultation procedure will have been invalid, and we shall have to start again.

For all the reasons that I have given, I say to my constituents, "Do not fear that the campaign to which you have committed yourselves so wholeheartedly is faltering or that the taskforce will lack determination." We are determined to retain Haslar not only as a civilian out-patient unit but as a hospital serving the defence medical services. I say to my constituents, "Have faith and join us in the determination to do that."

9.49 am

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, will be aware that, a few years ago, the Government inherited the responsibilities of the then ill-fated British Coal, including the long-standing problems of payments for bronchitis and emphysema to about 100,000 miners. No one can deny that a prompt start was made. Under British Coal, it had seemed impossible for us to make any headway whatever.

Not long after the Government inherited that problem, we were able to celebrate success in the courts: the money would be paid. After that Manchester decision, the Government declared that they would spend between £2.5 billion and £3 billion to compensate those miners. That was a good start—a fast start; we were on our way.

However, the difficulties have been many. I have raised them in the House on several occasions and feel it necessary to speak about the matter again today. When the Labour Government introduced pneumoconiosis payments in the 1970s, we managed to make the payments quickly because not many solicitors were involved and because we were dealing with only eight or 10 sections of the National Union of Mineworkers, and with the solicitors for NACODS—the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers—and for the British Association of Colliery Management. That was it. They were able to agree a scale of payments, and in next to no time every beneficiary under that scheme had received their money.

The position was not acceptable for a minority of people, but, after a few grouses, most people accepted the sliding scale and the system has worked happily ever since—except, of course, for those who did not achieve the 10 per cent. threshold in the first place. There are arguments about that. However, it was a success story.

The current problem is different. First, the NUM was shattered by the previous Government—the union was in fragments. Some areas had no pits left; some had no officials; and the whole superstructure of the NUM had been almost dismantled in many places. The net result was that some solicitors had an eye for an opportunity. We can all see their adverts on telly: they can get us money for anything—for tumbling over the pavement and God knows what else. They must be making a small fortune and their advertisements cost more than the ones for a general election, but I shall not go into that.

Those solicitors saw an opportunity; they saw that £3 billion and thought, "We're going to have a slice of that." Before we could bat an eye, they were in the pit villages, taking over the town hall for a few days. They said, "Come and meet us; we'll get you the money." The situation is different in Scotland, where the NUM still has its own solicitors, and in areas such as the one represented by my hon. Friend the Minister, but in the pit villages where there is nothing left of the NUM, those fly-by-night solicitors went through like a dose of Epsom salts. They told people that they would get them the moon, but people are still waiting.

There is a big problem in that the Government and the other agencies trying to tackle it are having to deal with as many as 300 solicitors instead of only a dozen sets of solicitors. Imagine that: 300 solicitors, who work on the principle that if they can stretch it out, they will get more money for themselves. There are rare exceptions—there are bound to be some good solicitors—but the general principle is that they do not answer letters, as I did this morning. We send off our letters straight away and our constituents thank us. Solicitors do not work like that. They work on the following basis: they do not answer letters but make people think that they are working hard for a week or a fortnight. That is what is happening to the poor old miners, heaving their lungs up—some of them dying—who want that money paid out.

During the past 18 months, I have not been backward in coming forward to explain the problem. I am still doing that. Despite that, the Government announced that, in order to hurry things up, there would be a handling charge for every solicitor for every case. The Government will pay the solicitors money—taxpayers' money—to speed the process along.

Not content with a handling charge paid for by the rest of us, some of those solicitors decided that they wanted commission as well. In some settlements that had been made, they took from 5 to 15 per cent. extra. It is time that that was stopped.

There are other delays. My hon. Friend is probably aware of them. We now have to pay the doctors as much as £100 a day for getting out miners' medical records. The miners had to go before the agency, Healthcall, to have their chests examined for a percentage assessment. The doctors are being paid £100 a day and they too are dragging their feet.

On top of that, some of the tinpot health authorities are involved in the delay. A ring-fenced sum of up to £3 billion is being handed over by the Government—no problem, the money will be paid—but, for the reasons that I have outlined, we are not able to get that money into the pockets of miners or miners' widows. That is why it is important to bring the matter to the attention of the House today—to get the show on the road.

I have mentioned that there are variations between regions and coalfields. We want to make sure that, when the payouts are made—some have been made, as my hon. Friend knows—and speeded up, there are no regional variations. Payments must be made on a similar basis, even in those areas where there is no NUM structure and where we have to deal with some of those fly-by-night, touting solicitors.

That is my first point. My second point is that the Government will be the beneficiary of about £20 billion—maybe more—from the licence auction of the new generation mobile phones. I do not have one, nor do I have a pager, so I am not into the technical stuff at all, but people tell me that there is real money involved. It is certainly more than we are paying out to the miners—a lot more.

In the run-up to the next election, we should not drag our feet over that money. I was delighted at the announcement on Monday that £100 million would go to the mining areas in order to save the few pits that the Tories did not close. I would have done things differently, but the money is better than a poke in the eye with a big stick.

I was pleased to see the faces of the Tory MPs who did not know what to do about that statement. Some of them wanted to oppose it on principle, because they do not believe in public expenditure, but once they had thought about it, they said, "Oh, I'm not sure about that." Their reaction was mixed. I like that disorientation—I enjoy it. When I hear that there is £20 billion to spend, I should like to do that once a fortnight. [Laughter.] Seriously, I have a list that I sent to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is important. We have had two years of Tory spending plans. I am pleased that is all over. We should never have followed them, but that is gone; it is behind us. We have all this money: we have paid off the national debt and there is £20 billion or even £25 billion extra.

Just as a starter, we have to sort out the pension problem. We did not accept the Tories' unemployment figures. When we came into government, we decided there should be two sets. They were announced yesterday. We should have a cost of living index for pensioners and those who are not in work. There should be an index that identifies the costs for those pensioners who are at the bottom of the pile. We must get these current decisions settled, with a view to ensuring that the Government can announce before the next general election—probably in the autumn spending review—exactly what the new index is and what the new payments will be. I am trying to get the Government off the hook. [Laughter.] This is only friendly advice.

In that brown envelope that I sent to the Prime Minister, I submitted a long list of things that need to be done, because I am absolutely sure that Madam Speaker would be utterly pleased if she thought that these statements were being made by the Government before John Humphrys got hold of them on the "Today" programme. I am trying to kill a lot of birds with a lot of stones here.

The Government have £25 billion, or whatever, to use. A statement has been half-heartedly made about what will happen to those who are in long-term care. This is the first time that any Government have even thought of tackling that issue. Some pensioners finish up in warden-assisted accommodation, of which there are many examples in our constituencies, but some others have to go into long-term care—some, sadly, with senile dementia—and lose everything. Now that we have had a study on that subject, I have reason to believe that there will be another announcement on the subject shortly. I would like it to be made before the local government elections, and I have a proposal to make about what should be done with that money.

When the Government came to power, they used money from the public utilities, which had been making vast profits under the previous Government, to introduce the new deal. It was not a bad idea to use that money. The Government tell me that unemployment figures are about 800,000 or 900,000 less than they would have been had the Labour Government not come to power. Therefore, the new deal was a success in its way.

We should have a new deal on long-term nursing care. It should be launched with the use of some of the largesse from the licence auction. I am not saying that that could be done year after year, because the payment is a one-off and that new deal would have to be financed out of general taxation afterwards, but the launch could be made of a free long-term nursing care payment straight out of that money.

Those are a couple of the things that I wanted to draw to the attention of the Minister and all the relevant Ministers. I am saying that we must speed up payments for chronic ailments and bronchitis, and we must ensure that vibration white finger payments are made speedily. Let us try to get the job completed before the next general election. If we do, there will be a lot of satisfied customers in the coalfields.

If we can also announce in the next few weeks that long-term care will be free for everyone who, unfortunately, has to spend their declining years in those places, it will be of benefit not only to those people—in one fell swoop, we shall have won the support of all pensioners, feeble or otherwise, if they know that a Government at long last have managed to grasp this very important issue and settle it, with the result that not only pensioners but all their families will thank us for ever.

10.4 am

It is a pleasure to follow two such powerful speakers as the hon. Members for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). I agree with every word that the hon. Member for Gosport said about Haslar.

There was much with which I identified in the speech by the hon. Member for Bolsover. It may surprise the House to learn that I too represent a mining constituency. The coal mines are closed but there are still miners, and I very much identify with the points that the hon. Gentleman made. I hope that areas such as the Somerset coalfield will not be forgotten, and that the miners who are suffering in exactly the same way as their colleagues elsewhere in the country will have access to the money that they should have.

Although the three points that I shall raise are well worn, they deserve to be addressed yet again before the House rises. The first—the issue of post offices—has been discussed ad nauseam in the past few weeks, but I make no apology for returning to it. I believe that we are making progress with the Government, not entirely as a result of the efforts of hon. Members. That progress has much to do with the 3 million people who were prepared to put their name on a petition and make plain their concerns about what was happening to their local post offices, not just because of the people directly involved in the post offices, but because of all the people who depend on the presence of that service in their communities—the pensioners who do not want to be encumbered with bank accounts with which they are not familiar, but want to continue to use cash, drawing it from a post office, from people they know, in their local community.

We have made progress in three ways. First, the Government have recognised that there will be a continuing need to allow people the choice of drawing benefits in cash from their local post office. Secondly, the Government have recognised that there is a need to maintain the integrity of the sub-post office network. Thirdly, an amendment has been introduced to the Postal Services Bill that provides for a subsidy to be paid.

Unfortunately for sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, there is a lack of definition on all three aspects. Business decisions are being taken now. People are deciding whether to invest in a post office business, whether they can safely retire and whether there will be a buyer for their business. More clarity is needed.

Therefore, I make a plea for the Government to talk now to the Post Office and to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, and put flesh on the bones of the arrangements that they are starting to develop. I do not take a partisan view of this. The issue is too important to use as a party political weapon. I believe that there are hon. Members on both sides of the House who recognise the value of sub-post offices. I was sorry that the Government took so long to respond to the legitimate concerns. I congratulate them on the fact that they are starting to do so, but they must finish the job. We must have clarity.

Secondly, I want to discuss the rural economy. I make no apology for doing so, because so many people—not only those who are involved in agriculture but all those in businesses that derive their income from agriculture, directly or indirectly—are still in a desperate position. I saw a tenant farmer, a dairy fanner, a man who had worked on the land all his life, a strong man, in tears in my presence because I mentioned the word "retirement" and it suddenly came to him that he had no means of retiring; he had nothing. His business was on its last legs, and once he retired he would be left with no house, no business, no capital—nothing. We must address that issue.

The only thing that is keeping the agriculture industry afloat at the moment is the extraordinary maintenance of the value of land prices. Land and quota are maintaining their prices, not because people are investing in agriculture but because they are investing in farmhouses, parkland and paddocks for their horses.

A farm in my village is for sale, and the estate agents who are selling that land have advertised it as a leisure dairy farm. Anyone who lives in a rural area knows that if there is an oxymoron to end all oxymorons, it is one involving the use of the words "leisure" and "dairy". That is how the estate agents describe that farm, which has provided a living for generations, in order to sell it. I find that offensive.

The Government have made moves in the right direction in terms of the farm summit, but they do not go far enough. The pig sector is still in desperate straits despite the measures that have been taken, as is the dairy sector, which is so important in my area. Those sectors are not asking for more subsidy. They do not ask continually for more money. They simply want a fair deal for their effort. At the moment, they are not getting that from the processors and supermarkets. Until milk prices are set at a reasonable level, businesses will continue to fail. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry could help by sorting out the successors to Milk Marque to ensure that we have the vertical integration that enables milk to be sold profitably.

My final point on this subject concerns the need to consider carefully the position of the tenant fanner—the farmer who does not have capital and who is seeing his business disappear, and, with it, his home. We need to find some way of providing security for those people. We need to find for them pension arrangements, which they do not have. The retirement scheme which we proposed, but which the Government rejected, would have gone some way towards meeting that need.

Thirdly, I turn to schools and education in my area. On this, too, I follow a well-worn track. How can it be right that a child in my constituency in a local education authority school can receive from the Government £1,400 a year less than a child in a leafy suburb of London? It is not just in Somerset that children lose out, but in many areas across the country. The extraordinary distribution system does not recognise the value of the child.

All sorts of academic arguments can be advanced in support of a better deal for our children. I do not want to go into that today, but simply want to say that a child, wherever he lives, is entitled to have a reasonable sum spent on his education. That is not happening. It is no good talking about three years of stability when those are three years of injustice to children in Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Derbyshire or wherever education authorities are losing out under the present formula. The Government need to address that.

The Government must also address the problem of capital. As the hon. Member for Bolsover said, we had two years of sticking to Tory spending guidelines, which meant that there was no money. Now, at last, there is beginning to be some improvement and I give the Government credit for that. Temporary classrooms in my constituency are being replaced by permanent ones. I have a list of five or six this year, but we have 800 temporary classrooms in the county of Somerset and some have been temporary for 40 years. Until we address the problem of capital expenditure in our schools, we will not provide the environment in which children can learn successfully and teachers can give of their best; nor will we give parents the confidence in the state education system that I believe they should have.

For all those reasons, I ask Ministers to look again at the distribution of resources and to make sure that the education, education, education pledge works for all, not just those in city areas which sometimes seem to receive a rather better deal.

10.14 am

I want to raise an issue that I know is troubling many of my hon. Friends and which is causing a lot of anger throughout the country. I refer to the wave of bank closures that are hitting all areas of our nation. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) mentioned the rural economy, and it is in the rural areas that banks are being closed. I want in particular to talk about my constituency, where some of those bank closures have recently taken place.

East Cleveland has seen the sudden announcement of the closure of two small branches of Barclays and a large branch of NatWest. The villages affected are Skelton, Brotton and Loftus. They are not small, sleepy hamlets, but sizeable villages that could be seen as small country towns. They are neighbouring communities on the fringes of urban Teesside. Barclays has now closed branches in Skelton and Brotton. NatWest is planning to close its branch in Loftus.

The closure of the Skelton branch of Barclays follows an earlier closure of the local branch of NatWest. There is now no effective banking presence in a town of some 6,000 men, women and children. The closure of the Barclays branch in Brotton means that there are now no banking facilities whatever in a community of some 4,000 people. Loftus is the largest settlement in that part of East Cleveland: the town, with small villages and estates, has a population of some 7,000. The NatWest branch there is the biggest bank in the town. If it closes—the closure is expected in early May—it will leave the town, indeed most of east Cleveland, with only one branch of the big four clearing banks: the Loftus branch of Barclays. You will understand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that most of my constituents are sceptical about that branch remaining open for the foreseeable future, in view of the track record of that particular banking concern.

I need to say something about what the closures and threatened closures will mean for many of my constituents. With the one exception of Barclays in Loftus, there will be no banking facilities between the town of Saltburn and Whitby—a distance of nearly 20 miles. That area is not uninhabited moorland. It covers large and small communities, many farms and a host of industrial employers—the largest being Boulby potash mine. Boulby is the largest deep mine in Europe, with some 700 employees, who have their wages paid through automatic bank transfer. Many of them have been hit by the Barclays closures, and 103 of them have been hit by the announcement of the intended closure of the Loftus NatWest. In no case was the company informed of the closure proposals by any of the banks concerned, and the same is true for other employers: the 30-odd firms based on the Skelton trading estate, the large Skinningrove steel plant of Corus plc, the nearby Skinningrove fabrication works of the multinational Caterpillar company, and the other varied employers ranging from the local bus depot to the East Cleveland national health service hospital facility.

The local authority first knew of the proposals in the same way as most of the residents—through the local paper. No consultation was built into the proposals. Many small shopkeepers are furious. In Brotton I was told that there were many small shops where the loss of cashing-in and change facilities could cause closures. That is because many of those shops are run by a husband or wife, leaving the other partner to take a job elsewhere. The closures mean that they may have to close shutters and drive the three miles to Saltburn and back just to exchange and bank some change.

Local employees are furious. Many of them have relied on a quick trip into the nearest village on a Friday to draw out some spending money, whereas now they have to trek to a distant town after work to get their cash from the nearest hole in the wall that may be working. For those without access to a car—some 30 per cent. of households on some of our local estates do not have such access—the outlook is bleak. From Brotton, the nearest branch of any bank is in Saltburn. It may be only three miles, but there is only one bus an hour. If a constituent misses a connection back, it could take him up to two hours just to cash a cheque. He could get a more regular bus to the market town of Guisborough, but that is several miles away and the return bus fare is £2.70.

The banks' attitude towards local feelings was contemptuous. Local management at Barclays has decided to preserve silence on the subject, relying on national press releases, but NatWest is worse. When the local newspaper for Loftus, the East Cleveland edition of the Evening Gazette asked what alternatives there were for NatWest customers, its press spokesman said:

I think there is a small supermarket next door, and they do offer cashback facilities.

That is true, but what a disgraceful attitude to suggest blithely that someone has to get a minimum of £10-worth of shopping merely to get cash out of the till. People are expected to queue at a public checkout to get cash, but no mention is made of other functions such as paying in cheques, dealing with loans and investments or inquiring about services such as mortgages or ISAs.

We should be more able to affect the levels of private sector investment in areas suffering from isolation or relative deprivation. We all know that financial exclusion is not just a problem for the deprived in rural areas. I mentioned the difficulties that the closures will mean for small businesses in loss of turnover and increased difficulties in acquiring change, and there are associated security issues of having more money on their premises.

Many elderly and disabled people experience mobility problems: for them, cash machines, even where they are available, are simply not a suitable option. Closing small local banks can mean the premature loss of financial independence and social interaction, because many local banks act as the linchpin for small communities.

Respected campaigning organisations such as Help the Aged and Age Concern have joined other campaigning organisations in a campaign for community banking services, and they have been vocal in their concern and dismay at the recent spate of bank closures. The Council for the Protection of Rural England, Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000 and others are concerned that, with bankless communities losing the lifeblood of the high street, people will increasingly travel out of town to shop, creating added congestion that is to the detriment of the environment.

Let us consider the figures, bearing in mind the fact that unless we do something about the problem, things will only get worse. In the 10 years since January 1990, more than 4,000 banks have been closed in England, Wales and Scotland. Independent consultants predict that a further 4,000 are set to close in the next five years. That will leave more than 1,000 communities across the United Kingdom without banking facilities.

Tackling social exclusion is one of the biggest challenges facing us. Only last week, we saw the publication of the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, about which I have tabled an early-day motion. I hope that all Members will sign it. That was the theme of a speech made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and the message from Ministers is that social exclusion has been, and will remain, at the top of the Government's agenda.

In November last year, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury published the findings of the social exclusion unit's policy action team—PAT 14—which considered access to financial services. In her introduction to the report, she says:

The banks in particular have a major task ahead of them, extending services to low-income households and developing delivery channels accessible to people in deprived neighbourhoods.

She concluded:

The banks have to recognise the importance of the role they play, the extent to which we all rely on them and their responsibility to sustain equal and open access to those who wish to use them.

The whole point of the report was to identify ways in which the financial elements of social exclusion could be tackled.

In his recent review of efficiency, competition and innovation in the banking industry, Don Cruickshank singled out two main areas for criticism. The first was retail current account banking, which costs householders and small business users between £3 billion and £5 billion a year too much. That is the equivalent to £400 a year for every account holder. The second was the payments system—with indefensible delays, lack of transparency and high charges.

Earlier this week, the Treasury Committee took evidence from three of the big four banks—from the chief executives of HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Barclays. NatWest had to give a presentation in the City the following day, so its representative did not bother to turn up. That says a lot about NatWest. The chief executive of Lloyds TSB made a welcome concession, which obviously surprised his competitors. Mr. Ellwood promised to preserve Lloyds TSB branches where it was the last remaining bank in a remote community. That is a start.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office will reassure us that the Government treat the issue seriously and that he will do everything that he can to protect our constituents in rural communities.

10.25 am

Before the House adjourns for the Easter recess, there are several points that I wish to make. I shall try to do that quickly and the House will be pleased to learn that I have no complaints about the Palace theatre, Westcliff. It continues to remain open, and I have been invited to attend a performance of a Noel Coward play next Thursday. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) has suggested, perhaps one day I shall also be invited to perform.

I had toyed with the idea of going into detail about a very serious allegation that I have received about the abuse of cadets at Winchester barracks. However, I hope that, when I return to my office, I will discover that my efficient secretary has called the Ministry of Defence and that I will be able to reassure a number of people. I hope that I will not have to go into detail on that matter.

The first point that I wish to make is about the Lady McAdden breast unit centre in Southend, which is known as BUST. Sir Stephen McAdden was a distinguished Member of the House and represented the constituency of Southend, East. The townswomen's guild started a fund to build the centre in 1968 when 38p was deposited in an account. The centre was eventually opened in 1976 and Sir Stephen's widow, Lady McAdden, heads the unit.

I am sorry to say that, when I visited the unit on Monday, I found a rather unhappy situation. In short, there are great demands on the unit's facilities, but unfortunately it has encountered difficulties with Essex area health authority and the trust; I received a pleasant letter from the health authority this morning.

The unit is entirely maintained by public donations and £5 million has been raised so far; running costs are roughly £300,000 a year. A White Paper published a couple of years ago seems to be the source of disquiet at the unit, because it condemned the practice of palpation that is combined with mammographies at the unit. There has been a lack of proper consultation on that point.

All Members have attended breast awareness receptions in the House over the past few weeks and I pay tribute to all the organisations involved; I attended a local charity event in my constituency.

The Lady McAdden unit had been the only source of breast education and screening of women in my area before the breast screening programme was introduced in 1992 for ladies aged from 50 to 64. The unit deals with women of all ages and it had very good relations with the local hospital until 1997. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case; support for both medical and advisory services has been withdrawn. However, a report by the national health service quality assurance team in April 1999 recognised that the unit played an important part in health promotion of well women and it did not want its existence to be compromised.

When the Minister has time, will he have a word with the Department of Health? I am sure that heads need gently knocking together. The unit has been developed as a result of voluntary subscriptions, but many press reports about it have appeared, and BUST has not had the opportunity to respond to all the negative publicity. I very much hope that the true value of this wonderful organisation will be recognised. It has saved an enormous amount of money for the national health service. I have received many letters and petitions and I hope that the Minister will do his best with the Department.

My second point concerns private and residential nursing homes. In 1991, Southend, West was ranked 27th in terms of the proportion of the population receiving pensions, but I think that it is now much higher in the ranking than that. It is therefore little wonder that I occasionally have to shout at people because as my constituents grow older, they become a little hard of hearing.

I know at first hand the challenges that have to be met in Southend, West if we are to look after our senior citizens decently. Private nursing homes are being short-changed. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) touched on one or two of these issues. To save money, all such homes are being described as residential, even though they all have to provide nursing care. Some of the rules and regulations are barmy. Private home owners say that inspectors are telling them that the rooms are two inches too small, but the quality of care has little to do with chintzy curtains and other fixtures and fittings. This year, private nursing homes are getting a funding increase of 1.4 per cent., which is below inflation. Council-run homes, which have fees of £485.50 a week or £69 a day, are receiving an increase of £50 per week, whereas private homes, which are overwhelmingly in the majority, are receiving half that amount. Private home owners, who have underpinned the service for so long, deserve better treatment than they are receiving at the moment. When I visited Southend hospital on Monday, I found, sadly, that 74 beds were being blocked by men and women who would be better off in one of those nursing homes.

I turn now to crime. We all know that if we hold law and order meetings in our constituency, no criminals turn up, and we meet all the usual people who say how dreadful it all is. What is happening? In Essex there are cuts. I meet the chief constable and learn about all the new technology, targets and strategies, such as the community safety strategy; glossy magazines are produced, and the great and the good turn up to meetings. Some of those people are paid a great deal—I do not know who is running their organisation while they attend strategy meetings. They all talk about crime, but at the end of the day what is happening? In my view, not enough.

Over Christmas, I was summoned, in a nice way, by a local priest. I turned up, like Mother Teresa, because he was having a problem with local yobs and no one was available to deal with it. I thought that I would act like Joe public and use the council's emergency service. I got on the phone to the service and the person on the other end did not know who the hell I was or what a Member of Parliament was. I found out later that our emergency service is being run from Croydon, which is not particularly helpful. I do not know what the many senior citizens in my constituency would do in similar circumstances. The sad end to that story is that that priest has left the area as a result of intimidation.

Day in and day out, I find that the police are doing their best in difficult circumstances. How do we deal with graffiti? We seem to scrub the walls and receive publicity, and then the next person with a spray can comes along. Some people might think that this is a minor issue, but in fact it is very important. It lowers the tone of the neighbourhood when every wall has graffiti on it. Some councillors think that the solution is to have a wall dedicated to graffiti. How daft can anyone be? The idea that all the people spraying paint will gather at one wall and do nice designs is ridiculous. I hope that the Minister will have a word with the Home Secretary to find out whether he, as a former Essex man, has any bright ideas about how to deal with graffiti.

My next point concerns employment agencies. For many years, I was involved in recruitment. I used to think that employment agencies were the lowest of the low because, as a student, I used to register with them and find it jolly difficult to get a job. However, I ended up running my own employment agency and I have interviewed thousands of people, so I am now biased and think that such agencies do a good job in difficult circumstances.

Several constituents who run employment agencies have contacted me because they are concerned about the Government's proposals. If an agency supplies temporary members of staff to an organisation, there is a clause in their contract whereby they can join the organisation permanently, and the agency receives a part of their overall salary. There is also a clause that says that when the temp has left, the employer cannot engage that person after a certain period. For many agencies, that period is 12 weeks, and the Government are trying to reduce it to four weeks. Clever employers, who are practical operators, will find a way to get round that, and employment agencies will lose their money.

Jobcentres cannot manage all recruitment, and the private sector plays a valuable role. The Government are not being fair to small businesses and British entrepreneurs, so I hope that the Minister will have a word with a colleague in the relevant Department.

I turn now to proposed bus lanes on the A13. Southend suffers terrible traffic congestion. I do not have an easy answer to that, because one cannot simply knock down all the houses and widen the roads, but the council is absolutely potty to propose to run a bus lane all along the A13 in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor).

I criticise the council for failing to consult the majority of local traders. I am told that if the proposal goes ahead, it will have a considerable impact on them. Of the £2.3 million that has been earmarked for the scheme, a considerable amount—a quarter—has been spent analysing the proposal, which has caused tremendous upset among local traders. For example, Sancto, a company which has been in the town since 1910 and has been operated by four generations of the same family, was not consulted. That is not good enough when the Government are saying that we should have open government and more consultation. After all, the council is run by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Southend needs a bypass to the north. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions has cut the road-building programme, and I hope that the Minister will ask his colleagues to reconsider that. I hope that he and other hon. Members enjoy a happy Easter, but it will be a happier Easter for Southend, West if he can come up with a few answers for my constituents.

10.37 am

I declare an interest in the issue that I shall bring to the attention of the House. I chair the Cyprus Commonwealth parliamentary group in the House, and I want to raise the case of Loizidou v. Turkey. Mrs. Loizidou is a Greek Cypriot, and her home was in Kyrenia, which is now in the occupied area of northern Cyprus. As a result of the Turkish military invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Mrs. Loizidou was forced to leave her home and possessions.

The case involves two members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: Cyprus and Turkey. As hon. Members will know, the United Kingdom is also a member of that Parliamentary Assembly. I raise the issue this morning because Cyprus is a Commonwealth country, and the United Kingdom is one of the guarantor powers for the Republic of Cyprus.

The case goes back some years, and, while preliminary discussions about it were taking place, there was hope that the case would be resolved. It went before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in July 1998. Turkey and Cyprus had every opportunity to present their views on the case to the court, and they did so. The court found by 15 votes to two in favour of Mrs. Loizidou. The case came before the court under article 50 of the European convention on human rights, which clearly states:

Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions.

That is something that Mrs. Loizidou cannot do. Her property and possessions are in the occupied area of northern Cyprus, to which she is refused access by the Turkish military authorities. That action by Turkey violates article 1 of the first protocol of the convention.

Following the decision of the human rights court of which all Council of Europe states are members, there have been many attempts by the Council, by the Secretary General of the Council and by the Committee of Ministers, which represents the member states of the Council, to ensure Turkey's compliance with the judgment of the court. Regrettably, Turkey continues to refuse to recognise the court's decision.

As a member of the British delegation to the Council of Europe, I have put questions to whoever has been the Chairman-in-Office during the Council's sittings in Strasbourg. I tabled a question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as long ago as October 1998. I asked the then Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Ms Quin), to set out the actions of the Government with regard to the judgment. On 3 November she replied:

We are mindful of the obligation of all parties to the European Convention on Human Rights under Article 53 of the Convention to abide by European Court of Human Rights judgments. In the case of Mrs. Loizidou v. Turkey, and in line with Council of Europe procedure, the UK, along with other members of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, has invited Turkey to inform the Committee of the measures it proposes to take in consequence of the judgment.—[Official Report, 3 November 1998; Vol. 318, c. 541W.]

Despite that reply, there has still been a total refusal by Turkey to honour the judgment. Regrettably, no progress is being made.

At a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in January, the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Brian Cowen, made a statement of regret that the Committee of Ministers had made no progress towards the execution of the judgment in the Loizidou case. He said that it was the unanimous view of the committee that the compulsory jurisdiction of the court is an obligation that is accepted by all contracting parties, which obviously includes Turkey. He added that he had sent a letter to Turkish Foreign Minister Mr. Cem, emphasising the Committee's concern at Turkey's continued failure to meet its obligations.

Recently, I asked the Secretary General of the Council of Europe to express his view about the failure of Turkey to honour the court's decision. He said clearly that he deeply regretted the lack of response and commitment, and that it cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. So we have clear statements from the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

It is apparent to me and to many other parliamentarians that a decision has clearly been made by the European Court of Human Rights in favour of Mrs. Loizidou in a judgment supported by 15 votes to two. Yet we are still seeing a member state totally refusing to honour the judgment. This is at a time when on-going discussions are taking place, in which the Government are involved, about Turkey's possible future membership of the European Union. Is the deliberate flouting of a decision of the European Court of Human Rights acceptable behaviour by a future possible member of the EU? I believe that the Government have a clear duty. Is it acceptable that the case is allowed to drag on? Where do the Government stand on the judgment, and what action will we seek to take, along with our fellow member states of the Council of Europe, to see that Turkey honours the decision of the court, which many members of the Council and Governments believe should have been honoured long ago?

10.46 am

I shall bring three issues briefly to the attention of the House before we rise for the Easter recess. The first is prompted by a petition that I placed in the Bag last Friday in the name of one of my constituents, Mrs. Holly, whose daughter was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident in my constituency a few weeks ago. I shall not go into the details because charges have now been brought. However, we would do well to have greater awareness of speed limits and their enforcement.

Largely, my constituency benefits from a 40 mph limit. That is consequent on the nature of the New Forest. However, as I drive through the forest, I am constantly overtaken by cars racing past me. Even when I move from a 40 mph limit to one of 30 in a village, I find it difficult to remember to make that accommodation in my behaviour.

Despite the fact that I speak from the Opposition Benches, I am not critical of Government policy in this respect. I support the thrust of it. My words are of encouragement rather than criticism, but we need to make a greater effort to achieve a change of cultural awareness as regards speed. We have achieved that for drink driving, and, over 30 years, the public attitude to it has changed fundamentally. I should like to see the same change achieved in the public's approach to the enforcement and observance of speed limits.

I receive constant representations about pornography, particularly that which is hard core. I have taken a rather different view from some of my constituents. I have felt that hard-core pornography tends to be less corrosive than other forms because of the lengths to which a person who wishes to acquire it must go to get hold of it. I have always been rather more concerned about the general reduction in standards in the diet of soap operas that people experience. Even before the nine o'clock watershed, they offer a view of sexual behaviour, language and violence which I do not believe represents norms of behaviour. I have always regarded that as a more corrosive influence on society than hard-core pornography.

A few weeks ago, a constituent approached me—a parent—to complain about the nature of pornography that is available on the internet, and the ease with which it could be accessed by adults and, more particularly, by children. In an idle moment, I accessed the internet in my office. Within a few seconds, I was able, without any ingenuity, without using any passwords and without overcoming any security arrangement, to access a number of pornographic sites. Most of the material was little more titillating than making a phone call from a telephone booth in most parts of London.

How does my hon. Friend know?

My hon. Friend does well to ask me that question. I have made several telephone calls from London telephone booths, where one inevitably sees such advertisements.

However, I was able to access some extremely disturbing and profoundly corrupting material, and I think it extraordinary that it is so easily accessible. I began myself to feel the powerful nature of that corruption: I could within moments have established my ability to access such material and then moved on, but I found myself lingering over it, with a sense of fascination. I reckon that I was saved by the Division Bell, which called me to my senses and forced me to leave. I felt profoundly the meaning of the words of St. Paul:

your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

I wonder whether Ministers are alive to the potential for corporate evil that lies within those forces rampant on the internet. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to assure me that Home Office Ministers are indeed wrestling with the question of whether it is desirable—and, indeed, technically feasible—to restrict the ease of access by vulnerable people to such material.

My third and final point is one that has been raised in early-day motions this Session, in questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland and in questions that I have put to the Leader of the House of Commons. It relates to the desire initially expressed by Members of the Scottish Parliament to reopen the Act of Settlement. At first, the Secretary of State for Scotland gave only a dusty answer to those representations; however, the Government's attitude then appeared to change, and a suggestion was made that the issue might be included in the next Labour party manifesto.

I doubt the need to address the issue. I am not persuaded of the disadvantages that Roman Catholics might feel as a consequence of the Act of Settlement. Sectarianism on the mainland has been in steady decline for many years. After all, it is not long since numbers on the Conservative Benches were augmented by Members representing more than half the seats in Liverpool and Glasgow, elected entirely on the basis of the sectarian vote. Those times have gone, perhaps to the detriment of the Conservative party, but certainly to the benefit of society as a whole.

I speak as man who married a Roman Catholic, who has moved within the Roman Catholic community and who has worshipped in Roman Catholic churches. Never has any Roman Catholic told me that they feel disadvantaged by the settlement that we enjoy—with one exception: this morning, in the Members' bathroom, the Government pairing Whip made such a complaint to me. That extraordinary incident was the first time that I had ever received such a representation.

The historical justification for the settlement we enjoy lies in the English experience of political Catholicism before the glorious revolution. We must examine those issues in their historical context; I do not favour revisionism, whereby we judge the actions of our forefathers by the politically correct standards of the modern age. I accept that the Protestant succession would be difficult to defend in a modern setting, but I believe that those who advocate the reopening of the Act of Settlement have focused on the wrong target.

It is, in fact, the Bill of Rights of 1688 which establishes that the monarch can neither be a Roman Catholic, nor married to a Roman Catholic; and the Coronation Oaths Act of the same year requires the monarch to make a promise—take an oath—to uphold the Protestant religion by law established. Both those Acts were ratified by the Crown in Parliament Act of 1689. Only in 1701, as a consequence of settling the succession, after William and Mary died childless, on Anne, rather than on her Catholic half-brother, were those provisions reinforced and restated in the Act of Settlement, and again in the Act of Union of 1706. The consequence of those Acts is that the monarch cannot be a Roman Catholic or married to one.

The issue of the monarch's wife is rather more problematical: the legislation merely requires that she not be a Roman Catholic; it does not preclude her being anything else. However, the Coronation Oaths Act requires a promise to be made by both the monarch and his queen to uphold the Protestant succession and the Protestant faith. In addition, since the coronation of Edgar in 987, an act of communion according to the rites of the Church is required as part of the coronation. I suspect that it would be difficult for an adherent of another religion to take such an act of communion. Therefore, the position of the monarch's wife is circumcised—[Interruption.]—circumscribed to a certain extent.

Reopening those issues would present Parliament with a huge practical difficulty. We are struggling with 28 Government Bills in this Session alone. Consider the consequences of reopening all the constitutional measures that I listed—all of which would have to be taken on the Floor of the House—along with other measures, including the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the bishoprics legislation and the Statute of Westminster 1931, and having to deal with consequent negotiations with other Commonwealth Parliaments. An enormous unravelling of our constitutional arrangements would be required.

I remind the Parliamentary Secretary and the Leader of the House of the words uttered by Cardinal Wolsey when this country embarked on the process of creating an intimate connection between Church and state. On hearing that there was to be a reformation, he said that he wished that many things were to be reformed, but warned that others would come after and reform on that reformation, and that the results of so proceeding would be that there was nothing left. I suspect that that is the agenda of some of the advocates of reform.

In principle, I do not want the issue to be reopened for two reasons. First, the papal bull of 1570 that called on adherents of the Catholic faith to depose their Protestant monarch remains extant. It would be quite improper to reopen our constitutional settlement while it remains. Secondly, as the Prime Minister discovered to his cost, the Roman Catholic faith maintains an exclusiveness about the sacrament of the altar that I do not believe is appropriate in an age of openness and inclusiveness.

The argument has now moved one stage further, with the publication of the report commissioned by the Home Secretary, "Religious Discrimination in England and Wales" by Professor Paul Weller. The interim conclusions, on page 84, state:

The religious composition of society has changed significantly since the last Coronation and the next Coronation will therefore highlight a series of very important issues and complexities, which it would be best to begin giving consideration to as soon as possible.

I urge Ministers not to give consideration to those issues, for three reasons. First, the demand for such consideration is greatly exaggerated; there is no appetite for such reform. Secondly, adherents of minority religions—not least the Chief Rabbi—have themselves expressed satisfaction with the existing settlement. Thirdly, a society that is prepared constantly to reopen and unravel fundamental values will end up with no such values at all.

The link between the Church and state expressed in the coronation service is much more fundamental and more profound than that link as expressed in the statutes to which I have referred.

The model of monarchy in the coronation service is that of an Old Testament rather than a New Testament monarchy.

It being Eleven o'clock, MADAM SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sittings).

Business Of The House

11 am

With permission, Madam Speaker, I shall make a statement on the business of the House. The business for the week after the Easter recess will be as follows:

TUESDAY 2 MAY—Progress on consideration in Committee of the Finance Bill.

WEDNESDAY 3 MAY—Conclusion of consideration in Committee of the Finance Bill.

THURSDAY 4 MAY—Debate on defence in the world on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.

FRIDAY 5 MAY—Private Members' Bills.

The provisional business for the following week will be as follows:

MONDAY 8 MAY—Remaining stages of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill.

TUESDAY 9 MAY—Progress on remaining stages of the Transport Bill.

WEDNESDAY 10 MAY—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Transport Bill.

THURSDAY 11 MAY—Debate on the common agricultural policy on a Government motion. Details will be given in the Official Report.

FRIDAY 12 MAY—Private Members' Bills.

[Thursday 11 May:

The European Scrutiny Committee Thirteenth Report (1999/2000 Session) of 5 April 2000 concerning Explanatory Memorandum 6629/00 Parts I and II of 21 March 2000; Council Document 6629/00 of 2 March 2000; and Explanatory Memorandum 6629/00 Parts I and II of 21 March 2000.

The European Scrutiny Committee Twenty-Seventh Report (1998/1999 Session) of 21 July 1999 concerning explanatory Memorandum 9311/99 of 12 July 1999; Council Document 9311/99 of 16 June 1999; and Explanatory Memorandum 9311/99 of 12 July 1999.]

I thank the right hon. Lady for outlining the business for the two weeks after we return. I hope that, if the pattern of this morning's sitting is repeated in future, the business statement will be made at 9.30 am before the Adjournment debate begins or at 12.30 pm when it finishes. It is unfortunate to have to interrupt them.

The right hon. Lady will know about the enormous anxiety in the House and throughout the country about the unfolding tragedy in Zimbabwe. Although it is unlikely that there will be cause to recall the House next week. will she try to ensure that the Foreign Secretary makes a statement to the House to explain the current position when we reassemble on 2 May? Events in Zimbabwe underline the need for the House to have a proper debate on foreign affairs in the near future. It is some time since we held a wide-ranging debate on foreign affairs.

We have asked for a statement on the inter-governmental conference White Paper, and we still do not know when we shall have that.

Will the right hon. Lady tell us when the Second Reading of the Northern Ireland police Bill is likely to take place? She knows that there is considerable interest in the subject in all parties.

Although the right hon. Lady responded positively to requests for a debate on long-term care, we have not yet had an opportunity to discover the Government's conclusions on that important subject. It has been raised this morning in the Adjournment debate as the Parliamentary Secretary knows. We should be grateful for a statement in the near future.

The right hon. Lady has admitted several times that, with the reversion of the Budget to the old date, the pattern for economic debates is not satisfactory. When is she likely to present proposals for regularly spaced debates on the economy and public expenditure?

Is the right hon. Lady any nearer being able to propose a proper pattern of sittings for the whole year? I ask that not because of my concern about the precise dates of recesses but because the staff the House are anxious to know them. She might know that the Doorkeepers open golf tournament takes place on 2 August. I have been approached this morning and asked whether that will have to be cancelled. Perhaps we could be given some idea about the pattern for the rest of this year.

I wish the right hon. Lady a happy Easter.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) and return his good wishes for Easter to him and the House.

I take the hon. Gentleman's point about making the business statement at the beginning or the end of proceedings under today's circumstances. We thought that sticking to our usual slot, even on a Friday pattern sitting, would be for the convenience of the House. However, I note his remarks.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe. It causes great anxiety in all parties. I shall draw his remarks to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who will do his utmost to keep the House informed. The hon. Gentleman specifically asked whether we could make a statement on 2 May. The Commonwealth ministerial action group is meeting on 2 and 3 May—I fear that I cannot recall the location—and the Foreign Secretary will attend it. His attendance might be incompatible with making a statement to the House. However, I am sure that the Foreign Secretary wants to keep the House informed.

I cannot provide dates for the intergovernmental conference White Paper debate, Second Reading of the Northern Ireland police Bill or a debate on the Government's conclusions on long-term care. On the latter, I shall draw the remarks of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me that as yet we have no settled pattern for economic debates. We shall reconsider that. On more certainty about when the House is likely to sit during the year, I am pleased to hear an Opposition Member expressing anxiety about the impact of our decisions on the staff of the House. That is sometimes overlooked. I take his point about unpredictability. That is one of the reasons for the Modernisation Committee's recommendation, following the Jopling committee recommendation, of greater use of motions for programming the discussion of our debates. Such motions are likely to promote better discussion of issues in Government proposals that hon. Members in all parties identify as important and also because the lack of such agreements contributes to the unpredictability and uncertainty to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

I omitted to provide some information. Last week, I said that there would be a debate on a Select Committee report in Westminster Hall on 11 May. We now know that it will be the second report this Session of the Select Committee on Science and Technology on engineering and physical sciences-based innovation.

When I hear Opposition spokesmen refer to patterns of sittings, I start to worry. It is as if the Opposition are trying to fix the business.

They will be asking for guillotines next.

The unpredictability and uncertainty in the House strengthens it and makes the institution what it is.

Is there any news on our annual debate on the Intelligence and Security Committee report?

I am afraid that I cannot provide a date for that debate, but I bear in mind the pressure to hold it. Of course, I take my hon. Friend's point about the anxiety that he and other long-serving Members feel when the Opposition seek a more predictable pattern of debates that they are trying to create difficulties in the Government's handling of business. However, there is merit in reaching common-sense agreements so that important issues can be aired and the House has an opportunity to scrutinise them. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) say sotto voce that the Opposition will be calling for guillotines next. He will remember that the Leader of the Opposition did that not long ago.

While we all welcome the fact that the Government try to give notice of business several weeks in advance, what is the rationale for changing the business for Thursday 4 May, which is an important date for many hon. Members? The change has caused some confusion. A debate was supposed to be held on the Wakeham report on the reform of the House of Lords. Many hon. Members intended to give up the chance to meet their electorate to be present at that debate. However, the business has been changed to a debate on defence. That means that those who had to be in their constituencies have to change their arrangements. Many hon. Members, including members of the Select Committee on Defence, will find it difficult to be present on that day. Why has that change been made?

We endorse the views of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) on Zimbabwe. As the Leader of the House pointed out, our return will coincide with a meeting of the Commonwealth leaders. I hope that there will be an early report to the House about what action the Commonwealth can take, hopefully under British leadership, to deal with the deteriorating situation.

I endorse the views of not only the hon. Member for South Staffordshire but many other hon. Members about the need for a Government statement as soon as possible on long-term care for the elderly. Many hon. Members have expressed that view over several weeks.

Finally, I endorse the view that we should wish each other a happy Easter.

I of course understand that, whenever we change the provisional business that has been announced, there are always as many complaints as there are congratulations. I understand that doing so can create difficulties for Members, and of course understand the point about the Defence Committee.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that several defence debates are scheduled. We strive to accommodate the concerns of the Defence Committee, which include, for example, providing timely debates following completion of its reports and so on. However, there are occasions on which, unfortunately, we cannot accommodate all its requests.

I of course take the hon. Gentleman's point about the debate scheduled for 4 May. I am not entirely sure—this is not a criticism—that he was with us for lasts week's business statement. If he was, he will recall that the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), the Opposition spokesman, specifically asked us not to stage the House of Lords reform debate on 4 May—indeed, a number of Members expressed that view—because, although all the issues that we debate are of importance, and we would not find time for them on the Floor of the House if they were not, there is a feeling that the debate is a matter of considerable constitutional import and many Members, who otherwise might be engaged on local election day, wish to take part in it.

I note, too, the hon. Gentleman's remarks about Members having been prepared to give up the chance to meet their electorate. I am sure that they are now even more happy that they will not need to make that sacrifice. I also take on board his remarks about both Zimbabwe and long-term care.

Will my right hon. Friend take on board the widespread interest in the Government's new policy planning guidance note 6, which will help protect the green belt? However, does she recognise the concern that we are still hamstrung by the structure and other plans that, in some cases, were made many years ago? Will she try to schedule a debate on those issues in the reasonably near future, perhaps combining consideration of the Government's forthcoming White Papers on urban and rural planning, and response to the Rogers report?

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, especially as he ties in other documents with his proposal for an examination of such issues. I fear that I cannot undertake to find time in the near future for such a debate on the Floor. He might find a debate in Westminster Hall a more fruitful opportunity. However, I certainly take on board his point about several issues coming together.

I appreciate the pressure on the House's business, but join those who are calling for a major debate on foreign affairs. Although I also appreciate concerns about Zimbabwe, there is an even greater tragedy in Ethiopia. May we have an opportunity to see how we as a people are pressing the world to help that situation?

I also join those who are expressing season's greetings. I hope that we might all enter into the wonder and mystery of Good Friday and the thrilling joy of Easter day.

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I know is the whole House. I certainly take on board his point about the number of foreign affairs issues that are arising. I shall endeavour to raise that matter with the Foreign Secretary.

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be aware of the ease of travelling on our roads during the Easter school holidays. In the light of such ease when parents are not driving their children to school, will she find time for a debate on home-to-school transport provision?

Again, I recommend Westminster Hall. I entirely take my hon. Friend's point about the contrast. I saw an interesting description the other day of something that is called a walking bus, which gathers school children to take them to school. That is thought to be conducive to safety and to easing parents' fears. I know that some experiments are being undertaken, but I fear that it is unlikely that I shall find time in the near future for such a debate on the Floor of the House.

I, too, wish the right hon. Lady and her husband a happy Easter, although I feel sure that they will both sorely miss the company of right hon. and hon. Members.

When will we have the delayed but important annual debate on small businesses—a matter of great concern to them, as they constitute 99.6 per cent. of all British enterprises, employ approximately half of the private sector work force and contribute two fifths of our national output?

May we have as early as possible a further statement on progress in the proposed appointment of the chairman of the Appointments Commission, on which the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office had a few words to say on Tuesday afternoon? I hope that nominations have not yet closed, though the appointment is to be made very soon. Does the Leader of the House agree that, in view of the importance of that person being characterised by experience, impartiality and a spirit of public service, one outstanding candidate for the post would be my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)? I hope that she will undertake vigorously to lobby on his behalf.

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. I am sorry and surprised that, uncharacteristically, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) is not present.

It is his day off.

Perhaps he is having a day off, which makes a change.

There is a slight inconsistency in the comments of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) about the Appointments Commission. On one hand, he hopes that nominations are not closed, but on the other, that there is an early announcement. Those statements seem not to be mutually compatible. However, I anticipate that an announcement will be made very soon.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for entering the caveat that a debate on small businesses is not an assured annual event, although the Government endeavour to find a regular, suitable opportunity for one. I say that only because, as he will know, one does not have to be in this Chamber for very long, listening to Members calling for annual debates on a variety of burning issues, to realise that we would never do anything if we agreed to all such requests.

It is difficult to tear oneself away from this place. We shall definitely miss right hon. and hon. Members, but we shall just have to steel ourselves.

Adjournment (Easter)

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

11.17 am

I shall attempt to draw my remarks to a close as I see that other hon. Members wish to speak.

The view of the secular state of the New Testament is very much one of grudging tolerance—render to Caesar that which is Caesar's. The view that we have expressed in our coronation service is much more intimate: of priest and king intimately connected by the anointing of oil and the consecration of the monarch. The monarch reigns not only by the grace of God, but with the blessing of God and is defender of the faith. I suggest that such an image is not open to amendment as Professor Weller would have us believe.

I say in passing that the communion service has been an integral part of the coronation service from the outset. The only monarch who avoided it was James II, and we all know what became of him. I argue that any attempt to include, as Professor Weller appears to require, the active participation in the act of acclamation by other faiths would undermine the fundamental of the principal faith—the first commandment.

There is an entirely proper argument to be had about an entirely secular state that is devoid of religious trappings, but we should not go down the road of unravelling our religious settlement by accident or by trying to change its nature, thereby ending up with a coronation service not dissimilar to the political correctness that characterised the opening of the millennium dome.

11.19 am

It is with some pleasure that I follow the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). At first I thought that he was wise to move from debating the internet to constitutional history, but his circumlocution began to make that subject an even bigger risk than the first. I intend to be very much safer and, as would be expected of most hon. Members, say a few unkind words about Barclays bank. The matter has been well covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar)—I do not propose to go over the same ground again—and parallel points were made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath).

There is a natural interrelationship between banks and post offices in rural areas. Barclays is currently running an advertising campaign using fairly expensive actors, and I understand that its slogan is, "A big bank for a big world". One fears that that may become, "Only one bank for the whole world". Barclays has been singled out as the major culprit, but it is only third in the league table of infamy, as the NatWest bank and Lloyds TSB have closed more branches.

Barclays has suffered from a lack of good public relations, but, most of all, the banks have all suffered from a lack of any form of community spirit. That problem is endemic to modern society and businesses have changed character rapidly. Many, however large, were family run, or run by an employer who lived in the community, close to or alongside his work force. He was bonded to that community through direct terms of employment, knowing his work force socially and performing acts of benevolence for that community. All that has been swept away over a short period.

The connection between the business community and the local community has gone. We see that on a vast scale with Rover, whose owners are dismissing a country just as Barclays is dismissing villages. Governments of a democratic persuasion throughout the world sometimes need to put their nationalist tendencies aside, and we may have a lot more in common with the Governments of France, Germany and Italy than with large corporations that flit from one country to another, to the disadvantage of the inhabitants of all of them.

I want to raise another subject that has been visited often and would do so with an even greater tremor were my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) still present. I must declare an interest as a solicitor before I discuss magistrates courts. Like all hon. Members, I fear that there will be further waves of closures. The county of Essex suffered that fate in early 1998 and, as each month goes by, other counties end up in the same position.

The appeal ratio is interesting, and the fees of a lawyer appealing on behalf of magistrates courts would not be large, as the success rate is remarkably small. There were only two successful appeals under the Conservative Administration, and I suppose that the Government would say that they are twice as good because over the past three years there have been four successes in 48 cases.

Again, the problem is the divorce between democracy and the functions of government. Formerly, the magistrates courts were administered by a committee of the county council, whose members are subject to the wonderful invention—if one might put it that way—of having to be elected. That stimulates the mind, as one has to listen to what the people in one's community have to say. That, of course, does not apply to chief executives of health authorities or to members of health trusts or magistrates courts committees. They do not have to be elected and can act as they will until discharged, when they receive a large settlement.

We are missing the whole point about magistrates courts and their place in the community. I have in my hand a document, issued by the Central Council of Magistrates Courts Committees, that is tragically early 21st century. The words "central council" have an almost Stalinist ring about them and represent the incredible mixture of communism and capitalism that we have these days, which is called corporate finance. The document is entitled "Good Practice Guide on Courthouse Closure", but the very idea of using a good practice guide to close something down is beyond me.

Decisions are made according to "criteria", which is one of the words that I never want to hear again. Criteria are a straitjacket—a device for coming to the conclusion that the decider had reached in the first instance. The arguments for closing magistrates courts, which have been well rehearsed by hon. Members, are that there is concern about facilities and that the disabled sometimes cannot climb the steps to the courthouse. Magistrates courts solve that problem by making the disabled travel 20 miles to court rather than using the nearest courthouse. Another argument is that witnesses and defendants need to be separated, but the point was well made in a recent debate that they would travel home on the same bus to that far-distant village after the case.

When one judges whether institutions should remain open, one must try to sense the spirit of what one is trying to do. Magistrates courts administer justice with the benefit of local knowledge, in the spirit of the communities in which they are set. That is best achieved when magistrates come from a defined and relatively small area, sit in a courthouse in that area and judge people and situations of which they have long and extensive knowledge. None the less, the pace of contraction in the county of Essex, as elsewhere, has been rapid.

I used to appear regularly in a small two-room courthouse in Southminster on the Dengie marshes, where the interviews took place in the car park. The spirit there was as it should be. The magistrates knew everything about the locality, and probably everything about the defendants as well, especially when they faced the antique Essex charge of going in search of coneys—I suppose that we would call it rabbit poaching—for which people were prosecuted on the Dengie marshes until the early 1980s. That courthouse has closed. Local people who have to attend court now get a train from Southminster to Wickford and change for Shenfield, where they change again and catch a train to Witham in my constituency. I suspect that that court, too, may be scheduled for closure.

When King Solomon made his judgment he did not pick up a book entitled, "The Best Practice Guide to Dividing Babies"; nor did he make his decision according to the appropriate criteria. He had a sense of justice and what was right. The sooner we move away from good practice, supposed quality assurance, transparencies and all the other gobbledegook of managerial tyranny, the better. We may then be able to retrieve the sense of justice in our local communities.

11.29 am

Today, we have a good opportunity to consider some important constituency matters before the Easter Adjournment. When I tell people that I represent Shipley, near Bradford in West Yorkshire, the image of the semi-rural part of my constituency—the leafy suburbs—often comes to mind. However, east Shipley, which is a disadvantaged corner of my area, is less well off than many areas of Bradford and many important issues need to be tackled. East Shipley contains the neighbourhoods of Windhill, Bolton Woods, Wrose, Owlet, central Shipley and parts of Saltaire. There are areas of high unemployment and difficulties caused by poor housing. We need to examine ways in which we can begin to share the prosperity and economic growth that is now emerging in all parts of our community. I am keen to see Shipley East share in that growing prosperity.

Much has been done by the Government to help Shipley East, including the national minimum wage, the new deal for the unemployed, the working families tax credit and the increases in child benefit. That money will bring greatest benefit to many of its residents, and I am pleased to see that the changes are beginning to have a significant effect. Unemployment there is dropping, although not as much as I should like. In particular, youth unemployment has fallen markedly, as has long-term unemployment, as experienced by those who have been unemployed for more than a year.

We have a high pensioner population in Shipley East, and I am pleased that the Government have been able to make a start in targeting those who are less well off, through the minimum income guarantee, the free television licence for the over-75s, which will be introduced shortly, and the £150 winter allowance. However, there is more to do.

We have done a lot. When I was a member of Bradford council, before I became a Member of Parliament, we managed to introduce several significant regeneration schemes in Shipley East. We retained its objective 2 area status, and obtained matched funds from the European Union to set against local public funds. We managed to lever £1 million out of objective 2 status, which was matched with another £1 million, and that money has brought significant benefits. For example, we have a scheme to increase information and communication technology learning—Shipley Communities Online. We have child care facility schemes, such as the Jumping Jacks scheme at Bolton Woods. Several other projects have started, thanks to other Government initiatives, such as the health action zone. We are working on developing a healthy living centre in Shipley East.

Several small but important ideas have helped to rebuild confidence and economic prosperity in the Shipley East community. They all add up to a comprehensive plan for regeneration and include small projects such as tree planting and road resurfacing. For example, Festival avenue is having a new road constructed, and £85,000 has been spent on bus shelters and new litter bins. Small things like that make a difference in improving the infrastructure of a less well-off community.

Through careful planning, we have also managed to secure a retail development at Low Well and significant industrial and job creation opportunities at Fox Corner in Shipley. I have worked hard, together with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, to try to get world heritage status for Saltaire, part of which is in Shipley East, and we are making good progress.

Some major issues have been controversial locally and have required sensitive consideration. One example is school reorganisation. East Shipley, like the rest of Bradford, has had a three-tier system for many years, with first, middle and upper schools, but we are now moving to the primary and secondary model prevalent across the country. That has been a difficult process with several schools having to close. However, from such ends come new beginnings and, although we were unsuccessful in persuading the council to site a new secondary school at the location of Wood End middle school, we have managed to obtain important new investment in Salt grammar school, the Frizinghall challenge school and Immanuel college. Many new classrooms, teaching facilities, sports facilities and other important education provisions will bring great benefits to the children of Shipley East.

Most important in many ways has been the focus on housing and tackling the poor quality of social and council housing in Shipley East. I am pleased that the council has been able to secure £1 million of new investment this year to refurbish many estates and improve, repair and re-roof many properties that were in a dilapidated state. For example, the old flats on Gaisby lane have been demolished and new houses are being built as I speak. That is a tangible example of the delivery of a regenerated community in a poorer area.

Some successful local community organisations have made good progress, such as Windhill community centre, with its Windhill futures project. Kath Quinn and others are doing a great job in developing plans for the future. At Wrose community centre, Bob Lee and others are working hard to bring the neighbourhood together, and at Bolton Woods community centre, Tony Miller, who is also a local councillor for Shipley East, is working hard on several projects, including the information technology learning scheme that I mentioned earlier. I pay tribute to the local councillors for Shipley East, Mark Blackburn, Phil Thornton and Tony Miller, who do a lot of good work, sometimes unsung.

Much has been done in Shipley East, but there is much more to do. I must emphasise the need for housing regeneration. One corner of Windhill—Wood End crescent—is particularly deprived. It has a very dilapidated estate of three and four-storey blocks of flats that are derelict and crumbling. They are half-empty because nobody wants to live there. I fear that they may be beyond saving and we will need to consider rehousing the few remaining residents. We should also consider flattening those properties and building new social housing on Wood End crescent estate. I have spoken to the council's chair of housing, Jim O'Neill, and the city housing officer, Geraldine Howley. They toured the estate with me, and we have a plan to make progress by June towards funding new housing on that site.

We have delivered a lot in Shipley East, but there is more to do. As a Labour party, under a Labour Government, we will get there.

11.39 am

I was not here at 9.30 am and I did not think that I would be recognised, so I have not written anything down. It is no use sending me little envelopes, because I will not know exactly what I have ended up saying. I am a member of the Council of Europe and in January we had a debate about Chechnya. Many right hon. and hon. Members from this House and colleagues from the other place contributed to that excellent debate. We made several proposals to which we believed the Government of Russia should adhere and said that we would revisit the issue in April to see whether any progress had been made. However, not much progress was made, and there have been enormous human rights violations in Chechnya. These matters have been discussed by the Prime Minister and the new president of Russia, Mr. Putin.

In the context of the Council of Europe, there are other nations with poor human rights records. I wish to refer to Turkey, a nation with phenomenal human rights problems. It has other problems, such as the divided Cyprus on which there have been a large number of UN resolutions, none of which Turkey has adhered to. There is the Ilisu dam, into which we are potentially putting £200 million which will flood many of the historical areas of the Kurdish people. We have had the Loizidou case, which is now nearly 20 months old, on which Turkey is not listening to the European Court of Human Rights.

The main issue is the human rights violations by Turkey, its military and Government, against the Kurdish people. I have always been amazed that we have no Kurdish representatives on the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO or any of the international bodies, despite the fact that a large percentage of the population of Turkey is Kurdish. We must ask why there is no fair representation of the Kurdish people.

The PKK, depending on where one stands, is either a terrorist organisation or a group of freedom fighters. However, it has come up with new plans for peace, to which the Turkish Government have not reacted. I would argue that the PKK should no longer be seen as a terrorist organisation. We have been willing in other parts of the world to start discussions with organisations that may have been terrorist in the past. If we could start discussions with the PKK, it would be a good step for stability in that part of southern Europe and the middle east.

The PKK' s peace plans were sent to the Foreign Office, where officials said that the plans were wonderful, but that they could go no further because the PKK was a terrorist organisation. Perhaps the Foreign Office could examine those plans again and build bridges with the political wing of the PKK to help the peace process in Turkey for the Kurdish people.

11.44 am

First, I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) and for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), who have done us a service in highlighting the continuing concern about bank closures. I am committed to the idea of a community reinvestment Act, requiring banking and financial services providers to disclose their level of investment in areas of deprivation.

The social exclusion unit report, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East referred, highlighted the inadequacy of voluntary disclosure by banks. I am not convinced that that voluntary approach will work, but I await with interest a Bank of England report on the subject which is due shortly.

I want to concentrate on a specific local issue and highlight the need to expand intensive care and high-dependency unit facilities within my local NHS trust. These facilities are crucial at district general hospitals, and help to ensure safe clinical care and to improve the entire patient care process within hospitals. They help also to minimise treatment delays.

Northwick Park and St. Marks hospital—which sits just in the borough of Brent, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner)—serves my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty). In the run-up to the last general election, the previous Government closed the accident and emergency units at Mount Vernon hospital and Edgware general hospital—at a stroke closing two thirds of the accident and emergency provision that had served constituents in Harrow.

The decisions marked the end of Mount Vernon hospital's time as a district general hospital. That move continues to be resented deeply by my constituents—not least because it has led to recent decisions to shift the regional specialties in burns, plastics and oral-maxillofacial surgery off the Mount Vernon hospital site to Northwick Park hospital.

I wish to praise the considerable work and effort of the Pinner Association, the Hatch End Association and Community Voice who, between them, collected more than 80,000 signatures against the initial proposal to shift burns and plastics services to Chelsea and Westminster hospital, well out of the local area. Having that scale of support makes meetings with local health decision makers more productive. The news last year that we had finally secured the burns and plastics unit at Northwick Park hospital, with much better access for Harrow residents, has been welcomed—albeit reluctantly, because the move from Mount Vernon was required.

Northwick Park and St. Mark's hospital merged with Central Middlesex hospital in April last year to create the North-West London Hospitals NHS trust. As well as bringing in new management, the merger means that the trust is now the biggest provider of acute care in north-west London. I am delighted that the accident and emergency unit is benefiting from the Government's casualty modernisation scheme, with a £2.2 million refit due to be completed by autumn this year.

With the transfer of burns, plastics and oral-maxillofacial services from Mount Vernon, Northwick Park hospital is set to expand further. That will increase the pressures on intensive care and for proper high-dependency unit provision. Northwick Park hospital is the largest hospital in the trust. It currently has some six intensive treatment beds, and no high-dependency facilities at all. The existing facilities are not adequate to meet local demand and need urgent redevelopment and expansion.

The ITU facilities at Northwick Park are co-located with the theatre complex, with six ITU beds backing on to theatre recovery. There are options for fast-track and relatively inexpensive expansion of the existing area, which would meet the immediate needs of the local population. There is space to add two beds capable of use either as ITU or HDU beds, plus space for a further four HDU beds. That would be achieved through the conversion of areas at the heart of the current ITU department. At present, they are used for offices and laboratories, which could be relocated to the hospital's basement.

The overall fabric of the ITU facility at Northwick Park hospital is good, and recent refurbishment means that the proposed conversion could be completed quickly and at a relatively low capital cost. In addition, I am told that there has been a proposal to add four HDU beds to the medical assessment unit if funding is available. That would incur no capital building costs, although there would be some equipment and recurrent costs.

The other crucial ingredient in the successful expansion of intensive care and high dependency unit provision is the staffing needs of those facilities. The intensive care areas in the North West London Hospitals NHS trust are fully staffed, with both trained and untrained nurses. Recruitment and retention of nursing staff in intensive care has been problematic nationally, but the trust is especially proud of its record of attracting and retaining trained intensive care nursing staff. Each site consistently attracts a high level of interest when new jobs are advertised. No problems are anticipated in recruiting staff if additional beds can be opened.

One of the reasons for the success enjoyed by both hospitals in retaining staff is the flexible approach that they take to intensive-care nursing, together with their commitment to proper training and education. At Northwick Park hospital, key theatre recovery staff are intensive-care trained. Within that innovative model, the group of nurses works as part of a team with the ITU staff, and they led a pilot project on high dependency care last winter.

It is likely that there will be increased demand for intensive care services. The trust has a full staff complement on each of its two sites. It—and Northwick Park hospital in particular—is extremely well placed to open additional ITU and high-dependency unit beds to cope with that expected increase in demand.

The trust has assured me that it will continue to develop innovative staffing solutions, which may offer lessons for the wider national health service and contribute to the development of ITU and high-dependency services across the capital. At Northwick Park hospital, there is now an urgent need to expand the intensive treatment unit to meet that local demand, and to open high-dependency beds to improve the patient care process. Investment in that facility would offer a long-term benefit to the local health economy.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will encourage a swift and positive response from Ministers and officials in the Department of Health.

11.51 am

I am delighted to take part in this debate. I would have liked to talk about my idea for a new deal for pensioners, and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) could have persuaded me to explore the rural dimension, but perhaps he would enjoy reading the rural manifesto launched by Labour Members this week. However, both The Independent and Conservative Front-Bench Members decided to concentrate on what that manifesto did not contain rather than on what it did. That is unfortunately what happens to modern politicians, but we certainly did not say that we wanted to build excessive numbers of houses in the green belt, as they maintained.

I have two brief points to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister, and a third that I would like to cover in slightly more detail.

We have heard a lot recently about the future of British Nuclear Fuels plc, and the current proposals were aired last week. It is important to understand that Sellafield is not the whole of BNFL, and that BNFL is not the whole of the nuclear industry. There is an important plant at Berkeley in my constituency, where some of the brightest brains in the country work on the Magnox reactors. There is also great investment in ideas for the future, and it is about time that the House held a proper debate on nuclear energy.

The announcement on electricity supply made last Monday was very important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) will agree, but we cannot ignore the other elements in that supply. I hope that all the negative publicity associated with BNFL could be put in the context of how we want to progress. For all sorts of reasons, we need people to go into this important industry, either to clean it up or to explore future developments in power generation.

My second brief point concerns the sale of land by the British Railways Board, which affects the constituencies of many hon. Members. I have a particular interest in the matter, because there is a proposal for a land sale at the Stonehouse site on Bristol road in my constituency. With the help of the county council those opposed to the sale have managed to delay it until a proper investigation has been held.

I have written to the British Railways Board, the shadow Strategic Rail Authority and the rail companies about the matter. I have also raised the matter in questions to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. The process is rather byzantine, and I feel that there should be a presumption against sale where there is a potential to bring sites back into use, as is no doubt the case with the Stonehouse site. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take that message forward. It is all well and good to talk about the benefits of bringing money into the Treasury, but it is more important that we consider the potential for integrated use of not only rail transport but all public transport.

The main issue that I want to raise is of constituency interest but also some national interest. In many respects, home improvement agencies are a good news story for the Government. We have done an awful lot to extend work on improving homes through the home energy efficiency scheme and more recently—it is a pity that the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) is not in his place—with the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill. The Bill has been accepted by the Government and has reached Report stage and we hope that it will receive all-party support. The Bill is an important statement. As always, one could call for more detail and an even more advanced strategy to achieve what we all want, which is to help people who live in poverty and cannot heat their houses.

I declare an interest as a trustee of the Care and Repair agency in Stroud. The reason why I raise the issue at this time is that, although it is a good news story, some hon. Members—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has a constituency interest in it—were disappointed that, having set up bureaux in different areas, the Government did not re-award the contract to Care and Repair. The co-ordinating body was run by Care and Repair England. The body was originally set up by Shelter and other agencies that are active in the field such as Age Concern, Anchor Trust, and so on.

Care and Repair lost the contract to fulfil the national co-ordinating role in January this year. That was disappointing in a number of respects. The agency felt that it had done a perfectly good job. It had civil servants sitting on its board. All the reports that came back to it said that it was doing a good job. Last year, it received a grant of £423,000, which was money well spent. It has always argued that the grant did not cover the work that it did so it had to find other ways of funding its work. Having done the work, one would have thought that Care and Repair had a fair chance of having the contract awarded a second time.

I know that the Audit Commission was unhappy that the first contract was awarded to Care and Repair England, but it is the national co-ordinating body. It is the parent body of all the agencies and it works closely with other bodies such as Anchor Trust. The sad thing was that Care and Repair was not re-awarded the contract. I have been trying to get to the bottom of that. I have written a number of letters to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning. I know that he was ill when the contract was awarded to Collective Enterprises Ltd. I cast no aspersions on that organisation, but we are looking for a further extension of the number of bureaux, and Care and Repair England had that under way.

Care and Repair has a good reputation for advice and working with the different bureaux, yet it lost the contract supposedly because it put in too high a bid. That may or may not be the case, but the problem was that it was apparently given the wink by people close to the Ministry to go for a realistic bid in terms of what it costs properly to co-ordinate home improvement agencies. Yet as a result of putting in that bid, it did not get the contract. I hope that there is a case for taking forward the issue with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions because the matter has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the agencies.

If we have a good news story, we should know what is going on and how matters are handled. They are important. Care and Repair has done an awful lot of good work. I have spoken before about the value of the organisation, and justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.

11.59 am

An interesting thread has run through the debate; that does not always happen on these occasions. The subjects of health, food and rural life have predominated; almost all hon. Members made some reference to them.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Ms Jones) referred to the Health and Safety Executive. The hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) told us about the threat to the Royal hospital Haslar. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) spoke about chronic bronchitis among former miners. I very much endorse his point about the need to keep such issues out of the hands of lawyers—with all due respect to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), who subsequently confessed his membership of that profession. I am only too aware that sufferers from organophosphate poisoning have experienced similar difficulties with compensation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) referred to concerns in rural areas—to which I shall return in a moment—that are echoed throughout the country. The hon. Members for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) and for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) talked about banks that were pulling out of their responsibilities to rural areas.

I thought that the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) would not fit into my pattern, but he did because he was concerned about breast-screening services. That matter is most important to several hon. Members.

Similarly, I thought that the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) might disappear into another subject. However, when he engaged with the effect of internet pornography, from which he was saved by the Division Bell—I always wondered about the origin of that expression—it became clear that such practices could have an unsettling effect on the mental balance of those who indulge in them. That too is a health issue.

I endorse every word said by the hon. Member for Braintree on the fact that magistrates courts committees throughout the country—including my area of Devon and Cornwall—seem to be out of touch with real life. I was delighted to hear a solicitor making those points. I hope that, as a result of the hon. Gentleman's advocacy, the Lord Chancellor will take the Book of Solomon home for the Easter recess rather than the criteria of the central council.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) made an important connection between healthy living and poverty and housing. I was pleased to hear that there is a healthy living centre in his area. I wish that they existed in all our areas.

The hon. Member for Harrow, West spoke about intensive care. That is a growing problem, not only in central London but throughout the country.

I have great difficulty in dissenting from anything said by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). I wish he would be more controversial. He always picks on Liberal Democrat policies and endorses them. However, I strongly agree with him on the connection between warm homes and health; it is extremely important and I am glad that, together, we are making some progress on that matter.

I want to add to the themes of nutrition and health—issues to which we do not pay sufficient attention. There are three related issues. The first is the continuing threat to smaller, specialist, top-quality food producers, processors and retailers.

The second is the organic sector, about which I have a special concern. Consumer demand is increasing rapidly, but three quarters of the organic produce on supermarket shelves has to be imported—what a crazy situation.

Thirdly, there is the dairy sector, which includes many small family farms. They have been hit disproportionately hard by BSE, by the structural changes in milk marketing in recent years and by the uncompetitive level of the pound. Weekly—even daily—my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and I share the experience of talking to dairy farmers who are in a desperately difficult situation.

That was why I was pleased to read the report, published on 24 January, of the Select Committee on Agriculture on the marketing of milk. A few days ago, the Government published their reply to that Committee, from which, sadly, it is evident to every Member who represents an agricultural area that the Select Committee is far closer than the Government to the real life—the grass roots—of the dairy sector. The Government are substantially out of touch.

This sector, and those who process and retail its products, are hit by too many regulations. They encounter a lack of flexibility, of discretion and of common sense in those who are given responsibility for implementing those regulations.

Just as the specialist cheesemakers are particularly badly hit by that situation, so are the low throughput abattoirs. In that area, our continental competitors have a considerable edge over us, because they recognise the need to differentiate according to size between the different organisations involved in the food process, and they, with their artisan or craftsman status and with derogation, manage to ensure that the smaller producer or processor is given a quite different set of regulations. In Britain, that simply is not the case. We must persuade our Ministers, from all parts of the United Kingdom, to follow the example of the continent.

I have already mentioned a related issue—that of organic supply. At the National Farmers Union annual general meeting in February, the Prime Minister, in his speech, made the following absolutely explicit statement:

Our plans envisage a trebling of the area under organic farming by 2006.

That means an increase from the current figure of 3 per cent. to 9 per cent. in that period. In my private Member's Bill, the Organic Food and Farming Targets Bill, we are looking slightly further ahead—to 2010. Many Members on both sides of the House, senior Members and those who have great expertise in that subject area, have backed the Bill. I am now looking to see not only whether the Government will live up to the Prime Minister's aspiration, promise, pledge or whatever it may be, but whether they will endorse my Bill. The content of a number of answers that I have received to parliamentary questions that I tabled in recent weeks do not give me much confidence that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has endorsed the Prime Minister's target, let alone my own.

Next, I return to the dairy sector. The Committee report is a very thorough document, as one would expect from one of the most important Select Committees of the House. It refers even to the detailed issues that were raised by the so-called Duckett's Cheese case in the county represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome, which I have mentioned before in the House. That case is alarming, because it seems that the hygiene police are being given additional powers and are not being in any way constrained, even though the case obviously has huge implications for the way in which we deal with problems relating to the sector.

The Prime Minister's summit at No. 10 Downing street to consider together all the issues surrounding the agricultural industry produced useful, stopgap, temporary remedies, but the long-term remedies are not in place.

The marketing strength of most of our farms in this country is far outweighed by that of the supermarkets and the big processors. Therefore it is a buyer's market, and we cannot deal with that problem until we identify the extent to which there is real competition and ascertain that those commercial giants are not using monopolistic powers—oligopolistic powers. At the moment, we are looking in vain to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Competition Commission for a fundamental and radical review.

Imports of dairy products are at an all-time high. That of course relates to the strength of the pound, and will not just go away. Everyone will be trooping back through the door of No. 10 next year unless something is done to address that problem.

Finally, I wish to discuss vertical integration. Under the previous Government's deeply regrettable legislation, which not only massacred the quite good system of milk marketing but made it very difficult for a producer co-operative to be effective in the sale of milk, there was the real risk that Milk Marque would not only be a puny child but might die in infancy—and so it has proved. We alone in the Agriculture Committee, against the opposition of the Labour party and of the then Conservative Government, argued that producers—the farmers—should be given more market power.

I hope that, at the very least, the Minister who is present today will give us an undertaking that the Committee report and the Government's response to it will be debated as soon as possible—preferably before the Whitsun recess. Perhaps he would use his best endeavours to ensure that such a debate takes place, in Westminster Hall at least.

12.9 pm

In a debate of 14 speeches that has ranged from Wood End crescent in Shipley to Chechnya, I am not easily able to detect a common thread, although there were a number of subjects in common—among them, that raised by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler).

We are all grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the plight of farmers. Those of us who represent rural constituencies are acutely aware that all sectors of agriculture are under enormous pressure. We only have to look at the demonstration across in Parliament square to know just how acutely one sector is suffering, but every aspect of agriculture is under great pressure. Although it is of particular concern to hon. Members in rural seats, it is also of interest and concern to every hon. Member, because of the food that that industry provides.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Ms Jones) on her opening speech: her treatment of these debates is exemplary. I must not be too kind to her because if she were standing at the next general election, I would be doing my best to ensure that she did not get elected, but I deeply appreciate her exemplary manner in this House and as a neighbour. She rationed herself, as did the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Dr. Vis), to a five-minute speech, thus demonstrating that in five crisp minutes a topic can be dealt with adequately.

No hon. Member will cross swords with me when I say that the highlight of today's debate has been the return to vigorous and healthy form of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). We missed him in the last two of these Adjournment debates and we are glad that he is restored to health. He demonstrated in his own inimitable way just how a subject can and should be pursued. Although like the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), I could not necessarily associate myself with all the castigations of solicitors that he poured out today, he made some extremely valuable and cogent points.

Fly-by-night solicitors.

Yes, the hon. Gentleman talked about fly-by-night solicitors: some do exist, and we all know about them. He made some trenchant points and we were glad to have his contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) demonstrates that he has earned a long service and a good conduct medal for the way in which he has conducted the campaign for Haslar hospital. He now deserves the Victory Cross because, by highlighting to the House the importance of the hospital, he has shown how crucial it is not only to his constituency but to the services in general that it should be retained. At the beginning of February, I happened to be in Gibraltar on a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel. I asked some of the people who were running the hospital on the ship, "Is my hon. Friend overstating the case?" They said, "Most certainly he is not. We are extremely grateful to him and we very much hope that he will succeed." So do I.

We had an interesting speech from the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). He has been in the forefront of those who have talked about the plight of rural post offices. The House has addressed the subject on a number of occasions and, I think, will do so again. Like the hon. Gentleman, I welcome the halting progress that has been made, but there is much more to be done before postmasters and mistresses are reassured. Coming from a constituency with many of these post offices, which are the lifeblood of the local community and the real community centre, I know how vital it is that they should survive.

I know, too, how important it is that there should be a more equitable distribution of funding for individual pupils. The hon. Gentleman spoke about Somerset. I have not been able to leave my place to check this, but I think that Staffordshire is even worse off.

indicated assent.

The hon. Gentleman acknowledges that. This is an important point. Those of us who represent areas where children receive so much less per head than children in the home counties find the logic difficult to comprehend and the fairness impossible to comprehend. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bolsover talks about the Tories. I have agitated on this issue on behalf of Staffordshire under successive Governments. We have not got the formula right. The Labour Government have now been in power for three years and it is time that they got the formula right. We very much hope that they will.

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) talked about banks. I have to be a little careful in my response to his argument, because I might provoke the Minister into saying something similar to what a junior Minister said a couple of weeks ago; he earned himself a firm slap on the wrist for doing so. However, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has made his own concerns clear, and he represents a constituency not a million miles from the hon. Gentleman's: indeed, it adjoins it. We all share those concerns. The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) was right to say that we should not just point the finger at Barclays: NatWest and Lloyds TSB have both closed more branches than Barclays. However, it behoves those who are in charge of our clearing banks to recognise that they have certain social obligations; that services need to be provided, particularly in rural areas; and that everything cannot be done on the internet or online.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) made another extraordinary omnibus speech of the kind with which he entertains the House regularly in Adjournment debates. He covered a variety of subjects, and I was glad that he referred to our former colleague the late Sir Stephen McAdden, whom I remember well. My hon. Friend made a powerful and eloquent plea for the breast cancer centre which was named after Sir Stephen's widow, who I understand still runs it. I hope that the Minister will respond positively on that, and to the other points that my hon. Friend made. I was amused that, when my hon. Friend spoke about crime, he cast himself in successive sentences as Mother Teresa and as Joe public. I think that he wears the mantle of the latter more easily than that of the former.

The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox)—I was going to say the hon. Member for Cyprus because he frequently refers to Cyprus—sent me a note to explain that he is chairing an important Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting at the moment. That is why he cannot be here. He used the debate, as he does so often, in a classic way to highlight a particular case.

My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) gave us a most interesting constitutional essay. All I would say to him is, "Don't let's tamper with the Act of Settlement." If a particular problem arises, it is within the competence of Parliament to deal with it when it arises. My hon. Friend talked about speed limits, and he also gave us a somewhat alarming account of how he was rescued from perdition by the Division bell. In doing that, he made it clear that there is real danger on the internet: that it is a point that we should all take very much to heart. Some us are perhaps mightily relieved that we no longer have young children who can play with these sets and call up the most extraordinarily grotesque images. It is a problem that the Government must tackle.

As well as dealing with the banks, the hon. Member for Braintree made a lovely side-swipe at managerial gobbledegook. I echo strongly what he said about that. We want good, plain speaking. The hon. Gentleman cited Solomon in the most exemplary fashion.

The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) talked about the need for more intensive-care facilities in his constituency. Again, the highlighting of constituency cases and problems is what the debate is mainly about; it is right that he should have done that. I cannot respond with any knowledge about Harrow, West, but I hope that the Minister will relay the hon. Gentleman's points to Ministers in the appropriate Department.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) came to praise the Government in what I thought were rather extravagant terms. I wonder whether there are local elections in Shipley next month. If there are, he was obviously aiming for appropriate headlines in the "Shipley Gazette", or whatever it is called. His blushing acquiescence shows that I have hit the nail on the head.

The debate has once again illustrated that it is a very useful occasion for the House. It enables Members to raise a whole range of topics and to do so in a non-confrontational way and in a manner that allows the Opposition to respond and the Government to take on board their points. I hope that the Minister will do just that.

In fulfilling my part of the time bargain, which I always scrupulously seek to do, may I conclude by wishing you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Minister and all hon. Members a very happy Easter? It has been a long haul since Christmas; Easter this year is almost as late as it can conceivably be. Although I had my leg pulled by the Member for Bolsover—and quite justifiably so—when I talked about sitting patterns, a more structured parliamentary year would not be a bad thing for any of us.

12.20 pm

The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) ended with a message, which I heard clearly. Several hon. Members gave messages today which they asked me to pass on to my ministerial colleagues. Some did so politely, asking whether I could have a word with Ministers. Others were more extreme and asked me to knock a few heads together. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who always gets to the bottom of the matter, told me to poke a stick in an eye and pick up a few bricks.

Other hon. Members sent a message to their constituents, and I was particularly struck by the speech of the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers). He spoke movingly to the troops back home, if I may put it like that—the 22,000 troops whom he met on the march to save Royal hospital Haslar. I also suspected that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) was talking to the people back home in Saltaire, perhaps not because of the local elections, but to encourage his colleagues there.

Haslar hospital is important, and the hon. Member for Gosport, who has pursued the matter diligently, spoke authoritatively. He knows that the Government's position is that the defence side of the hospital is to close and move to Birmingham. There are problems in that, and I will convey his views to ministerial colleagues. The hon. Gentleman also knows that the plan is to open a new hospital for civilians in his area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) also talked about a hospital, Northwick Park, which, I am told, had a serious flu crisis over the winter. The staff coped remarkably well, and I understand that they have been encouraged by the millions of pounds of funding, which my hon. Friend mentioned, which is being given to the hospital's accident and emergency unit. He knows that this year the NHS budget is growing by 9 per cent. in real terms. His request for a high dependency unit, which is a cornerstone of a modern district hospital, has been heard, and I shall pass on his views.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Ms Jones) also raised health issues when she talked about health and safety. The Government's policy is clear: we want health and safety issues to become part of mainstream business. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover talked about the coal industry, and it is important that health and safety thinking permeates all business.

Small businesses may not have the necessary resources and expertise, and it is a key priority for the Government and the Health and Safety Commission to provide small firms with the help that they need to ensure the health and safety of their workers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said, the commission is considering a revised strategy, which it will publish shortly. I shall ensure that her remarks are reported directly to the Health and Safety Executive. My hon. Friend talked about the importance of small business, as did other hon. Members.

The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) mentioned a range of issues, including those relating to residential and nursing homes and employment agencies, which are very much small business issues. He also referred to the problems at the Lady McAdden breast centre in his constituency. That facility is supported by enormous local voluntary effort, and it is important that such provision has a healthy relationship with the mainstream NHS.

The hon. Gentleman also told us that he had a problem with cadets in his area. I understand that, as we speak, the Minister for the Armed Forces is helping to resolve the matter.

I am pleased to hear about the Palace theatre. I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman was to perform there.

Like the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), I was not sure whether he would be a Joe public figure in his performance, or more of a Mother Teresa figure.

The hon. Gentleman talked also about the need to tackle crime. He made strong points about doing practical things at local level, and contrasted that with strategies. The importance of the Government's policies is that strategies will be defined. Local policing plans will be drawn up that meet people's needs. There will be the opportunity to challenge the police. For example, we shall be able to challenge the chief constable of Essex if targets are not met.

Some of my hon. Friends talked not about small business but about the big business of the banks. It seems that, in some of their actions, the banks have treated customers with arrogance and contempt. It is important to nail that. I followed with interest the proceedings of the Select Committee on the Treasury earlier this week. There is a need to find new and better facilities. In a sense, the demand for better banking facilities, both in urban and in rural areas, is linked with what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said about rural areas. I shall send him a copy of the manifesto produced by the rural group of Labour Members. It is a well-written document, which I plagiarise from time to time; there are ideas that we can pinch from one another. I accept, however, that we shall have to work hard on some people.

I was interested in a remarkable new concept of small farming—the leisure dairy farm. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) talked about the needs of the farming industry and referred to regulations. We are over-regulated and we need to relieve the burden. I was interested in the point made by the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome and for North Cornwall about a retirement scheme. In principle, that would be a good way forward. The difficulty lies in working out a scheme which does not retire people out of the far end without drawing in new people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) talked about Care and Repair. I put on record my thanks to the staff, who have worked hard over many years. I know that my hon. Friend is pursuing the matter. As well as thanking the staff, let me express the hope that Collective Enterprises Ltd. delivers for elderly people.

I do not know how to describe the speech of the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). I thought that he was going to get us into trouble at various times. He talked about the need to reduce speed on the roads, which is important. He spoke also of changing the culture surrounding the public's attitude to speed. He referred to phone boxes, pornography and circumcision. I was pleased that he was saved by the bell. I am not sure whether we should quote the phrase from Macbeth about the knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell. I was slightly concerned about the direction that the hon. Gentleman was taking.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover spoke forcefully about an issue that is close to his heart and mine—putting money in miners' pockets. They have given their health and, in some instances, their life, to keep us warm. It is essential that the 100,000 ex-miners are compensated quickly. The sum might be £2 billion eventually, and £55 million has been paid out. My hon. Friend is right to say that we need to focus on solicitors and health professionals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley talked about regeneration. Saltaire should be a world heritage site; with his efforts, and those of his colleagues, I am sure that it is getting there.

My hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and for Finchley and Golders Green (Dr. Vis) talked about Cyprus, Turkey and the European Union. There is an opportunity, with applications for EU entry, to try to resolve some of the difficulties.

This has been an interesting debate. I am sure that we shall have a good Easter, even though some of us will be involved in election duties until 4 May. The comments made during today's speeches show how seriously we all take our constituents' interests.

It being half-past Twelve o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Petition

Rights Of The Child

12.30 pm

I am pleased to bring to the House a petition brought to me by two young people. It was organised by a organisation based in my constituency, Big Take, on behalf of the Oasis Trust, the Tear Fund, Youthwork magazine and the Jubilee Campaign. It comprises 278 signatures, mainly, although not entirely, those of young people who are, for the most part, from London, including many from my constituency who were organised by the Salvation Army Citadel at the Elephant and Castle. The petition relates to matters in which, most impressively, those young people have taken an interest.

The petition states:

To the House of Commons,

The Petition of the people in London.

Declares that Her Majesty's Government has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and is therefore committed to children's rights and therefore has a responsibility to do all it can to help end the exploitation of child labourers in overseas countries.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons should urge the Secretary of State for International development that all aid to countries such as Indonesia, India, Mali or Pakistan where child labour is known to be an extensive problem should have a reasonable percentage of the aid linked to a programme of education for the child labourers. And the petitioners remain, etc.

To lie upon the Table.

School Nurses

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. McNulty.]

12.31 pm

I am grateful to the Chair for granting me this debate, just before we break for the Easter recess. The motivation for requesting it arose from visits to schools in my constituency, where I met teachers, head teachers and parents who are worried about the reduction in Kingston's local school nursing service. Having spoken to representatives of the health authority, I am aware that, last year, the service was cut back. A major review of the service has been carried out, but no decision has been taken. Meanwhile, the service is left in limbo and there are insufficient school nurses to serve the 20,000 children in Kingston's schools. That is a matter of deep concern.

I am aware of the broader issues and, in the desire to prevent the debate from becoming too parochial, I shall give my view of the importance of the role of the modern school nurse and how it fits in with Government policy. The days of Nitty Norah are long past. I remember lining up in the queue to have my hair checked with the head lice comb, but the school nursing service changed many years ago. Now, it is far more involved in real health screening, with highly skilled professionals delivering added value through the health care that they provide to schoolchildren.

School nurses conduct proper interviews to compile a profile of a school; they assess children for specific problems at different ages; and they run immunisation and vaccination programmes. They are in regular contact with schools, so that problems picked up by teachers can be referred to the school nurse. They help to ensure that vulnerable children and those on the child protection register can talk to a private and confidential ear. That counselling, listening and advocacy role is an often overlooked part of the school nurse's role.

Many school nurses run drop-in clinics, not only for schoolchildren, but for parents and teenagers outside school, in which they deal with issues ranging from mental health to sexual health. They run enuresis clinics and parenting programmes. School nurses play an essential part in health education and the promotion of healthy living. That sophisticated role should be recognised, developed and given proper investment.

The Government have recognised that in their documents "Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation" and "Making a Difference", which specifically refer to the role of the school nurse. It fits well with the health improvement programme, sure start and the healthier schools initiative. That role could play a key part in the way in which primary care groups and trusts deal with public health policy.

"Making a Difference", which was published in July 1999, states:

We need to develop the public health role of the school nurse too, building on the opportunities their contact with children and young people provide.

I therefore acknowledge and put on record the fact that the Government say the right things. When they develop their forthcoming policy on sexual education and sexual health—the Minister may want to refer to that—I hope that they put school nurses at its centre.

The need for early detection of special educational needs is part of public policy. Do the Government provide sufficient guidelines to health authorities? Are they placing sufficient emphasis on their statements to health authorities? Are they providing the resources to ensure that a key role such as that of the school nurse can be properly fulfilled? I am worried that they have not yet done that.

The Government have a problem. The history of the school nurse service shows that the experience in different communities is diverse. No Government have developed a national framework from the start of the school nursing service. Some people believe that it began in 1892, whereas others trace it back to the 1870s. There were changes in the 1960s and in the early 1970s, and the Court report was published in 1978. The previous Government also made changes.

The importance of the school nurse service has been recognised, but there has been a lack of willingness to provide a proper framework. It has fallen between the stools of health and education and has never received the priority that it deserves. I hope that the Government will develop the statements in their documents to provide a clear lead.

There is a great need for such a clear lead. I have read several academic studies in preparing for the debate. A paper that was published by Berry Mayall and Pamela Storey in 1998 put that need in the clear context of experience in schools. The paper discusses current pressures on schools through, for example, local management of schools and large classes. It makes the point that teachers are almost too busy to provide much of the lay, informal care that they used to provide. Children therefore rely increasingly on school nurses, whose numbers are reduced.

There is a genuine problem, which merits debate. At the end of the paper Berry Mayall and Pamela Storey make the point that other health service purchasers claim that a school health service largely duplicates other health provision—GPs, primary care groups, health centres—in the health service. However, there is a key drawback, which I hope that the Minister will recognise, to that argument.

Children cannot easily seek help on their own. There are many reasons for that. They may not think of doing it, traffic may be a problem, health centres may be a distance from their homes. It is often the custom that parents look after the health and welfare of children. Children expect parents to do that and they do not often take the initiative. If health care is not provided in schools, it might never be provided for many children, especially our most vulnerable children. Researchers and other commentators are right: we need to develop the service.

I was especially anxious about the lack of statistics and information on the subject. The data are no longer held centrally. When I asked the Library for information on the number of school nurses, I received figures from 1990 to 1994. They showed a reduction in the number of school nurses over those years. There were no data after that. The Library claimed that employment data no longer provide such a breakdown. The Minister may want to consider that and obtain the data so that the Government could understand what is going on and ascertain whether the number of nurses is decreasing. That is certainly what has happened in my area.

The Royal College of Nursing told me that it is very worried and that the service was the first to be cut because it is not noticed so easily. It provides preventive health care and is therefore much more vulnerable. I hope that the Government will give the matter the attention that it deserves.

I also refer the Government to a draft national framework for school nursing practice published in October by the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association, working with the Queen's Nursing Institute. They advocate what I am talking about: there needs to be a clear framework to provide such a vital service. The introduction to the document states:

In the absence of a clear national framework or strategy for the School Nursing Service many service developments have been ad hoc and confined to individual Trusts. With widespread disinvestment in the service over recent years, school nurses have often had to fall back on their individual skills and ingenuity with few resources.

A Government who rightly put huge emphasis on public health and a primary care-led NHS, cannot be happy with that. I hope that the Minister will make a particular comment on that draft national framework and on whether the Government are considering adopting it. I hope that they will do so because it would support a vital service.

As primary care groups and primary care trusts develop, I ask the Government to consider giving them guidelines to ensure that the school nursing service and the school health service generally are not forgotten in the allocation of resources locally. It might be too tempting to the GPs who will inevitably lead PCGs and PCTs to forget community nurses and particularly school nurses, whose voices may not be heard as loudly as they ought to be. Given the amount of money that we are talking about—a relatively small sum in the overall health budget and budgets of PCGs—that would be a mistake. The Government rightly talk of joined-up government. The service could provide so much and meet so many of their social objectives, so it is important.

I return to the comments of those in my constituency, who provoked my interest in the subject. As I said, there have been cuts, and, as a result, the health authority wanted to review the service and to consider how to use its pot of money more effectively. That review was led by the school nurses, and rightly so. I congratulate the people involved in it; many positive things came from it. They have talked about using best practice and conducted a wide review of the literature and what is going on elsewhere. They are proposing to move away from a service based on principles of routine screening to more preventive, targeted health care, which is probably right.

The review also uncovered many negative aspects, especially the impact of the cuts. School nurses in Kingston qualified the proposed service structure in which new services would be developed by saying:

The proposed structure can be developed within current resources. However, school nurses feel that they will not be able to deliver all of the service principles with such a structure.

In other words, as a result of the cuts, they cannot deliver the service that the review required.

Although recent discussions with people who are much involved in the school nursing service have revealed that they have done many innovative things, such as ensuring that the child protection scheme has been properly covered and pushing through the vaccination programme, they cannot give certain vulnerable children the extra support that they need. They cannot provide regular, weekly contact with schools or develop drop-in centres. They certainly cannot assume the health promotion role that the Government clearly want them to play. Even after the review, the service faces great problems.

Although some vacancies are to be filled, we have only four school nurses looking after almost 20,000 children. That shows the size of the problem. Even when the vacancies are filled, and there are perhaps seven or eight nurses, there will still be fewer than just a few years ago. It is therefore not surprising that there are problems.

Several schools have written to me about their problems. Lovelace school in Chessington said:

The reduction in the number of Nurses available to the schools in the Borough has been a great concern to the Governors at Lovelace for a while now … It is important, therefore, that Ministers are made fully aware of the implications of such lack of support and are consequently urged to reconsider the funding of the service.

St. Philip's school, a special school in Chessington, said:

I am writing to express my growing concerns about the School Health Service and the recent impact that the lack of a school nurse is having on the children in this school…I am concerned that we are not going to be able to carry out the statutory annual medicals for all the children this year.

That is the extent of the problem that we face. Knollmead primary in Tolworth wrote:

Schools have missed the regular weekly nurse visit. Staff, pupils and parents knew when to expect the nurse and each week in her message book we would put any concerns requiring follow up, knowing that this would be prompt. The loss of this part of the service has been felt and I do urge its restoration for the good of the children.

Local schools are very concerned.

I stress to the Minister that the review has uncovered real concerns, which shows that we need a framework. For example, there is a wide diversity in spending on the nursing service per pupil per annum in one health authority. In 1999–2000, Kingston and district community NHS trust spent £13.86, Teddington memorial NHS trust spent £19.69 and the South West London community trust spent £31.56—more than twice as much as Kingston. Such a wide variation in the allocation of funds in the same health authority cannot be right; nor can that deliver the programmes that the Government want to deliver.

Finally, I have a particular bugbear. People talk of Kingston as a leafy borough, as the Deputy Prime Minister did early in this Parliament, but may I explain to the Minister that it is not? There are prosperous areas of course, but it is not homogeneously prosperous. Indeed, there are pockets of severe deprivation in my constituency, and children in schools need help. As the review says, in spite of the impression that Kingston and Richmond is a very affluent district, its Jarman score shows that its deprivation level is slightly above the average for England and Wales. The area includes pockets of considerable deprivation.

There are children who need the school nursing service. I urge the Minister to contact Kingston and Richmond health authority to urge it to provide the service with the resources that it needs. For the country as a whole, the Government should make sure that the service can be properly developed and properly resourced.

12.48 pm

I thank the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) for raising this important topic and for making significant points to which I shall try to respond as best I can in the time available.

School nurses clearly provide an extremely valuable service to children. They have been looking after children's health for more than 100 years—the first was appointed in 1894—and they are often the first point of contact for teachers, parents and children requiring health advice in school. They often work closely with general practitioners with primary care and sometimes with specialist paediatricians, when the need arises. They also play an important part in providing a safety net for children who have perhaps slipped past the routine development checks or immunisations offered under primary care in the early years, and have a role in other immunisation and health advice campaigns and in offering counselling to teachers and children in school.

I pay tribute to and give thanks for the role that school nurses are playing this year in delivering the meningitis C vaccination. Without the school nurse network, it would be extremely hard to achieve such an unprecedented roll-out of the new vaccine in such a short time and before any other country. School nurses offer health support to children who have medical needs and can play a crucial role in all stages of child protection.

In the White Paper "Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation", the Government set out a framework for the future role of school nurses as public health practitioners, including many of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. The White Paper stated:

School nurses are ideally placed to help children, young people and their parents find the support and services they need. The potential to develop school nurses is a growing element within the Healthy Schools programme and their role is being increasingly considered within other Government initiatives.

School nurses can provide support on personal relationships, managing stress and risk-taking behaviour. They can complement primary care services, especially for the most disadvantaged.

School nurses' enhanced child-centred public health role means that they will be working in new ways, operating across traditional professional and agency boundaries which will require multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral working to deliver high-quality and effective services. School nurses will be expected to lead teams, to include nurses and other community and education workers to assess the health needs of children and school communities and perhaps to agree individual and school health plans and the delivery of those through multi-disciplinary partnerships. They will be involved in immunisation and vaccination programmes and will also contribute to personal health and social education and to citizenship training. School nurses will offer support and counselling and promote positive mental health. The new role may involve work on teenage pregnancies or the housing needs of children who have asthma. School nurses will work with other teams across the community to provide the support that children need.

The Government have set up an innovation fund of £1 million to explore new ways of working for health visitors and school nurses, including new roles and partnerships. Since last summer, 31 health visitor and school nurse leadership posts have been set up across the NHS demonstrating the new roles and ways of working. Those appointments have been made in order to develop and demonstrate the new role and to provide examples of best practice that we can roll out across the country. Health visitors and school nurses form a core element of the innovations network and provide a locus for networking across their own health regions. The posts will be demonstrating the new, ways of working and focusing on the particular aspects of the needs of those local communities they serve, be those the special needs of pregnant teenagers, vulnerable families or deprived neighbourhoods, or the particular problems experienced by black and other ethnic minority communities.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question whether we should have some sort of national framework or standards. He raises an important issue to do with developing the public health role of school nurses and health visitors in practice, and how we implement many of the proposals described in "Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation". One of the key methods will be through primary care groups and, increasingly, primary care trusts. New partnerships and relationships will evolve, as the primary care groups develop their public health role. That is one of the issues that the modernisation action teams are examining, as part of their work towards the national plan for the NHS to be drawn up this summer. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that issue, and we are considering it at the moment.

The hon. Gentleman is also right to point out that there are frameworks in place within which those issues can be developed, such as the health improvement programmes. He did not mention the healthy schools initiative, but that will be an important part of the future role for school nurses. Although parents have the prime responsibility for keeping their children healthy, school is clearly a vital influence on children's health. The healthy schools standard that we have developed provides a structure for the shared responsibility for promoting health and integrating initiatives aimed at the school population. The healthy schools initiative will provide school nurses with the opportunity to contribute to a common health and education agenda and to make those links between health and education that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. A number of other related policy developments recognise the potential for school nurses to contribute to the Government's agenda, such as child and adolescent mental health, parenting, quality protects, teenage parenthood and smoking. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that work on the implementation of the teenage pregnancy report must include the role of schools nurses.

By launching the national healthy school standard in October 1999, the Government set out to give all schools the opportunity to become healthy schools. We also ensured joint working between health and education authorities by funding programmes designed to support the implementation of the national healthy school standard in every local education authority. One of the conditions of funding was that the work programmes should be approved by the relevant chief education officer and director of public health. These partnerships are expected to attain national standards and criteria, and to reach a stage where they can be accredited under the national standard. In turn, they can accredit schools in their area.

We have, in the last week, accredited three health education partnerships—Liverpool, Manchester and Norfolk—with reaching the standards required by the national programme, and we expect all local programmes to be accredited by March 2002. I understand that the Kingston and Richmond healthy schools programme is aiming for accreditation in April next year.

Schools and partnerships gaining accreditation will continue to be monitored by regional and national assessors to ensure that the process is not a one-off, but a continuing improvement in the level of health information and opportunity within school communities. School nurses have a vital role to play within the development of healthy schools.

Healthy schools are an essential training ground in preparing our young people for citizenship and providing building blocks in building a healthier nation. A considerable amount of work has been done in schools in the past. This work has contributed to the development of the healthy schools programme. However, what has been slower to develop in school health promotion programmes, relative to programmes in other settings, is the wider perspective, which recognises the importance of supportive social and physical environments for health promotion.

In Leicester, for example, school nurses are involved in multidisciplinary teams across the community to ensure that there are improvements in housing for children with asthma or children in vulnerable areas. Such work to link what is done in schools, as part of the healthy schools programme, with what is done in the wider community is where school nurses have an important role to play. They need not necessarily do everything themselves, but they can work as part of a team—or as team leaders—to deliver the wider public health roles that the hon. Gentleman and I agree are important.

We believe that the national healthy school standard will encourage the development of that perspective and, through the need to link to local priorities, a greater concentration on local issues can be given, particularly in more deprived areas.

Ten schools in Kingston and Richmond have already received their healthy school award, with a further six schools due to receive their award this May. A wide range of projects is undertaken by the local schools, including an important early introduction to healthy eating through from healthy lunch box work at Buckland infants and nursery school, a refugee compact club at Southborough boys school and an impressive sun safety project at Latchmere junior school.

The hon. Gentleman referred to a fall in the number of school nurses in the area, but my information is that there has not been a reduction. Perhaps he and I could pursue that matter later. The review has addressed important issues and has been an opportunity to examine clearly the future public health role that school nurses can play. It has recognised the value of the service provided by the school nurses.

I understand that the health authority is keen to examine the report from the child health sub-committee of the national screening committee, as one of the elements to inform development of the work locally. The hon. Gentleman talked about national guidance, and the work being done by the child health sub-committee may prove extremely important. It is looking at the evidence base involved in—

It being One o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, till Tuesday 2nd May, pursuant to Orders [1st and 23rd March].

Volume 348: debated on Thursday 20 April 2000

House Of Commons

Prayers

Contingencies Fund Accounts 1998–99

Adjournment (Easter)

Business Of The House

Adjournment (Easter)

Petition

Rights Of The Child

School Nurses