I am grateful to have secured this debate, because it is a subject on which I have campaigned for a long time. I first introduced a ten-minute Bill on the regulation of cosmetic surgery in 1994. My interest started because one of my constituents had had silicon implants that had gone wrong, and as a result she had to have a double mastectomy, which left her feeling shattered. That ten-minute Bill generated considerable publicity. I was invited to appear on many programmes and to campaign with consumer organisations, such as Which?, and with the BBC programme "Watchdog", among others, which by then had had letters and telephone calls from innumerable people, mainly women, who had had problems with cosmetic surgery that had gone wrong.

Many of us have at some time in our lives wanted to change something about ourselves, perhaps the nose, the bags under the eyes or the spare tyre, because something about our bodies has not pleased us. I do not believe that anyone in this Chamber could say that they would not like to change something about themselves. For some people it becomes almost an obsession. Pressure is put on women in particular, but increasingly on men, too, to change their appearances, suggesting that they will have a better sex life, be more attractive to the opposite sex or simply feel better about themselves if they have some kind of cosmetic surgery.

In 1994, about 60,000 people had private cosmetic surgery. It is difficult to say exactly what the figure will be for 2000, but I suspect that more than 100,000 people a year request private cosmetic surgery, most of which is carried out in private clinics. I was tempted to bring the drawers of material in my filing cabinets to show how many people have written to me over the years on some aspect of cosmetic surgery.

My interest in cosmetic surgery began with silicon implants. I was contacted by many people who suspected that silicon had somehow leaked into their bodies. Having had silicon implants in their lips, faces, breasts or buttocks, they believed that the silicon had started to make them ill. I took various deputations to the Department of Health to try to persuade it to investigate silicon implants, but those pleas fell on deaf ears. It was not until July 1998, under the present Government, that the independent review body on silicon breast implants presented its recommendations to Parliament, a move which I welcomed. Previously, people did not even know how many silicon implants had been carried out in this country. There was no register or follow-up, and that work desperately needed to be done. As a result of that work, the Royal College of Surgeons agreed to develop multi-disciplinary clinical standards for breast implant surgery. The Department of Health accepted the recommendations of that review group on the compulsory registration of details of each breast implant and removal with the national breast implant registry. That was an important step forward.

The other aspect of cosmetic surgery on which I am still campaigning is laser surgery, which is offered almost exclusively by the private sector. There are no regulations for the training of doctors who work in private clinics, and no regulations to prevent a doctor in private practice who does not have specific experience from offering treatment. Some eye surgeons in Harley street and at Moorfields eye hospital contacted me about a year ago to say that they were concerned that there was nothing to prevent someone from setting up a business without a medical background, and that problems were often glossed over. Although many thousands of laser treatments on eyes are performed with few long-term complications, a small but significant number result in permanent damage to eyesight. That must concern us all.

Private sector clinics offer many procedures and people spend millions of pounds on cosmetic surgery. Although plastic surgery in the national health service is generally safe, the NHS has no time to perform cosmetic surgery. It spends its time for such surgery on people with medical needs, such as burns victims, cancer patients and those with limb deformities.

I remember a press conference that Sir Norman Browse, a former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and I gave in the House of Commons a few years ago. It is not often that the president of that body emerges to give such a conference with a politician, but he said that he was concerned that too many people could set up shop as cosmetic surgeons with no qualifications. Unless they specifically claim to be doctors or surgeons, they do not even commit an offence. As soon as the so-called surgeons have the patient's consent, they can legally operate without any expertise whatever.

Horrifying though it may sound, Ministers could perform liposculpture in a private clinic, so long as they did not tell lies about their qualifications. That would be legal. Sir Norman Browse said at the press conference that animals were better protected in Britain than people because one had to be a qualified veterinary surgeon to operate on an animal. To do so without that qualification is to break the law. But a veterinary surgeon could operate on someone in a private cosmetic clinic without being taken to task.

Far too many butchers practise in some clinics. Repair of botched surgery can be time consuming, expensive and embarrassing to the person involved. It sometimes has to be done on the NHS and can cost as much as £10,000. There may be a long wait for surgery, especially as the disfigurements, though nasty to look at, are not life threatening.

Many of the clinics get a lot of business from advertising in national newspapers and women's magazines, in which they often use misleading images. I have had correspondence with the Advertising Standards Authority, which has tightened up the regulations a little, but not enough. The advertisements make claims such as "Walk in, walk out", "Gentle surgery", "Looks you always desired", or suggest that to change one's whole outlook on life one should have a particular type of cosmetic surgery.

I looked at some of the ads in some current magazines last night, and there are pages of them. One states:

Cosmetic surgery with the gentle touch. The Lanark Centre is owned and run by medical experts, specialists in their chosen branch of cosmetic surgery. We believe in a caring, holistic approach—ensuring you complete peace of mind as well as giving you the body you want.

Others offer a wide range of treatments, stating:

Consultations with our highly experienced FRCS surgeons are FREE. Breast enlargement, breast reduction, breast uplift, classical facelift, mini facelift, chin tuck, neck lift, eye improvement, nose refinement, fat removal, ear correction, tummy tuck

and so on.

Cindy Jackson is an example of the extravagant claims made in those advertisements. I remember her because she sat in the audience at some of our press conferences. She is described as

a walking advertisement for cosmetic surgery.

She says:

I am over 40, but after extensive cosmetic surgery, I look better than I did at 21. My exceptional results have attracted worldwide acclaim. Now others benefit from my unequalled knowledge and firsthand experience. No one need repeat the same mistakes I made at the beginning due to lack of realistic information, or have to learn, as I did, by trial and error.

She offers a

Guide to Cosmetic Surgery, unique personal Video and much more.

The adverts go on and on. "Specialist in figure reshaping", one of them says. It is accompanied by various sketches of before and after, showing soft liposculpture. One says:

Dieting or sports takes time. With soft-liposculpture we will permanently remove the fat excess where you need to (thighs, knees, stomach, bottom, arms…) and sculpt your new silhouette.

I mentioned Cindy Jackson and liposculpture for a particular reason. Today, I spoke to Toni Rust who, in a letter to me last year, said:

I have made countless inquiries to different organisations to find out if there are any support groups for Cosmetic Surgery patients and apparently there is not, but there is a desperate need for this kind of support and advice network.

I know only too well about bad cosmetic surgery.

She went to have the bags under her eyes that she had had since she was a teenager removed. She said that she had

undergone an upper and lower blepharoplasty which has left me disfigured and scarred and with eyes which do not close. My eyes are also extremely uncomfortable, and it is 18 months since I had my operation. I thought that I had gone down the right route to finding a good cosmetic surgeon, having contacted The Cosmetic Surgery Network, a business run by Ms Cindy Jackson. I did not know at the time that she was either working for or with the surgeon Edward Latimer-Sayer who had done most of her surgery. I believed that her Network was independent.

The advert in question was clearly misleading.

I asked Toni Rust whether I could quote her letter today. She said that I could, because there were hundreds of women with the same concerns as herself. She said:

Of the people I have been in contact with so far who have had bad cosmetic surgery, their stories are a mirror image of each other. This is not only from the physical disfigurement and emotional turmoil that they find themselves in but because of their surgeon's comments. The words: it has never happened before; it is just the way you are healing; you must give it time; I can't see anything wrong; it looks alright to me; cosmetic surgery is not a 100 per cent. science. They have got an answer for everything and at first you believe them because you do not like to disagree with your surgeon. You were originally in awe of them, you respected them, but gradually you come to realize that they are not all in the same category and that there are some very unscrupulous so called surgeons out there, unskilled and unashamed…I just wish that I had known 18 months ago what I know now. If I had known, then I would not have been "butchered" by an unskilled and irresponsible surgeon. I need to share this information, the same as the other people who have contacted me to try and stop this happening to others.

I looked up two cuttings, one of which, dated 20 April from The Guardian, is headed "Model wins £93,000 for ruined looks." The article states:

A former male model who claimed his looks were ruined by inappropriate cosmetic surgery, yesterday won damages totalling £93,000 at the high court in London. Mark Russell, 36, had sued Harley Medical Centre Ltd. and the surgeon, Alan Kingdon, over liposuction he received at the Harley Street clinic in 1989…The defendants admitted failing to give proper advice, warning or counselling about the likely outcome of such treatment and that the surgery was wholly inappropriate and unnecessary.

Another cutting, which appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 28 January, was written by that paper's medical correspondent. It states:

This week, a coroner gave warning of the dangers faced by women who consent to non-essential cosmetic operations. He was commenting after the death of Lorraine Bull, 36, who had scraped and saved for a £5,500 operation to remove 3lb of saggy tummy fat after having caesarean section. She was determined to have the routine "tummy tuck", which was carried out at an independent hospital, but her death raises, once gain, the question of how fully women—and men for that matter—understand that all surgery can have complications, sometimes with devastating consequences.

So much of the advertising is totally misleading, because it does not give the impression that there is any danger in carrying out these procedures.

Christine Doyle, the medical correspondent, continues:

It seems so simple to lift the face or shift some fat, blast wrinkles with a laser, inflate lips to perfect pouts and breasts to seductive perfection, slim the ankles and resculpt the tummy and thighs…Anyone can be young and beautiful. Just sign the consent form and write the cheque.

Many more men are now having cosmetic surgery, because of competition for a jobs in an ageist society. People go to job interviews and are told that they are too old—as was my researcher at the age of 35. One article states:

Job competition and the desire to attract younger women can lead tired men to opt for invisible upper and lower eyelid snips, removal of frown lines, and a touch of jowl tightening. Entertainers are regular customers.

It does not mention politicians.

Another case that I drew to the attention of Which? was that of a woman called Joyce. She had seen a lot of adverts for liposculpture, and was so impressed with their claims that she felt sure it would give her the figure that she dreamt of. She contacted a private clinic, whose promotional leaflet said that liposculpture was a straightforward and minor operation. She agreed to pay £2,500 to have liposculpture to her knees, thighs and hips in two stages. She was awake throughout the two-hour operation. She believed that the local anaesthetic must have worn off after 45 minutes, as the pain was intense. She went home the same day, her legs in blood-stained bandages. She got little advice after the operation and ended up having to take two weeks off work. She was supposed to have follow-up appointments but they did not occur. Her left knee still has a large flap of overhanging fat and is a completely different shape from her right knee. She had many lumps, bumps and pits on her legs. Needless to say, she was extremely disappointed with the results.

Such incidents are common. I heard from someone who was given liposculpture in a ground floor office in Harley street. She said:

I think the operating table was a dental chair. They asked me to turn over onto my stomach, or my side, but the chair was the wrong shape and it was very difficult. At some stage during the operation I woke up. I was in tremendous pain and began screaming. They were still taking fat from my legs. The doctor told me afterwards that he had to continue with me awake or my legs would have been uneven.

The level of complaints, unless victims write to Members of Parliament, and so on, or talk to magazine and newspaper journalists, is low, because people are often acutely embarrassed. Filing a complaint is the last thing on their minds. One victim told me that when her surgery went wrong,

It shattered my whole life and left me feeling suicidal.

Even if people do complain, they have to follow complex and potentially confusing procedures. To prosecute for negligence, one must sue the doctor involved. That is a costly and drawn out procedure, requiring a patient to draw attention to her disfigurement. Many people go to private cosmetic clinics without even telling their nearest relatives, so they are hardly likely to want to draw attention to what went wrong afterwards. I know one woman who could not bring herself to tell her family that she had spent £5,500 and ended up looking the way she did, so she made up a story about having been involved in a car crash. That is the level of embarrassment created by procedures that go wrong.

Some of the clinics and adverts are, as it were, selling body parts by mail order. The clinic surgeons often work on a commission, so the more operations they perform, the more money they pocket. One woman said:

I was sitting in his office and he said to me, "Your under-eyes need doing also." I had never noticed any bags or sagging, but he had such a wonderful bedside manner, I thought to myself, "I must trust this man".

Newspaper and other reporters have gone to cosmetic clinics to investigate them; they are usually aged about 21 and in most people's eyes look perfect, with nothing wrong with their appearance. They go to those clinics, and the hard sell begins. One reporter told me it was incredible—it was as though they were totting up on a calculator, as fast as they could, what they could do.

I shall quote further from the letters that I have received. One woman spoke of

unbearable pain during surgery…two scars on belly-button and on hips, and post-traumatic stress disorder

and another said:

I suffered excruciating pain for more than a year

and referred to the results of her operation as a "disfigurement". Many women mention not just the physical but the psychological problems, for example a feeling of total isolation, encountered after botched surgery. Another woman said

I felt so bad I eventually took an overdose. I really wanted to die.

Someone else said:

I just wanted to die, which I did inside.

A Minister with responsibility for health in the previous Government repeatedly told me that he was not convinced that a case had been made to show that the existing controls were insufficient. Clearly, that is nonsense. A couple of months ago, I said in the Chamber that, unless some action was taken against a particular surgeon, I would name him in the House. I shall do so now, although he has now since been named on television. David Charles Herbert is a cosmetic surgeon, who works in the private cosmetic surgery industry. He has earned the nickname of the flying doctor for the speed at which he carries out his surgery and the brief time that he spends with patients, especially post-operative patients. Apparently, he performs 35 surgical procedures a week and carries out a face lift in only 40 minutes, which other surgeons say should take between two and four hours. He has operated from clinics in Huntingdon, Preston and Nottingham.

Over the years, David Herbert's work has generated a huge number of complaints, mainly from women. Allegedly, one woman nearly died after a bowel infection following a tummy tuck; one woman was left with a gaping hole in her stomach after a tummy tuck; and several women have had to have corrective surgery after David Herbert performed breast surgery. He performed a face lift without using enough anaesthetic. The list of allegations goes on. I could spend the entire morning repeating the list of complaints against him.

In 1986, Mr. Herbert was apparently asked to leave one hospital in Nottingham after the operating theatre staff refused to work with him. As far back as 1988, he was the subject of a BBC "Watchdog" exposé which involved four alleged victims of his surgery. He did not sue the programme makers, but instead went to ground for a period. It has been alleged that Mr. Herbert often settles with patients out of court to avoid the bad publicity that would come with a court case. Several surgeons have also made serious observations about his work, describing it as verging on the psychopathic and crude, and describing him as a psychopath, saying that anyone with an ounce of moral integrity would not go around causing permanent disfigurement; that that is not how doctors act. It has also been said that he is careless and carries out bad, rushed surgery. It is rare for a doctor's colleagues to make such observations.

Mr. Herbert is still operating and my dossier of evidence about him is as gruesome as it is long. The BBC's Sally Chidzoy first raised the allegations with the General Medical Council in November 1999. In January this year, she contacted me with a dossier from Mr. Herbert's patients and I then wrote to Finlay Scott, the chief executive of the GMC. On 2 February, I raised the matter in the House and I also forwarded the evidence to the Secretary of State for Health. In April, I received further witness statements from the BBC. Some 70 complaints have now been made as a result of the programme about the surgeon. The slow progress made by the GMC and the fact that he is still continuing to operate prompted me to chase up both the Department and the GMC. The Government's chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, has sent all the evidence to the GMC asking for an urgent update on its investigations into Mr. Herbert.

I then contacted the GMC again and spoke to Isabel Nisbet, director of its fitness to practise directorate, for an update on progress. On 27 April she confirmed that the GMC would not try for a misconduct charge against Mr. Herbert because it would be too easy for him to get away with it, as he could bring witnesses- former patients—who could testify to his excellent surgery, skills, conduct and so on.

That seems a strange defence for an accused person. Supposing somebody being tried for murder brought 100 witnesses to the court to testify that, because he had not murdered them, he must be innocent of the one murder of which he was accused. The fact that Mr. Herbert may have performed some operations—perhaps many operations—satisfactorily is irrelevant. It is the cases and the evidence that we have, which allege that he performed badly, that matter.

What is more, the GMC says that, under the present law, it cannot suspend Mr. Herbert pending the outcome of the investigation. Therefore, the GMC has decided on the professional assessment option because it offers a better chance of a successful outcome in terms of making the charges stick and has apparently informed all the complainants of that fact.

The GMC wrote to Mr. Herbert on 25 April to say that it is minded to invite him for a professional assessment before two plastic surgeons and a lay person. He has until the end of May to reply with his comments. After that, provided that he does not appeal against an assessment, he will be assessed and, if he fails, he will be suspended for a period or have conditions set on his work or his employment. The danger with that option is that Mr. Herbert could have a good day and pass the assessment with flying colours, in which case he would be free to carry on, in many cases, unfortunately, disfiguring patients for life. To judge by his past record, the likelihood is that he will avoid a showdown with the GMC and go into retirement.

In view of what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier this year in the Chamber about the GMC's performance, that is a totally inadequate response to the information supplied to it, nor is it new information. Apparently, it had previously received complaints about Mr. Herbert. In the meantime, he has been allowed to carry on regardless.

This morning, I heard from Toni Rust, whose letter I read earlier, that a friend of hers phoned the GMC as recently as January this year to ask for advice on which cosmetic surgeon to choose. She asked specifically about Mr. Herbert and was told that he was all right. No official register of cosmetic surgeons is kept by the GMC, but it can apparently supply information about the area of surgery in which a certain surgeon has trained. It is incredible that the situation has been allowed to go on for so long.

In answers to me, the Government have pointed to the safeguards that exist. The Registered Homes Act 1984 provides for the registration and inspection of private cosmetic surgery clinics by health authorities. I do not know how often such inspections are carried out, how vigorous they are, or what the results are.

I gave evidence to the Select Committee on Health, which published its report last year, giving it some of the information that I have collected since 1994. That Committee made all kinds of recommendations. A couple of months ago, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), said:

We recognise that greater assurance for the public is needed about the safety and quality of the treatment being provided in this area. We therefore intend to introduce improved regulation of independent healthcare services…These measures are included in the provisions of our Care Standards Bill.—[Official Report, 1 February 2000; Vol. 343, c. 555W.]

I am pleased about that progress, but the Bill sets out only general principles; it does not contain any real detail about regulations and standards. I know that the Government are carrying out a consultation process with the aim of drawing up the regulatory and inspection framework criteria, but, as far as I know, no date has been set for the completion of that process.

A number of measures need to be implemented as soon as possible. The complaints procedure for patients must be improved. Patients need improved mechanisms for obtaining redress for their complaints. The position of the GMC should be reviewed. The medical profession regulates itself through the GMC, but it might be better for patients and the medical profession if an independent body were to be responsible for investigating complaints and disciplining doctors and surgeons. An independent disciplinary body must be given effective teeth. Pending a decision, people who are being investigated must be suspended; they must not be allowed to practise in the meantime. It is incredible that Mr. Herbert should continue to operate, given the seriousness of the complaints against him. I cannot think of any other profession that would allow that.

Can the NHS offer more cosmetic surgery? That is currently lacking. I understand that rationing is necessary, but it means that people are forced into the private sector. When the NHS has to correct the negligence or malpractice of private cosmetic surgeons, it should be able to reclaim the costs of that treatment from the private sector. In order to raise standards, everyone in the private sector who carries out plastic surgery should be made financially responsible for the outcome. If a patient has to have corrective surgery, those who carried out the original botched surgery should pay.

Patients must be better informed; they should not have to rely on advertisements. Sometimes even asking one's GP is not entirely satisfactory. There must be other methods of telling patients where they can get the best possible treatment in the private sector.

There should be a review of the training of cosmetic surgeons, with a view to establishing recognised specialist training and regular professional assessments. No doctor, surgeon, or any other person should be allowed to practise cosmetic surgery without formal training or accreditation in that specialty.

A mandatory peer review audit process should be introduced into the private sector. Regular scrutiny of surgeons' competence is undertaken by other doctors or surgeons. The surgeons who made the complaints against Mr. Herbert found it very difficult to make them formally to the GMC. We have those complaints on record, with the names attached.

I do not ask for all those matters to be dealt with immediately. However, if some of them could be addressed, it would give recognition to genuine competence and experience, while rooting out incompetence.

Someone suggested to me that for a patient to have complicated surgery practised on them by someone who is not experienced in cosmetic surgery is equivalent to boarding a jumbo jet and finding that the pilot has been trained only on a crop-spraying plane. I do not know whether that analogy is correct, but it gives an idea of the frustration and concern felt by many of the people who have written to me who have suffered physical damage.

I received a letter from a teacher—these letters are not from stupid women who do not think about what they are doing—who told me that, after reconstructive surgery on her nose, she cannot wear her glasses for more than half an hour because the side of her nose collapses. She has had two operations to try to rectify the problem, but it is still not right. Some women cannot close their eyes properly; some look as though they have been in a car crash; others have large indentations in their bodies. All these women have been promised many things by the advertisements. The Government have a responsibility to introduce the kind of regulation for cosmetic surgery that is long overdue.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on raising the issue and pointing out the need for the debate. The case histories that she has given clearly demonstrate that this is an important issue.

I should like to address the matter under three headings. The first is consumer protection. Someone who goes out into the marketplace to buy a service should be protected from incompetence, shady practice and over-promotion of a product. The second heading is medical competence. We have had illustrations to show that that is not always satisfactory. The third is medical ethics, which raises the question of whether it is appropriate to offer some of the surgery available.

The Health Committee has addressed the issue of private cosmetic surgery in two reports: one on the control of private medicine, the other on the unexpected and often disastrous outcomes of medical intervention. It is interesting that cosmetic surgery has provided the best examples of areas that lack regulation and consumer protection. I am glad that the Government have taken notice of those reports. When I questioned the previous Secretary of State on the matter, he said that it was a matter for the private sector, not for a Secretary of State for Health who was solely concerned with standards in the national health service. I am glad that there has been a change of mind on that matter, because the hon. Member for Cynon Valley has highlighted some important issues.

Consumers become quite confused about cosmetic surgery. We have been given illustrations of the hyped claims made for surgery outcomes: one will be more economically prosperous; one will get a better job and have a better sex life; one will be more interesting. In my experience, rather than becoming more interesting, people who have had a great deal of cosmetic surgery tend to become extraordinarily boring because their only topic of conversation is their surgery. It is frightening to read advertisements that present an idealised picture of the perfect human being that can be created. Those are not the kind of aspirations that should be encouraged. I am sorry to say that the Advertising Standards Authority has proved itself to be completely toothless. It receives many complaints and it has guidance on these matters, but it ignores that guidance more frequently than it adheres to it.

One of the main problems, from the consumer's point of view, involves the balance of accountability between the organisation that employs a surgeon and the surgeon himself. Discussions with a patient and those involved with advertising are conducted through the organisation or clinic. The person who is considering having cosmetic surgery has an appointment with a consultant, who is often a handsome lady in a white coat who probably trained on the Clinique counter in Boots rather than as a consultant in cosmetic surgery. There is no protection against the misleading use of the phrase "cosmetic consultant" in the circumstances that I describe.

Things may go right-if people pay their money and like the outcome, that is fine—but if things go wrong and a complaint is made against the clinic that took the cheque for the service that was provided, the clinic's usual response is to say that responsibility lies not with it but with the operating surgeon, who is contracted but not employed by it. Claims have to be made against the surgeon, not the clinic. That situation cannot be acceptable. People often do not realise that that is the case, and, not infrequently, they do not meet the surgeon before they pay their money. I shall discuss the Select Committee's recommendation in that regard later.

It is important for people to realise that no surgery is without risk. The basic issue in relation to cosmetic surgery is that there is no such thing as minor surgery, although there are minor surgeons. The General Medical Council has a specialist register, but it does not specify the specialism that the people on the register have. The GMC also resisted setting up a specialist register for cosmetic or plastic surgery—it relies on trade organisations and professional bodies to provide that service. That is confusing to the consumer because most people believe that the GMC's role is to maintain the standards of doctors who offer their services to the public.

I have a surgical qualification and I am a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, which probably qualifies me to remove a wart or an appendix, but that is about the extent of my surgical expertise. Having a surgical qualification and being a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons demonstrates surgical expertise in a general field, but it does not demonstrate that someone has specialist training in a particular area. We have already established this morning that the results can be disastrous.

Concerns have been expressed about silicone implants. I was concerned to have read during the weekend that much cadaveric material is now used in implants. People have dead donor tissue rather than silicone injected into their lips to make them more pouting. The situation is obscene: people donate their organs to save lives, but some of their bits are used for breast enhancements or for what I believe is called facial sculpting.

The Select Committee highlighted concerns about laser surgery, which can be extremely helpful. We should not fail to recognise that plastic and cosmetic surgery have an important role to play in the treatment of patients. It is totally justifiable to try to remove obscene tattoos inflicted on someone at the age of 16 who was drunk. It would improve his prospects for employment as, for example, a waiter, if he can have obscene language removed from his hands. I am pleased that laser treatment has something to offer and, if expertly done, can be effective and not very expensive. I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley: the NHS should have a greater role, and we should not abandon people to the private sector.

The second issue relates to medical competence. The General Medical Council must get off the fence. It is essential that registers showing the specialism of the people listed be maintained. Ordinary members of the public should be able to go to the public library, look up the interests and expertise of the people on the list and see how competent and well trained they are in their particular field.

The third issue is one of medical ethics. Someone who is operating incompetently is behaving unethically. It is bizarre that, in the illustration used this morning, the General Medical Council has not taken a more active role, if only to protect the name of the surgeon concerned if he is innocent of what has been alleged. It seems extraordinary that such allegations can be made, without any action being taken. That is in no one's interests.

There are a number of outstanding issues. The Government have done a great deal to protect the users of medical services, setting up the Commission for Health Improvement and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and establishing clinical governance. They are all positive steps. Unfortunately, the Government have, for what I believe to be dogmatic reasons, left the private sector outside the framework. That is disappointing. Clinical governance is just as important in the private sector as in the NHS. The creation of a special body parallel to the NHS will not feed good practice from one sector of health care delivery to another. Without doubt, the NHS can learn from the innovations introduced in responsible private practice, especially in this field. The more reputable clinics have a great deal of experience that could be of benefit to the NHS. Indeed, the NHS could occasionally contract to the private sector desirable and essential plastic surgery, if a private clinic were better geared up to carrying it out.

A number of recommendations could be made. One is that the Advertising Standards Authority might as well be disbanded if it will not do its job properly. There should be an investigation into the effectiveness of the Advertising Standards Authority in all its work, but specifically in an area such as this, where vulnerable people with hyped-up expectations are not always the best judges of how to act as a consumer. The patient as consumer is a nice concept, but unless people are extremely well informed, they need a lot of information to make informed choices. One reason why I am critical of the Advertising Standards Authority is that its code of practice does not cover the information that a patient can expect—information such as the success rate for an operation, for the organisation offering it or for the surgeon carrying it out.

On the consumer side, there must be a clearer framework of accountability when things go wrong. In the national health service, it is now accepted that, through clinical governance, either the medical director or the chief executive of a trust is responsible for everything that happens in that trust, although liability may of course be passed to clinicians further down the line. In the private sector, there seems to be a tradition whereby the employing authority or contracting authority washes its hands and passes responsibility to the clinician carrying out the work. That is not acceptable.

The public are entitled to a specialist register that has meaning. Again, the Government should take action in that regard and instruct the General Medical Council. If they cannot do so under current regulations, the regulations should be changed to ensure that information is available to members of the public.

The medical profession has lacked application in respect of the important issue of medical ethics. Those who apply for surgery are vulnerable, and it is essential that they be protected as patients, as well as consumers. At times, the ethical approach is to say no to someone who requests a particular intervention. At the moment, there seems to be no framework for addressing that issue.

I endorse the recommendations made by the Health Committee in its fifth report on the regulation of private and other independent health care. Reference was made to a cooling-off period, and evidence clearly showed that people who paid in advance, before seeing the surgeon who was to carry out the work, could not recover that payment. Consumers of double glazing and life insurance seem to have greater protection than those who undergo major surgery. It was also recommended that it should be mandatory for information on outcomes to be available to those who contemplate surgery.

My final plea is that the Government should address the issue of the control mechanism and the complaints system. There should be a single route for complaints. Many people who work in the private sector also hold national health service contracts, and many of the things that go wrong in the private sector become the responsibility of the NHS. It is ridiculous to talk about setting up two complaints systems—one through the ombudsman and the other through a private sector-funded ombudsman. I would much prefer the people of this country to have the protection of a competent regulatory body and access to an efficient complaints investigation system, irrespective of whether complaints or mishaps occur within the national health service or the private sector.

A useful contribution to the debate has been made this morning, and I hope that the Minister will be able to take these issues forward. Unlike the hon. Member for Cynon Valley, I do not think that her requests for Government action were unreasonable. Indeed, all of them should be implemented.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on securing the debate. All hon. Members will have constituents who have had bad experiences that they could recount, and it was doubtless deemed that, because the subject is familiar to other hon. Members, it would make a good one-and-a-half-hour Adjournment debate. It is unfortunate that more hon. Members are not present to give those examples, but the hon. Lady raised many cases—almost horror stories—of what is happening in cosmetic surgery.

The debate is important against the background of the increasing popularity of cosmetic surgery. According to a recent survey by a women's magazine, there has been a 50 per cent. increase in cosmetic surgery in this country during the past five years. For all the bad examples that have been given, more and more people are undergoing such treatments. It is estimated that almost £160 million is spent on cosmetic surgery in this country. This is a good opportunity to raise specific cases, but we also want to speak on behalf of many people who have had adverse results and no satisfaction in trying to sort them out.

One of the underlying problems is how to define cosmetic surgery and I shall be interested to hear how the Minister does so. The more I looked into the matter, the more difficult it became to draw the line. Many procedures now are carried out on the margin of medical treatment. Can cosmetic surgery be defined as an invasive procedure that requires local or general anaesthesia? What about procedures such as dermabrasion which involves neither, but may cause damage? We need a definition of cosmetic surgery so that we can try to provide better protection for patients.

In February this year, the Secretary of State for Health referred to the key purpose of the General Medical Council and stated:

The GMC must genuinely exist to protect patients. It must be truly accountable and it must be guided at all times by the welfare and safety of patients.—[Official Report, 1 February 2000; Vol. 343, c. 908.]

We have heard today that public confidence is being undermined by well-publicised cases about which multiple complaints have been received by the GMC, but the investigation of those complaints takes a long time, during which the person under investigation is allowed to continue to practise. We understand the importance of self-regulation in health matters, but public confidence must be maintained in the self-regulation of professions. If more such cases come to public attention, the tolerance of the public and the users of health services will diminish.

The examples that have been given reveal the sad fact that cosmetic surgery seems to attract some dubious practitioners. That is not confined to the United Kingdom and there are horror stories from around the world. There are clear anomalies in this country and it is the Government's responsibility to try to sort them out. For example, a doctor suspended from working in the NHS can continue to practise in the private sector. Surely that cannot be right.

Another issue concerns protection of title. It is clear that one problem with cosmetic surgery is that a patient may be seeing a consultant who is more a consultant in name than what we understand to be a medical consultant. The hard sell to which the hon. Member for Cynon Valley referred may come from someone without medical qualifications. There is an issue concerning the words "cosmetic surgeon".

There will be an opportunity shortly during the debate on the Care Standards Bill, to define medical nursing and other titles as a vital protection for the public. Does the Minister agree that such an opportunity exists? I urge him to be cautious on the question of protection of title. I am sure that he knows that protection of title was sought for professions allied to medicine under the Health Act 1999. The consensus among some of those professions is that the provisions do not work well. In an effort to protect patients from so-called cosmetic surgeons, the incorrect use of that title should be avoided, but we need assurances that some of the mistakes learned from dealings with professions allied to medicine can be avoided.

There is no doubt that better regulation is required for cosmetic surgery. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Dr. Brand) referred to the Health Committee report, in which there are several good recommendations. I would be interested to hear the Government's opinion of some of them. I endorse the hon. Gentleman's view that a 14-day cooling-off period for cosmetic surgery would be wise before someone signs up for an operation, given that it would be a non-urgent procedure.

I also draw attention to the Health Committee's recommendation that health warnings should be given on cosmetic surgery advertisements. Perhaps that would be a way around the fact that the Advertising Standards Authority is proving ineffective on the subject. The British Medical Association supports that recommendation.

Another important recommendation was that warnings should be given to patients of the risk of being treated by a doctor who does not have access to their records. That is common in cosmetic surgery and applies to other health care issues. If followed, the recommendation might help to prevent disastrous examples such as those given by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley. I look forward to hearing the Minister's views on that and on how legislation could be toughened to deal with the misleading advertisements for cosmetic surgery.

The timing of the debate is useful in that the Care Standards Bill, which should provide an opportunity to improve regulation for cosmetic surgery, is returning from another place. Clause 2(7) of the amended Bill mentions cosmetic surgery, so it is beyond doubt that the Bill deals with such surgery. My reading of the Bill is that it creates an option to ensure that the same safeguards as protect patients in the public sector apply in the private sector. Does the Minister accept that there is reduced resistance in the Government to the idea that the private sector should be regulated on a level playing field? There is no resistance from the independent health care sector to that change of attitude. The chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Association said:

A single, level regulatory playing field is essential to poorly regulated sectors.

After the debate, there can be no doubt that cosmetic surgery is one such sector.

Does the Minister acknowledge that it is important that inspection standards for independent health care establishments are consistent with those applied to NHS hospitals? That is both important and practical. The inspectorate that will be set up following the Care Standards Bill will at some date result in a good level of expertise. After a couple of years of carrying out inspections of publicly owned establishments, the team of inspectors' level of expertise could be usefully applied to private sector inspections. I urge the Minister to ensure consistency across both types of establishment, as it would be beneficial.

In the debate in the House of Lords on the Care Standards Bill, Lord Laming pointed out that

wherever people receive healthcare treatment the standards of regulation and inspection should be the same.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2000; Vol. 608, c. 417.]

I concur with that view. In the debate, several noble Lords observed that the NHS is increasingly using independent provision in a wide range of ways, for recuperation, rehabilitation, or because of insufficient provision in the NHS. Regulation and inspection must therefore cover both. As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said, the extent of contracting out to the private sector in cosmetic surgery would make common coverage even more of an imperative.

As a result of the amendments made in the House of Lords, the new National Care Standards Commission will he able to contract with the Commission for Health Improvement to carry out on its behalf inspections of private and voluntary establishments. In practice, will experienced inspectors enter both types of establishment?

Having read clauses 2 and 21 of the amended Bill, I am slightly worried. The treatment of the lady who found herself in a dentist's chair rather than on a proper operating table and suffered accordingly took place in a ground-floor office. The establishments in which cosmetic surgery is carried out are diverse. Will the Bill cover such establishments? It is not beyond the wit of man to imagine that some cosmetic surgeons may work in a home setting. Will the Bill extend to cosmetic surgery treatments in a domiciliary setting? That may be another loophole that we must try to close if we are trying to prevent more accidents.

It has been important to have this debate. Clearly, many vulnerable people have had poor experiences, and we as politicians should try to see what could be done under existing law or proposed new law to tighten up and provide proper protection for patients who undergo cosmetic surgery. I realise that the Care Standards Bill is betwixt and between another place and this place, but I should be interested to hear what scope the Minister believes legislation offers in providing a level of protection that is currently lacking.

Like other hon. Members, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on having chosen this subject for today's debate. She made the important point that tens of thousands of cosmetic procedures are performed in this country every year, so it is clearly big business. Parliament must ensure that it is properly regulated and that the public are properly protected. It is clear from what my hon. Friend has been saying for a long time that there is room for considerable improvement in both those areas, and I shall explain what the Government are doing.

As I am sure the House is aware, my hon. Friend has a long-established interest in this important subject, and has campaigned long and hard for better protection and higher standards. In 1994, she introduced a private Member's Bill to establish registration procedures for cosmetic surgeons in order to set minimum standards of training and practice. She followed that by bringing to the House's attention on several occasions her anxieties about doctors who work privately as cosmetic surgeons but do not necessarily have either the expertise or the experience to perform such operations. The House owes her thanks for ensuring that these matters are raised.

I assure my hon. Friend that the Government take the issues involved extremely seriously. We accept her view that the public need greater assurance on the safety and quality of such treatment. I am sure that she will be glad to know that we are therefore introducing, in the Care Standards Bill, improved regulation of independent health care services, including premises where cosmetic surgery, medical treatment under anaesthesia or sedation and certain laser treatment is provided.

The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) asked whether the Bill would be sufficiently flexible to cover a variety of circumstances and places where private cosmetic surgery is performed. It will be. The Bill has been constructed to ensure that many of the detailed powers can be dealt with through regulation, which will allow us to respond as and when situations arise. We do not want to repeat some of the mistakes of the past, when the regulatory framework was too inflexible, and did not take account of people's desire to find a way around, and through, the regulatory net.

We do not often have the opportunity to correct such problems, but the Care Standards Bill provides it. The Government—and, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley—want to make sure that the legislation is comprehensive and flexible, and can adapt to changing medical practice in the future or a desire on the part of some practitioners to find a way through the system. I hope that the Bill will address my hon. Friend's concerns. If she has further concerns, they can be addressed by tabling amendments in Standing Committee, which will provide an opportunity for more detailed discussion.

In addition to the legislation, the Government are working closely with the GMC to improve, strengthen and modernise the regulation of medical practitioners, whether in the public or private sectors. My hon. Friend will be aware that the vast majority of cosmetic surgery is carried out in the private sector. Arrangements for regulating private sector health care are long-standing, and are based on the Registered Homes Act 1984. We recognise the weaknesses in those arrangements, as she has done. For instance, they concentrate on facilities and equipment, do not address health care quality issues adequately and do not provide satisfactory access to redress for patients who are dissatisfied with the health care that they have received. We aim to achieve more effective regulation to ensure quality of private cosmetic surgery, adequacy of information for patients and would-be patients-all hon. Members who have spoken have addressed their concerns in that regard—safety of technology and equipment used, including laser treatment equipment, and effectiveness of complaints procedures when, sadly, things go wrong.

The Care Standards Bill will establish a new regulatory body for care homes and independent health care—the National Care Standards Commission. The commission will have the powers to inspect and, if necessary, shut down cosmetic surgery clinics that do not meet the rigorous standards that will be put in place. The starting point for the new regulatory system for independent health care is that those who operate private hospitals and clinics should be accountable for all aspects of care—clinical and non-clinical services—undertaken inside them. For hospitals, that includes the work of doctors to whom they grant admitting rights. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Dr. Brand) referred to that concern, which is perfectly valid, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley.

It is not acceptable for private clinics, hospital owners and managers to seek to wash their hands of their responsibilities on the ground that consultants are not employed by them, but have a private contract with their patients. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight will be aware that one of the most effective ways to address that issue is to make sure that private hospitals have proper complaints procedures in place. Ultimately, the operation of those complaints procedures will be tied to registration. Therefore, if clear evidence exists of poor practice within a private clinic, action can be taken to shut the place down, even if privately or self-employed consultants conducted the procedures. We must not have a system in which people shuffle off their responsibilities, pass the buck and blame others, while continuing to provide a poor service. That will not happen under the new arrangements for which we intend to legislate.

We shall also set up tough national minimum standards for private hospitals and clinics. That work will be developed through wide-ranging consultation, which will include the independent health care sector. Clearly, standards will need to be sensitive to the type of care that is being provided—they will differ between, for example, hospitals providing acute surgical care and those treating people with mental health problems. Our guiding light throughout the exercise will be patient safety.

We will therefore require all private hospitals and clinics to have proper arrangements in place to assure quality. Those will include proper treatment protocols, arrangements for clinical audit, proper maintenance of clinical records, systems for clinical risk management, arrangements for reporting untoward incidents to hospital management, and so on. All health professionals working in a hospital should participate in those arrangements. Private hospitals will need to put proper arrangements in place to oversee those systems, for example by using medical advisory committees. However, the hospital manager and owners will have the ultimate responsibility of ensuring that the hospital provides high-quality clinical care.

We will develop standards for independent health care by involving the relevant experts in the field. Our consultation on the development of standards for cosmetic surgery will also involve the Medical Devices Agency. Its views, expertise and professional contacts on, for example, the use of lasers, silicone breast implants—which concern my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley—and devices used for liposuction will be essential in producing effective standards. We will also require private hospitals and clinics to have proper procedures in place to check the qualifications of the staff whom they employ and to ensure that they employ only state-registered staff in relevant posts, for example as physiotherapists.

However, the process does not end there. As part of our minimum standards, we want to ensure that staff have the appropriate skills and qualifications for the work that they undertake; for example, the employment of paediatric nursing staff to look after children will be a vital requirement in ensuring that there is proper 24-hour medical cover in place where hospitals carry out major surgery.

Standards will also cover the qualifications of all health care professionals involved in cosmetic surgery. Clinics where cosmetic surgery is performed will have to satisfy the National Care Standards Commission that surgeons who operate in them have the relevant qualifications and have reached consultant status. That will help to ensure that patients have increased protection from surgeons who are not adequately experienced or skilled in cosmetic surgery. We are also determined to put a stop to the practice of doctors continuing to work in the private sector when they have been suspended from their NHS work because they pose a risk to patients. All hon. Members who spoke in the debate have expressed their concerns about that. The current alert letter system has not always worked as effectively as we had hoped and we will work with the GMC and other bodies to establish better arrangements.

We recognise the difficulties that patients sometimes face when cosmetic surgery, or indeed any private health care treatment, goes wrong, and they try to seek redress. Patients can be faced with the surgeon and the hospital passing the buck, with neither accepting responsibility. That is simply not good enough. Under the new regulatory system, each hospital and clinic will be required to have a formal complaints procedure; that is not at present a formal or legal requirement. Patients will be able to make a complaint about their treatment and have it fully investigated. If they are not satisfied with the response that they receive, they will be able to raise the matter directly with the National Care Standards Commission, which will have considerable powers at its disposal. It will be able to ensure that all staff who work at the hospital or the clinic co-operate in those complaints investigations. If necessary, it will report poor or unethical practice directly to the GMC, under the fitness-to-practise procedures, where matters can be further investigated. If standards are persistently poor, the clinic can be closed down and will not be allowed to open in the next town, as can sometimes occur under the present arrangements.

Compared with the current system, in which 100 different health authority inspection units are involved, the position of the National Care Standards Commission as a single regulator will give it the necessary overview and co-ordination to apply that type of sanction effectively. Those who pose a risk to the public must not be allowed to slip through the regulatory net. In tackling those issues through the Care Standards Bill, we are confident that the measures we will introduce will provide the enhanced safeguards and assurance of standards in independent health care, including cosmetic surgery, that the public fully deserve.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight raised concerns about the difference, as he saw it, between the arrangements that we are putting in place for the private health care sector and the national health service. I believe that he was wrong in several respects; I do not want to pick him up too much on that, but I will make two points. He was concerned about clinical governance arrangements. In relation to NHS patients being treated in the private sector, the same safeguards and procedures will apply. The Commission for Health Improvement will be able to follow the progress of those patients and the standard of care that they received. We expect medical practitioners in the private health care sector, when treating NHS patients, to apply exactly the same standards of clinical governance as they would apply to patients when treating them under the national health service. The hon. Gentleman may have inadvertently misunderstood the arrangements in those two respects.

Surely the Minister has just illustrated my point. It would be more sensible to have a common framework for clinical governance, whether for a private patient within an NHS hospital, an NHS patient in a private hospital or a private patient in a private hospital.

The hon. Gentleman was saying that we were abandoning NHS patients in the private sector and exposing them to no effective safeguards. That is not the case. There is a logical argument for separating the role of the Commission for Health Improvement from the role of the National Care Standards Commission. The Commission for Health Improvement will not be a registration body; it will be an inspection body. The National Care Standards Commission will have both functions in relation to the private sector, which is a reasonable place at which to draw the line. The problem with legislation is where to draw the lines, define functions and separate one organisation's responsibilities from those of another. That is an inescapable part of the whole process of providing an effective regulatory framework.

The system will be flexible and, when we have amended the Care Standards Bill, the National Care Standards Commission will be able to use the expertise of the Commission for Health Improvement in carrying out certain inspection functions in relation to the private, acute health care sector. There is every possibility that we can ensure that the two separate organisations work closely together and advance the interests of patients in the way that we have always intended.

I have outlined the many improvements that will drive up the standards of private health care to a much higher standard. It is important to be aware that that work does not stand alone. The potential of the National Care Standards Commission cannot be met unless the regulation of the professions is thoroughly modernised. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley expressed her serious concerns about such issues. To that end, the Government are currently working closely with the GMC to bring about the necessary changes that she and others have long called for.

As my hon. Friend will be aware, the GMC has, by law, several specific functions such as keeping up-to-date registers of all qualified doctors, fostering good medical practice, promoting high standards of medical education and dealing with doctors whose fitness to practise is in doubt. The tragic events surrounding the Shipman case have most recently brought that last area into focus. The case highlighted beyond any reasonable doubt that the powers currently available to the GMC to impose interim suspension or place interim conditions on a doctor while cases are being investigated are inadequate under the current procedures. There is common consent about that. It is important to understand that that relates to all practising doctors, not only those who specialise in plastic surgery.

Currently, the preliminary proceedings committee of the GMC can impose interim suspension on a doctor's registration, but only after it has decided to refer the case to the professional conduct committee. The process, which is set out in regulations, requires a doctor to be given a minimum of 28 days' notice in which to respond—to which my hon. Friend referred. In reality, the delay may be eight weeks or more. Such a delay is not acceptable. Those various gaps and loopholes mean that doctors who may be a danger to patients can continue to practice. That is clearly unacceptable. It is certainly not in the public interest, which is why we have decided to take action.

We are giving the GMC additional powers to impose interim suspensions. We also intend to give practical meaning to the presumption that, when a doctor is struck off, it is for life—save in the most exceptional circumstances. Speed is vital to those powers. We shall use them to impose interim suspension or conditions quickly in any circumstance, including cases of performance and health. Importantly, the new power could be used at any point in the fitness-to-practise procedure. It would give the GMC similar flexibility to the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting in the timing of the imposition of interim conditions.

There are many other issues that I would have liked to discuss but, sadly, I have run out of time. There is no argument about what we want to achieve. We want private hospitals and other independent health care facilities to work to proper modern standards of health care. We want those hospitals to be accountable to their customers for the services that they provide, and to be subjected to the most rigorous and demanding checks to ensure that they meet the necessary requirements. That will be the case in future.

It gives me tremendous pleasure to start this debate. Often, in the House, we are accused of talking a lot and getting little done, because we are into adversarial politics. Today's debate is different: it marks an important event that has arisen from an Adjournment debate that took place nearly two years ago. Today sees the launch of the Year Out Group, which will promote a structured year out for school leavers before they go to university or start a job, and for those who choose to take the year out between university and a job.

In setting up the Year Out Group, we have had assistance from the Department for Education and Employment, including from the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge). We have also had support from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, which plays an important role in the decisions of school leavers. The purpose of our group is to encourage more school leavers to defer for a year their entry to university, or their commencement of whatever they choose to do with their lives. A year out can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people's personal development; it can enable them to contribute to society and help to ensure that they set the right course for the following few years.

Following our Adjournment debate, I formed a working party of the seven leading organisations that I could identify working in the sector. The advice and knowledge that they made available brought in others, and the Year Out Group now comprises 20 bodies, including voluntary organisations that offer work opportunities, principally overseas; organisations that offer teaching opportunities overseas and in this country; and organisations that enable self-development through adventure programmes, such as treks across the Sahara.

Eighteen-year-olds and 19-year-olds face a range of options when they leave school; different ones are appropriate to different individuals, but, in the end, the individual must choose. That is why the focus of our debate two years ago was on the need for guidelines. The sector is burgeoning: in the past two years, the number of organisations offering a year-out experience to school leavers has grown by 50 per cent., to nearly 200. However, little guidance has been available that might encourage and steer students, helped by their families and teachers, to make the right choices.

I want to make a distinction between those who take an unplanned year out and those who take a planned and structured one. We are talking not about years off, but about year-out programmes devised by organisations that are committed to providing the best once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for students and young people. After its launch, the Year Out Group will be open to other organisations that meet its criteria and aspire to its six aims.

The group's first aim is to promote the concept of the year out, about which I shall say more in a moment. The second is to provide accurate information that will become a focal point for those who want to find out about the different organisations and the range of opportunities available to school leavers.

Thirdly, it is increasingly evident that a quality framework should be applied to the provision of year-out opportunities; until recently, the sector has been self-regulating. The Year Out Group has not yet provided such a framework: its focus has been on providing guidelines to help people to choose between the many organisations that are available-I shall give examples of some of the very good organisations that are not yet members of the group later. However, people should know what they are looking for, and our group aims to provide a quality framework.

Fourthly, there was until recently a sense of rugged individualism about organisations in the sector-an attitude that may, to some extent, have been spawned by the nature of the people who set them up. The Year Out Group has proved that those working in the sector can co-operate and that their organisations have a mutual interest in working together. Fifthly, it was made clear on several occasions during the past few years that the Government and major organisations had not caught up with developments in the sector. There was a need for a voice to speak collectively for year-out organisations. To achieve that, the group's sixth aim is to represent the whole sector equally and impartially.

I have described the group's aims, which are very ambitious. The group has clearly set out what type of organisation should belong to it: it wants to attract organisations whose principal activities include the provision of high-quality, structured programmes in the United Kingdom or overseas for young people who take time out. Such programmes include cultural exchanges, educational courses, expeditions, volunteer work and structured work placements, but exclude ordinary paid employment and the au pair scheme. In addition, members of the Year Out Group should be required to aspire to all of its aims.

The sector is about to achieve an important landmark. So far, its main achievement has been to agree guidelines to which all of its members can sign up. Today, the Minister will today launch those guidelines—we are grateful for her support—and, at the same time, the Year Out Group's website will be launched. It should be available online this morning at www.yearoutgroup.org. The website contains guidelines which are also available in a leaflet that will be sent to schools around the country and can also be obtained from participating organisations.

Students who are considering taking a year out should first look long and hard at the way in which they will be selected: they should establish what sort of person the organisation wants, and whether they will be properly assessed. It is no good ending up on a project on the other side of the world if one is simply not suited to it, or if one has been insufficiently trained and prepared.

Secondly, it is a good idea to establish who will benefit from the activity. A prime purpose of a year out must be that students themselves will benefit, and the best organisations do all they can to ensure that, at the end of the programme, participants feel that they have made a real contribution to the scheme, project or programme with which they have been involved.

To achieve that, the third thing that students need to examine is precisely how they will spend their time. It is no good going on a programme to an exciting and exotic country if too much time is spent performing menial tasks that do not exploit the potential that even 18 or 19 year-olds have to offer. Tapping that potential not only helps their self-development, but contributes to the development of the place in which they work.

Finally, with such a wide range of organisations—around 200—offering so many opportunities, students must look at the cost of the programme that they intend to go on, at any hidden extras and at the organisation itself. The group felt that it was worth emphasising the importance of the arrangements made before students set out on a programme, for example, they should ask who is responsible for getting them to the site of their designated programme.

Young people should also look at safety procedures and at the support that they will receive in the field. It may be the first time that some of them have left home for an extended period; for such people, an element of pastoral care adds a great deal of value to the programme, and they may wish to ensure that the organisation that they are going with can provide that. Others will welcome the chance to break away from parental ties, considering that they are old enough to look after themselves. Again, it is the student's choice, in consultation with family and school.

Last, but not least, and especially relevant to those who go on a longer placement lasting six months to a year, is the question of readjustment when they come back and start on their university course or long-term career. It is important that the right debriefing arrangements are in place. To have an extended period away from home can be an exciting and exhilarating experience, but students need to land on their feet and readjust to the world of home or work, or to the academic world that many of them intend to enter next.

It is a credit to the success of many organisations today that the attitude of universities to a year out has changed significantly. For a long time, a gap year between school and university was regarded as a bolt-on extra for middle-class kids who could afford it and who spent their time enjoying themselves. Their tutors hoped that, when they went up to university, they would remember enough of what they had learned at school and would have enough commitment to get through the course. Far be it from me to suggest that that applies to any Member of Parliament, although in the two debates that I have attended on this subject, I have learned that many hon. Members took advantage of a gap year.

More seriously, we now recognise that students who take structured and planned time out before they go to university are better equipped to focus on their course; they have the social skills needed to engage with other students, and they acclimatise well to an environment that is extremely difficult from what they have been used to at school. Indeed, a survey undertaken by the Year Out Group in February this year found that, although all universities noted a higher pre-course drop-out rate among students who take a year out, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that students who have taken a year out and remain committed to their course have a much lower drop-out rate. The extra year to think about the course that they intend to follow makes it more likely that the majority who take up their place at university will complete it successfully. In the modern world, in which students have to pay so much of the cost of their course, it is important that they go up to university confident that they have made the right decision.

We asked the vice-chancellors of the 50 leading universities in a survey whether they agreed that a structured year out benefits the personal development of a typical undergraduate: 93 per cent. of those who responded—almost all did—agreed with that statement. As a member of the Select Committee on Education and Employment, I have had many opportunities to ask vice-chancellors for their views on the year out, and I have found near unanimity in their endorsement of the benefits of a planned year out. Last September, the Committee took evidence from UCAS, and I asked Mr. Tony Higgins, the head of UCAS, whether the drop-out rate among those who had taken a year out was higher than among the university population as a whole. He replied:

No, the evidence is to the contrary…these are people who are going for their places when they are a little bit older, a bit more experienced and they have done what they really want to do.

UCAS has also stated:

Voluntary work is almost certainly worth an A-level grade or two in college selectors' eyes.

Of course, the Year out Group is not only concerned with voluntary work, although that is an important dimension of the whole sector.

There has clearly been a change in attitude. Last year, 50,000 of those going up to university—that is 16 per cent. of those placed on university courses—did not have a place set aside for them before they took their A-level examinations. It would be preferable if as many such students as possible planned to defer their entry rather than, for example, on finding that their A-level results were better than expected, ringing UCAS—or, increasingly, contacting it through its website—to find out at a late stage what university opportunities were available.

A change in universities' attitude opens up a new dimension—a way ahead. The concept of widening access by taking advantage of the year out needs to be promoted. Many children from less well-off backgrounds have not even heard of taking a year out. As a member of the Education and Employment Committee, I visit many secondary schools; a typical comment from head teachers at such schools is that the children there would not appreciate or be able to cope with going abroad for an extended period. That is not nearly ambitious enough for those children. I am sure that, with the right support and development, most could make a great success of a year out.

Changes in attitude have led to Voluntary Service Overseas beginning, in a modest way, to take school leavers from disadvantaged backgrounds and put them in year-out programmes with support from the Department for International Development. At this stage, the programme is very small, involving only a handful of students—fewer than 50 or 100 a year—but it demonstrates the potential.

The YMCA in my constituency, Guildford, is involved in a project in Sri Lanka. It sends people from less well-off backgrounds out there for up to a year to assist in a home. In addition, that YMCA branch, along with others, has gap-year opportunities within its organisation, enabling those taking a year out to help to run its hostels. In addition, people who have problems can be helped by having someone of their own age to help them deal with them and set them on the road ahead. The Prince's Trust is also beginning to play a much bigger role in this field.

Enabling school leavers from less well-off backgrounds to maximise such opportunities raises the issue of funding. Many of the organisations that are part of our group help students to raise money. Some are charities and have long experience of helping those whom they sponsor to obtain additional sponsorship from the private sector; many large companies have an outstanding record of supporting students on year-out programmes. In the long term, however, an element of funding from Government sources is bound to be necessary if the year out is to become a fully recognised part of the strategy for widening access.

How will children benefit? First, those coming from families that are not accustomed to their children going to university will find it much easier to justify that important decision to those around them if they already have their qualifications under their arm before going to university. Secondly, during their year out, they will, no doubt, want to save up some money to help them on their way when they reach university. It is important that they do not do that by taking a job in McDonald's and spending a year as a workhorse: they should spend time doing work—perhaps teaching or social work—that enables them to achieve more in terms of personal development and gives them a certain amount of personal responsibility. The evidence shows that, when they go up to university, they will have a great deal more to offer and better social skills, and so will be able to make the best and most successful use of their chosen course of study.

The most important point is that children are undertaking post-qualification entry to courses. I am a great believer in post-qualification entry, and increasing numbers of universities share that view. For example, Surrey university, which is in my constituency, has told me that

a move to a 100 per cent. post-A-level entry scheme would improve student choice and therefore retention, as well as reducing admission costs, tensions, and errors.

Of course, that view is not universal—a significant number of universities are opposed to students on certain kinds of courses breaking their periods of study with a year out. However, there is a growing will for change. The length of the timetable proposed by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals for developing post-qualification entry disappointed many in the university world.

There is a case for saying that a target number of school leavers should be positively encouraged to take a year out, and that support for them to do so should be made available. The arrival of the Year Out Group, with its agenda of guidelines and a quality framework, will make such a policy shift much easier to achieve.

I do not disagree with the merits of the year out, as explained by the hon. Gentleman in his fascinating presentation. However, post-qualification application for university could also be achieved by reforming the A-level System so that is more like the American system, which bases university applications on grade point averages, instead of all-or-nothing A-levels at the end of the sixth form. That would also achieve the hon. Gentleman's aims. Would he consider it, regardless of the merits of the year out?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and hope that we shall hear more of his thoughts in the debate. Clearly, there are alternatives to A-levels. However, the point is that a break between school and university is a valuable addition to the development of individuals. It also gets around one of the key concerns about A-levels, without undermining their status as the gold standard of academic achievement. There may be students for whom an American-style gradation system is appropriate, but I should point out that a four-year course—not a three-year course—is the norm in the United States; and only by the end of their first university year have students attained in their chosen subject the same level of ability and knowledge that is attained by many A-level students in this country.

I move from the funding issue to the quality framework agenda. As I said, the Year Out Group aspires to build such a framework. We recognise that some very good organisations are not part of the group, and we hope that they will join in due course. We are not saying that those who form part of the group have adhered to a quality framework, although they were required to answer questions based on the guidelines that we are promoting today. Nevertheless, such a framework is a precondition for significant Government funding, and it would have to tackle the difficult question of health and safety.

Firms in this country know that health and safety issues can create difficulties. In respect of school leavers, particularly those on programmes abroad, such issues create major challenges for organisations. However, all those who have left school are at greater risk than when at school: they are safer in the school environment and in the protection of their families than when they first go out into the world and stand on their own two feet. We must accept that, at that point in our lives, we are all a little more at risk, so we should not overplay the occasional tragedy of the school leaver who has an accident overseas. Sad as such incidents are, they frequently involve those who chose not to go through an organisation and instead took a risk on their own. However, it is clear that, if we are to deliver a quality framework, the health and safety issue must be examined and the personal development of individual students properly addressed. Moreover, assessment in respect of the programme in which students participate and achievements arising from their experiences must be properly measured.

I am delighted by the interest that has been shown in this subject. Many hon. Members have told me that they are pleased with developments in the sector. There is broad support for those developments, which is reflected in the consensus that we appear to have achieved in the Chamber today.

We live in a fast-changing world. I have yet to mention the internet, which will play an important role in this area. Hon. Members may know that, within the next two years, school leavers will apply for university places almost exclusively through the UCAS website. The heavy document through which some of us remember wading many years ago is disappearing. Through the website, students will be able to discover where a particular course is available and where other students on their course come from. Indeed, a wide range of other information will also be available.

We hope that the link between UCAS and the Year Out Group websites will enable students to discover the benefits of a year out. Should they choose to take a year out before going to university, they will able to keep in touch with their family and prospective university through the web. As a result of the web revolution, the world is shrinking. Increasing numbers of students can say, "Although I will be on the other side of the world if I take this opportunity, I will be able to keep in touch with mum and dad by exchanging e-mails every day of the week, if we feel like it." In the modern world, we can take the big step away from our home environment, yet stay in closer touch than ever.

Given that students are now made to pay so much more of the cost of their period at university, more of them will choose to go to a university near to their home. The chance to take a year out before doing that would offer such students the breadth of experience and opportunity to mature that a previous generation got from going to a university on the other side of the country. There are many advantages in the traditional British system, in which students are encouraged to go to a university far away from home. However, as the Dearing report made clear, it is not the function of Government to use taxpayers' money to promote that. Students who choose, for financial reasons, to go to their local university or to follow a remote learning course will ask themselves, "How can I show that I am growing up, now that I have left school?" The opportunity to take a year out on a structured programme, with its responsibilities and challenges, will appeal to a wide range of school leavers. The developments that I have mentioned, which have been so well supported by all those with an interest in the matter, are exciting opportunities that will be available to to all future school leavers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) said that we were acting in a non-adversarial capacity. I hope that you cannot see it, Mr. Cook, but I have brought my mackintosh.

Order. It might be helpful to all right hon. and hon. Members if I remind them that, in its decision to establish proceedings in the Chamber, the House deemed that it was not a Committee and insisted that the Chair be addressed as Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I do apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have spoken twice in this Chamber, but the circumstances surrounding my presence today—which I shall, in a moment, reveal—are in part responsible for my being perhaps not totally in control of my conduct. I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you cannot see it, but, partly due to those circumstances, I have brought into the Chamber a mackintosh that would be more suitable for a county cricket ground than a legislative chamber. I hope that it is invisible.

I was in Northern Ireland yesterday and was invited to participate in today's debate only one hour before it began. That is why I am still in the process of collecting myself. My speech will, necessarily, draw more on personal insight than on the results of burning the midnight oil. With apologies to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) I shall cite again the case of the Liberal peer, the publication of whose memoirs was held up for three weeks because the printers had run out of the letter "I". My speech, too, will draw heavily on the first person singular.

I suspect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you, like me, did national service. That particular form of gap year—indeed, gap two years—had a significant influence on my later life, but it has not been available since the late 1950s. Dr. Alec Dickson—and, in the United States, the Peace Corps—introduced the concept of a gap year into the lives of young people. My own links with Dr. Dickson came about through the legendary Launcelot Fleming, chaplain and dean at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, then Bishop of Portsmouth, Bishop of Norwich and Dean of Windsor.

Fleming took a first-class degree in geology at Cambridge and a Master's degree at Yale. His Fellowship at Yale obliged him to travel throughout the United States, at which time he had the sort of experiences that we are discussing. However, his most formative experience occurred in a rather late gap year—an expedition to Graham Land in 1934. For almost two years, he was both geologist and chaplain to the expedition. He said that there was no greater test for a clergyman than to be shut up with his contemporaries for six months each winter, during which time they could test to destruction his faith and the arguments that lay behind it. Because of his background, he was a massive supporter of Outward Bound, which was a national forerunner of the organisations that we are discussing. He was also involved in the World College movement, and took a leading part in the developments mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate—despite the circumstances in which I entered it—and on initiating the process two years ago.

My younger sister was doing VSO in Nigeria when the Biafran war broke out. She was in Onitsha, which was at one end of the bridge that separated the warring parties, but got out through Port Harcourt. She and the people she was with had to get out, just as people now have to get out of Sierra Leone. She appeared at the home of the economic counsellor in the American embassy, whom she had visited on her way out. He said, "The Americans have a strong tradition of sanctuary, but there is a price. I have to write a telegram to Washington tonight on the subject of the economic situation in the war zone. If you can tell me the price of bread in Onitsha on the day you left, I can construct an entire telegram about that." She said that that would be easy, and was admitted into sanctuary. To her credit, my sister went to Jamaica with VSO after she got her university degree here. She married a Canadian who taught in the same establishment and they have spent their entire adult life working in third-world universities. That stems directly from her original work for VSO.

My eldest son went to Zimbabwe—another country in the headlines—under the auspices of the Project Trust. That organisation is run from a castle on the island of Coll, which, remarkably, it uses as a kind of proxy for the third world—I mean no disrespect to Coll. If you send people out at considerable expense to the four corners of the earth, it is sensible to test whether they have the self-reliance to cope. Those who want to go out with the Project Trust go to the island for a week; they are housed in a croft and perform tasks such as sorting seaweed—at least, that is what happened when my son was there. At the end of the exercise, it is perfectly clear whether somebody will be able to cope with a year in the third world. As 20 per cent. of entrants fail, a great deal of money is saved by that testing process. I have to say that my son greatly enjoyed his year in Zimbabwe.

One of my nephews joined an organisation called GAP, which, as its name implies, operates in the gap-year sector—although it competes with a clothing company. He went out to Paraguay and, somewhat unpredictably, shifted his academic focus from history to Arabic as a result of the experience. He has been in Egypt and Yemen, and would have gone to Iran, had there not been prolonged visa difficulties. His twin brother also intended to read history at university but, after going to Japan, he devoted his career to reading Japanese. I cite those two anecdotes because of the German ambassador's observations on the "Today" programme this morning: he said that the British were not learning languages as they should. I can tell him that the gap-year process has altered the careers of people close to me in an immensely productive way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford spoke about a structured programme and guidelines that could be universally applied to participants. I will not spend a lot of time on that subject, not least because of the circumstances in which I entered the debate. Suffice it to say, an 18th-century Member of Parliament, after a long speech by Edmund Burke, got up and said, "Ditto to Mr. Burke." Like that hon. Member, I support the views expressed by my hon. Friend. I am delighted that the programme will be launched—perhaps later today, or in the near future—at the Greycoat Hospital school in the heart of my constituency; I can think of no better location.

Organisations such as Project Trust, GAP and the former Operation Raleigh, on which I worked with Colonel Blashford-Snell when I was a Minister, place a heavy obligation on participants to raise the money themselves. The pattern is that half the participants come from the maintained sector and half from the independent sector. Under the previous Government—I do not address this remark to the Minister—anxiety was expressed about offering VSO experience to people before university, rather than, as had previously been the case, to people who already had qualifications and were fully trained. In providing financial assistance for younger students, the Government might disadvantage people who participate on an entirely voluntary basis and have to raise all the money themselves. It would be helpful if the Minister could comment on the financial assistance that the Government give to VSO and other schemes.

You have been extremely indulgent, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for having addressed you incorrectly, and am delighted that you brought me up so short.

We all enjoyed that brief speech by the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke). I note his point about the dangers of dwelling on personal experience and I shall resist the temptation to do so.

The hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) made an interesting speech. I congratulate him on his persistence in requesting a debate and, in the Education and Employment Committee, promoting at every opportunity today's launch and the concept of the gap year. He made several interesting points, with many of which I agree. To save time, I shall concentrate on four aspects in which there is room to explore.

The first aspect is equity between people from less well-off backgrounds and, to use the stereotypical term, "rich kids". That term is unfair to them, but it is understood by many to mean those who can take advantage of opportunities such as gap years. The second aspect is whether the gap year should be used as a substitute for good early careers guidance. One of the advantages cited is that taking a gap year tends to reduce drop-out rates when people finally reach university; however, it is an unintended advantage and I question whether it is the most efficient way of reducing drop-out rates. The third aspect I want to explore is that of post-qualification application to university, which is often a consequence of taking a gap year; again, I wonder whether there are better ways of encouraging that. The fourth aspect is universities' attitude to gap year students. The hon. Member for Guildford has already spoken about other aspects, including the importance of structure.

Before I discuss those issues, I should like to make it clear that, for all the reasons given by the hon. Gentleman, I believe that a gap year can be very valuable. It can improve socialisation skills and provide a useful breadth of experience before people move on to higher education and intense academic study.

However, in some ways, some of those advantages resulting from gap-year schemes reflect the disappointing results of school education. It is unfortunate if a gap year is necessary to obtain the socialisation skills that are necessary for higher education or employment but that cannot now be obtained—if, indeed, they ever could—from secondary schooling. In employment and higher education, there may be a marked difference between people who have taken a gap year and those who have not in terms of their ability to socialise and get on with things. However, while that points to the advantage of a gap year, it raises questions about the pressures on school staff and students, particularly given the seemingly ever-expanding schools curriculum.

I feel strongly that we do not do as much as we should in terms of foreign language education, although I am wary of recommending that we add more to the curriculum. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster hinted that one advantage of a gap year is that it stimulates the necessary interest in foreign languages, but is that the right approach to take? Some people do not take a gap year because they cannot or do not wish to do so; they should not miss out on something so fundamental to a basic secondary school education as developing an interest, if not skill, in foreign languages.

As the hon. Member for Guildford said, equity is connected to the way in which such programmes are funded. I believe that, if we were to consider the number of young people who take a gap year—some students, others about to enter employment—we would see great inequity in terms of the ability of those from less well-off backgrounds to gain access to that opportunity. The profile would be similar, if not worse, than that of those entering higher education. I should be interested to know whether the relevant statistics exist.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the real inequality is found in the lack of access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds? Those who take a year out are not taking the year off; they are putting something back in. Many of them are giving up their time and resources for the purposes of self-development, but that costs them something: they will start their career a year after they would have otherwise have done. The inequality arises, not from finances, but from the education system, and it illustrates precisely the need to widen access to such groups.

I think that I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument. If he believes that a gap year is good idea, generally speaking, it should be accessible to all people on an equitable basis. Given the advantages of a gap year, there should be no reason why it should appeal more to people of one social background than to those of another. If we accept that it is a good thing, we should expect proportionate numbers of people from the maintained schools sector, the independent schools sector, social groups ABC1 and other socio-economic groups to take advantage of it.

However, I am sure that that does not happen. The problem is not unique to those taking a gap year and it relates to funding because the courses are self-funded, or sponsorship has to be obtained—unless one is fortunate enough to participate in a scholarship-type arrangement that pays the bulk of the expenses. Therefore, raising the necessary funds will be difficult and daunting for those without access to parental support.

My gap year was based around an English Speaking Union scholarship, granted following an entrance examination, to study at an American high school for the last two terms of that year. It was fully funded and worth a huge amount of money, given the costs of that high school place in the private sector. It was available to me as a student in a state school, but most of the students on the scheme came from independent schools. If funding is to be directed at gap-year schemes, it should be student based—enabling people to be selected according to their access, or lack of access to resources—rather than provided through block grants made to organisations or general subsidies given to everyone on the scheme. That is the way to increase access.

I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Guildford make a plea for more Government funding. I am sure that the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing now and what more they can do. However, if, to an increasing extent, students have to pay their way through university, there will be implications for their access to a gap year. It will be another year in which they do not earn money, but go further into debt—a year in which they might have to spend their savings or the money that their parents gave them to support them through college. Current funding arrangements have been criticised on the grounds of equitability, especially after the loss of the means-tested grant. Therefore, it is incumbent on hon. Members and Ministers who think the gap year a good idea to say how they would ensure that access to the gap year is improved. They must deal with the fact that new student support arrangements, whatever their advantages, will act as a disincentive to spending another year not earning. Broadening the gap-year experience will be difficult, given those arrangements.

In passing, it is worth noting that our discussion has covered the gap year taken before entering higher education or employment. The hon. Member for Guildford and I have both been guilty of talking only about students; we should also mention those young people who may not be deferring entry to university or employment. We have also failed to mention the group of people who take a gap year between higher education and entering employment. I suspect that that group, whatever the figures are historically, will come to represent a dwindling proportion of the total number of people who take gap years. If gap-year schemes increase, the actual number of people in that group may not fall, but their proportion of the total number taking gap years might fall because of the level of debt that students have at the end of their course. Proposals from all parties suggest similar levels of debt, and naturally people will want to clear it by earning money. Therefore, to an increasing extent, gap years will be taken between school and university or employment.

I want to touch on the issue of careers guidance. Taking a year out to reflect on whether one has made the right choice of studies gives one the opportunity to change that choice. However, I would hate us to recommend taking a gap year because those who are unable or do not want to take a year out have a higher drop-out rate, instead of offering proper careers guidance for higher education courses,. The hon. Member for Guildford will probably agree with me. Constituents tell me that changes in the careers service have meant that one group of students has made worse decisions than it might have, because the service has been focused on another group. The careers service is invaluable and should be invested in.

I would be interested to see the drop-out rates and course-change rates for those who have taken a gap year. However, it is obvious that reflecting for a year on whether one really wants to study a subject can give one pause. In my own case, I might have abandoned medicine if I had decided that I wanted to enter politics instead.

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the careers service. He may not know—I only recently discovered it—that, under current funding arrangements, careers service advisers who persuade a school leaver to take a year out do not necessarily get a credit for that as an education outcome. Therefore, there is a disincentive for careers advisers to promote the idea of the year out for students, even when they think it might be appropriate. The Department should investigate that.

I know that the Minister heard that point and I shall leave her to respond to it. Perverse incentives come with all sorts of regulations and schemes to encourage people to do one thing or another, and they must be ironed out if they are a problem.

The third area I wanted to touch on was the attitude of universities and employers to the year out. I was pleased that vice-chancellors have changed their views on the gap year, because there is no reason why it should be frowned on, even it makes it difficult for universities to plan places, as they used to claim. It would not surprise me if a gap year was considered to be worth an extra grade at A-level, because of the advantages that it gives.

It is hard to say how one gained from one's own gap year, but I have watched people who have worked for me in the House of Commons—for remuneration in excess of the minimum wage—during a gap year, and they have blossomed. I currently have one such employee who is one of the best researchers that I have ever had, even though he is not yet a graduate. He has been superb: I have watched him develop in the role and he is now more than capable of bossing me around—which is perhaps the true test of competence for a research assistant.

It is important that universities recognise the importance of a year out. Maturity in general is an important factor in higher education: we know that mature students need fewer academic qualifications to succeed at university. A debate for another time and place is the plight of full-time mature students in higher education. The more mature the student, the better, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Guildford gave. The Minister should send a message to the higher education sector that there should be no disincentive—in the form of fear that it will be badly regarded by universities—to students who wish to and are able to do so taking advantage of a year out.

There was an old-fashioned concern that students would forget everything that they had learned in the sixth form by the time they arrived at university a year later, but I remember that one forgets everything a week after taking exams for which one has swotted—that certainly happened in my case. I remembered what I had learned only six years later, working in a district general hospital, during bursts of feverish calculations on drug charts—which should be a worry to everyone.

My final point is tangential to the point made by the hon. Member for Guildford about the advantage of a gap year to post-qualification application to university—not to post-qualification entry, because we all expect qualifications to be a condition of entry to higher education. The gap year has all the advantages that the hon. Gentleman detailed, but it is not necessary to insist on or encourage a gap year to achieve such advantages. It would be a useful beginning if he and others could drop their seemingly instinctive opposition to the reform of A-levels, which they regard as the gold standard.

The higher education system in the United States has certain disadvantages and certain advantages, but it is a system that is envied. University applications are made on a much wider basis than final exams taken at the end of two years' study at A-level grade. Perhaps for that reason, the courses entered are more varied and enable people to choose which subjects to major in during their time at university. Many people perceive advantages in that, and hon. Members on both sides, including Liberal Democrat Members, should be encouraged to look beyond the A-level as the gold standard. That is tangential to the main thrust of what has been said about the advantages of a gap year, to which I wholly subscribe.

The hon. Gentleman should be applauded on his initiative in working with organisations at the front line, and emphasising the advantages of taking a gap year to those who would not otherwise consider it, or who might consider it another year's delay. Whether those opportunities are explored abroad or in this country is not as important as whether they are explored at all. The fact that the gap year is regarded as something that needs to done abroad can be a disincentive: certain groups of young people who are not fully engaged in taking advantage of gap-year opportunities might not want to go abroad, or might feel that it is beyond their means. Structured voluntary sector programmes in this country might open up possibilities for self-development to those who are not already taking advantage of such opportunities.

It is conventional to congratulate the hon. Member who secures an Adjournment debate. On this occasion, I want to go further by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) not only on initiating the debate and making an eloquent contribution, but on his personal, hands-on role in the Year Out Group, which will be launched after the conclusion of this debate. It is unusual, but welcome, for a Member of Parliament to be so directly involved in such a group.

The Chamber in Westminster Hall was devised to provide an opportunity for hon. Members to express consensus on matters that do not always enter into party political controversy. I hope that I do not spoil that consensus. It was not spoiled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), or by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), and I suspect that it will not be spoiled by the Minister. I congratulate those hon. Members, in retrospect or in advance, on that consensus. We should welcome the fact that we can reach such consensus from time to time. It is remarkable that, by osmosis and a good deal of hard work, the Year Out Group already includes a strong collection of big hitters, and offers a huge range of opportunities to young people.

I begin by dealing with potentially contentious matters. The Minister would be surprised if those did not relate primarily to resources, although I strongly echo the comments that were made about the importance of adequate guidance for young people. To some extent, that guidance can be provided electronically through the new UCAS website, the Year Out Group and the higher education institutions. However, information is no substitute for guidance.

There is concern—to be debated in another context—about the new arrangements for the guidance of young people that are being introduced by the Government. They lay strong emphasis on dealing with the problems of the socially excluded. I have no problem with that emphasis, but it must not come at the expense of offering proper guidance to all young people. All young people have difficulties and opportunities, and need personal support in making choices.

The second issue is that of resources. I would be surprised and a touch shocked if the Minister got up and said that anyone who wants to take a year out will be fully funded to do so. That is not a realistic aspiration at this stage, but the Minister should bear in mind two matters. The first, to which reference has been made, is that when young people take a year out there is an opportunity cost to them, because they do not earn much during that period. Secondly, taking a gap year can add to the difficulties that may already be experienced as a result of recent changes to the higher education support system. Many young people will finish their higher education with a debt exceeding £10,000, so taking a non-earning year out before they reach the labour market, even if it has long-term benefits, must give them cause for thought. I hope that the Minister will take an holistic look at the overall impact on young people, as well as the impact on specific young people who lack the advantages that some of us have had. They, too, should have the right to share in such programmes if they would benefit hugely from doing so.

We must remember that all young people are individuals whose aspirations, confidence and wishes vary hugely. It would be wrong to send out a signal suggesting a conscription programme in which all young people are expected to participate. Each young person must decide whether and when to participate in a year-out programme and then choose the programme that is right for them. Some may seek activities for personal improvement at home or in their spare time, rather than take a formal year out. Both forms of experience can be valuable.

Guidance is important because young people will need to draw on the counsel and wisdom of parents, friends, teachers and, perhaps, the universities admitting them. I welcome the fact that universities now accept that prior experience is a positive benefit for young people. However, I would not wish them to make such experience a precondition of entry, nor do I anticipate their doing so. The decision should be for them, and the Minister and the Department would be ill advised to stir the system too strongly.

The Minister's encouragement and involvement is welcome. She should be able to offer advice on the guidelines, keep a close watch on what the Year Out Group is doing, and participate in appraisals and statistical activities with the various agencies and the group, but each young person should make a choice and we should keep our hands off. Any involvement by an institution should be solely a matter for the young person and the institution—Ministers should not directly interfere.

This is a general debate and it would not be helpful to give a personal curriculum vitae, but I shall draw on some of my experiences gained since my undergraduate years—I now realise that they were 40 years ago—and as an education Minister. Perhaps I should declare a non-interest in that I did not take a gap year, although I participated in a number of other extra-curricular activities before going to university. I seemed to learn quite a lot about civil defence, and when I got to university I found myself president of my junior common room. Those were the sort of activities that people did then and they were not irrelevant, even though they did not constitute a formal gap year.

Since that time, there has been a huge change in the character of higher education in this country. We have moved from what was—it was not intended to be—a largely elite system to a massified system. I do not mind that because it has been a positive development, encouraged by Conservative Governments. A third of our young people now go through higher education. However, that has inevitably affected the experience and nature of those participating.

One or two generations ago, many people went to higher education from well-known independent schools or leading grammar schools; now, there is much broader participation, and that is right and proper. The issue is not only that of resources and the economic background of students and potential students, but of students' confidence and social skills. The paradox is that, while many people would benefit hugely from the opportunities of a year out, their background and the resources immediately available to them make it less likely that they will apply or take part. They might even be discouraged, or feel themselves discouraged, from doing so.

That is a social problem that the Minister will not solve this morning, but I hope that the resources available to her and the powers of encouragement that she has are directed towards creating a better balance. Our common interest, which was well expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, is to ensure that, as people from all backgrounds move through higher education, they exploit all the opportunities available to them. They should not be excluded by an accident of education or geography.

My final comments relate to the education experience itself. There have been suggestions—which are, to some extent, concomitant on the expansion of the sector, the huge changes in the labour market, the development of globalisation and so forth—that higher education is simply a commercial development activity, as though one went through it as a staging post on the way to a lucrative career. That may be so—indeed, there is plenty of evidence that the ancient universities began primarily as vocational establishments, training people for service in public life in various capacities—but it is not the whole experience, nor should it become that. Universities have much more to offer an individual in terms of development than merely the ability to join the labour market at a higher rung than they would otherwise have done.

There is a good deal of evidence, much of which has been brought out in this debate, that the experience of a year out is very beneficial to the individual, partly because it is different from what he or she would have been doing at university: it is a different chunk of the map. It is often also beneficial to a student's future employer.

I did not take a formal year out myself, so I shall to draw on the experience of two young people whom I know well. Our children's contemporaries have been students in the past decade. I have seen the difference between the undergraduate who is reading for her first degree and the same person who is reading for her second first degree at another university, with a view to becoming a lawyer. The 21-year-old undergraduate was a very different person from the 18-year-old undergraduate. Another young person of my acquaintance, who went to university very early, had an interesting year out, which she divided between an advanced cookery course and working on the Archbishop of Canterbury's staff. As the late Eric Morecambe would have said, there is no answer to that. In diversifying their experience, those young people expressed the wisdom of centuries of educationists who have never seen the university or higher study as a degree factory, but regard it as a place for developing a rounded person.

In two respects, the year out is valuable. First, in many cases, it provides a physically demanding set of tests: it is the old idea, at which we should not scoff, of a healthy mind in a healthy body, although that is not possible for everyone. Secondly, it provides a moral challenge: many of my generation can still respond to Kennedy's inspiration for the Peace Corps and to the idea of asking

not what your country can do for you

but

what you can do for your country—

or, indeed, for other countries. I hope that all parties share that healthy aspiration. It is a spark in young people that we must kindle, not extinguish. We welcome the initiative unreservedly.

It is a joy to participate in debates in Westminster Hall. They are informative and consensual, and I am sure that we all agree that they provide a better way in which to discuss issues that are important to our constituents.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) on securing this debate and on the work that he has done to support the organisations that will today launch the Year Out Group. I have known the hon. Gentleman for some time—he and I sat on the Education and Employment Select Committee. Although we did not agree on every issue, I recognise him to be a man of integrity who has done much practical work as a Back Bencher. In this instance, his efforts will ensure that a sector that is of increasing importance to young people will develop. Growing numbers of young people are taking a year out at some stage during their period of maturing. I join him and other hon. Members who have spoken in congratulating the 20 leading organisations that have come together. That effort, with support from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and other groups, have ensured that today's launch will go ahead.

I must declare an interest. I have four children, three of whom have taken a gap year. Quite horrifyingly, one of my children is currently wending her way across the world. She sends us e-mails about sharks in Thailand, which leave me shivering, and about sheep-farming in Australia. In her most amusing e-mail, sent from Vietnam, she asked, "Mum, What's wrong with communism? Is it that different from new Labour?" Her e-mails suggest that her experience is enhancing her capacities and abilities and preparing her for university when she returns.

The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) referred to his time in national service as his gap year. When he retires from the House, I am sure that he will have another gap year before he moves on to other activities. We all need the odd gap year in our lives to recoup, to recharge our batteries and to consider where to go next. Young people are no different in that respect. I did not have a gap year. I am afraid that my gap years involved the three years that I spent at university in the 1960s. I did not do a lot of work, although I underwent a great deal of personal development, and I still have nightmares about my lack of preparation for finals.

The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) talked about the gap year after university, which is becoming increasingly popular. People also often talk about career breaks. A member of staff in my private office is currently doing massive overtime to secure his second or third career break, during which he wants to travel round the world. Good luck to him, too.

The Government have made it clear that one of our objectives is to secure a real increase in the number of people of all ages who become involved in voluntary activities. Many activities during the gap year involve volunteering. It is difficult to attract young people to voluntary activities, because they tend to think that such work involves people such as myself-middle-aged, middle-class women. Our challenge is to turn that perception around, build on young people's interests and ensure that when they put something into a community, they get something back. To the extent that the gap year complements our efforts in the voluntary sector, it is of great importance.

For many young people, the transition from school to college or university, or from university to work, is an especially important time in their life. The experience that they gain during that period can be formative to their career choices or their development later in life. It is a time in which young people are particularly open to new experiences and are looking to be challenged. What young people choose to do at those stages in their lives vary from individual to individual. For some, the gap year or the year out will work to their benefit and be life-altering. Every year, thousands of young people decide to take a year out after finishing their full-time education—whether post-school or post-university—before entering the labour market. They are able to choose to take part in an enormously varied range of activities during that period.

People tend to think of the gap year as being spent abroad. That is true in some cases, but not all. Some people choose to get work experience, take part in exchanges or join educational programmes that offer alternatives to more formal academic teaching. Voluntary work in this country is as important as voluntary work abroad. It may involve anything from improving the environment to working with homeless people, to bringing arts and music into communities—in fact, any activity that one can think of. It is an endless list, and the benefits are enormous and valued.

The Government believe that young people should be able to take up the year-out opportunities that are right for them. Hon. Members have raised the question of Government financial support, and it may be helpful if I respond to that. We give support directly from the overseas training programme, which exists to give host projects help in undertaking specific pieces of work in developing countries. It aims to provide young people, many of whom may be interested in continuing to work in development, with a worthwhile experience. It also aims to promote international understanding. The programme is funded by the Overseas Development Administration and managed by VSO, so it receives money directly. Placements are currently limited, but a start has been made. Having known a couple of people who have been involved in the programme, I know that it is successful.

A range of opportunities are funded through Europe. The Erasmus programme promotes student mobility and offers the opportunity to study and learn other languages. About 10,000 UK students took part in it last year. The European Union also offers the Leonardo da Vinci programme, which provides vocational training. The youth exchange centre administers the British Council youth millennium awards scheme, which enables 18 to 25-year-olds to spend time abroad developing skills that will benefit their local communities. The European voluntary service enables young people in EU member states to spend up to a year doing voluntary work. My nephew took part in that, and gained worthwhile experience in France. The "Youth for Europe" programme arranges international exchanges, seminars, project training and other activities. I hope that that quick run through the range of initiatives by which the Government directly fund programmes shows the range of opportunities that are available to young people to broaden their horizons.

We should remember that the year out may not be right for everyone, and some young people will not want to take it up. While respecting everyone's individual decisions, we must ensure that they make informed choices. That is why we are supporting the Year Out Group. The group's guidelines are very useful to young people and their advisers. They encourage young people to ask the right questions and open up opportunities that they would not have thought about before taking their year out.

Several hon. Members referred to the function of the careers service in providing advice and opportunities in relation to the gap year. We are in the process of establishing the new Connexions service, and I shall pass on the idea of advice on gap-year opportunities to my colleagues in the Department with responsibility for that. We will consider whether it can be covered in the prospectus on which the Department will soon be consulting.

Hon. Members have alluded to many of the benefits that result from a year out. The main benefits are gained by young people themselves. They learn vital skills that cannot be gained from academic involvement, known in today's terminology as soft skills, including working with other people and problem solving. They also gain self-confidence, which is important in later life. Those young people also learn about other people and about other environments with which they might otherwise never have contact. They gain impressions and experiences that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Those experiences can help to motivate people who might have been disaffected in school, to change their perspectives, raise their aspirations and provide them with the knowledge that they have made a difference to other people and communities.

Other beneficiaries include the organisations with which young people spend their gap year, which are often helped to deliver work more effectively; and employers, who are able to recruit from a pool of young people with a wider set of talents. Moreover, educational institutions, including universities, are increasingly asking young people what they have achieved in addition to their academic qualifications. I endorse the comments made about the importance of the work done by UCAS to enable young people to apply for university in a more streamlined way. The personal statements, with which many of us have struggled to help our children, form part of those applications. As academic standards rise, the importance of that personal statement grows. If a young person can say that he or she plans to take a year out, and that that experience will be structured and relevant to his or her course, I would expect universities to see that as a way of differentiating between candidates. The personal growth that young people who have made good use of a gap year will have experienced when they start their studies will give them a head start over their peers.

I agree with all hon. Members, especially the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon, who said that the year out should be available to a broad range of people. There is a problem of equity, but it does not arise solely from money and resources; it is also connected with access to information and opportunity. That is why the initiative that we are launching today is so important. It is also about the much tougher agenda that the Government are attempting to address relating to access to higher education and ensuring greater equality through a range of initiatives.

The year out can also change young people's views on their contribution to communities. Learning the importance of community and enhancing the opportunities for individuals within the community are vital threads in the Government's agenda. We want young people to learn those lessons at an early stage. Equality and opportunity for the many are best enhanced through strong communities.

I notice that time is hurrying on, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall conclude by saying that we have heard today about the setting up of the Year Out Group—an organisation that draws together several organisations involved in year-out activities. I endorse the work carried out by the hon. Member for Guildford; we believe the group to be a welcome development. Voluntary work can, and should, be challenging for the individual concerned. That is part of its reward. Working overseas has its own challenges and difficulties, and the group is confronting those issues.

Speakers have mentioned many organisations involved in supporting young people who decide to take a year out. Some have charitable status; others are companies; they all offer young people the opportunity, here and abroad, to become involved in worthwhile activities. I am pleased to endorse the guidelines prepared by the Year Out Group, and I congratulate it on the website that it launched this morning. Both will ensure that young people are helped to make more informed choices about their lives, and to do so with greater confidence in the quality of the opportunities that they pursue.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Guildford on securing this debate, and I look forward to joining him at the launch of the Year Out Group. In the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I am happy to offer him a lift in the Government car, so that we get there on time.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on the plight—if that is not an exaggeration—of fire officers in Northern Ireland and some of the problems that they face, and have faced consistently, during the past 15 years. I acknowledge at an early stage that, subsequent to questions tabled by me, which were answered on 11 April, the Minister has taken steps to remedy certain problems. One of those problems would have led to the first strike by the fire service in Northern Ireland since 1977. I am grateful to the Minister, as are members of the Fire Brigades Union and the public at large, for quickly recognising the difficulties and taking steps to avert what would have been a serious problem.

I hope that the Minister will not think that I am nitpicking, but I want to draw attention to one or two points that relate to his answers to my questions. I know that Ministers approve answers, rather than prepare them, but he suggested in one answer that civil disturbance call-outs often involved children who threw stones at appliances. I hope that he will recognise that that is a derogatory way in which to regard some of the hazards that fire officers have faced down the years. Last weekend, we witnessed the sad effects of throwing stones during a football match. Similarly, as the Minister will acknowledge, in the past 30 years, firemen in Northern Ireland have been seriously injured, or have given their lives.

In another answer, the Minister said that firemen in Northern Ireland have four additional days leave a year, but on closer examination, he will realise that different fire authorities have different terms and conditions. Compared to firemen in certain regional fire authorities, those in Northern Ireland may indeed have an extra four days leave, but compared to the firemen in Northamptonshire, there is just one day's difference. Such issues must be carefully understood, so that we do not give the impression that there is a huge difference between firemen in Northern Ireland and those in other regions of the United Kingdom.

I shall deal in due course with some significant factors that affect the fire brigade in Northern Ireland, but at this stage, the Minister will acknowledge that the attempt to introduce a two-tier system in the Northern Ireland fire brigade has proved a folly. Since the most recent agreement in Northern Ireland, I have been bombarded with equality agendas. Everyone must now produce an equality agenda. I am waiting for my elderly next-door neighbour to produce an equality agenda for when he goes down the road to the pub for his pint. We are overwhelmed with equality agendas. Yet our newest young recruits were to be paid, as whole-time firemen, £24.99 a week less and, as retained firefighters, £1.24 per call-out less than their established colleagues, which is not acceptable.

One acknowledges the dangers of being a firefighter in Northern Ireland, and across the United Kingdom, but what do those dangers have to do with the extent to which firefighters are brought on the scene when there are civil disturbances? Sadly, although we hope, on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, to see a change in the situation, in 1998 there were 1,156 civil disturbance call- outs in Northern Ireland—these are the Minister's own figures—and in 1999 there were 555. That may seem like a halving of the problem, but if we take out the figures for one month—July—which two years ago was quite fraught, to put it mildly, and compare the remaining 11 months, in 1998 there were 413 other call-outs and the following year there were 476. That is considerably more than one a day.

Until the Minister took a hand subsequent to my written questions, there was folly in the way in which an agreement negotiated and put in place under the aegis of the Labour Relations Agency was to be swept aside. If one wonders why that was so, one has only to look at the fire authority's annual report for 1998–99. On page 25 it alludes to its financial difficulties and says:

A significant control mechanism for containing costs was allowing employee numbers to fall.

It went on to detail the extent to which the numbers fell. The Northern Ireland fire authority's report shows that its fire service was being called in demonstrably more difficult circumstances than other fire brigades, with—again I emphasise this—traditionally fewer resources.

Following a review of fire cover in Northern Ireland some years ago a major report was published that took, as the costs, the figures for 1983–84. That may seem a long time ago, but at that time the per capita costs of the fire service made startling reading. I shall not compare them with the £17.40 per capita that the London fire brigade cost in that year. It is more realistic to compare Northern Ireland, with its large rural areas, to Scotland.

The Scottish brigade cost £13.55 per capita. The Northern Ireland fire service cost £9.74. That is a considerable difference, with about 28 per cent. less being invested in what I consider to be a comparable fire service. More up-to-date figures are difficult to come by, but the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy produced figures for 1996–97, when the comparative figures were £24.83 per head of the population for Northern Ireland against £30.38 for Scotland. The estimate for 1998–99 showed Northern Ireland at £25.80 and Scotland at £33.45. I simply ask the Minister what the cumulative effect of the underfunding from 1983–84 to the present must be.

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether, in his judgment, the saving is mainly the result of reduced staffing or reduced equipment and resources in Northern Ireland?

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I shall try to cover that later.

I know that statistics are boring, but we are talking about financial issues so statistics are important. The cost of responding to emergency calls across the regions varies considerably. In metropolitan fire and civil defence authorities, it is about £1,102 per call, whereas in Scotland it is as high as £1,377. Northern Ireland is the second lowest at £1,163. There is a fair difference between those figures.

Does the Minister accept that a major problem has to be tackled? The reality is that the cumulative effect is reflected in several ways, which brings us back to the question asked by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik). It is reflected in the cutting back of the establishment, which was identified in various reports including the 1998–99 annual report. We are talking about undermanning. There has also been a reduction in the updating and modernising of equipment and stations. I shall return to the subject of stations.

The cutback could inevitably be dangerous. I hope that I suggested that 77 per cent. of the budget pays for staffing. If there were a shortfall, it would be reflected in the quality of training and retraining. Nothing stands still in firefighting. There are changes and advances in technique and equipment to which I feel that the fire service in Northern Ireland is entitled, in the same way as any other fire service in the United Kingdom. I cannot quantify the extent to which training suffers, but I shall try to give an example of the undermanning and extrapolate that argument to other subjects. To do so is not unreasonable.

Page 25 of the fire authority's annual report refers to an approved establishment of 1,919 whole-time firemen and 980 retained firefighters. Yet the reality is that the number of full-time firemen has fallen from 895 to 872 and retained firefighters from 923 to 827. Administrative and manual personnel also decreased: from an establishment of 205 there was a fall from 196 to 191. If my mathematics is right, the figures show that a total establishment of 2,104 was reduced to 1,890. In other words, we are manning at a level 10 per cent. below what is required, in a context in which there were 16 deaths from fire in Northern Ireland in 1998 and 28 in 1999.

Let me return to the 827 retained firefighters. For presentational purposes, they are presumed to be available as 24-hour manpower units. In reality, 75 or 80 per cent. of them provide only limited availability—12hour cover, perhaps—and two limited-availability retained firemen equal only one of what is intended. What we therefore require is not a reduction from 980 to 827, but more than 1,700 retained firefighters. I am quoting the fire authority's own figures. I may be boring people with these statistics, but I do not how to illustrate the point without referring to them.

I shall compare Essex fire brigade with that of Northern Ireland. Essex covers a population comparable—in fact, just a little less—to Northern Ireland's, though its geographical region is only a quarter of its size. In 1998, the Essex brigade reacted to just under 23,000 call-outs, compared with Northern Ireland's 32,000. Yet the manpower and budget for Essex is greater than for Northern Ireland.

I shall briefly move on to fire stations. In the Northern Ireland fire brigade's survey of 1984, a requirement for new retained part-time fire stations was listed. Sixteen years later, Aughnacloy in my constituency and Market Hill are still without fire stations. Similarly, there was to be an upgrading to provide greater full-time cover in places such as Coleraine, Newtownards, Portadown, Enniskillen and Omagh. Again, that has not happened and one wonders why. In fact, I know why—it is all to do with underfunding.

Some of those towns are well known for the wrong reasons. We all remember the tragedy in Enniskillen and the tragedy in Omagh. We are all aware of the tragic confrontation over the years in Portadown. Yet these major rural towns remain without adequate fire cover.

In considering those points, I ask the Minister to remember that Northern Ireland does not have the advantage of inter-regional back-up. If Essex is under pressure, a nearby region can provide support. There is no similar arrangement in Northern Ireland, and because of our political circumstances, we do not even receive much support from the Irish Republic. Our fire brigades will go across into Donegal, but because of the confrontational nature of society in Northern Ireland, that support is not reciprocated to any degree.

I understand that 15 stations are inadequately manned and require semi-permanent back-up arrangements that are placing neighbouring stations under huge strain. There is the danger that we will have inadequate cover for a tragedy. Why does the Northern Ireland fire authority not advertise in the local press to counter the undermanning? That would make an impact, and seems a simple way forward, yet it is not pursued. I wonder whether the fire authority is being kept fully acquainted with the facts. I believe that the authority is being kept in the dark in some respects.

As I said, I know that the Minister endeavours to provide meaningful responses when a serious issue is raised with him. We have averted the crisis and the firemen are comparatively happy. Can he move the situation forward on a broader basis? Given all Northern Ireland's problems, and its isolation from support, can he ensure that the fire service receives equipment and finance that are comparable with those in other regions of the United Kingdom? Despite the dedication of the fire officers, the people of Northern Ireland should not be required to accept second-rate fire and emergency protection.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) on his choice of subject, and I thank him for his generous remarks about me. The Government appreciate the work that the Northern Ireland fire brigade has carried out during many long years of civil unrest. It has consistently provided a high quality of professional firefighting, without showing favour towards any part of the community, and I know that almost everybody in Northern Ireland agrees with that. The brigade is owed an enormous debt of gratitude, and I am happy to place on record my admiration and respect for its work and for the dedication and courage with which it carries out its work.

The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone raised a couple of issues that arose from written answers that I gave him recently. We did not intend to cause offence by highlighting the stone-throwing incident, we merely wanted to point out that some incidents of disorder have no sectarian dimension. They are regrettable and should not be excused, indeed, they should be condemned, but they should not be seen as unique to Northern Ireland. Sadly, and unacceptably, such incidents are not unknown in all parts of the United Kingdom, including in my own constituency of Knowsley, North and Sefton, East. However, that does not undermine the fact that firefighters in Northern Ireland have had to carry out their job in difficult circumstances and, in many cases, in circumstances specific to Northern Ireland.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the written answer that I gave him, in which Hansard records that I said that there is

a Northern Ireland allowance of four days additional leave.—[Official Report, 11 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 126W.]

Hansard has accepted responsibility for the error, and has undertaken to correct the record accordingly. The correct answer, and the one that I submitted, was that Northern Ireland firefighters receive a Northern Ireland allowance and—the crucial word being "and"—four additional days' leave in comparison with firefighters in Great Britain. I did not want to cause offence or mislead the hon. Gentleman. It was simply an error in how Hansard presented the information. The Fire Brigades Union called for me to resign over the issue, but, fortunately, I could establish that Hansard had made the mistake rather than me, in time for me to retrieve my resignation letter from the Secretary of State's in-tray.

I shall certainly not endorse the call for the Minister to resign, but I quibble over even his amended answer. To pick out the phrase "four days" and suggest that Northern Ireland firefighters have four days more than all other fire brigades is not accurate either. In the case of Northampton, the difference is one day. We are dealing with packages, and we must not pick part of a package and suggest that the brigade is more favourably treated than other brigades.

As the brigade receives those four days, it is treated more favourably than some other brigades. However, I accept that it is not unique, and that different local arrangements are involved.

I shall make three brief points before I conclude, as time is short. First, like the hon. Gentleman, I am pleased that the dispute that was looming has been resolved through sensible negotiation between the fire authority and the trade union involved, the Fire Brigades Union. A sensible conclusion was reached, and I am glad that I played a small part in encouraging them to negotiate a sensible solution to the problem. In such circumstances, the use of industrial action, which was threatened, is unsuitable, as I told the Fire Brigades Union, among others.

The hon. Gentleman raised two issues with which I shall deal briefly. The first related to the finances of the fire brigade and the authority, and the second related to manning levels. The fire authority's baseline budget allocation has risen from £43.7 million for 1998–99 to £51.4 million for the current year. In 1999, an upgraded control room was opened and training facilities at Boucher crescent were improved. The modernisation and improvement of fire services throughout Northern Ireland has been pursued through the development of efficient maintenance of the fire brigade fleet and firefighting equipment, of which there have been several examples.

The authority's budget has increased by £2.9 million for the 1999–2000 allocation. An additional £4.9 million was allocated last year, which is an increase of 8.5 per cent. in real terms. There has also been benefits from the comprehensive spending review.

Order. Time is up.

I am delighted to have an opportunity to talk about the operation of the landfill levy. Until recently, that has received an almost universally positive reception, probably because people observe the two ends of the tax: first, as a tax on putting waste material into the ground instead of doing more imaginative things with it, such as recycling it or reusing it, and, secondly, the magical appearance of large sums of money for environmental schemes and good causes apparently as a result of the levying of the tax.

There can be no doubt that both observations are well grounded. The tax, which is the United Kingdom's first green tax, is in principle a sound application of the idea that one should tax "bads" rather than "goods". The indiscriminate dumping of our society's waste in landfill sites is clearly a considerable environmental bad that could be ameliorated by diverting substantial elements of the waste. A tax escalator that encourages such a change in behaviour is clearly a good idea. There is also no doubt that many local voluntary groups, church halls and environmental organisations have benefited from the £90 million that has so far been allocated from the proceeds of the tax. However, the bit in between the raising of the tax and the distribution of its elements is a problem and has rightly been the subject of a recent inquiry by the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs, and of a sustained inquiry by The Guardian.

The latter inquiry examined several aspects of the process and drew some frankly unfavourable conclusions, which will become part of the evidence in a further inquiry by the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee into the effect of the landfill tax later this year. I do not wish to trespass on that inquiry nor to cover all the issues raised by The Guardian inquiry, which covered a range of topics, including the illegal dumping of contaminated soil, the commonality of interest of environmental bodies handing out the money, the evasion of the tax itself, inspection of sites by the Environment Agency and several other issues. Rather, I want to concentrate my thoughts on an issue on which neither the Select Committee nor The Guardian inquiries focused.

Why is the operation of the tax beginning to go wrong? Is it because a few bad apples are taking advantage of a few holes in the legislation or is it something more serious, or are problems arising because of the design of the mechanism that takes us from the tax to the handouts? I believe that it is the latter. There are, and will be, attempted evasions, fly tipping and the illegal passing off of active waste as inert material. Indeed, The Guardian inquiry chronicled several such scams. They are almost an inevitable byproduct of an increasing tax and demonstrate that the tax is beginning to work in that people think that it is worth their time and trouble trying to evade it. That is an important issue, but it is no different from the consequences of any other tax. The solution to the problem is to ensure that resources are available to secure proper enforcement of the regulations.

It is painfully clear that the Environment Agency does not have sufficient ability to investigate and enforce, and that the courts still fail to take environmental crimes as seriously as they should. They are matters of process. Almost as a throwaway remark, we can say that, as a consequence of the landfill levy escalator, there will be a direct correlation between the level of tax and the level of attempted evasion, and that a proportion of the additional levy should be allocated to ensure that enforcement increases at the same rate as the tax.

It is the mechanism for distributing the tax or a portion of it that is seriously at fault. That will not be cured by better enforcement or by review of its working, as its basic logic is flawed. Unless we appreciate that, matters will get worse not better. That would be a great tragedy, because the input and output principles of the tax are sound.

Let us consider the logic of the mechanism. The tax is collected, but as it is a green tax it serves two purposes. The money does not simply go to the Exchequer, but is designed to assist a change in behaviour. On that principle, 20 per cent. of the tax take is to be recycled for environmental purposes. One might assume that that is for the purposes of the tax as stated at the time of its introduction, which were, according to a memorandum from Her Majesty's Customs and Excise submitted to the Environment Sub-Committee's inquiry,

to promote the "polluter pays" principle, by increasing the price of landfill to better reflect its environmental costs

and

to promote a more sustainable approach to waste management in which less is produced and more is recovered.

So, where does the 20 per cent. of the tax go? The Treasury designates it as tax forgone, which means that it is regarded as having never been collected. I imagine that that is to do with Treasury rules. hypothecation and so on, but the result is that the tax, which is clearly a real tax and public money, stays in the hands of the companies that pay it. Those are the companies that collect waste and place it in landfill sites. One might imagine that they pass the costs on to the people from whom they collect, which escalates the costs and the concern about tipping in landfill sites.

Instead of paying the 20 per cent. to the Exchequer, the companies pay it as a tax forgone to the environmental bodies credit scheme, which comprises several organisations set up specifically to receive the money and disburse it to good causes. Those causes are specified under the scheme in six headings, which, roughly, are land reclamation, reduction of the effects of pollution on such land, research and development into sustainable waste management, the provision or maintenance of a park or similar amenity if it is in the vicinity of a landfill site, the restoration of a building for religious worship if it has an environmental connotation, and administrative services to other environmental bodies. Strikingly absent from that list is any provision for money for recycling, an omission that has been rectified only now, four years after the commencement of the scheme.

We may ask ourselves who carries out the overwhelming amount of recycling, and the answer would be the local authorities. They also have to pay to put their waste into landfill sites, and the more that the tax goes up, the more that they will pay. They will pay from the same legislatively limited revenue funding as they might otherwise use for the promotion and extension of recycling, which is one of the aims of the landfill levy in the first place. We have established that they cannot recover money for recycling from the environmental bodies credit scheme, because that was not included in the six headings and has been added only recently.

We might think that matters would be different now that the rules have been changed to include recycling, but that is not so. The rules state that only registered environmental bodies can receive money from the 20 per cent. of the tax under the terms of the environmental bodies credit scheme. To date, 1,200 such bodies have been registered with ENTRUST, a private company limited by guarantee, which regulates the scheme. However, if they are to register, the bodies have to be certified as not being controlled directly or indirectly by a local authority or a landfill operator.

Local authorities are therefore organised out of getting their hands on any proceeds of the tax. The most that they can do is attempt to press the case or otherwise support one of the registered environmental bodies to obtain money locally that might support the environmental objectives that they find increasingly difficult to sustain by themselves. Hampshire county council and the city councils of Portsmouth and Southampton made a joint submission to the Environment Sub-Committee inquiry in which they estimated that 20 per cent. of their waste management budgets went simply on landfill tax.

The same restriction does not apply to the landfill operators. They have set up, as a vehicle for the distribution of the tax forgone, a number of environmental trusts, supposedly at arm's length from the landfill companies, which are empowered to make the decisions on how to distribute the money. Furthermore, landfill companies can claim a tax credit of up to 90 per cent. of their contributions, so only 10 per cent. of the money that goes into the environmental trusts is real money donated by the landfill company.

A bizarre twist then arises. ENTRUST authorised landfill companies to raise the other 10 per cent by soliciting so-called third party contributions—another organisation would pay the money on behalf of the landfill companies, but, curiously, the landfill company can continue to claim tax relief on the money as if it had paid it. So the landfill company may appear to have donated, for example, £100,000 to an environmental trust, but in reality it gains around £3,000 net from the process.

Notwithstanding that, the landfill companies exercise substantial control over the environmental trusts into which taxpayers' money goes. Thus, Cory Waste Ltd. has an associated environmental trust, Cory Environmental Ltd., the Onyx Environmental Group has the Onyx Environmental Trust and so on. It is, therefore, not surprising that the pattern of allocation of funds between the various headings shows that 55 per cent. of all funds go to just one category—category D—covering the provision or maintenance of amenities in the vicinity of landfill tips. It is as if the board giving out lottery grants consisted of the shops selling the lottery tickets, convened area by area, and empowered to provide community centres down the road with the name of the relevant sweetshop on them.

I am not blaming the landfill companies. They are rational businesses and will do what is best for their businesses. They have found that they can appear to be positive stewards of the environment and can secure greater acceptance of their landfill sites in particular locations by showering the vicinity with environmental goodies, using our money to do so, and all quite legally. I do not blame the landfill companies for seeking to offset their 10 per cent. contributions when many hungry organisations can see the sense of seeding the pot with a relatively small sum to secure a far greater amount in grant for a cause that they favour. That motivation is especially strong for companies that were excluded from the carve up because of the way in which the scheme was set up. It is no surprise that many local authorities have contributed the additional 10 per cent. on the understanding that a project that they favour will receive funds from the environmental trust.

I cannot blame local authorities for doing that because it is a rational response to the irrational set of circumstances in which they find themselves. What is peculiar is that there is no published register of third-party contributions, so the public cannot see who has put in the additional 10 per cent. and to what extent it correlates with the award of grants. What is even more peculiar is that, until last autumn, even ENTRUST did not know the identities of those contributors. That has changed to a limited extent in response to a recommendation of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs that a register be made public. The Government stated that changes in the 1999 Budget rules would introduce a

new requirement that ENTRUST be notified of the identity of third parties. This will enable ENTRUST to be satisfied that no benefit arises from the contribution. The Government sees no need to go further by requiring that a public register be kept.

That is the final piece of strangeness. Why do people give unsolicited contributions of 10 per cent. of the cost of the liability of the landfill company if it is not to secure some benefit? Is there any reason, other than occasional and breathtaking philanthropy, for apparently anonymous donations to be used by landfill companies as if the money had originated with them?

All in all, it does not surprise me that there are occasional excesses and self-serving use of the money, as shown by the example unearthed by The Guardian of a supposed experimental environmental road which—well, I never—led to a landfill site and was used only by lorries going to and from that site. I am surprised that things are not much worse. It is perhaps to the credit of the bodies regulating the scheme, and of the landfill companies on the whole, that a scheme that almost seems set up to be abused in most cases has not been. The loser in all this is the prime objective of the tax—to promote a more sustainable approach to waste management, in which less waste is produced and more is recovered or recycled.

Dozens of churches have been restored, hundreds of parks laid out and scores of contaminated sites remediated and landscaped. That is all very good, but are they squarely in the front line of the stated objective of the tax? At some stage, logically, we will run out of churches, parks and ancient household waste tips in the vicinity of landfill sites. What will we do with the money then?

It is high time for a fundamental review of the way in which the scheme is constructed. It is not that it has not done good: it has. It is not that it is hopelessly corrupt: it is not. It is simply that it is badly set up and its results are far from being what they could be if it were differently conceived.

We should start with some simple building blocks. I have three suggestions. First, the money should be handed over as a tax obligation to an independent organisation for consideration and distribution; secondly, the key terms of reference of this organisation should be the original aims of the tax; thirdly, a portion of the money made available should be set aside for a local authority challenge fund to assist with investment in recycling and reuse at local level, which is vital if waste is to be diverted before it enters the stream that leads to landfill. Those three simple rules could transform the way in which we administer and distribute the income from this most worthwhile of taxes.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on securing this debate. I know that it is a subject that he has followed with great interest over a long period.

I agree with him that the landfill tax is a worthwhile tax. The Government are committed to reducing the environmental consequences on land of the way in which we dispose of waste. I very much welcome this opportunity to discuss the role that the tax plays in helping us to achieve that aim.

The tax was introduced on 1 October 1996 and, as my hon. Friend said, had predominantly environmental objectives. I agree that it has done much good. It forms a key element of the Government's waste strategy, with its aims of recovering the environmental costs of landfilling and encouraging waste producers to consider more environmentally friendly alternatives to landfill such as waste minimisation, reuse and recycling. There are two rates of tax—a lower rate of £2 a tonne on inert waste, such as soil and stone, and a standard rate of £11 a tonne on active waste, including household waste, which has a greater potential to pollute the environment.

The tax is already having a marked impact on waste management practices, but we want it to have a greater effect. Therefore, in the 1999 Budget the Chancellor announced that the standard rate would be increased by £1 a tonne each year, with a review in 2004. The first of those increases has just taken place. This escalator will encourage greater diversion from landfill and will allow waste producers and managers to plan future waste management effectively. It also represents a prudent approach, because it allows us to measure the effects of the increases in tax and the tax's performance before we decide on a longer-term strategy for the rates that should be applied to the tax.

We need to keep an eye on the way things are going, to make sure that the landfill tax is achieving its objectives. That is why we carried out a major review of it, which was reported at the March 1998 Budget.

My hon. Friend referred to recent allegations of fraudulent abuse of the landfill tax and the environmental bodies credit scheme. We take any allegations of abuse extremely seriously. For example, Customs and Excise and ENTRUST uncovered last year, in the course of ENTRUST's enforcement work, serious allegations of misuse of scheme funds, which are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, and Hertfordshire police have made seven arrests. Customs and officials at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions have now also received the 85-page dossier prepared by The Guardian following its investigations. Those allegations are being examined carefully, but I cannot respond to the conclusions and recommendations until the examination is complete. However, I want to comment in general on some of the issues raised by the dossier and by my hon. Friend.

On the environmental bodies credit scheme, which was introduced at the same time as the tax, landfill site operators who contribute to approved environmental bodies can, as my hon. Friend said, reclaim 90 per cent. of their contribution as a tax credit, up to a ceiling of 20 per cent. of their landfill tax liability. A contribution can also be generated by third-party contributors who fund favoured environmental projects through an operator. The scheme supports projects that improve local communities around landfill sites, reclaim brownfield land, or support research into, and education about, more sustainable waste management.

Since its inception, the scheme has raised about £250 million, which has been handed over to the environmental bodies. As my hon. Friend said, about £90 million of that sum has so far been spent, and we need to ensure that the apparent lag does not continue for too long. The amount that is handed over and the amount that is spent must match reasonably closely. At the moment, the scheme costs the Treasury about £80 million a year in forgone revenue, and is regulated by ENTRUST, to which my hon. Friend referred.

A number of changes were made to the scheme from 1 January. As my hon. Friend noted, recycling was explicitly added to those research projects that can attract funding, thereby creating a new category that covers market development for recycled products. The Government want to encourage greater spending in those areas. How and when operators can claim credits was simplified, and the scheme's rules were changed to make it clear that third-party contributors cannot benefit from projects that they fund.

A main aim of the tax credit scheme is to involve the private sector in supporting environmental projects, so it is not surprising that industry should be involved in how the money is spent. However, a contributor is not allowed to gain a direct benefit from a donation. A contributing operator or other third party who wants to finance an environmental project may benefit only in a general sense—for example, through improved standing in the local community or publicly available research.

To help prevent "direct benefit", operators cannot control those environmental bodies that receive their contributions. However, there is nothing to prevent operators from influencing bodies to which they donate. Indeed, in respect of large donations, Customs and Excise recommends that operators have such an influence, or that they at least take a close interest in the project, so that they can ensure that the money is properly spent. Customs and Excise has told me that it will seek repayment of tax credits from any operator who fails to take such precautions, and whose contributions are subsequently mis-spent.

Of course, all manner of influences may help to determine where and how contributions are eventually spent. Foremost is the landfill site operator, but other influences include local communities around landfill sites, third-party contributors, customers of operators—including local authorities—and specialist advisers such as non-governmental organisations. We see nothing wrong in that, so long as contributions are spent on approved objects and contributing people or organisations do not benefit directly.

As regulator of the environmental bodies credit scheme, it is the job of ENTRUST to ensure that the money is properly spent by environmental bodies, and that no direct benefit passes to contributors. Customs and Excise, which audits ENTRUST's performance to ensure that it meets an acceptable standard, is satisfied that ENTRUST now has appropriate systems in place to identify abuses and revoke non-compliant bodies. Those are the mechanisms and systems that led to the arrests to which I referred. ENTRUST has carried out about 500 assurance visits since the scheme's inception. ENTRUST cannot guarantee that no fraud or abuse is taking place within the scheme, but Customs and Excise has assured me that ENTRUST is fully investigating the new allegations and will report to it on its findings. The Government will carefully consider any concerns that arise from that report. I note my hon. Friend's point about public access to the register of third-party bodies.

My hon. Friend would like more funding for local authorities to help with investment in plant and equipment to recycle more household waste and divert more waste from landfill. The case for such additional expenditure will of course be considered as part of this year's spending review, because recycling and support for recycling is a call on mainstream Government spending. Recycling schemes have to be considered in the round, alongside other priorities such as health and education.

I point out to my hon. Friend that if the cash that can currently be credited to those who pay landfill tax were to become instead a fund directed by the Government, it would count as public spending, whereas the existing scheme does not. That spending would need to be contained within the envelope of total public spending, which has already been announced for the next three years. My hon. Friend's proposal would therefore lead to reduced spending on recycling, which is contrary to his intentions. However, if the organisation were to be independent of the Government, and managed a portfolio of projects, and landfill tax payers chose where their credits were directed within that portfolio, it might not count as public spending. That is an interesting idea that I should like to consider further, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it. However, I caution him that if, as he suggested, some of that money was then handed to local authorities, it would certainly count as public spending. That reinforces my point that the real decisions concerning public support for recycling must be taken in the context of the spending review.

I have not yet worked out how it is possible for a company to donate £100,000 to an environmental body and find itself £3,000 better off at the end of the transaction, as my hon. Friend suggested. If he has any examples, I would be keen to see them.

The Government would like more environmental bodies to support more local authority recycling projects. We are considering ways of improving the performance of the scheme by encouraging contributors to target their funding at more strategic projects. We have expressed the view that more of the available money should go into sustainable waste management, such as waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and the development of markets for recycled products. Officials are working with the waste management industry, ENTRUST and environmental bodies to develop guidelines to achieve that.

I turn to activities that are exempt from waste management licensing. Landfill tax applies only to waste disposal landfill sites that are licensed under environmental law because that activity has the environmental cost that the tax was designed to recover. Some activities involving the recovery of inert waste are exempt from waste management licensing, provided that they comply with the terms of the exemption and do not endanger health or the environment. The recovery of waste under those exemptions from licensing can include the construction of roadways, buildings and recreational facilities such as golf courses.

The "Dispatches" television programme on 6 April blamed the alleged abuses of the exempt activities regime and illegal fly tipping on the desire to avoid paying landfill tax. However, in one of the cases shown, in which the waste came from a contaminated brownfield site, the disposal would probably have qualified for exemption from landfill tax under the contaminated land exemption if it had been taken to a licensed site. In another case, the waste, if taxed, would have attracted only the lower rate of £2 per tonne.

The Government, recognising that the tax was leading to a serious shortfall in suitable inert waste for restoring landfill sites and filling quarries, introduced an exemption from tax for waste used for such purposes from 1 October last year. It is therefore difficult to see how the tax promotes the illegal dumping of inert waste.

Will the Minister give way?

I do not think that I can, given the time. I apologise to my hon. Friend.

The Government take very seriously illegal dumping and the abuse of licensing exemptions, which are criminal offences. I remind hon. Members that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment announced to the House on 18 April that he is reviewing the two waste licensing exemptions that are subject to allegations of abuse—those covering recreational facilities and the improvement of agricultural land. There will be a consultation paper setting out the proposed changes to the current exemptions.

I look forward to the debate on the operation of the tax and to hearing the views of hon. Members on how we can best use the tax and credit scheme to achieve national waste policy objectives and create a more sustainable waste management system. My hon. Friend will be an active and particularly well-informed participant in that debate, but I suggest that the case for proposals such as that which he made today for a local authority challenge fund for recycling projects will be considered primarily within the spending review 2000.

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the proposed closure of the manned meteorological station on the Island of Tiree in my constituency.

I shall begin by setting the scene, with a brief description of the island and its situation, and by welcoming the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie). He represents a Scottish constituency, albeit one in the central belt. He may not have visited Tiree, but I am sure that he has some idea of its location. If he has not visited Tiree, I extend a warm invitation to him to do so. He will know from the forecast on the radio that Tiree has the largest number of hours of sunshine in the United Kingdom. There is also a tremendous wind that blows all the time. I also welcome other hon. Members who have come for the debate, particularly the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Ms Jones). That may seem to be an unlikely place, in this context, but I know that she takes an interest in the island and has visited it recently.

Tiree is a jewel of an island, situated off the west coast of Scotland, a four-hour trip from Oban by Caledonian MacBrayne ferry. There is nothing beyond it, except America. The island is 11 miles long and six miles wide at its widest part, and its Gaelic name, Tir Iodh, means the land of corn. It was once known as "the granary of the islands", in the days when there was a great export trade between the islands. Its main exports now are quality sheep and cattle, or they were, before the dreadful downturn in the agriculture industry. In 1831, the population was 4,450; it is now less than 800 and falling.

I am aware of the Met Office's long and honourable history. Formed as a small department within the Board of Trade in 1854, it was taken under the wing of the Air Ministry after the first world war. Later, it moved to the Ministry of Defence, becoming, first, an executive agency and, in 1996, a trading fund.

Our debate is about the closure of the meteorological office on Tiree. The Met Office's headquarters is in Bracknell, in Berkshire. It employs over 2,000 people and five of those are employed at the office on Tiree. The Tiree station started work in 1926, and has produced valuable weather reports ever since. Five jobs does not represent much in the great scheme of things. Nevertheless, to a small community, it is the equivalent of 50 or more jobs elsewhere. The Minister will argue that the station on Tiree is not closing altogether; it is to be automated and will continue to produce weather reports. He will also argue that the five involved will not lose their jobs and that they will be relocated. Well, that would be good. However, would they prefer to live on Tiree or to be relocated to Bracknell? I suspect that that is a rhetorical question.

Tiree, which has a small and falling population and a fragile economy, will lose five jobs. Five families will be affected, and five children will be withdrawn from an excellent school, which may suffer the loss of a teacher's job.

In a written question, I asked the Secretary of State for Defence about the

assessment he has made of the social and economic impact on remote and island communities of the automation of meteorological stations.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence replied:

This is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Meteorological Office.

The Minister asked the chief executive to write to me, which he kindly did. In that letter, which is published in the written answer, he said:

The Met Office is looking to improve efficiency and reduce costs in the delivery of weather services…We recognise that the withdrawal of the Met Office observers from Tiree, should this be the outcome, could have an adverse impact on the local community, and this I would very much regret.—[Official Report, 18 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 432W.]

It was very nice of him to say that, but what will he do? He did not say. What will the Minister do? He cannot shuffle off his responsibility. We are discussing not simply the automation of a weather station but the way in which the Government care for their people and what they can do to help to sustain a fragile community.

The Minister will no doubt argue that we must move with the times—new technology is the name of the game, and we are told to be cost effective and to make money. People, it seems, do not matter. I am afraid, however, that the brave new world of information technology was somewhat dented by the recent crashes in the stock market computer system and by the love letters that were sent to the House of Commons.

Can the Minister say, with hand on heart, that the quality of weather information that is gathered by an automated station is as good as, or superior to, that which is gathered by a trained expert? For example, a machine can presumably report on the height of clouds above it, but can it look around, as the human eye can, and see whether storm clouds are gathering on the horizon? I am not a technical expert, and the Minister may be able to answer my question.

The Minister will argue that the collection of weather data will still be undertaken because the Met Office will train airport staff to help regular and air ambulance flights that go to and from Tiree airport. However, I question the quality of the data that may be gathered. The main issue is primarily the loss of jobs.

The hon. Lady shares my concerns about this matter. Is she aware that after the closure of the Shetland weather station, on at least two occasions aircraft flying to Sumburgh had to divert at the last minute because the automatic system failed to give adequate warning of changes in the weather?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving a good example of the worries that are felt about automation. In a moment, I shall discuss the example of Kirkwall.

The Minister will no doubt maintain that sustainable development of the islands is a matter for the Scottish Parliament and for Highlands and Islands Enterprise. The Ministry of Defence will not help if it undermines local efforts. Too often, decisions are made in Westminster without any regard to the consequences. After all, five jobs on a remote island such as Tiree must look like peanuts compared to the numbers involved in the developments between Rover and BMW, about which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry made a statement in the House yesterday. He said:

Our priority now is to do everything we can to help those who will be affected, to provide training and to attract new jobs to the area. That is the role of Government—to manage change and to equip people for change, not to leave them the innocent victims of change.—[Official Report, 9 May 2000; Vol. 349, c. 645.]

Today's debate highlights the fact that Tiree is to be the innocent victim of change, unless the Minister can come up with a similar answer to that given by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. That would be very welcome. The almost callous way in which these things are done is hard to take. Did the Minister or the chief executive think to inform anyone about what was to happen? Did they consult the local council in Argyll and Bute, the local community council, or the Member of Parliament?

Other stations in Scotland under threat include Kirkwall in Orkney—where concerns have been raised about the partly automated station, and about the quality of forecasting since forecasters were withdrawn—and Aviemore, the only staffed inland weather station involved with the mountain rescue service. The decision to close that station would be a rash one.

However, today's debate is about Tiree. What help or support can the Minister give? I understand that the Bracknell headquarters is to move into a modern building in another area, at a cost of millions of pounds. I suggest that a contribution could be made to the Tiree economy with, for example, financial support for the new livestock mart which has to be built to meet European Union standards. If it is not built, agriculture will suffer and more jobs will be lost.

Finally, will the Minister, in conjunction with the chief executive, examine the possibility of decentralisation by moving IT-based activities that are not geographically specific to Tiree? Why does everything have to be done at Bracknell? I hope that I have given the Minister some idea of my great concern. I thank him for listening and look forward to his reply.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) and to the Minister for allowing me to intervene briefly in support of the hon. Lady's case and to enter a plea of common sense.

I am something of a weather groupie. One reason for that is that I spent most of my boyhood summer holidays on the west coast of Scotland. I am more familiar with Coll than with Tiree, but I understand the importance of any job in a rural community. That is also true in my own rural constituency, where we enjoy the Met Office C130 plane, affectionately known as "Snoopy Snack", flying in and out of Boscombe Down as part of the weather operations.

The Met Office has an annual revenue of nearly £155 million, and its largest customer is the Ministry of Defence, which contributes £55 million a year. The Civil Aviation Authority pays the Met Office £27 million a year, and other commercial customers contribute a further £21 million a year. Tiree represents a drop in the ocean. The Met Office employs 2,300 people, including 460 weather forecasters, 168 observers, 317 researchers, 825 people in computing and technical areas, 163 people in sales, marketing and other commercial areas, and nearly 250 in finance and support service posts.

The Met Office's mainframe super-computer has a peak processing power of 150 G-flops—that is, 150,000 million calculations a second—and is the fastest supercomputer in Europe. A knowledge of the cost of everything and the value of nothing is one way of summing up the Met Office's approach. It grieves me to say that, because I am a huge fan of the Met Office and admire it greatly.

On relocation in the south, on 17 April 2000, at column 667 of Hansard, the hon. Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) asked for a statement on the future of the Met Office and said, as a Labour Member of Parliament, that she hoped that its future location would not be in the Reading area, because the economy of the entire country needed to be considered as well as the congestion in the south-east. In the same column the Minister said that the aim of the Met Office

is to enable individuals, society and enterprises everywhere to make the most of the weather and the natural environment.—[Official Report, 17 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 677.]

Why, therefore, is the Met Office picking on five people in Tiree?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) on securing this debate, which has allowed us to discuss an issue of great local interest and concern. I was raised in the Outer Hebrides, so I have some familiarity with the topography of the region, although it is not nearly so sunny in Stornaway as it is in Tiree, as I am sure that the hon. Lady is well aware.

I am conscious of the sensitivity of this issue, as is the chief executive of the Met Office, and I shall try to reply as fully as possible in the time available to me to the points raised by hon. Members. In addition, the chief executive would like to extend an invitation to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, and any other hon. Member with concerns, to visit the Met Office's headquarters at Bracknell for a full briefing on this subject and to view the organisation's admittedly centralised operations at first hand.

I shall start by putting the issue of automation into context. The Met Office, in common with the meteorological services of many other countries, has steadily increased the contribution made by automated systems to its observing networks over the past 10 years. Since the early 1990s, automatic weather observing stations have been installed at a number of locations. They have been systematically developed since inception to provide increased capability and robustness.

Although the automatic weather system was originally conceived as an aid to the observer, it has always been capable of operating totally independently, and that is already the case in many locations. However, the equipment currently deployed does not have the functionality required to allow full automation of the manned sites that comprise the basic observing network. It is the Met Office's intention to retain some manned sites, such as Lerwick, for that reason.

The automated measurement of some weather elements has, therefore, been accepted practice for many years and has enabled the Met Office to run its observational network at a much reduced cost to the taxpayer without compromising the quality of its services. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the Met Office is a Government trading fund and, as such, all its services must be paid for by customers, either directly, as in the case of commerce and industry, or indirectly through a wide variety of Government Departments.

The Met Office's customers wish to see increasing value for money. In addition, developments in forecasting require data to be available more frequently and from denser networks—for example, in the Scottish highlands—to provide improved services. Increased automation of the observational network is key to meeting those needs.

Development work has now been carried out to enable the automated measurement of additional observational elements such as radiation, sunshine and precipitation-related weather conditions, and trials are shortly to commence to assess the feasibility of extending the automation process into areas where, up to now, manual observations have been seen as necessary for the Met Office's operations. The trial, which is being conducted between May and December 2000, is the first stage of a two-year project planned to develop the observing infrastructure and to roll out automation to a number of sites, subject to a successful outcome. The initial roll-out is planned to commence with Aviemore in November 2000 and is due to be completed by December 2001, affecting approximately 11 sites throughout the United Kingdom. The automation of the manned offices in Tiree and Kirkwall is tentatively scheduled for summer 2001 and the office at Stornoway is due to be automated by the end of that year.

I stress that the manned observing offices in Scotland are being treated no differently from those in the rest of the United Kingdom. A similar proportion of stations in England are likely to be automated, given a satisfactory outcome of the trial. Moreover, the Met Office plans to retain a presence at several defence locations in Scotland. Lerwick will continue all its current activities, as well as taking on a programme of ozone measurement. That will include high altitude balloon ascents that contribute to the international monitoring of ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere and the global climate observing system.

Hon. Members have asked whether automated observations are an acceptable replacement for manual observations. As one would expect, there are advantages and disadvantages to the information from the automated equipment, when compared with information produced by an observer making visual estimates. Despite differences in the nature of automatic and manual data, the Met Office is confident that the trial will demonstrate that automatic systems can provide the data that is needed, and will not jeopardise the quality of its services. In fact, increased investment in future observational systems such as remote cameras, coupled with increased research and development, will help to make local forecasting more accurate.

I am, of course, aware that increased automation will have an impact on Met Office staff who work at the affected sites, including Tiree. I understand that the people involved already know that they will be withdrawn from their respective sites, subject to an acceptable outcome to the trial. The priority will be to find all affected staff suitable posts elsewhere in the Met Office. That will include retraining, where appropriate. Informal consultation is under way with the trade union, the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, and formal consultation is expected to take place within the next few months, once the course of the trial has become clear.

I am also conscious of the potential impact of the withdrawal of Met Office observers, should that be the outcome, on local communities. The services that are delivered by Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd. at Tiree, Kirkwall and Stornoway airports, which are essential to local aircraft operators, are likely to be particularly affected. I stress that responsibility for the provision of the aerodrome meteorological reports that are necessary for airport operations rests with HIAL, not the Met Office. Nevertheless, the Met Office entered into discussions with HIAL at the earliest opportunity to consider how HIAL could continue to provide the reports.

In the absence of Met Office observers, those discussions, which remain at an early stage, are concentrating from the outset on ensuring that HIAL staff are suitably prepared, in terms of both training and equipment, to enable them to maintain manned observing stations at Tiree, Kirkwall and Stornoway airports, should that be necessary. That will ensure the maintenance of the crucial manual elements that are required at aerodromes for observing present weather, cloud height and visibility.

I am sure that hon. Members are aware that several worries have recently been expressed, not least by the hon. and learned Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace), about the quality of forecasts produced by the Met Office for those engaged in aviation in the northern isles. Those comments have been noted with great concern by the Met Office, especially with regard to the quality of weather forecasts for Kirkwall that are provided to civil aviation, following the move of forecasting services from Kirkwall to Aberdeen some four years ago. It is true that, initially, the quality of forecasting services dropped, which was a matter of great concern. Consequently, in 1998, responsibility for Kirkwall forecasts was transferred to the weather centres at Sella Ness and Glasgow, the latter of which provided out-of-hours support. Since that transfer, the quality of aviation forecasts for Kirkwall has improved significantly, and now exceeds that which was achieved when they were produced at Kirkwall.

Notwithstanding those improvements in the quality of service, I am pleased to note that the Met Office is discussing the forecast quality issues at Kirkwall that the hon. and learned Member for Orkney and Shetland raised directly with the airline concerned. As a result of initial discussions, a new reporting system for monitoring and assuring aviation forecast quality for the northern isles is, as we speak, commencing a trial period. The aim is to ensure that the quality of the forecasts that are delivered to aircraft operators in the northern isles continues to meet the requirements of those operating in an area that can be subject to rapidly changing meteorological conditions.

Concerns have also been raised about the impact that the withdrawal of Met Office observers from Aviemore would have on safety in the surrounding mountains. There are a significant number of weather-related incidents in the Scottish mountains. For that reason, the Met Office is keen to ensure that its public safety role is enhanced, rather than diminished. It is working with other interested parties to ensure that weather information is more widely available and more comprehensive. The automation of observations at Aviemore will include the introduction of high-quality closed-circuit television, which will complement its installation at three other sites in the Scottish mountains and provide much improved coverage. Forecasters will be able to use the resulting pictures, together with other observed information, to enhance the quality of forecasts for the area.

The Met Office is also talking to the Scottish Executive and other bodies in Scotland in an effort to improve the weather services that it provides in the Scottish mountains. The talks are taking place with a view to introducing the improved services to walkers and climbers, skiers and the public at large, as well as the rescue services, before next winter.

Even if I accept that automation will improve matters greatly, does the Ministry of Defence or the Met Office at Bracknell accept any responsibility for the impact that the withdrawal of five jobs will have on the community in Tiree?

If I may, I shall finish the point that I was making. The introduction of automation at Aviemore should be seen not as a reduction in Met Office services or a lessening of its commitment to the Scottish mountains, but as part of what it hopes will be a major expansion.

These decisions are never taken lightly, and we recognise the importance of an admittedly small number of jobs in an area that does not have many. The Met Office must try to get the best value for money. It is constrained by the rules that govern a training fund, and by the wishes of its customers. Ultimately, its service must be dictated by those considerations. Of course, other agencies are involved, and I hope that they will be able to work with us, particularly through the Scottish Parliament, to provide alternatives. I fully accept the principle behind what the hon. Lady says. Given the increasing availability of automatic computer links, telecommunications networks and so on, it ought to be possible to decentralise many of the activities that currently take place centrally. I am sorry to say that, at present, that theoretical position is rarely matched by the will of agencies, public or private. Although there are teleworking initiatives in the highlands, which I welcome, I suspect that the process will be slow. I shall do what I can to help, but I must accept that I can do little to influence matters directly.

I deeply regret the loss of jobs—assuming that the trial is successful—in the hon. Lady's constituency, and I shall be happy to deal with any point that she wishes to raise. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to visit Tiree. I have never been there, largely because I am a terrible sailor. My youth was punctuated by remarkably intense bouts of seasickness. Of course, one can travel by air, and the boats are much better than the Loch Seaforth of the 1950s and early 1960s. I should be happy to meet the hon. Lady and discuss her concerns, and I thank her for raising this subject.