Like any other Member of Parliament, I know many men and women who work hard, behave responsibly and look after their families as best they can. They rate their success in life by how much they earn and, perhaps, by how much better off financially they are than their parents were at the same stage of life. Occasionally they pause for a moment, often while waiting for their commuter train or as they interrupt their Sunday evening to take yet another overseas call, and wonder whether that is all that there is to life. It is not a thought that many of them feel that they can indulge for long, and soon they are back in routine, wishing that they had a little more time to spend with their children or to care for their ageing relatives. They would be horrified to be thought selfish or greedy. Indeed, most of them feel that they are much less well off than many of their contemporaries or colleagues, and wish that they could earn a little more.

What is true of so many individuals is, in an important sense, true of countries as well. In the developed world, the industrialised countries compete furiously among themselves to win a higher national income year on year. They squabble and negotiate to ensure that they do not lose out in trade deals, or that they are not outsmarted by one of their competitors. Their politicians solemnly recite figures showing more income, higher debt repayments, more exports, more imports, more exam passes, and life expectancy being extended beyond the imaginings of earlier generations, even if the prolongation is often miserably beyond any conviviality as well.

For nearly all hon. Members, the parameters of debate are given. Our job is to see how capable our opponents are to deliver those things and to try to show that we would deliver them better. I do not believe that that is enough. The time has come for our nation to pause and ask itself where it is going and whether its current destination will bring us satisfaction. The time has also come for us to ask ourselves whether our pursuit of goals and the way in which we pursue them is justifiable in this world, almost every corner of which is better known to us than, for example, Cornwall would have been to someone growing up in Newcastle or Glasgow 100 years ago.

I have chosen only one small part of that big, philosophical debate for today. Within the scope of my title, I intend to concentrate on children. They are not only our future, but the most vulnerable part of the world's population. In many parts of the world, they are also the most numerous sector of the population. It is also appropriate, as there is to be a world summit for children in New York in September 2001.

It is not as though all is well with children in the United Kingdom. I shall take a few figures at random, and point out that 900,000 children live with parents who have problems with alcohol, and that 11,000 are in penal institutions, more than anywhere else in western Europe except Portugal. We also have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. On the Townsend measure of relative poverty, 4 million children are deemed poor.

Those statistics shame us in Britain, but they almost pale into insignificance against those on children elsewhere. UNICEF reckons that, worldwide, no fewer than 1.2 billion children—one in five—live in poverty. That is a larger number than 10 years ago. I shall provide two more statistics. Every day, 8,500 children and young people become infected with HIV-AIDS. That is a quarter of a million a month. In 1996–97. donor countries gave $350 million to the fight against the epidemic. UNICEF suggests that in that same year they gave $60 billion to keep South Korea afloat financially. What is our contribution, apart from our share of the $350 million? It is to send teams to the worst hit countries to recruit the best of their doctors and nurses because we have signally failed to predict our national needs for such staff.

It is estimated that in 10 years more than 8 million children have been killed or disabled by war. What is Britain's contribution? It is to be the world's second largest arms dealer, in a business in which everyone agrees that it is almost impossible to control the end use of arms, no matter how carefully the first user is vetted.

In the UK, there has been sporadic debate about the propriety of children delivering newspapers before they go to school. For at least 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 elsewhere in the world, the debate is a little different. For them the issue is not pocket money to spend on CDs and fast food, but rather whether, at great risk to their health and their schooling, they can turn out enough work to keep their brothers and sisters from starving to death. The fact that for most of them such toil means that they are never in school is a tragedy both now and for the rest of their lives. The future for an adult with no education looks increasingly bleak.

Listen for a moment to the voices of some Zimbabwe's farm children, living on some of the most prosperous enterprises in that country. One of them wrote:

The houses of the farm are very small. You cannot even turn the other side. You have to wake up and go out and then come back facing the side that you want to face. The toilets are very dirty.

Another wrote:

My father died in 1997. My mother does not work and I don't have anyone who can buy clothes for me. At this time I am little happy. There are many things which make me unhappy. If I see others wearing nice clothes, I will just look.

A third said:

When I have finished grade seven I am going to secondary school in Mvurwi. But maybe I will not go because my father has very little wages and the money will not be enough. He will be buying mealie-meal and clothing.

I am not trying to say that the UK is doing nothing about such disparities. Indeed, the Department for International Development is working hard to improve both the scale and the effectiveness of UK development aid. The Department needs to become more transparent, readier to learn from other organisations and readier to welcome and learn from complaints. However, as a new Department, it deserves to be congratulated on its progress so far. This is not a partisan occasion. A bipartisan approach is needed if we are to secure our objective. This debate is an appeal for the nation to look seriously at its own goals and ambitions and to ask itself whether they are sufficient in a world so full of human misery.

It is tempting to say that if we go on getting richer, we shall be able to do more for the poor. However, experience disproves that. Between 1992 and 1997, overseas development aid declined among the leading industrialised countries by 30 per cent., at a time when most of them were doing better than they ever had done in their history. The Government have done well to arrest the decline in overseas aid, but the truth is that, even after their welcome increase in generosity, we are spending only approximately 0.3 per cent. of our national income on aid. Yet we boast that we have the fourth largest economy in the world. What destroyed the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle? Primarily, it was the reluctance of the richest countries on earth to make their markets available to the pathetically small output of the least developed countries. Trickledown? Pull the other one. The truth is that the rich nations, just like the rich individuals who make their policies, are spending more on preserving what they already have than on sharing it with those who have less.

We need to do a lot more, not merely to increase the sums available, but to change our perception of ourselves, our place in the world and the rights and hopes of our fellow world citizens. The insularity and triviality of so much of our media coverage of the world must change. What a Spice Girl wears, or rather does not wear, drives off the front pages anything other than the most lurid kind of disaster, and those images of disaster do not help to increase understanding and real sympathy. A change is needed in the perception of every family in the land.

If we are to secure that change, we must start with our children. I welcome the extra resources being spent by DFID on development education, but we can and should do much more. Young children have an inherent sense of justice. If they are given the information about how much more they have than other children they will want to do something about it, but only if they are given real opportunities to make a difference. That is where political leadership comes in. If they sat down and worked out how to do it, the Government could help schools and families to develop effective partnerships across the world for changing the lives of children elsewhere.

After all, if Nigeria, with all its troubles, can run an effective youth corps to serve its poor and, by sending young people to provinces other than their native province, is breaking down the tribal concentrations, we could surely do the same to serve the children of the Commonwealth. I have a friend who goes every year with his wife to a country in sub-Saharan Africa. They are part of a small group of British teachers who spend part of their precious summer holidays raising the standards of teachers in other parts of the world. That could be extended by Government assistance. They would not have to be current teachers who exhaust themselves during the term: I am sure that newly retired teachers would be of equal value.

At the primary school end of the age range, it should be possible to spark the latent sense of justice in small children by telling them that, as UNICEF believes, the goal of universal primary school education could be reached by 2010 if we spent $7 billion a year. How much? Oh, just what the United States of America spends annually on cosmetics or what the countries of the European Union spend on ice cream. How many school children in Africa could be assisted if every school in the United Kingdom went without ice cream for a week?

I know this all sounds idealistic, but it is also self-interested. If we do only the little that we do now for the poor of the world, and if we continue to believe that we can make a difference without it costing us anything from our own pampered life styles, our children will inherit the whirlwind. Already in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Rwanda and countless other countries, orphaned or abandoned children are learning that the only way to survive is to rob others, preferably with a gun. The instability of the middle east is fuelled by the poverty and frustration of children and young people who have nothing more to lose. The same is true in a growing proportion of the world. Just as in the UK we are seeing the first purpose-built estates with high walls and electronic fences to keep out those who have less, so across the world increasing riches are being spent to protect those riches, rather than to enhance the dignity and profit that could come from the talents of millions of children who need our love, not our police, and our generosity rather than our greed.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on introducing the debate with a moving speech, which I am sure we all heartily support. He has identified a need for us all to acknowledge the facts of a world in which there is such poverty and such high child mortality, and the question arises how we should respond. Will people be inspired simply by an appeal to their morality and idealism? Sadly, the answer is yes, but no. More than one approach is needed. The question is one of mutual interest.

We should set the goals that the Department for International Development has championed, of halving poverty by 2015 and thereafter repeatedly halving it until we eliminate it. We should continue to pursue that aim for the benefit not only of young children but of young adults and middle-aged and older men and women in the countries concerned, whose lives are ruined by poverty and ill health. In some parts of the world, as the Select Committee on International Development has seen, particularly in southern Africa where HIV-AIDS is becoming such a scourge, life expectancy has dropped by more than 20 years in the past 10 years.

We must address that problem and help to manage it, but we cannot do that sitting in Westminster or in DFID's office in Victoria street. We cannot do it for the people concerned. They must be enabled to do it for themselves. I ask myself how we could inspire the British people—and not just the British people but all those with the good fortune to live in comparative wealth in developed countries—to help the poor of the world. As my hon. Friend said, it really depends on the children and young people of the world experiencing the poverty that exists in some of the countries concerned.

To speak personally for a moment, the poverty of Pakistan struck me when I was travelling from London to Singapore in an ancient Hermes aircraft, which broke down at Karachi. I spent a week in Karachi in 1955, eight years after the partition of India. There were the refugees of partition, still living on the banks of the Sutlej river. Those who know that river will know that it is covered in filthy, dirty, slimy mud. On those muddy and infirm banks, the refugees had used any kind of material from Kellogg's cornflake packets to driftwood to build some kind of shelter.

Karachi was full of beggars and young children, many of them mutilated so as to beg more successfully from richer people like me. My first experience of their difficulties came when I gave one of the beggars a few coins, only to find that the news spread fast. Among the beggar children in Karachi, it became an objective to extract from me still more coins or other gifts that I might wish to make, or some, perhaps, that I did not wish to make. I was chased into a doorway. I was extremely frightened and had to be rescued by two policemen who took me back safely to my hotel.

Such poverty was created by the stupidity of man: first, in the partition of India and, secondly, because, in eight years, no one had taken into account how a better shelter could be provided. It sunk into my soul that that creation of man could and should be put right by man: people, especially younger people, must be given the experience to help them to understand what life is like for human beings who suffer poverty and degradation throughout the third world, and in pockets in this country.

We must emulate the Kennedy Administration, which challenged the world with its peace corps, and create a corps of people who are willing to go to villages, slums, refugee camps and even brothels, as the International Development Committee did, to see and feel the conditions, to make human contact with people suffering those conditions, and to admire their resilience, their determination and their cheerfulness in the face of such terrible adversity.

I shall never forget being part of the International Development Committee's visit to the slum children living in Dhaka, where some effort had been made to give them schooling. The schools did not have a regular 9.30 am to 3.30 pm regime. They met in rudimentary conditions and the children were taught by volunteers—mainly women—after dusk, when they could no longer scavenge the rubbish tips. To see the enthusiasm, the bright determination and the exhilaration of a 10-yearold in those conditions showing us that he could read was the reward of that visit. Understanding begins to develop if people can visit those places.

We must encourage the twinning of schools and communities in the developing world with those in this country, so that people can go with a team from their neighbourhood to help people in the third world to build schools, pumping stations and houses, showing them the techniques necessary to construct what is needed in a manner that the area can afford. It is not only money that is needed.

Those contacts must be built up over the years so that children from Dhaka and from the slums and rubbish heaps outside other great cities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Africa can be brought here for a fortnight, as my hon. Friend suggested, to learn from us not only about material things but about the friendships that can, and do, exist between races, religions and cultures. That is why they must come here, even though it sounds impossible. We would probably have to raise the money to enable them to travel, but nowadays, with cheap air travel, that would be feasible. If we manage to do that, it will develop the determination necessary to provide the rudiments of life, the education and the technological developments to enable the people living in slums in those countries to demand their rights and to work to build their own communities. That is how to defeat poverty. With the help and kindness of the human race, and the energy that will be generated by the visits that I have described, we can enable people, young and old alike, to help themselves. However, it will happen only when that coalition of circumstances takes place.

We saw, in Malaysia and Singapore in 1955, what can happen to the poorest countries when they become richer. Those two countries had been fighting the Japanese during the second world war and then the communist Chinese. They had suffered the conditions of war for between 15 and 18 years, and they had only one export, rubber, and that trade was severely disrupted by conflict. Conflict is the poverty maker. We must find a way to settle conflicts without destroying the infrastructure necessary to allow human beings to plant crops and sell the surplus to keep themselves alive. During conflict, all those things are destroyed and development cannot take place.

In the peaceful conditions that came about once the communist infiltration had been stopped, Malaysia set about working the rubber plantations and introducing new crops such as palm oil. New villages were developed, which part-owned the factories. People became shareholders, and they had land to grow their own crops and sell the surplus. They therefore needed roads to take their produce to market. Malaysia's economy is now one of the most powerful in Asia, and it is starting to produce manufactured goods such as motor cars.

The standard of living in Malaysia has risen immensely. However, that is the result not only of aid but of huge investment. If such countries are not in conflict, private sector investment can give them the confidence to employ people. Such investment is profitable not only to the nation but to the people, who can save and invest capital in their own right. That cycle has helped to bring Malaysia out of the serious poverty that it was suffering.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Those nations can derive encouragement from our country's record. My grandfather was born in about 1850, and I was reading in one of the DFID publications that the average expectation of life in Liverpool in 1847 was only 25.

Yes, the developed and the developing world have made huge strides. I mentioned Malaysia because I wanted to show that we should not be downhearted or dejected. Changes can be brought about, but only if we enable people to do it for themselves. Life expectancy in Liverpool changed from 25 years to 75 for men and 80 for women because, through the co-operation of good Governments and investment, much more hygienic conditions were brought about. Better public health resulted from proper drainage, and water being piped into homes made bathing possible for everyone. It was the ability to earn a living and to produce a surplus that brought Liverpool and the United Kingdom to the present state of comparative prosperity.

We have somehow to get the idealism back into our efforts to stimulate curiosity in the people of the third world, so that they are inspired to go out and work with their compatriots. We must help them to help themselves so that they develop the friendships, cooperation and co-ordination that will attract the investment and employment that those countries desperately need.

Another serious point that we must bear in mind involves the important report of the International Development Committee on women and development. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) was a part of that effort, as was my hon. Friend. That report revealed the appalling conditions in which many women live, particularly in the sub-continent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. We have to work to change the culture that keeps women in desperately poor conditions and enable them to understand their rights—even if they cannot read or write. We have seen that it is possible to teach them the law.

Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani laws pass any international legal test, but they are not implemented. Not until women are enabled to live a life of self-respect and believe themselves that they can contribute to their family in a way that they cannot at present will we solve their problems, such as those that result from serious overpopulation, for example in India. When women can take control of their own fertility and their lives, with the help and support of their menfolk, we will begin to get real development and relieve the conditions in India, with its high percentage of the abjectly poor—India, Bangladesh and Pakistan together contain a large percentage of the abjectly poor. We must assist and encourage women in those countries to begin to live a life with their husbands and children that has hope and the capacity for growth, so that they can contribute to the intellectual and cultural life of their countries. That means changing Indian culture. We cannot do that, but we can assist people to do it.

We can also encourage the many Indian people who want to change their culture. My hon. Friend took the International Development Committee to a suburb of Delhi where truly inspirational work is being done in helping slum dwellers to build their own houses and install drainage on land that they initially did not own. Most of the people doing that work were women. Some of the children of that settlement now attend university in India and are likely later to have a leadership role so that they can change the conditions for the slum dwellers of India, not just in Delhi but elsewhere.

That project was made possible because the land that they were living on was eventually transferred into their ownership so that they had control over it. Governments must provide the means of ownership of land and assets for slum dwellers to develop. Such a programme should inspire us all to believe that we can make a difference. It is a challenge of enormous importance to bring about a world in which people have self-respect and better living standards and can make a contribution. I am sure that the Minister's Department is making a great contribution in work that is idealistic but essential if we are to improve life in those desperately poor countries.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on an inspiring speech. To me, Andrew, that is the sort of cut out and keep speech—

Order. I realise that this Chamber is informal, but that goes a bit beyond the intention of the Committee that created the Chamber, and the House's subsequent decision.

I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was getting carried away, as I was by the speech of the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent.

The hon. Gentleman's speech was for me a cut out and keep speech. I still do not download easily; I cut out and keep. That speech will certainly have that treatment, and I suspect that I shall refer to it many times over the next few years. It was important because, in such an emotional way, he made the links that I am always asking people to make. Recently, when we—not me personally, but many people in this country—were shouting and screaming, protesting about fuel tax and complaining that petrol was slightly more expensive here and that we should do something about it so that we can drive our gas guzzlers wherever we want, I kept asking my constituents, "Can you not make the link? A few months ago you were screaming and shouting at me about helicopters to Mozambique and deploring the fact that a baby was born up a tree. You are now telling me that one of the very elements that created that disaster should be made cheaper. Make the link. That is the important thing." However, people never do so. We as parliamentarians, and especially those of us who are interested in development, must keep saying that.

Another link was made for me yesterday. My husband brought to the House a colleague, a doctor from Nepal, who is at St. Thomas' hospital for a few months. He was excited that the consultant whom he had happened to be placed with had a wife in Parliament. He came here and was completely overawed by the place, as people are. When I gave him his ticket to the Gallery to watch questions, he asked whether he might talk to me for 15 minutes, and he poured out his heart about wanting desperately to do something for the people of Nepal while he was over here. He recognised how privileged he was to have had a medical education and to be able to come over here, and—it was the first time that he had been to the west—he still could not get used to our way of life. He was on another planet, and he wanted desperately to lobby me to do something about Nepal and to help the poor people in his country.

We must constantly make the link between the high technology about which we are all screaming, such as stem cell research and how it should be made available in this country, and the fact that, as the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) said, women are dying because of a lack of basic health care, and AIDS is rampant all over the third world. We must make the link.

I intend to be fairly pragmatic, because we can do many things here that can make a difference over there. Last night, at dinner, a colleague asked whether I could list a few factors that were important in development. I jotted down debt relief, corruption, capacity building, education, mortality, maternal and child health, health generally, clean water, HIV-AIDS, arms and arms brokers, trade and trade issues, the environment and human rights, which links them all. He said, "I didn't want anything like that. I just wanted a few pointers." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but there they are."

The Government are beginning to understand that we need to link not only the third world and ourselves but the various Departments. Joined-up government is essential in development issues, because all the factors that I mentioned are dealt with by different Departments. Without co-ordination, our efforts are pointless: we are throwing money away.

Will the Minister explain, either in this debate or in writing, why there is no signature from the Secretary of State for International Development on annual arms exports? She scrutinises them and is supposed to play a part in saying where it would be dangerous to send arms, so why is her signature not there? Symbolic it may be, but symbols are important, and it should be there.

I may be able to help by pointing out that our Department and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State are consulted on only a percentage of arms export licences—only those destined for developing countries in which we have a particular interest—whereas the other three Departments are involved in consultations on all the licences.

I thank the Minister for his response, but without wishing to offend him, I suspect that it is a little inadequate. Nevertheless, it is very important that DFID be consulted wherever arms are to be sent, because there are many countries that, if they are not in dire poverty now, would be after a civil war, which might be caused by our sending them arms. The Department should have more input into the report and, likewise, the human rights annual report. There can be no Department more concerned with human rights than DFID, yet there is no signature from the Secretary of State on the report.

As a Parliament, we should demand a greater input and influence from DFID on those issues. It seems to me that the Department of Trade and Industry strides across the world destroying much of what has been achieved. Although there has been no decision yet on the Ilusu dam, if we are not careful, huge numbers of people are likely to suffer from one Department's decision, and DFID will have to pick up the pieces. The key is to make the link among the various Departments and with the third world.

As I understand it, the Foreign Office is responsible for human rights in all countries, and the Department of Trade and Industry must take its advice. Is it not extraordinary that the Minister responsible for the Ilusu dam is not prepared to let us see the advice that he gave the DTI on human rights in Turkey connected with the Ilusu dam?

I entirely agree. It makes one think that there is something to hide. The decision has not yet been made, however, so we must live in hope. What we do know is that if current trends continue we will not achieve the 2015 poverty reduction targets that were published in the White Paper. The World Bank and Oxfam tell us that 70 million more people are in absolute poverty now than 40 years ago.

Although we are making strides in some directions, things are not getting better. They are getting worse. I shall not go through my list in detail because that would take several weeks, but there are some issues that I would like to highlight. The first is trade. I remember the former Member for Tottenham, the late Mr. Bernie Grant, who was a member of our Select Committee and a very dear friend of us all, saying that African countries want trade, not aid. He used to shout from the rooftops about their vital aim: fair trade. They want free trade, but it must be fair. We still are not achieving that.

The actions of the west in trade agreements are damaging the third world and causing it constantly to fall back. We all know the examples, such as the large amount of dumping of agricultural products in third world countries, which affects the ability of their farmers to sell produce. Everyone knows the famous example of the bananas and the World Trade Organisation. I shall not go into details of the case, which anyone can look up. It is iniquitous that the world can hold to a decision that might force Caribbean small banana growers into growing drug crops because they no longer have a decent market for their produce. As I keep telling people, that produce is far better than the stuff that we get from the big banana growers.

When the multinational agreement on investment was being negotiated a year or 18 months ago, we heard a great deal about multinational guidelines for the way in which big companies operate abroad. I repeat that the onus for good behaviour and codes of conduct must be on the multinationals and must be legally binding. It must not be for poor, third-world countries to operate the guidelines. They will never do so, because they want the trade and investment so much that they will cut corners.

I understand from the non-governmental organisations that mail me—they do so three or four times a day, it seems—that an agreement called GATS, or the general agreement on trade and services, will soon be established. If we are not careful, public services in developing countries will also be at risk from the multinationals. We must consider the matter carefully to ensure that public services are not exploited and that facilities such as water supply are not made more expensive for people living in developing countries. It is terribly important that we consider that matter, and I hope that the Minister will speak about it.

When I took over the brief for international development after the general election, one of the things that had never occurred to me as an innocent in the field, before I had participated in Select Committee visits, was the lack of capacity and the amount of corruption in many developing countries. Lack of capacity often means that even if countries have the money, they may not be able to spend it properly because they do not have the right people to make the right plans. I am sure that the members of the Select Committee who are present would agree that we saw evidence of corruption wherever we went. We saw it from the very lowest level to the highest levels of government. I know that the Department for International Development has addressed that problem. It is important to do so. We all shout for a much higher proportion of our gross national product to go as aid to developing countries, but that is no good unless they have the capacity and the good governance to absorb it.

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. In addition, she may have been as astonished, as other Select Committee colleagues were, to discover that the UK has the feeblest legislation on corruption of all the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The Home Office claims that it does not need to do anything because the system is working perfectly. As far as I can see, there has not been a single prosecution for money laundering in this country, despite its being well known that, as one of the largest financial centres in the world, the City of London is bound to have a significant amount of laundered money.

I do not have the experience to comment on what is going on in the finance houses or the exchanges of this country, but, if the hon. Gentleman is right, I hope that the Minister will address that problem also.

We all agree on education, education, education. I should like to add one more statistic to those given by the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent. Sub-Saharan African countries spent $11 billion on arms in 1998. Universal primary education for all the children in developing countries would cost $8 billion, yet sub-Saharan Africa alone spent $3 billion more than that on arms in one year.

Of course, that brings me—the Minister and the civil servants will groan at this point—to my favourite hobby horse: when will we have legislation to control the activities of arms brokers? Yesterday, I acknowledged that that is difficult, and I do so again today, but so is controlling the drugs trade. We spend billions of dollars a year trying to control the activities of drug pushers and barons, so that we can protect a few people in the western world. What could that money achieve if it were used to chase arms brokers? If we could control their activities, how many hundreds of thousands of lives in developing countries would be saved? We must take this issue seriously, and I hope that the Minister will put pressure on other Departments to introduce legislation as soon as possible.

Despite many debates with the Minister in which hon.

Members pressed for EU aid to be suspended to those African countries that are known to supply the arms and soldiers that feed the wars, there is still no mechanism by which EU aid can be suspended. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is depressing? EU aid continues to drip-feed into those countries, fuelling the very conflict that she is discussing.

To be totally honest, I am not clear what the hon. Lady is referring to. Is she suggesting that EU aid is used to buy and send arms to those countries? If so, that is appalling and it should be investigated. However, it is difficult to argue that we should suspend humanitarian or development aid on the ground that that country is selling or laundering arms. That happens in every country in the world.

I was thinking in particular of Zimbabwe, where $250,000 a day was used to feed the war in the Congo. There was no mechanism to stop that direct aid going to the Government. The difficult area is EU to Government aid, rather than the aid that goes directly into projects and reaches the people for whom it was originally destined.

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification, and I agree with her. I knew that she would want to mention Zimbabwe, as she often does.

The AIDS epidemic is raging throughout developing countries. Some of those countries, such as Uganda, have admitted to the problem and are taking action. This huge problem will, I suspect, decimate the economically active portion of an entire generation of people in Africa and Asia. In fact, I am depressed about AIDS and I think that it will take time to control it.

I thank the Government for putting progressively larger sums of money into AIDS vaccine research—future generations in developing countries will be eternally grateful for that. As an ex-medic, I know that, as with smallpox many years ago, a vaccine is the ultimate hope for controlling the AIDS virus. The Government began the process with modest sums, but last year they increased funding to £25 million. The Chancellor's latest spending review makes it clear that more money—we have not received the precise details yet—will be provided to foster AIDS vaccine research. I thank the Government for that from the bottom of my heart, because it will make a huge difference to third world development.

Last Saturday night in Kingston and Richmond, I joined my local Bahai community in celebrating the birthday of their founder. The Bahais are concerned about development issues and poverty in the third world, and at the celebration the children performed a dance in which a little boy named Igan—I promised to mention his name—dressed in a black bin bag and bare feet to represent the poor of the world, while the other children dressed in their smart sweatshirts and jeans. Every time Iqan appealed to them, they swatted him to one side. The more he appealed, the more they swatted him, and they carried on having a great time, enjoying life and demanding more and more goodies.

The dance concluded with a great catastrophe, and Iqan fell to the ground. He was prostrate before the children and obviously dying, and they gathered round with huge concern. They offered help, caressed his body and carried him from the room in a great gesture of sympathy. I thought, "How appropriate—isn't that what we do all the time?" Every time there is a famine, flood or other catastrophe in third world, we fill the collecting boxes, set up our standing orders at the bank, and say how terrible it all is. Then we get back into our cars and drive to our security-gated estates and forget all about it, having done our bit for the third world by giving money.

As a doctor, this is a hard thing for me to say, but although such actions make us feel good and charitable and absolutely wonderful, they will in fact condemn children in developing countries to a much slower and more painful death, unless we take all the steps to which I have referred to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries.

In the light of the previous three contributions to this debate, I rise with some trepidation. Like the two hon. Members who spoke after my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), I congratulate him on securing this debate and on the sensitive way in which he introduced it. It is clear that he feels deeply about this subject, which he has pursued consistently throughout his parliamentary career. Before this debate, I looked up his entry in Roth's and there was something rather nice about it. It described him as a socially sensitive and caring Christian, and he lives up to that apt description, of which he should be proud. I agree with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) that his was a cut out and keep speech.

I could never emulate the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) on this subject. He has served in Parliament for many years, and his speech enabled us to benefit from his great knowledge, wisdom and guidance. He chairs the International Development Committee in an exemplary fashion, and all hon. Members, regardless of their political persuasion, appreciate its work under his leadership.

I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if this is beginning to sound like a mutual admiration society, and I shall deal with the Minister in a minute. The hon. Member for Richmond Park gave us a canter around the fields. Her long-standing interest in the subject of development has been well catalogued. She and I have spent many a lonely hour in Westminster Hall debating subjects of that ilk. Only yesterday in this Chamber, we were discussing the Great Lakes and Rwanda and the Government's policy on that area. A Labour Member mentioned that during the recent all-party parliamentary visit to the Great Lakes region she had observed that the eyes of the children were dead. That is a poignant description of the product of conflict, wars and man's inhumanity to man.

We have only to read some of the reports of the child soldiers that are deployed by warring factions in various parts of Africa to be appalled that children are so used and abused. We do not have to go to Africa to see such abuse. We can nip down the road to the other end of Europe and see the results of ethnic cleansing and hatred between communities in Kosovo. I was in Kosovo a few weeks ago and went to a small village in the hills above Pristina where some brave Serbs had finally had the courage to return to their village, which was in ruins. Some of our British soldiers were helping to reconstruct their houses. I saw an old woman and three young children with a mother who was obviously traumatised and could not function properly. A 10-year-old girl had undertaken the care of the two younger children and seemed happy to do that, but one could not help looking into her face, which was the face not of a 10-year-old child but of a 90-year-old woman.

There is a fabulous charity in my constituency called the Toy Box, which was started by Duncan and Jenni Dyason. They provide help to children on the other side of the world—the street children in Guatemala city. They started the charity in 1992 and do sterling work. It is appalling that there are still almost 40 million street children in Latin America alone. Charities such as the Toy Box offer a window of hope. Its young student workers, helpers, members of the Dyasons' church and even a well-known company called The Entertainer, which sells children's toys in this country, all support the Toy Box charity.

I received a letter from one of the student workers who has just spent three months working in Guatemala City as part of a project. She said that she had come to love the children, one

of whom, Danny, I will never forget. He is 6 years old and when he was 2

he

and his mother came to live in our girls home. Although memories from his somewhat abusive past resurface occasionally, he is generally a very happy boy who loves to colour, do maths, play sports and read—he is still learning. Each morning he would wake us up to teach him to play the recorder.

There is some hope. I do not know whether that was the particular child about whom I was told a few years ago, but when I first came across Toy Box, I was stunned by a story that Duncan told me. A young girl, aged 12, came into the refuge with her baby, aged about 18 months. They started treating the mother because she was obviously traumatised and then realised that the baby had also been sexually abused.

I admire the people who work with children in areas such as Guatemala. I do not have the opportunity to do that, but they deserve our support and I hope that the Toy Box will continue. We should also pay tribute to the many charities that do sterling work in that respect throughout the world.

The Conservatives share other parties' objectives in seeking to alleviate poverty. I applaud the Department for International Development for recently producing its strategies for achieving the international targets on halving world poverty by 2015. Although we sometimes differ with the Department on the policies that it deploys, we share its aims.

The World Bank recently updated to 1998 its estimates of the number of people living in poverty. The new figures reveal that both the share of the population and the number of people living on less than $1 a day and on less than $2 a day declined substantially in the mid-1990s after increasing in the early 1990s. Sadly, the number of poor people rose again in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The decline was due almost exclusively to the reduction in east Asia, most notably in China, but progress was partly reversed—and stalled in China—by the crisis.

In south Asia, the incidence of poverty declined moderately throughout the 1990s, but not sufficiently to reduce the absolute number of poor people, which has risen steadily since 1987. In Africa, the share of poor people has declined but the number has increased. The new estimates indicate that Africa is now the region with the largest share of people living on less than $1 a day. In the countries of the former Soviet bloc poverty has, unfortunately, risen both by share and by number. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the share of poor people has remained roughly constant over the period covered by the World Bank, but the number has increased dramatically.

That brings me to a specific aspect of the Government's policy that I want to raise. There is little point in aiming to bring the poorest in the world out of poverty if the policies that we adopt may work to lower the standards in countries that are above that level already. In other words, we want not a levelling down but a levelling up. I am worried about a proposal that is being considered by the European Commission, and I hope that the Minister can address that in his response.

In September, Pascal Lamy, the European Commissioner for trade, announced that the Commission had agreed to a proposal that will result in the world's 48 least and less developed countries—the LLDCs—being offered, in 2001, duty-free and quota-free access into the European Union for all their products except arms. When Europe's decision to support the poorest nations through trade measures was announced, it was hailed as a forward-looking—and more than required—response, which offers an end to the marginalisation of the world's poorest countries and may, it is hoped, be matched by the United States and Japan.

However, it is now becoming clear that if the proposal—which is described either as the Lamy initiative or the everything but arms initiative—is implemented without significant amendment it may seriously harm every commodity-dependent Caribbean economy, destroying much of the sugar and rice industries and damaging the rum industry's last remaining chance to compete in the EU market. It will certainly diminish further the prospects for Caribbean bananas in Europe.

The EC proposal, which remains subject to consultations and eventual agreement between European Ministers, is politically sensitive and difficult for the Caribbean region to address, and places the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in a dilemma. The region is committed to supporting any initiative aimed at helping the world's poorest nations, as we all are, but it may not be able to accept the EC's proposals because to do so could be at the expense of the special arrangements agreed for commodities in the just-completed Kotonu partnership agreement.

Apart from threatening the future of the sugar beet and banana protocols, the Lamy initiative may also damage, perhaps terminally, the creative ideas being developed on commodity issues by the Caribbean regional negotiating machinery. To complicate matters further, the EC proposes to proceed by means of an amendment to an existing regulation, which will not require a joint decision with the European Parliament.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Jamaican Trade Minister recently discussed the question of everything but arms with the Germans in Berlin? He told them that the Kotonu agreement, although not fully ratified by European Governments, none the less has legal effect. If the Ministers agreed to admit all goods from the least developed countries without tariff or quota, that would be illegal under the terms of the agreement. The European Union would, therefore, contravene its own agreement with the ACP if it were to go ahead.

My hon. Friend's point stands alone, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to it.

I tabled some questions earlier that were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Minister of State there replied that the Government believe that there is a potential inconsistency between the proposals and the regime. I hope that this matter will be pursued by all Departments involved.

While applauding whatever we can do for the least developed countries and the world's poor, we must ensure that we do not destroy the economies of other countries. It is easy for progress to be reversed. Evidence for that exists in the recently updated World Bank report, in which China has slipped backwards and the number of poor people has increased, even though, statistically, the percentage remains the same. It is so easy to fall beneath the line and return to abject poverty. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the proposals for the Caribbean would not endanger the standards of living in those small, fragile island economies.

I join all other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) on securing this debate. I am not allowed to call him my hon. Friend, although that is what he is. In this Chamber, I am not allowed to call him Andrew—although I do outside—and if I were a Member of the Scottish Parliament, with its modern, updated procedures, I would.

The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent made a thoughtful, philosophical, moving and wonderfully non-partisan speech. I am not sure that I can live up to it. As Opposition Members know, I tend to be a bit of a partisan bruiser from time to time. However, I shall do my best, especially as this is an appropriate time for a debate in which the main topic is concern for children. This is the week of Children in Need—my wife has given me a special tie to wear—but I hope that we shall remember children in need not only for one week, but throughout the 52 weeks of the year, as the hon. Gentleman said.

As well as being a cut out and keep speech, as others have called it, the hon. Gentleman's speech should be titled, following a phrase that he used, "Pause for Thought". That phrase is now used as a title for what is rather cheekily called the God slot on the radio. It is right that those of us involved in the hurly-burly of politics, especially in matters such as international development, should occasionally leave the day-to-day and week-to-week routine to pause and consider what we are doing. In our Department, we have tried to do so during the past three and a half years, first with White Paper 1, which dealt with all our work but concentrated on poverty eradication, and now with White Paper 2, which considers the potentially huge threat from globalisation, which is the main topic of concern in developing countries now. Hon. Members kindly acknowledged that we are working hard.

As the hon. Gentleman and others said, we have been concerned about poverty, not only because it is morally right to be worried about poverty in Britain and the deeper and more abject poverty in developing countries, but because it is in our long-term interest. Could we have a more graphic example than the floods of how climate change affects us? I do not mean only in places such as Mozambique, but more modestly but nevertheless dramatically in the United Kingdom. If people who struggle to survive have to cut down trees in the tropical rain forests, there is an immediate and direct effect. That is why we published a White Paper on poverty eradication and why we do everything that we can to help in the context of our development programme.

I shall try to cover most of the points that have been raised. If I cannot do so today, no doubt we shall have the opportunity to return to the subject in this excellent parallel Chamber. As the hon. Gentleman said, the biggest inequalities are between the vast majority of relatively well-off people living in developed countries, and the 1.2 billion living on the margins of existence in abject poverty. I do not want to diminish poverty in Britain, but those people are without adequate food, clean water, sanitation, health care and education. That is why poverty eradication is our top priority.

As hon. Members have acknowledged, Britain has been at the forefront of development agencies, giving an unambiguous commitment to poverty eradication. Since the publication of the report, we have twisted the arms of other organisations—we are members of almost all of them—such as the World Bank, the European Union and the regional development banks, encouraging them to commit themselves to the principal target of poverty eradication and the subsidiary targets. We have been relatively successful in doing that. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, officials of the Department and I have worked in all the forums in which we have representation.

People have said that the targets are ambitious, but we think that they are achievable if we have the right policies in the developed and developing countries, and if we have the political will to push them through. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) said, it is important that we push forward not only development assistance, but other matters that affect developing countries such as trade, investment, agriculture and environment. We are committed to playing our part.

Nearly 7 million children die each year before their first birthday, and 12 million before their fifth, as the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent said. About 120 million children are without even five years of schooling. Those are shocking facts that we must always remember. To break the cycle of deprivation, we must support all the aspects of the full development of children that enable them to realise their rights and to become productive citizens. That means ensuring their survival, protecting them from abuse and conflict and meeting their development needs, especially in health and education. It also means allowing them to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

Let me give an example of what we are doing. In Andhra Pradesh in India, we are helping to get more children out of marginalised communities and into school. That is linked to funding an International Labour Organisation programme, which involves cooperation with Government institutions, the private sector—which plays a vital role—and civil society to develop a state-based approach to tackling child labour. I have a list of all the work that we are doing to support the attack on child labour. I should be happy to provide it to hon. Members, who will have seen the document entitled "Helping not Hurting Children: An Alternative Approach to Child Labour". We have taken the issue firmly on board.

As has been pointed out, the convention on the rights of the child provides the yardstick that we use to measure how the world is treating children. Next September, the international community will meet in New York at a special session of the General Assembly and review how far we have gone over the past 10 years. I remind the hon. Member for Richmond Park that progress is being made, as she was being a bit negative. We must recognise that progress has been made in a number of areas, including, for example, the mortality rate among children under five. In Bangladesh, that rate has dropped from 205 to 106 per thousand. In Uganda, it has fallen from 185 to 134, and in Bolivia from 195 to 85. I am not trumpeting those figures, as a great deal remains to be done, but we will become too disheartened if we do not recognise that some progress has been made. We must acknowledge that we are at least beginning to move in the right direction.

As several hon. Members mentioned, it is not only our policies that must be right, but those of the developing countries. We are sometimes coy about saying that developing countries need to get their policies right. If they are to maximise the benefits of globalisation, they must first create effective systems of government, and we are helping them to do so. They must also take action against corruption, with which we are helping. They must ensure respect for human rights. We are also helping with that. They must promote security, safety and justice for all. Again, we are helping on that area. They must prevent violent conflict, in respect of which the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) spoke about Zimbabwe. We are raising the issue of conflict in developing countries and pointing out how it inhibits our debt cancellation and development assistance programmes. Also, developing countries need to make markets work better for poor people and to invest sufficient resources to develop a healthy and skilled work force. Without those elements, the effectiveness of our policies is severely restrained.

Will the Minister confirm that the amount of EU aid going into Zimbabwe is still at the same level that it was, say, two years ago? I think that that is when we had our initial discussion about reducing the aid, when $250,000 a day was going into the war effort.

I shall write to the hon. Lady specifically about that, as I want to deal with some of the points made earlier.

Of course, concerns were expressed about conflict and arms controls. We have tightened control over the export of arms and have helped to establish similar controls throughout the rest of the European Union. We have stated our commitment to introduce a licensing system to regulate the activities of arms brokers and traffickers. I remind the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that that could have been done a long time ago if the previous Government had taken on board the need for such a system. We are also working internationally to stem the trade in illicit drugs and minerals, which fuels so many conflicts.

We have helped to raise international awareness of the importance of an accountable security sector that is responsible to an elected Government and does not see itself as an alternative Government. Arms brokerage legislation has been drafted, and I assure the hon. Member for Richmond Park that we will continue to press for early legislation.

A number of hon. Members spoke about corruption and I was asked what we are doing in Britain. We recognise that we need to improve our own controls. The Home Office has published proposals for updating British laws on corruption. The Treasury is currently reviewing financial regulation systems in UK overseas territories to encourage compliance with international standards of financial regulation. The Department for International Development is supporting work by Transparency International to develop integrity guidelines. The Export Credits Guarantee Department has set up several measures to prevent UK companies from using its support for corrupt purposes. Bit by bit and area by area, we are taking the matter on board.

We shall never be able to put an end to all corruption in developing countries. Successive Governments have tried to achieve that in this country. To use an isolated incident of mismanagement, as the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) did recently, to undermine the development effort in Malawi, where we are trying to help the poorest, is downright mischievous. I hope that he will recognise that it was the work that was done on corruption, and not his intervention, that had an effect on the Government of Malawi.

The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham asked about the European Union's everything but arms initiative. I am sure that she will understand the purpose behind it. It was to provide duty-free access to the European Union for the poorest countries in the world. I hope that she approves of that and accepts that those countries, with the largest number of poor people, are the ones that we should help. To give them duty-free access is useful, but I recognise the problems that that creates, particularly in the Caribbean. We have received several representations on the matter.

As the hon. Lady knows, the Lamy initiative includes a transitional period for goods such as sugar and bananas, to help the Latin Americans and Caribbeans to adjust. It is Britain that has taken the initiative in trying to help the Caribbean countries. That is why the carousel activity has resulted in threats to British trade, including in particular the cashmere trade in the Borders. I assure her that we are taking on board the representations, mentioned by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), from Tony Hylton, the Jamaican Trade Minister, and others.

I realise that the Minister has a huge brief and a short time in which to speak, but I should be grateful if he could make some response to the proposition that the Government could play a real role in creating exchange programmes, youth corps or whatever.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I wish that I had much more time. I have a great deal to say and will no doubt find another opportunity to say it. However, by wonderful coincidence, I was just about to come to the matter that he raises.

The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford also raised the question of a British peace corps. We already spend about £30 million a year on supporting volunteer programmes that help to send more than 2,000 volunteers to 80 countries. We have moved away from the kind of scheme that existed when he and I were boys, which meant taking a year out after school or university to go to developing countries. Those activities were good for character building for people such as him, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent and me, but they were not necessarily the best thing for developing countries. Now we want to concentrate on what assistance is best for developing countries. That is what Voluntary Service Overseas, British Executive Service Overseas, Skillshare Africa and others are doing. We support those bodies in their activities and are considering how to support them further. If any ideas are forthcoming, I shall certainly consider them.

As to global citizenship, which the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent mentioned, I am pleased that we have now published guidance to help teachers in schools to incorporate global issues into the curriculum. We have published that for England, we are doing so for Scotland, and next will come Wales and Northern Ireland. We are sending teachers to developing countries and we are including some aspects of development in teacher training. The number of schools twinned with schools in developing countries has doubled in the past year. A great deal is being done—so much that I should like to speak all morning, but I suspect that other hon. Members want to discuss other matters.

I again thank the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent for securing the debate. It is a pity that we did not have more time, but I assure him that the Government are committed to everything that he said, and I thank him for the kind way in which he and others said it. Progress is often slower than we would hope or expect, but I hope that he agrees that, in the matters I have dealt with, the Department for International Development is making its mark in the world.

I congratulate all hon. Members who participated in the debate, which was of the highest quality.

I take pleasure in speaking in the debate, which concerns the most important international conference this year: the COP6 conference of the parties to discuss the implementation of the 1997 Kyoto agreement.

My predecessor as Member of Parliament for Ceredigion, Cynog Dafis—now the Member of the Welsh Assembly for Mid and West Wales—secured an Adjournment debate on the subject of climate change in 1995. He told me that he was one of the first Members to secure such a debate; the record will show whether that is true. He also told me that, at the time, another Member commiserated with him, saying, "Never mind, perhaps next time you will have an Adjournment debate that will be of interest to your constituents." Following the flooding caused by the recent severe weather, there can be few hon. Members who do not now have a constituency interest in climate change.

I shall give a thumbnail sketch of some of the evidence for climate change, which is the background to the COP6 negotiations that the Minister will attend next week. In August, a Russian icebreaker—a cruise ship taking tourists on what was probably a non-sustainable tourism venture to the north pole—broke through the ice, only to find when it reached its destination that there was no ice, only a mile of open water. In September, at the height of the fuel crisis, there was a little-reported paper from scientists who had been studying ice samples from the Himalayas, which showed that the past decade was the warmest for 1,000 years.

There seems to be a disaster in the making: the thickness of the ice sheet over Greenland has shrunk by 42 per cent. in the past four decades and the area itself has shrunk by 6 per cent., and the annual flow of melted ice from Greenland into the sea is equal to the annual flow of the Nile. If the whole of that ice pack were to melt, the sea level would rise by an amazing 7 m.

In 1850, the Glacier national park in Montana contained 150 glaciers; it now has fewer than 50. In 30 years' time, that national park will no longer justify the name "Glacier" because there will be no glaciers left.

The best prediction is that by the end of the century, sea levels will have risen by 1 m. I shall illustrate that by using a local example. Last week, a blue runner was caught in Swansea bay. A blue runner is not that rare breed, a Welsh Tory MP, although they have certainly left Wales for warmer climes—[Interruption.] No, it was not the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) either, but a Mediterranean fish that has never before been seen in Welsh waters.

Global warming is not in question; the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, warned at the beginning of the last century that burning fossil fuels could raise atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and create a greenhouse effect. This has been known about by scientists for at least a century. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, estimated to have been at about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution, had climbed to 317 parts per million in 1960, and 368 parts per million last year. That is a gain of 16 per cent. in four decades. I am pleased to say that even the Prime Minister now seems to be convinced about global warming. Referring in the press to the recent British weather, he said:

The increasing frequency of such extreme weather does lend support to those who say that global warming is no longer theory, but is a fact of life.

I suspect that the Minister would put it more strongly, and I think that the Prime Minister needs to spend even more late nights with his son slowly learning about environmental change.

There is some debate about whether global warming leads to climate change, and it is important that we lay to rest any such disputes. The planet has warmed by 1.5 deg C since the 1970s, and the 1990s was the warmest decade on record. CO₂ emissions are estimated to contribute around 64 per cent. of the greenhouse effect of global warming. Europe and the USA are responsible for 85 per cent. of the man-made CO₂—there is, of course, a great deal of natural CO₂—in the environment. Some argue that we are living in a period of normal climate fluctuation, and that we are just emerging from a little ice age when the Thames froze over and the state of the Scottish economy forced that unfortunate union between Scotland and England. However, even those who hold such views would tend to agree that industrial emissions exacerbate such climate variations. Dr. Mike Hulme of the Tyndall centre for climate change research at the university of East Anglia—I think that the Minister opened that centre last week—put it very succinctly. He said:

Only the input of greenhouse gases can account for things that we have experienced recently.

He was talking about the recent weather in the UK, but we must also remember the recent, horrific flooding in Mozambique and in south-east Asia. That is the reason for the Kyoto agreement.

In Kyoto we agreed at a national and European level to reduce our emissions of CO₂, and other greenhouse gases by 5.2 per cent. from the 1990 levels by 2012. However, since the agreement was entered into in December 1997, emissions have risen by more than 1 per cent. per year. They are projected to be roughly 8 per cent. greater than 1990 levels by 2010. The Kyoto targets, which we discussed at the COP6 conference, may not be strong enough. The royal commission on environmental pollution reports that cuts of 60 per cent. are needed in the next 50 years. I am pleased to say that in a parliamentary answer to me on 6 November, the Minister confirmed that that was the long-term objective of the Government's climate change programme. However, those cuts represent a huge change, and if COP6 is not to be a cop-out, the Government must set the pace for the developed countries, as well as having due regard for the needs of the south.

The Minister called COP6 a make-or-break conference, and I would like to discuss some of the issues to be resolved there. I hope that the Government will look beyond initial compliance and find long-term solutions. It is vital to ensure that domestic policy—our part of the global picture—is the basis for action taken. It would not be acceptable for us to rely on flexible mechanisms in the agreement, such as the USA wants to see imposed, to pass our responsibilities to the developing countries. 1 hope that the Minister will be able to address my concerns about those mechanisms.

I want to talk about carbon sequestration through the use of carbon sinks, which are not the latest household accessory, but use organic growth to remove CO, from the atmosphere and lock it up. Other Members may wish to comment on that, but I want to raise one problem with it. Carbon sinks lock in industrial greenhouse gas emissions temporarily—50 years is temporarily in terms of the history of the world. Once that organic growth, be it forest, grass or whatever, is burnt or logged or in some way comes to its natural end, the CO, and other greenhouse gases locked into it are once more released into the atmosphere. Therefore, carbon sinks do nothing to alleviate our industrial emissions.

Indeed, it could be said that we are moving along the lines of carbon colonisation. Equity Watch has drawn attention to at least two Norwegian companies that have already acquired several thousand hectares of land in east Africa to use to plant fast-growing trees such as eucalyptus and pine that will not bring any benefits to the local economy, but will be sold off and traded as a carbon sink.

Equity Watch calls that the application of cheap development mechanism-CDM-which COP6 prefers to call clean development mechanism. Developed countries earn carbon credits by investing in clean technology in developing countries. That is good in principle and I assume that most hon. Members would support it, but its practical implications could be unfortunate. The new technologies may be less dirty, but that does not equate to clean. Surely at one level at least, CDM should exclude new nuclear energy and that is one point that I want to stress this morning.

I was surprised to learn through a parliamentary answer that the UK's use of nuclear energy has increased from 21 per cent. of electricity generation in 1990 to 28 per cent. last year. Like many others, I simply assumed that nuclear energy was declining. In fact, it has assumed a greater proportion of our energy generation. Nuclear energy may be less dangerous in terms of long-term greenhouse warming, but its potential for sudden catastrophe, particularly in developing countries, surely disqualifies it as a clean development. The early indications from the COP6 talks, which started among officials this Monday, are not encouraging. Mohammed Barkindo of Nigeria, speaking for the negotiating block of the G77 and the China group, said that it was proving impossible to get the developed countries to talk to them about it. He said that they were frustrated and distressed.

My final point on this aspect of the COP6 talks is to remind us of what was left out of Kyoto—particularly air fuel. A recent report, "Collision Course", published over the weekend by the New Economics Foundation pointed out that the projected 70 per cent. growth of international freight traffic by 2004 will wipe out any gains likely to be made at The Hague. That makes a mockery of the exclusion of such traffic from the current negotiations. Facts can often speak volumes. For each kilo of kiwi fruit imported from New Zealand by air freight, 5 kg of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere. Clearly, that is not a sustainable way forward.

The Tyndall centre recently carried out research that matched the countries most and least vulnerable to the effects of climate change to their capacity under their gross domestic product to deal with its effects. The four most vulnerable countries were Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. They have just $100 of GDP for each citizen to spend on coping with every degree of warming. By contrast, the least vulnerable country is Luxembourg, which can spend $8,800 per head. It is worth remembering that it is the poorest countries that will suffer most from climate change. We have a moral obligation as heavy as that to rescind third world debt or to dedicate to the UN threshold of our GDP aid to developing countries to act against climate change in the COP6 negotiations.

I should now like to say a little about a country not represented at the COP6 talks but which has a vital role to play in their implementation—my own country, Wales. It is important to emphasise that the UK's obligations will be met in great part by the devolved Administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Indeed, the National Assembly for Wales has a unique role to play, as it is one of only two legislatures in the world that has sustainable development as a statutory duty. It is written into the Government of Wales Act 1998, and we therefore expect a contribution from Wales.

Wales produces some 7 per cent. of UK emissions for just 5 per cent. of population. That is mainly due to coal fire generation, steel production and so on. Anglesey Aluminium produces a ninth of the Welsh total. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) will welcome the agreement for combined heat and power at Anglesey Aluminium, which will no doubt help greatly. However, 5 per cent. of Welsh electricity is produced by renewables. The UK total is only 3 per cent. Perhaps I can look forward to Wales banking carbon credits with the Exchequer in return for full European funding. In 20 years' time, perhaps we shall have a carbon-based formula rather than the Barnett formula to decide funding issues for Wales and Scotland.

Whatever the future, my constituency of Ceredigion currently has 40 per cent. of its energy needs met by wind farms. If one adds the Rheidiol hydroelectric scheme in my constituency—the largest in England and Wales—more than 50 per cent. of our energy needs are now met by renewables. That is good news, but it is also bad news for the Government in terms of getting their message across. Despite having only 5 per cent. of the UK's population, Wales has more than 350 of the 800 wind turbines in the UK. The sort of political difficulties experienced over petrol and fuel prices could be stored up in the renewable sectors in parts of the UK and Wales. Using the same justification, we need to take action for environmental reasons. Rural areas will be disproportionately affected, and the same seemingly weak case will apply; air freight growth alone would wipe out any contribution from renewables. There is also the same potential for a public backlash.

It is proposed that the largest wind farm development in the UK will be in my constituency—58 MW at Cefn Croes, which will produce 1 per cent. of Wales's total electricity needs. It would make Ceredigion the first county in the UK to run on totally renewable energy.

However, many people do not understand the case. The Government should show a greater commitment to developing renewable technologies.

It was disappointing to receive a parliamentary answer on Monday from the Department of Trade and Industry that showed that Government investment in renewable research, technology transfer and development has been slashed by this and the previous Administration. In 1995–96, nearly £9 million was spent on the renewable development sector. By 1997–98, that figure had dropped to £4.36 million. In other words, it had halved in two years. In the last financial year, it was down to £3.14 million. Those are disgraceful figures in terms of moving towards meeting our Kyoto targets and implementing the COP6 agreements. A tidal generator has been suggested for the Rhyl flats off the coast of north Wales, which could produce 50 per cent. of Welsh electricity needs. However, the entire research budget for tidal wave energy last year was only £150,000.

I will finish with a parable, which is the best way to understand complex issues. It is the story of the French Foreign Minister and his ducks, his herons, his foxes and his fish. I hope that hon. Members will be able to follow it. The tale begins last year, when the French Foreign Minister decided that it would be nice to refill the dried-up lake at the bottom of the landscaped gardens at his official residence outside Paris. Several months later, the lake was restored to its former glory but, subsequently, the first problem occurred. The clear waters were invaded by a particularly potent algae. An environmentally friendly solution was decided on and the Minister imported several dozen algae-eating carp, at considerable expense; perhaps not as much as the fig trees, but still considerable.

The second problem was that the carp attracted a heron, which started to eat them. Despite the French love of shooting small birds, the heron is a protected species in France. The Foreign Minister encouraged—I do not know how—a pair of foxes to take up residence in his official garden; to scare off the heron, mind, not to eat it. As so often happens in matters of the environment, a symbiotic relationship developed between the foxes and the heron, and instead of dealing with the heron, the foxes started eating the mallards that had moved in.

The foxes had to be got rid of, but they produced a pair of cubs and the Minister's family persuaded him to stay their destruction. Therefore, the Minister decided to ship the depleted colony of ducks from his official residence to the pond outside his office at the Quai d'Orsay. That brought about problem number five; the mallards started to mess up a statue of one of his illustrious predecessors—I am sure that the hon. Member for Brent East (Mr. Livingstone) would have something to say about that. "Well, its simple," he thought and had the statue moved back to his residency, where it joined the heron, but not the foxes, which he had moved, and unfortunately not the carp. Why not the carp? Because the lake had drained dry.

We meddle with the natural balance of nature at our peril. The COP6 negotiations provide a crucial opportunity to restore that balance. The hopes and expectations of people in the United Kingdom and many in the developing world rest on the leadership that the Government must and can show.

I cannot think of an appropriate parable, but I plead with those who wish to participate in the debate to be brief. If Members speak for less than eight minutes, all who wish to can speak, but I must allow the winding-up speeches to start at 12 o'clock.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) on securing this debate. I welcome his reference to his predecessor, who deserves credit for being instrumental in alerting hon. Members to the dangers of climate change at an early stage. I endorse everything that he said about the seriousness of the problem and the issues facing us at the conference in The Hague next week.

I note the promotion that he gave to his constituency and the extent to which sustainable technologies are already operating in Ceredigion and in Wales as a whole, but he conveniently overlooked the fact that Wales contains some of those who are most aggressive and militant in their determination to pollute the planet. An educational role exists for him with some Welsh farmers and hauliers. Our debate this morning is appropriate not only because of the COP6 conference next week, but following yesterday's fuel protest, which showed that a considerable body of opinion in the United Kingdom remains unaware of the significance and danger of burning excessive fossil fuels. It is a timely reminder for all of us that work must be done to improve the flow of public information and the level of public understanding.

The Government deserve enormous credit for the lead that they have shown internationally. My right hon. Friends the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment have been instrumental in moving the political agenda at an international level and I welcome what the Government have done. I particularly welcome the speech by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the CBI Green Alliance conference two or three weeks ago, in which he gave an important commitment to put the environment on the political agenda and to promote policies of sustainable development, and in which he put money behind important new concepts, particularly by increasing the amount for renewable technologies and establishing the Carbon Trust.

The policies outlined in that speech were reflected in the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement last week, in which the word "environment" was heard more often than in any other Budget speech in the history of this country. We all have reservations about what he did not say, and we all know that there is much more to do on transport taxation in particular, but the pre-Budget statement was an important step forward in the consolidation of environmental and fiscal policy in the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year, the Government published their draft climate change strategy on which there was a period of consultation. We expected the strategy to be published and it would have been logical to publish it before the COP6 conference. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Minister will tell us when we shall see it. At business questions last week, I asked whether, if it is not published before the end of this week, we can have a full statement on the Deputy Prime Minister's return from The Hague and an announcement of when the final strategy will be published.

I turn to the clean development mechanism to which the hon. Member for Ceredigion referred, and the inclusion or otherwise of nuclear energy. I welcome the fact that the European Union's position is not explicitly to include nuclear energy within the CDM, but to compile a positive list of clean and renewable technologies that contribute to sustainable development. Our Government's position is not quite so clear as that of the European Union, in that they believe that it should be left to the individual host country to determine for itself what constitutes a sustainable energy policy. The United States, the G77, Australia and China are in favour of including nuclear energy in the CDM.

It is indisputable that burning uranium in nuclear reactors does not directly increase carbon dioxide emissions, or, as far as I am aware, those of other greenhouse gasses. However, if we consider the whole nuclear cycle and all the associated activities related to the burning of uranium, nuclear energy as an industry produces considerable quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.

One could argue that the carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear energy were lower when compared, like for like, with gas or coal. However, it has one insuperable problem that other forms of energy do not have: a propensity to sudden, inexplicable lapses in safety, with all the appalling dangers that can result. Well-documented disasters in recent years include Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and, on a smaller scale, the case of the Sellafield radioactive pigeons flying round the Lake district.

The continuing, serious problem with safety was well documented earlier this year by the nuclear installations inspectorate report into the processes at Sellafield. Although the operation by BNFL has improved significantly over recent years, the NII report continued to condemn lapses in safety practices in the nuclear operations at Sellafield. Additionally, no one knows the solution, at present, to the more serious long-term problems of the disposal of radioactive waste and the treatment of plutonium.

The Government will produce their own policy for radioactive waste management in the next few weeks, which may make some reference to what is to be done with the 60 tonnes of plutonium that are to be stockpiled in the United Kingdom—a stockpile that will increase to 120 tonnes between 2010 and 2015. It is difficult to argue that nuclear energy should be seen as a clean development mechanism when there is the propensity for breakdowns in nuclear power plants that can have such catastrophic effects, and when no one on the planet knows how to dispose of nuclear waste or immobilise plutonium safely.

The clean development mechanism is an important strand of the Kyoto protocol. I hope that the Government will stiffen their resolve and support for the European Union's position to exclude nuclear energy from the CDM. I also hope that they will continue to argue the case, as they have done strongly in the past, for genuine renewable technologies. The future for energy policy and the solution to climate change lies in the exploitation of new technologies. We may not yet be aware of some of those technologies. Those that are at an early stage of market development and hold remarkable potential include photovoltaics and solar hydrogen, as well as the wind and wave power already mentioned.

Although the nuclear industry in the northern industrial countries is keen to export its products to the southern countries, it is the latter that have the greatest potential for the development of genuine clean sustainable energy. I hope that Ministers will urge those points at The Hague next week.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) on securing this Adjournment debate on the third day of the crucial meeting in The Hague, which we all hope will reach agreement on setting the global rules for implementing the Kyoto protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. If ever there was a time for a united front by the world community on any environmental issue, that time is now, and the issue is that of tackling global warming.

One of the Kyoto mechanisms by which emission reductions can be achieved is the innocuous-sounding clean development mechanism—at the heart of which, from the perspective of the USA and its allies, is the ability to invest in projects in developing countries that are claimed to reduce emissions and to count them as a credit against their own targets.

The most controversial aspect of CDMs is the inclusion of so-called carbon sinks to absorb the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. In essence, the protocol states that parties must account for carbon emissions and take-up from afforestation, reforestation and deforestation. That creates perverse incentives for removing old growth forests and creating new plantations, as has been seen in Australia and elsewhere. For example, Japan and Canada are trying to secure rules that would allow them not to count emissions from cutting down forests, but to count the carbon stored when plantations are grown back on the land. That is, to put it candidly, barmy.

The USA, Japan and Canada also claim that they can use all kinds of additional activities—such as agroforestry, urban greening and cropland management—to meet their targets. The EU opposes any crediting of those activities. That is right. Many such activities would happen anyway and therefore count as business as usual. Some countries want to claim credit for what would happen without human action, such as increased vegetation through nitrogen or carbon dioxide fertilisation. That is logically and environmentally unsustainable, and would blow a hole right through the Kyoto protocol. Allowing forest activities in the CDM is a distortion. It offers cheap and temporary credits to industrialised countries—hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon a year, with a likely estimate of about 300 million tonnes—while still allowing them to increase their fossil fuel output.

To allow carbon sink projects in the CDM would be to sanction cheating by industrial countries. Every tonne of carbon supposedly retained in such a project is one more tonne that the developed nation can pump into the atmosphere. It lets the north off the hook; totally undermines the impetus for domestic action on greenhouse gas emissions, which are so damaging in their impact on climate change; and removes the incentives to invest in energy conservation, to develop renewable energies—as the hon. Member for Ceredigion illustrated—and to achieve energy efficiency. Those are the only real hopes, in the medium and long term, for combating climate change.

A number of other fundamental problems are linked to the use of biological systems to absorb and retain atmospheric carbon dioxide. On impermanence, the fact that carbon storage in biological systems is reversible—for instance, through forest fires—means that reliable monitoring is required over long periods.

Another difficulty concerns who is responsible if carbon losses from sinks occur in future. Such losses could arise, if recent findings are correct, when ageing forests become net carbon generators midway through the next century. Just days ago, the Hadley centre published research in which its computer climate model predicts that, as soils warm and forests decay, land sources will switch from being net absorbers of carbon to net emitters by 2050. That, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, would be a mind-blowing result.

Other uncertainties about biological systems include the worry that carbon sinks could damage biodiversity. Forests that are good carbon sinks are not optimum areas for biodiversity. Carbon sinks are also often people's homes, and ascribing their environment a carbon value would increase the threat to indigenous peoples' land rights. More generally, there may be a loss of sovereignty for developing countries that are associated with sink projects. To count as a carbon offset, a plantation would have to remain intact for a specified period. In effect, the host country would surrender control of the land, which would then be subject to international surveillance and verification. Where does that leave future Governments who may wish or need to develop another economic role for that land, and find themselves prevented from doing so? Sustainability must be not only environmental but economic and political.

Greenpeace, of which I am happy to be a member, says that, in essence, sink projects are a way of dumping responsibility. It is right: at the best, carbon sinks are a partial and highly uncertain answer to the climatic changes that may result from global warming. The planet's soils, forests and seas do not have the capacity to absorb our ever-increasing emissions. The real answer—the only answer—is for the developed nations to reduce their emissions. It is we in the north, with our use of fossil fuels for more than a century and a half, who have caused the global climate change, which seems to be gathering speed with such damaging effect. It is we who have the prime responsibility for tackling the crisis by reducing our carbon emissions.

Sinks are merely a tree-lined window dressing, behind which we are pressuring developing nations to accept environmental responsibility for our industrial past and present. It is little more than third millennium colonialism for the wealth-creating, pollution-generating nations of the north to try to coerce our southern neighbours into cleaning up after us through low-value or no-value schemes—schemes that transfer no positive technology and produce little prosperity.

Uncaring United Kingdom Governments—but not the present Government—have routinely allowed unwanted people to be dumped in sink communities. Negligent nations meeting at The Hague must not get away with dumping their unwanted economic side-effects on sink countries. Our priority must instead be to reduce our fossil fuel emissions. We must target transport emissions in order to improve air quality—and the quality of life—for the cities of the north and south alike. We must reduce our reliance on coal and oil in order to drive down mercury contamination and reduce acid rain. We must invest also in renewable energy projects to transfer state-of-the-art technology to the countries of the south, thereby speeding their economic growth and development.

I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to seek agreement at the COP6 talks this week and next on excluding sinks from the CDM. If sanctioned, the sinks will increase the real prospect of us suffering a damaging climate change. Kyoto raised the hope that the 6 billion people on planet earth could work together to confront the grave environmental problems that face us all. Let not those hopes be dashed. The political dinosaurs must not have their way, or our descendants could share the fate of those earlier dinosaurs. Global warming is that important.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) on initiating this important and timely debate, once again proving himself to be an excellent successor to Cynog Dafis, who was highly regarded on this matter.

I am sorry to say that there is considerable inconsistency in the Government's environmental policies. In a recent speech, the Prime Minister committed the Government to following green policies. The recent climate change programme set out the ambitious target of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent. The Minister for the Environment intends to take the lead in the discussion at The Hague in support of a narrow definition of carbon sinks. And the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement introduced a 3p cut in low sulphur petrol, although that fuel is available from only 10 outlets in Wales and does not lower carbon dioxide emissions. By cutting duty on that fuel, the Chancellor is sidestepping the climatic effect of traffic to ensure short-term popularity.

No mention has been made of the more environmentally friendly alternative of liquid petroleum gas. Only 16,000 LPG vehicles have been sold this year, but the manufacturers believe that, given the right incentives, as many as 250,000 could be on the road within a few years. The Government are not acting on that.

Dissatisfaction with the Chancellor's statement has been expressed by many sectors. In a strange alliance, Greenpeace and the RAC are demanding that the Government should use a portion of fuel tax to start what they call a green fuel fund, to be used to protect the climate and human health by promoting alternatives to oil. That is one alternative to the Chancellor's short-term fix to the fuel protests. He could use his next Budget to offer a way out of the high environmental and financial costs of using oil.

The Chancellor should also have targeted his fuel tax cuts towards rural areas. Prices in rural petrol stations are considerably higher than they are in London or Cardiff. By bringing rural prices into line through subsidy, the Government could have eased the considerable burden on rural drivers. In many rural areas there are no public transport alternatives. Further investment in public transport—as I have said, a serious problem in rural areas—was notably absent from the Chancellor's statement, as was any reference to the thorny issue of possible congestion charges. No one is addressing that politically unacceptable question. Cutting tax for cars with 1500 cc engines is a step in the right direction, but means that there is no incentive for people to have cars with smaller engines. Why not have a graduated scheme across the board? Why should the measure apply only to new cars as opposed to the range of older cars on the road?

My hon. Friend has drawn attention to the fact that research into renewable energy sources has been steadily decreasing since 1995. I would like to add to that by reference to the recent 19th round of oil licensing. In a recent question, one of the Minister's colleagues confirmed that carbon energy would be at the centre of the Government's energy policy. One cannot square that with trying to decrease carbon emissions by 20 per cent. The Minister for the Environment stated recently in a reply to a written question that although carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 7.5 per cent. between 1990 and 1997, the figure has not decreased further since 1997. There is a danger of stagnation in that important area.

My hon. Friend referred to the clean development mechanism, as did the hon. Members for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) and for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor), and I will not refer more to it other than to say that I agree with what all three said. Evidence suggests that we will have simply to put up with the hardships caused by the recent extreme weather throughout the country. We will have to deal with such problems again and again in the coming years.

About 3,000 homes throughout the UK were flooded and the transport infrastructure paralysed. The storms have cost the insurance industry an estimated £500 million and the Association of British Insurers says that if, as is likely, recent weather patterns continue, insurance premiums will increase substantially. Meanwhile, the costs of building properties that are able to cope with flood alleviation are rising. Ten per cent. of the population of Britain live in flood-risk areas, accounting for about £200 billion of property. Damage from flooding could eventually reach £1.8 billion a year and the value of properties on flood plains or near rivers could plunge by as much as a third. There is also the problem of rising sea levels, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion eloquently said.

On Monday, I visited the constituency of Clwyd, West to look at the flooding in the town of Ruthin. The town was severely hit, with many properties under water and businesses brought to a standstill. Unfortunately, the Government's response has not been good enough. They have offered Wales an additional resource of £3 million to deal with the damage. An estimated £5.5 million is needed in Ruthin and the county of Denbighshire alone—just one unitary authority out of 22—to alleviate the problems. I know the credentials of the Minister for the Environment and respect him greatly, but I ask how committed his Government are to reducing emissions, encouraging more renewable energy, decreasing traffic and countering the effects of global warming that have sadly become apparent. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is sincere, but I question the Government's determination to tackle that serious problem.

I congratulate warmly the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas). To refer to the work of his predecessor and the contribution made by my right hon. Friend the Minister in this debate, Ceredigion, climate change, Kyoto and COP6 are all synonymous with getting the environment at the heart of public policy. I welcome this brief debate and I hope that when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions returns from The Hague we will have an opportunity to debate this important matter in the House.

Climate change should be a mainstream issue. The general public should regard it as one of the most pressing issues currently facing us. Our efforts this morning will help to ensure that there is a general understanding of the importance of climate change and the effect that it could have on future generations. We must find a way to make it a key issue to be debated by the British public. That is especially important in light of the third assessment of atmospheric warming by the United Nations' official research body—the intergovernmental panel on climate change—which, I understand, is likely to find that the rate of warming is twice the initial estimate. That is a pressing problem that we all face and that we as parliamentarians have a responsibility to do something about.

I cannot help thinking about a previous debate that took place in this Chamber, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) discussed global citizenship and the work that has been done by the Department for Education and Employment to promote that in schools. A tremendous amount could be done in schools and through twinning to move that issue up the agenda.

I wish to stress to my right hon. Friend the Minister that, more than ever, we need joined-up government thinking so that he can take the lead in negotiations in The Hague. When he returns, we should use joined-up government to implement what will, hopefully, have been agreed. In addition, I hope that, through the green Ministers' committee, he will provide more support for renewables, in order to build on the Prime Minister's speech last week in the City. The money that is now available from the climate change levy can be used to invest in renewables throughout the country.

As we will have a centre for renewables in every part of the country, I would like to make a bid for the west midlands centre to be located at Chatterly Whitfield in my constituency, which is a grade 2 scheduled monument currently being worked on by English Heritage. Chatterly Whitfield was a powerhouse of the past, and it could become a powerhouse for the future promotion of renewables. That would create work and jobs in communities that have been abandoned since the closure of the colliery. It would also allow us to link the local with the global.

I would like my right hon. Friend the Minister to consider the work of the CBI and to find a way to ensure that there is no resistance from the business community to the imposition of a climate change levy. We need sustainable technology for the long term, so I want business to take a clear lead.

In the brief time available, I would like to flag up the issue of refrigeration. I remember much of the debate in the House about 10 years ago on the importance of the Montreal treaty and phasing out CFCs, which were responsible for ozone depletion. I am conscious that HFCs, which have come to be regarded one of the substitutes for CFCs, themselves contribute to global warming. Therefore, I ask my right hon. Friend to do everything that he can in The Hague to ensure that we support the work of Denmark by committing ourselves to an early phase-out of HFCs. It is possible that HFCs could comprise 4 per cent. of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, which would be almost a third of the UK target. We need an early phase-out of the products concerned, and I want the UK to lead the way on that.

I am mindful of last week's prestigious launch at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the new environmental policy unit. In pursuance of joined-up government, that unit, with its input from business and from various Departments, will become a player on the world stage that could help us to make progress on this issue, so that we can tackle the vulnerability of developing countries.

I want to pick up on the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor). He talked about the importance of not going down the route of carbon sinks, and I want to refer to developing countries in that context. According to the Red Cross, 96 per cent. of deaths from "natural disasters"—in fact, we are talking about unnatural disasters—occur in developing countries. UN figures show that, by 2025, 80 per cent. of the world's population will live in developing countries, and many will be at risk from cyclones or flooding.

According to Christian Aid's information on unnatural disasters, 12 of the 14 disasters to which it has responded since 1997 were caused by extreme weather conditions. The cyclone that hit south-east Bangladesh in 1997 left 1.5 million people homeless, and the floods that began in September 1998 affected three quarters of the country. In 1998, Hurricane Georgia caused extensive damage in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, El Nino-related floods brought disaster to Peru and there was a drought in Sudan. In 1999, there were mudslides in Venezuela. Those events should create major headlines and be the cause for great concern. We should properly take on board the precautionary principle, so that we can prevent such disasters rather than dealing with them after the event.

There are concerns that the proposed flexible mechanisms that are under discussion in The Hague fail to fulfil the principles that should underpin the UN framework convention on climate change. They fall short of the precautionary principle, and ignore equal rights. When my right hon. Friend the Minister visits The Hague, I want him to feel secure in the knowledge—as was my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister on his visit to Kyoto—that the UK can play a leading part. I recognise the contribution of Wales, and I applaud its sustainable policies. I want to ensure that we ratify the 5.2 per cent. cuts, but that should be only the first step. I want work on a new agreement that is effective and fair, but it is important for industrial countries to provide aid and investment to developing countries, so that they can avoid future dependency on the fossil fuel economy. We do not need to keep reinventing the wheel.

During last week's severe weather debate, I urged my right hon. Friend the Minister to take the lead in initiating public debate, and 1 hope that today's debate will take us one step forward in that respect.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) on securing today's extremely important and timely debate. Perhaps the only positive outcome of the recent floods is the change in public understanding, which is critically important. Environmental awareness in this country had fallen off, but it is now very much on the increase. Research undertaken on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund and the Energy Saving Trust suggests that 83 per cent. of people reject the belief that climate change is good for the UK. People had begun to buy the stories of how they would be able to make red wine in their back gardens, but they now understand that climate change poses a very real threat. Four out of five respondents said that climate change causes freak weather conditions such as storms and floods, and women expressed more concern—as they so often do—than men. That is important, because behavioural change will be the responsibility of individuals.

Most people have not acted, however, and there is an important message in that for the Government. We have failed to explain adequately what our eco-taxes were designed to do, which is part of the reason for the fuel tax crisis. Much more work remains to be done. I realise that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment has always been active, but on that front it is for the Government as a whole to increase public awareness of the issues involved.

Most hon. Members who have spoken today have begun by acknowledging information from scientists in recent reports from the Hadley centre and in the draft report from the international group that reports on such matters. Clearly, the debate is now not between the majority of the 3,000 international scientists and the few who do not agree that global warming is a reality. It is between the majority and those who are saying that global warming is much worse than predicted. We must all take that on board.

The debate has three elements—the international community's responsibility, our domestic responsibilities as a nation and our responsibilities as individuals. At every level, we shall have to act even more seriously and rapidly than we have to date.

The Government cannot be faulted on their approach to the international community. My right hon. Friends the Minister for the Environment and the Deputy Prime Minister have been an example not only in how they have developed our domestic programmes and held them up as an example in the international community but in how they have worked tirelessly to encourage and cajole others to follow in similar ways. We can rely on them in the COP6 talks to press strongly the principle of supplementarity, that domestic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should form the basis of the action taken by every nation, and especially industrialised ones. We can expect them to shame the United States, in particular, for its selfish adherence to the so-called flexible mechanisms as a way of avoiding making domestic cuts.

I agree with what other hon. Members said about nuclear power in the CDM. I believe that our Government will argue that emissions trading is not a substitute for taking domestic action. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment is convinced—I am glad that we have all shared in that conviction—that carbon sinks are a small part of the equation and that there are real risks in countries adopting them as a way forward.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment will raise the issue of taxation of aircraft fuel, because there is no doubt that that is the biggest single issue that the international community has failed to tackle. It must do so, for the reasons set out in the report on global transport growth and climate disaster, to which the hon. Member for Ceredigion referred.

COP6 also gives us an opportunity to consider our domestic responsibilities. I speak as someone who was active in our party's development in opposition of the targets to which the Government now adhere—a 20 per cent. reduction on 1990 levels of carbon dioxide, and 10 per cent. of electricity to be produced from renewables, by 2010. Those two targets are vital. I believe that the United Kingdom will easily meet the Kyoto target of a 12.5 per cent. reduction, and I am sure that we shall have confirmation of that when the report on the Government's climate change programme is published.

We should go further. Aiming for 20 per cent. is something that we owe to ourselves and the world community. I am not convinced, and nor are others, such as SERA—the Socialist Environmental Resources Association—and Friends of the Earth, that the draft programme provides a secure basis for achieving the 20 per cent. target as opposed to the obvious 12.5 percent.

Why should we do so much more when other nations are often doing so little? Because it is our duty to the international community and because we can. We have the resources to do it, and it is in the public interest. The Environment Sub-Committee has already given its professional and expert view that a greater increase in the use of renewable energy in Britain is possible.

When I was in opposition, shadowing the position now occupied by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, I proposed the target of 10 per cent. electricity production from renewables by 2010, and it looked exceedingly ambitious. Today, it looks exceedingly modest. I believe that it will be possible to double that target, so I hope that he will press my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to build on what he has done this year when he forms next year's Budget, to give more incentives to other forms of renewables, to consider solar again, to encourage increased use of wind power and to think about biomass.

Will my right hon. Friend the Minister comment on the inclusion of legally binding targets for renewable generation in the EU renewables directive? I understand that our Government may be ambivalent or may even oppose that, so I would be interested to know the reasons why.

I have not time to talk about many other aspects of Government policy, so I will concentrate on the issue of energy efficiency improvements to buildings. It would be helpful if the energy industry published energy consumption figures by postcode. We need to know much more of what goes on in our communities, and we must be able to create new incentives for the average owner to improve energy efficiency in the home.

We can all contribute through individual behaviour. If hon. Members did not see Monday's edition of The Guardian, I refer them to Ros Coward's excellent 10-point plan for how we can all contribute, in our own small ways, to the reduction of greenhouse gases and, consequentially, global warming. I urge my right hon. Friends the Minister and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to do their utmost to ensure that agreement is reached at COP6. That agreement should be designed to produce emissions reductions in industrialised countries and, critically, be a first step towards the equity-based allocation of emission rights.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas). I especially liked his parable, which reminded me of Carshalton ponds in my constituency. We need to introduce congestion charges on the ponds for the Canada geese, which live quite happily alongside a suburban fox population. I should like to focus on the Government's pre-Budget statement and the assessment of its impact on climate change, the role of the United States, and the need for a long-term strategy.

It would be churlish not to recognise that the Government have a greater awareness of environmental issues than the previous Administration. That is largely down to the influence of the Minister, and of the small band of environmentally friendly Labour Members who are present. The Government believe, rightly, that the environment should be at the heart of their decision-making process, so I hope that the Minister can confirm what discussions he, or perhaps the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, had with the Chancellor about the environmental implications of the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement. If any such discussions took place, it would seem as though the team at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions was outmanoeuvred.

Steven Twindale is the policy director of Greenpeace, of which I am a member. He said that the pre-Budget statement

hasn't cut taxes on alternative fuels such as bio diesel and compressed natural gas…Although the statement did introduce reduced tax on Ultra Low Sulphur petrol, sulphur isn't such a big problem with petrol anyway, and therefore is just a gesture…There are other new technologies round the corner that the government should be giving far more support to, such as fuel cell vehicles…These could reduce emissions by 50 per cent. immediately, and in the long run by 100 per cent. with renewable energies.

Finally, he makes a point that other hon. Members have made, which is that renewable energy and the Government's investment in it have not been successful so far. A total of £89 million has been spent on biomass and offshore renewable energies compared with £100 million on coalfields, apparently.

It is therefore clear that from the environmentalists' point of view, that the pre-Budget statement has not done what was required. I should think that it has also failed to accord with the Government's draft climate change strategy, which stated:

Alternative fuels…can offer both greenhouse gas and air quality benefits…It is necessary…to stimulate the take-up

of those fuels.

Perhaps we should consider the Government's own assessment of the pre-Budget statement. According to table 6.2 on page 139, relating to road fuel duty differentials, ultra-low sulphur petrol price reduction will reduce nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds. However, there is no mention of CO₂ reductions because, as other hon. Members have said, there will be none as a result of the differential in question. Have the Government failed to refer to that because, according to page 86 of the 10-year transport plan,

increases in fuel duty reduce the general level of traffic growth and CO₂ emissions

and therefore, presumably, decreases in fuel duty must increase the level of CO₂ emissions? If that is the case, and I am sure that it is, I should expect some bad news in table 6.2 as well as some good news. The Government have been quite candid in setting out the table, for example highlighting the fact that a reduced rate of VAT on domestic fuel and power will increase carbon dioxide emissions.

My second topic is the impact that the United States has on climate change. Developed countries such as the United Kingdom are the villains with respect to CO₂ emissions, but the biggest villain of all has to be the USA. Does the Minister agree that much more hangs on the spoiled ballot papers in America than the outcome of the US elections? The election of Al Gore might mean a successful outcome to the climate change negotiations, but the election of George "Dubya" Bush would be a disaster. No one can doubt that.

The attitude that the US adopts in The Hague will make or break the negotiations. If it was right to impose sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, and on Iraq for its treatment of its own people, surely it is right to impose sanctions on the world's most powerful nation, the last super-power, if it chooses to pursue an anti-environment agenda that threatens the long-term survival of the planet. What sanctions would the Government support? Those would of course apply equally to the United Kingdom if it failed to meet its target. Perhaps sanctions are too radical and financial penalties are what would be required. Will the Minister seek to block proposals by the United States to rely on carbon sinks as a means of meeting targets? I am sure that he accepts that carbon sinks are not for eternity. At best they will buy a little time, but they will become carbon generators later.

I want to press the Minister on the extent of the cuts in CO₂s emissions that he thinks will be required to stabilise climate change. He has already said in response to a parliamentary question that he thinks that a 60 per cent. reduction in CO₂ is needed. If that is so, what national and international measures will the Government implement to achieve that significant cut, and over what time scales? If he is short of ideas, I commend to him "A Strategy for Sustainability", a Liberal Democrat policy paper, which I launched at our party conference in September. It outlines how emissions could be reduced by 50 per cent. from 1990 levels in the next 40 years. It is available free on our website if the Minister or his assistants want to print it.

The outcome of the COP6 conference will either secure or destroy our global future. The Minister will have the support of all hon. Members who are present today, and many others, I am sure, if he goes to The Hague and argues for the toughest possible action to be taken on climate change. We expect nothing less of him.

I join hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Thomas) on securing the debate. I, too, wish the Minister well in the Hague, as it is in the interests of people in this country and around the world that that important conference continues the momentum of Rio and Kyoto and comes to a successful conclusion. The conferences are not less important because they continue a process.

I am happy to agree that the Minister represents Wales as much as any other part of the United Kingdom. Wales should not feel unrepresented, because it is represented by the UK Government.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), who said that she wished that the environment was a more mainstream part of political debate; I assume that she meant that it should have as much political salience as debates on issues such as health, education and transport. A peculiar, but beneficial, side effect of the horrors visited on many people by the recent floods is that the environment and how best to combat climate change will be higher on the political agenda.

A relatively small band of enthusiasts turns up to debates on the environment. Discussing the issue means debating big, long-term politics and complex and controversial scientific matters. Those who want the environment to be higher up the political agenda do not serve that cause if the debate is conducted in simplistic, black-and-white terms.

It was alarming that some contributions to the debate verged on straightforward anti-growth rhetoric; they were not just attacks on the west, the north or the United States but on economic growth itself, which was deemed a bad thing. That is a foolish proposition; it is unarguable that if there was a world agreement to reduce growth, poor people in poor countries would be affected first, and most severely. Turning the argument in favour of the environment into an argument against economic growth is unhelpful.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman; I would usually give way, but we are under pressure of time this morning.

I shall speak briefly about the key issues before the conference and about the Government's tactics and their performance in respect of Britain's contribution to climate change. Hon. Members spoke about the important issue of carbon sinks and I confess that I thought that the debate was moving into rather simplistic territory on that subject.

The Minister for the Environment is not sure whether carbon sequestration can make a significant contribution to the CDM and I ask him to clarify his thinking on the matter. I am aware that he will not want to give away every detail of a negotiating stance, but it would be helpful if he could give us some details on that issue and on other technologies that he believes should be included within the CDM. Nuclear power does not contribute to carbon emissions but there are other serious questions to be asked about its future. What will be the Government's position on that issue in the conference?

Another area that has not been covered this morning but that I suspect will feature quite largely at The Hague is that of emissions trading. Many of those who are most sceptical, for instance about carbon sinks, believe that emissions trading is a way for developed countries to evade some of their responsibilities. If the Government are tempted to go down that route, I urge them not to do so because there is clearly a serious need for precautions and for limits on how much can be put under the banner of emissions trading. All those who wish to participate in an emissions trading system should be required to meet certain prerequisites in their domestic actions before being allowed to participate.

Having said that, a proper, well-run emissions trading system would offer a powerful, market-based method of driving down carbon and other emissions. We should not let the caveats that we would all wish to issue outweigh the virtues that can come from a decent emissions trading system. If the Government are to play the leading role that they claim for themselves, their own record must bear examination. I do not share the unquestioning praise that many hon. Members have expressed during the debate for the Government's record on emissions reduction. They have set themselves an ambitious target on that, on top of the Kyoto commitments, but while they may not admit it publicly, everyone privately knows that the principal reason that they will be able to meet the Kyoto targets and possibly the more ambitious targets is our reduction in the use of coal, which largely took place from the 1980s.

I do not wish to make partisan points, so I turn to the report of the royal commission on pollution, a body with impeccable and impartial credentials, which states that it is extremely doubtful that the measures in the Government's draft strategy will achieve their targets.

Indeed, the Government do not think that they will hit the 20 per cent. target for reduction from 1990 usage. The royal commission itself says that there is therefore

something of a hole in the government's climate change programme.

I agree with that. I suspect that the Minister will take the opportunity to tell us when he will unveil the policy in its full glory. If he does, perhaps he could, for the convenience of the many hon. Members who will wish to attend, say whether he will make a parliamentary statement this Friday—otherwise, many hon. Members who would be interested may not be here. The underlying point is that the Government's great claims to virtue in regard to Britain's performance on carbon emissions do not stand up to the detailed scrutiny to which the royal commission subjected them, and that will weaken their ambition to play a leading role in the matter.

My final point is on tactics and on whether the Government can continue to play a leading role. If the Minister is to act as a kind of bridge between the EU and US positions, I urge him to resist the temptation to lapse into anti-American rhetoric. There has already been a report this week of his attacking the US stance on emissions. He should avoid going down the route that the Liberal Democrats apparently favour, comparing the US Government to Saddam Hussein's Iraq and apartheid-era South Africa, which was not a helpful or sensible contribution to the debate. He should resist that cheap anti-Americanism and retain Britain's credentials to act as an honest broker, as I suspect that honest broking will be needed over the next week or so.

I hope that the Minister has a successful week, that the conference succeeds and that the UK plays a significant role, because this is vital, not just for the people of this country, but for people all over the planet.

I would like to respond immediately to the good wishes that the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) has just expressed, which I think were echoed throughout the Chamber, for the Government's success at this important conference. I should like to commend the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) as a worthy successor to a tremendous advocate of the green cause. His speech today focused on a lot of the key issues and I will try to deal with as many of the points as I can.

I regard sinks as one of the make-and-break issues in these negotiations. I have always supported a narrow definition. I will come on to what I mean by that in a moment, if I get that far. However, because there are questions of scientific uncertainty and impermanence—forests burn, die back and are corrupted by pests—and there are problems with base lines and the degree of additionality that one can fairly attribute to sinks, I am extremely cautious.

The EU's position on the CDM is quite clear. We had a long debate on this at the June Council. We agreed that there should be a positive and exclusive list. By that the EU means that it excludes nuclear, which it does not regard as a clean, sustainable technology. The question of air travel and whether there should be a tax on aviation fuel was indeed omitted from the Kyoto protocol. Off the top of my head, I believe that aircraft fuel accounts for 3 to 5 per cent. of nitrous oxide, which is one of the main greenhouse gases. If airline travel doubles over the next 10 to 20 years that can be expected to increase. There are problems, because the US is resisting action on this. I will say a little more about how we may be able to tackle the issue.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion also mentioned renewables. Of course we have our 10 per cent. obligation. Ceredigion should be congratulated on its 40 per cent. of energy from wind farms. It is an excellent precedent for many other parts of the country. I agree that the great moral of the fuel crisis, whatever one thinks about cuts in fuel duty, is the need to switch from over-dependence on oil towards renewable sources of energy, particularly wind power, but also biomass and solar power.

The figures that the hon. Gentleman quoted for expenditure on renewables are correct, but that is now being turned around through new investment that has been announced over the past few weeks and through the portion of funds recycled from the climate change levy and other new funding. There is a focus on important newer technologies: £89 million is now committed for offshore wind and energy crops, and there is also £12 million for planting grants for energy crops. I would be the first to say that that is not enough, but there is a definite momentum in that direction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said that some people had not made the co nnection between the fuel crisis and climate change impacts. I liked the newspaper cartoon of someone proudly rowing down the high street with his coracle full of petrol canisters. That made the point very nicely. The climate change strategy will be published this week, before COP6.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the CDM and said that he did not regard the technology as clean and sustainable. I think that that view is widely shared in the EU. A lack of clear policies for immobilising plutonium or for long-term—one uses the phrase with a view to geological time—disposal of radioactive waste, occasional flaws in safety procedures and lack of managerial rigour and capacity building in some developing countries mean that there can be no ultimate and total guarantee against potentially catastrophic accidents. That is the background against which the EU debate was held.

My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) asked about carbon sinks and the Hadley centre conclusion about the switch from net absorption to net release, which is serious. He also mentioned the social consequences of loss of sovereignty by native peoples who are displaced by widespread planting, which I recognise. My point about sinks is that the Kyoto target of 5.2 per cent. would save about 250 million tonnes of carbon. With the increase that occurs in the interim, before it falls back—it is to be hoped—below 1990 levels, the figure might be 1 billion tonnes. A loose or unrestricted definition of carbon sinks could give scope for an increase in the allowed emission of carbon of about 2 billion tonnes. In other words, it could wipe away all the benefits to be gained from Kyoto by strict action from other countries. My hon. Friend asked for sinks to be excluded from the protocol. They cannot be, as they are dealt with directly in articles 3.3 and 3.4; it is simply a question of how they are regarded.

I shared extremely enjoyable discussions with the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) in Committee during consideration of the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill. However, I think that he is being less than fair on this occasion. He referred to the 3p cut in ultra-low sulphur petrol. First, half the gain for hauliers—£560 million this year and next year—comes from a reduction in vehicle excise duty. For motorists, raising the threshold for the £55 cut in vehicle excise duty from 1000 cc to 1500 cc means that the advantage is available in respect of 4 million cars. Secondly, the cut is not a general price cut in conventional duty but is concentrated on ultra-low sulphur petrol, which is currently used by only about 35 per cent. of motorists. No doubt such use will increase because of the incentive. If so, the environmental gain in the reduction of nitrogen oxides and particulates will be considerable.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the suggestion by non-governmental organisations that a green fuel fund be established. Fine. We have set up a fund, whose exact title I forget—it may be the green challenge transport fund. It asks industry to develop alternative fuels and says that we—or, rather, the Treasury—will offer major or substantial reductions in duty. We are moving in that direction and are keen to make progress.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned rural areas—of course, his own constituency is one—and appealed to us to reduce prices. A moment before, however, he was telling us not to do so. The ultra-low sulphur petrol cut of 3p will especially benefit people in rural areas. He said that we had not referred to transport investment. That is because we have mentioned on other occasions payments such as £170 million on buses in rural areas and the 1,800 new or enhanced services. Over the next 10 years, there will be an investment of £180 billion in transport.

The hon. Gentleman said that carbon reductions have stagnated. Indeed, they have not fallen significantly over the past two or three years. However, we have not yet published, let alone implemented, our climate change strategy. As to flood defences expenditure, we are spending about £400 million over the current three years. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned an extra £51 million, and we are considering what can further be achieved with local authority leaders.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) mentioned more support for renewables. I listened to what she said about her constituency projects; it is a nice idea. On the Montreal protocol and ozone depletion, we have given a clear signal that we need to phase out hydrofluorocarbons in the next investment round. In some ways, of course, there is no alternative to HFCs, but have given a clear signal to industry that it needs to come forward with new technologies.

I realise that I am running out of time, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I promise to respond to all the points made during the debate, but I shall continue speaking until 12.30 pm—

Order. Time is up.

The Lymington hospital has 112 beds, 60 of which are located in an infirmary and are primarily intended to provide rehabilitation for elderly patients. In addition, the infirmary provides 20 hospital day places. The hospital provides beds for medical, surgical and maternity treatment and has theatre sessions for general surgery, urology, oral surgery, ear-nose-and-throat surgery and gynaecology. The best measure of the hospital's importance, however, is the hole that it would leave if it no longer existed.

Dr. David Balfour is the chairman of the New Forest primary care group, which is to become the primary care trust that will take over responsibility for the hospital. He wrote to me on 14 November, saying:

The local health economy could not absorb the amount of work being done at Lymington if the present hospital were to close. Southampton already has significant problems around lack of space…bed shortages, lack of theatre space…as Southampton increasingly develops as a regional specialist and cancer centre, waiting lists for standard secondary care services are increasing. It is worth noting that one third of all endoscopies done in Southampton and South West Hampshire are done at Lymington. Also if the local Health Economy then had to absorb some 7,000 admissions, 20.000 outpatients, 4,000 day cases, and 17,000 casualty attendances a year, chaos would ensue.

Those 20,000 out-patients, 17,000 casualty cases, 4,000 day cases and 7,000 admissions are a measure of Lymington's contribution to local health care. However, there is a problem.

The infirmary buildings date from 1836 and the hospital dates from 1913. They are dilapidated and unsuited to modern health care. Transport is required between the two hospital sites. For instance, the X-ray and casualty facilities are separated by hundreds of yards of corridor.

Despite the dedication and the overwhelming efforts of the staff, leaving things as they are will result in an unacceptable decline in services, and ultimately to the hospital's demise. Even with a £3 million major refurbishment and remodelling, the hospital would achieve only the minimum acceptable standards.

I believe that the development of public policy will give community hospitals an even more important role, given the increase in elderly patients and the winter crises to which we have been subjected in recent years. In a written answer last Thursday, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Southampton, ltchen (Mr. Denham), said:

The National Health Service Plan announced a major programme of investment in intermediate care and related services to promote independence and improved quality of care for older people. As part of this investment, there will be 5,000 extra intermediate care beds by 2004, and the Plan makes it clear that some of these will be in community hospitals.—[Official Report, 9 November 2000; Vol. 356, c. 378–79W.]

I submit that many more than "some" of them will have to be in community hospitals. In fact most, if not all, will have to be so, because those beds will not be found in residential homes and nursing homes. All over the south-east of England developers are queueing up to buy such homes and build residential properties on the plot. That is certainly the case with Farnley house in Lymington and Kivernell house in Milford-on-Sea. Therefore, the role of community hospitals is increasingly important.

We believe that the efficiencies achieved by a level transfer of the existing beds and facilities at Lymington to a designed, purpose-built modern environment will allow the treatment of more patients and provide a wider range of services. That is an exciting vision. We aim to develop a radical intermediate care facility that will make a significant contribution to the health needs of the people of Lymington and the New Forest, and to the local health economy. We want to develop an efficient unit dealing with diagnostic services, day cases, short-stay surgery and rehabilitation. To realise that vision, fundraising began in 1980 and the PFI initiative was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities in 1995. A full business case was presented, which was praised by the private finance unit, and much of the credit for that is due to the chief executive of the Southampton Community Health Services NHS trust, Mike Lager. The site for the new hospital has been purchased and is already under preparation as a result of more than £1.5 million in funding raised by the League of Friends of Lymington hospital. That is a tremendous credit to them. How many hospitals begin with such a signal of good will from their local community? I take my hat off to the fundraising efforts of the League of Friends over many years.

However, there is a fundamental problem. On 2 November, the NHS executive called off negotiations with the Rotch-Schroder consortium, which was bidding to build the £23 million private finance initiative scheme for the new Lymington and New Forest community hospital. Where do we go from here? We expected the new hospital to open at the beginning of 2003, and that itself represented a considerable delay compared with initial expectations. Any further delay will stretch our ability to maintain the services to the required standards in the existing buildings. If we had to start another private finance initiative, the time frame would be such that we would have to invest significant amounts in the existing hospital in the meantime, which would be completely wasted when we rebuilt. Equally, what enthusiasm would there be for a renewed private finance initiative after the investment of so much money, time, effort and good will in the previous bid? There would be no guarantee that it would be any more successful a second time around.

Perhaps I should put my doubts about private finance initiatives on the record. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I have always thought that they had rather more to do with the Maastricht convergence criteria than with sound principles of public finance. [Interruption.] The one thing that I have always accepted, despite my scepticism about the role of the state in many aspects of our lives, is that the Government can raise capital more effectively and cheaply than the private sector.

Setting aside my scepticism about the private finance initiative, I understand the reluctance of the NHS executive to tie itself into a 25-year contract with a private consortium when Government policy on intermediate care is even now under development in the 10-year national plan for the NHS. Indeed, its relationship with the private sector is also dynamic and under development.

The most obvious and expedient course is to build a hospital with public funds, as the project is already so advanced. Will the Minister play her part in ensuring the survival of this vital asset to the health care economy of south-west Hampshire by showing the Government's willingness to consider with an open mind the case for funding the new hospital with £23 million of public capital? It is a pleasure to share this campaign for a new hospital with my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), and I am keen to hear how he will support the case.

It is typically generous of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) to give me the last portion of his allotted time, and I endorse everything that he has said.

Westminster Hall is rightly regarded as an arena in which confrontation should be kept to a minimum, and there is no confrontation on this issue. We have even had a meeting of minds, to judge by the Minister's reaction to my hon. Friend's doubts about the role of the private sector in raising capital for such a project. Westminster Hall is working its magic.

The Lymington hospital is sited in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West, but the new Ampress site—just south of Boldre in my constituency and just north of Lymington in his—is virtually on the border between the two. More importantly, the Lymington hospital, in both its present and future incarnations, has a wide catchment area covering the residents of the New Forest, the Waterside and even further afield.

My involvement in this matter goes back to spring 1995. 1 was minding my own business at my desk in the research department of Conservative central office, when the telephone rang. It was a wonderful lady, whom I later came to know well, called Pamela Combes, who was concerned even then that the Lymington hospital was becoming a political football, and wanted my help in investigating the matter. That led to a chain of events culminating in my accession to the position of prospective Conservative candidate for one of the New Forest seats, to which I was subsequently elected. I am sure that the Minister will not hold the fact that the hospital was indirectly responsible for my becoming a Member of Parliament against it, and that it will not prejudice the prospects for its future.

The problem, even in 1995, was that there was great community concern about where the hospital should be, what the money raised with great effort by the local community should be used for, and how the partnership arrangements should be drawn up. Even the press release from the NHS executive, when it announced that it was pulling the plug on the private finance initiative, acknowledged that the two NHS trusts to which it referred—one on the isle of Sheppey and one at Lymington—had worked hard with their private sector partners under the PFI. Mike Lager and his team have made every possible effort to get this project off the ground and to make a go of the PFI approach. That has not worked. Even the Southampton Community Health Services NHS trust accepts that. It thought that it had a deal ready in June, but, as its press release states:

We were all but ready to sign. Since then the Rotch consortium's financial figures have changed—they're now no longer affordable nor good value.

There is no dispute between the NHS executive and the community health services trust that the scheme has not worked, but it is more than five years since I was drawn into the matter and one can imagine the effect on the morale of all concerned—those trying to build a new hospital and those manning the existing one—if the clock were turned back to the beginning and they have to start again.

This is not a matter of doctrine or ideology, nor of freeloading because, as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West said, the community has raised enough money to buy the freehold of the land. Many people have made an emotional, professional and financial investment in the project. The PFI approach has been tried but has failed, so please do not make us return to that approach with all the time constraints involved. We need the NHS fully to fund the hospital.

I, too, am delighted with Westminster Hall and its non-confrontational atmosphere, but the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) mistook my response to his hon. Friend's views on the private finance initiative. I was merely surprised that he agreed with his party, which was committed to the PFI but never made it work. I am also surprised, and delighted, that the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) managed to bring Maastricht into the debate. We could not have had such a debate without a mention of Europe.

I congratulate the hon. Member for New Forest, West on raising the matter, and the hon. Member for New Forest, East on joining him. I know that it causes great concern in their constituencies. I shall set out the steps that will ensure that the hon. Gentlemen's constituents continue to have access to the best possible health care services, but I want to start by making a few points about the main principles behind the private finance initiative.

The failure of the Rotch consortium deal should not be seen as a failure of the PFI process, but as a sign of success, showing that rigorous methods of testing are continuously applied. In a press release, Alan Meekings said:

It is very disappointing that the Trusts involved have had to stop work on the PFI options, but they will simply not deliver viable value for money solutions. The trusts have therefore been unable to complete the business cases for the schemes and they must now be abandoned.

He also said:

Now that the PFI options have been discontinued, the important thing is to move forward as quickly as possible with alternative arrangements to ensure that the healthcare needs of local people are met.

I want to assure the House that the bottom line is to ensure continued good health care for local people.

The PFI provides extra resources for the NHS building programme, and transfers many capital investment risks to the private sector. Ultimately, we hope to achieve better care for patients and best value for money for taxpayers. The process was designed to allow the NHS and the private sector to work together effectively. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the announcement earlier this week of our proposal to build at least 18 new hospitals around the country at a cost of more than £2.3 billion. We also confirmed our approval for 16 additional schemes worth more than £350 million. Those schemes endorse our commitment to the expansion of the NHS and to improving facilities nationwide. I was delighted to be able to announce schemes involving ambulatory care centres. We have heard about PFI contributing to a loss of beds. In any PFI project, the assessment of beds is made well before the financial decisions are made, so the two issues should never be connected.

Before approval is given to PFI schemes, a number of key factors must be carefully considered. First, we must ensure that key local stakeholders in health economies consider that the scheme will meet the health care needs of the area and fit in with the strategy. Secondly, we must ensure that all PFI proposals represent best value, and decide whether a scheme would be better value for the NHS and the taxpayer under PFI than under the equivalent publicly funded alternative. Thirdly, we must ensure that local health authorities and those that commission services will be able to afford the overall cost of the proposed scheme.

The Government have a major responsibility to support the NHS in managing PFI as well as it can. That is why, last December, we published guidance entitled "PFI in the NHS", which clearly sets out the process for testing the PFI market and negotiating a PFI contract. The guidance was based on the experience of the public sector in negotiating such deals, including the wealth of experience gathered from the first wave of major PFI schemes. One outcome of the review was that standard form contracts are now mandatory for the schemes.

We have seen several successes among the PFI schemes, probably the most striking of which is the new Cumberland infirmary in Carlisle, which had a completion timetable of 25:12 months, compared with the 54 months that was envisaged under the conventional public capital route. It is now open, and was the first major PFI hospital to become operational.

One can sometimes make a virtue out of disaster. I visited the Worcester hospital which had to be evacuated because of the flooding of the River Severn. When I went to the site to which some patients were being transferred, I could see the progress that had been made on the PFI hospital there—it was the first to be started after 1997 and is well on the way to completion. We should not run away with the notion that, because we unfortunately had to withdraw from some negotiations because the project was not viable, the PFIfunded process is more lengthy than the public sector option.

I take this opportunity to reassure hon. Members about the Government's commitment to making appropriate and effective use of community hospitals, and to confirm their important role in the delivery of local health care and the future development of intermediate care.

I was struck by the introduction given by the hon. Member for New Forest, West, in which he outlined the huge local support that the hospital has received. It is important to place on the record that it was never suggested that the hospital should simply disappear without being replaced by alternative facilities. He referred to the mechanics of working on split sites—I am familiar with that problem. We agree that we need to move forward constructively.

In the NHS plan, we pledged that by 2004 there will be 5,000 extra intermediate care beds, some of which will be in community hospitals, some in existing facilities and some in new developments. That will provide an opportunity to breathe new life into community hospitals.

I turn now to the events in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and the proposed PFI scheme to rebuild Lymington community hospital. I acknowledge that the decision to terminate negotiations must have been extilemely disappointing. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that PFI schemes will only proceed when they represent value for money. It is now important for all parties concerned to move forward as quickly as possible with alternative arrangements. I heard the pleas from the hon. Members for New Forest, West and for New Forest, East about the speed with which the next steps should be taken.

A review process has been initiated to appraise the options to meet the needs of the local health economy. That will engage the Southampton and South West Hampshire health authority, the local primary care groups and Southampton Community Health Services NHS trust. By requesting the debate, the local Members of Parliament have had their chance to contribute to that process, and I am sure that they will continue to do so.

The review will take place over a six-week period and will be fully supported by the south-east regional office of the NHS executive. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate that it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on its outcome. It is important that, while proposals are being discussed at local level, the local population are confident that effective community services are in place to help the health economy over this coming winter. All health economies will face surges in demand, and we must ensure that we have measures in place.

I am advised that considerable work has already been undertaken to support this vital area of work. Some £2 million has been identified to support the whole of the Southampton health economy over the winter—£1.9 million to support critical care, and £572,000 for improved access to primary care services. In addition, £525,000 has been allocated to primary care groups and trusts, which will be managed as pooled budgets with local authorities. A number of schemes using these funds have already been agreed, including the establishment of rapid response teams across the health authority, and that covers the constituency of New Forest, West.

The emphasis will be to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. It is important to recognise that, although hospital buildings with extra beds are seen as a real improvement to services, rapid response teams, who react quickly and prevent hospital admissions—which is what most people want—play an important part in rebuilding a fundamental structure that enables us to give better primary care.

Additional residential care has been purchased for those people awaiting discharge from hospital. Again, it is important that the flow of patients through hospitals is well managed. The development of an emergency home care service that will operate seven days a week is planned. Again that will cover the New Forest. I fully appreciate the concerns the hon. Gentleman has raised, and it is only right that he and his constituents question how local health services will be provided. I have been reassured by my own discussions with representatives from the regional office and by all the key players who have to participate in that review that they are aware of the sense of urgency.

There is considerable disappointment, as much among the private providers as in the health authority, that the scheme could not go ahead, but it simply would not have been right. We had to recognise at some stage that it did not provide value for money. Part of the consortium had to withdraw four of the five bids that it submitted: one of them was well advanced and looked all right, but the other four had to go back to the drawing board. This is not a delaying tactic and it is not a sign from the regional office that it does not appreciate the needs of the community.

I should also like to pay tribute to the League of Friends. The hon. Gentleman was right in his introduction. It raised a considerable amount of money. Many a hospital scheme would like to be able to start with an endowment as generous as that given by the league. We will build on that—I should make it clear that I mean build in the metaphoric rather than physical sense: that is by no means a ministerial commitment. We will use that good will and support as a foundation on which to progress. Although the withdrawal of the PFI scheme in Lymington has undoubtedly caused anxiety locally, I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman that every effort is being made by all parties to bring this matter to a swift conclusion.

We come now to the penultimate topic for our consideration today.

I am grateful for the opportunity to outline some major concerns about independent local radio in advance of a communications Bill and the forthcoming White Paper. The concerns primarily focus on ownership rules, convergence and content regulation. Moves to consolidate ownership go back to the Conservatives' Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Broadcasting Act 1996, which accelerated the process and removed most of the ownership rules. The current situation shows that companies want more liberalisation and less regulation.

The 1990 Act removed most of the content controls on local radio, leaving the Radio Authority able to work only through the promises of performance, now called formats. In the past few days, I have received input from spokespersons acting for some of the giants in the commercial radio sector, but today I wish to speak for the wider public interest rather than for specific vested interests. Sound broadcasting is special and cannot be left to competition law and criminal law. Advertisers are the clients of commercial radio but listeners are also important to that commercial interest. Six groups—Capital Radio, GWR, Emap, Chrysalis, The Wireless Group and Scottish Radio Holdings—dominate the market, generating 80 per cent. of commercial radio revenues and owning more than 60 per cent. of the points that make up the radio ownership system. Should we continue with the trend towards more convergence with extensive networking and automation, we shall be in danger of losing the localness in local radio and having national radio in all but name.

As the summer recess began, so did a spate of letters from constituents horrified that they might lose a favourite local radio station, Breeze AM. Common to all the letters was the refrain, "Are you able to do anything to help—please?" The letters reflected the feelings of so many people throughout Essex who over the years had grown to love and, in many ways, depend on Breeze AM and Essex FM. In its early days, Essex Radio covered a wide range of music and phone-in programmes and there was a compelling interaction between broadcasters and listeners. The group started its own charity, Helping Hands, which was relaunched in 1998 as Cash for Causes. It had grown not because of a corporate decision but through a natural evolution that was supported by listener activity. Families, schools and individuals all contributed to community fundraising, benefiting, among others, the local Mencap, the Cot Death Society, Hearing Help Essex, Braintree Women's Aid, Homestart Harlow, Action for Kids, St. Claire's hospice—I could go on and on.

Local people decided to fight for Breeze AM when they became aware that it was to pass into new ownership. They feared losing the character and identity of a local radio station that thousands of people had regarded as run by and for locals—the chat between listeners and presenters, the immediate reporting on local situations such as school closures, neighbourhood events and the minutiae of road works that might affect local travel. As one doughty campaigner, my constituent Penny Pringle, said at the launch of the Essex Campaign to Save Local Radio:

Above all, as an observer of one of Peter Holmes' brilliant talks to schoolchildren about the art of communication, remember to stress—as he did—that communication is a two-way process. Breeze speaks to us, we speak to Breeze. But at the moment we must speak for Breeze, because do we really want to lose all this?

I pay tribute to the efforts of Penny, who lives on Canvey island, of Maxine Meadows from Maldon and of Geoff Bonser from Southend, who was a co-founder of the original Essex Radio. They came with me to the Radio Authority in September to argue the case about programming, licensing rules and, essentially, local radio. With the Daily Mail and General Trust as the owner of the Essex stations, there had not been swingeing changes to format and content had not been much affected, but with a new owner, GWR, it was beginning to look like goodbye to all that.

Mr. Cook, I should like to point out that in Bristol, where GWR already has a significant presence as well as owning Orchard FM in neighbouring Somerset, it also has a stake in the most recent community radio station, Eagle FM. That was given, to my dismay, to the Bristol Press and Post, which is hardly a local community group, and was subsequently bought by the Daily Mail.

Order. Perhaps I should offer the gentlest of gentle admonishments on two counts. First, in a 30-minute Adjournment debate an intervention is unusual unless it has been pre-arranged with the presiding officer. Secondly, I should be failing in my duty were I not to remind hon. Members that when the decision was taken for parallel proceedings to take place in Westminster Hall it was agreed that they would be overseen by a Deputy Speaker, not by a Chairman. The exception is when a nameplate can be seen, in which case hon. Members may use the Chairman's name, but on other occasions it is Mr. Deputy Speaker. The intervention is unusual—quite extraordinary—so it must be the briefest of brief interventions.

Please accept my apology, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I had arranged it with my hon. Friend but not with you. I add only that following the takeover of the Bristol Press and Post by the Daily Mail, or DMG, the latter's radio interests have been taken over by GWR, so we have come full circle and the enterprise is no longer local.

I apologise for my earlier error, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I take my hon. Friend's point. In fact, GWR now cuts a swathe across the south of England from the west to the east coast and as far as Peterborough and the midlands. It is a major operator in those regions. That was one of the bells that rang for local people, who were determined to protect not just their own interest, but that of all those who love to listen to independent local radio stations. Indeed, as has been said, there was great consternation throughout Essex, and a campaign was started in the wake of GWR's takeover of Breeze and Essex FM, as well as other stations.

Devotees shed tears when local presenters who had given such a distinct character to Breeze began to be given their marching orders. Surely some protection of listeners' interests is needed and we should not be taking a cold view of the matter. The current concentration of ownership allowed by Conservative legislation enables distant groups to do away with valued local services in the pursuit of short-term profit. There is a desperate need for a regulator to stand up for listeners so that they can enjoy a genuine local radio service.

Following meetings with the Radio Authority, and to allow GWR to come within ownership rules, some of the people on our local station, Breeze, were given a reprieve and although there were some changes the format was not immediately switched to Gold. Until now, we have retained a little localness, but that will soon go, because for some of the presenters the reprieve was to last for only a few months. We have lost some really good people, and I am afraid that the spirit has gone.

The licence that was held before the GWR takeover allowed live output for up to 16 hours a day, with automation in only off-peak, night-time and early morning periods, and although Essex was part-networked to Crawley, presenters made sure that the Southend-Crawley split worked well. The station was able to react immediately to any situation. For example, on the evening of the Stansted air crash, listeners to Breeze 1521 in Crawley continued to receive its regular output. Indeed, Ray Clark has, on occasion, presented two different programmes at the same time. Ray joined the station in 1989 and has won five world-class awards, yet he was made redundant. It is regrettable that he and other highly professional and experienced broadcasters were jettisoned. I am speaking for not only one station, but for the nation. The development is ominous in terms of the encouragement of rising stars.

When GWR took over further stations from the Daily Mail and General Trust for 146 million, it exceeded the 15-point limit. It therefore had to sell some of its assets to a third party that would be prepared to broadcast the classic gold format. By October, it had become known that Unique Broadcasting had become a major shareholder of several of GWR's former acquisitions, including Breeze. It was felt at the time that the situation had gone from critical to not quite so dire. However, GWR maintains a 20 per cent. interest, and many observers believe that these interests are being warehoused until ownership rules are relaxed even further.

Unless legislation prevents it, one or two companies will soon own all local independent radio stations. With cross-media ownership, and if members of one company board sit on other company boards, as at present, there is an inherent danger to the public interest. The Radio Authority has suggested ways to protect the public interest in regions and local areas in its submissions to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Trade and Industry, in advance of the White Paper and in response to the Green Paper consultations. However, independent local radio takes a different view.

I feel strongly about independent editorial content. Local radio cannot be considered merely as a product. The relationship between the producer—if I may use that term—and the consumer is different. Two important points must be emphasised. One is about quality, diversity and choice. The other is the potential for a monopoly of editorial view. If that were to happen, the situation could become very dangerous. During the recent campaign in Essex alone, one mid-Essex newspaper, owned by DMG, would not cover the activities of local people engaged in their fight to save the distinctiveness of Breeze. We should take the issue very seriously.

The Radio Authority also mentioned access radio. The campaign for access radio, which would be a nonprofit making body, was born out of the frustration of losing genuinely local radio. It has been suggested that it could be funded by a levy on the independent sector, but that sector says that it should be publicly funded. The idea for access radio is a symptom of present ills and not a cure. In my view, the project has only a slight chance of becoming viable. For instance, would the independent sector want to fund access radio until it became popular enough to decrease audience ratings for that sector? I think not. Would access radio, which would be mainly run by volunteers and would work on a shoestring budget, be able to deliver the range—I hesitate to use the word "quality"—of programming that listeners expect?

Some people might say that the internet could provide ready access for everyone, but I urge people to hesitate before concluding that it could cure all ills. Essentially, it is an unregulated medium. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will say more about that. I am speaking about traditional radio broadcasting. Whatever happens in technology, I am speaking for the listeners at home. They will be less interested in advanced technologies than they are in what they hear in their living rooms.

I am left wondering whether it might be a better idea to invest more in local BBC radio so that it can undertake more research and perhaps engage in more local documentary programming. We owe something to the listeners out there. I ask all those who lament the loss of truly locally inspired and produced independent radio to come to Essex and learn from us in our attempt to bring localness and plurality of ownership back.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler) for securing this debate. She has raised an important issue, about which, as she knows from our conversations, I too have strong feelings. I also thank also my Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) for pointing out the similar circumstances that affect her constituents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst). I have received a considerable amount of correspondence about local radio. In response to the remarks that have been made, I should like to speak about the Government's commitment to local radio and to outline how we see the future developing.

I visited Breeze FM—I think at the invitation of Eric Moonman, who I believe is its chairman and who was also once a colleague here. I was very excited by what I saw and by all the work done with local community groups, charities and so on. I was sorry to learn that some of the presenters who have now gone, including Ray Clark, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point cited as having received five world-class awards. Employment matters are for the broadcaster and we have no power under the Broadcasting Acts to intervene, but I hope that GWR will take note of local concern. I pay tribute to Penny Pringle, Maxine Meadows and Geoff Bonsor for their campaign to save local radio in Essex.

I turn to existing regulation, which is under review. The Radio Authority was established under the Broadcasting Act 1990 to license and regulate independent radio in the United Kingdom. The Act provides that the authority should ensure that the local character of a radio service is maintained during the period of the licence while allowing individual stations the flexibility to make commercial and programming decisions. The authority sets out to meet that statutory obligation to maintain the essential character of a service by requiring output to be within a programme format. I understand that, as of this morning, it has not received any application from GWR to change that format.

The 1990 Act enables a local radio station to change its format, but the Radio Authority may consent to a change only if it would not narrow the range of programmes available by way of independent radio services to people living in the area for which the service is licensed to be provided, or would not substantially alter the character of the service.

It is difficult for the regulator to deal with ownership rules in the local independent radio sector because there is a perceived weakness in what it can and cannot do, notwithstanding section 106(1) of the 1990 Act. Further strengthening is necessary because the drafting of the provision is too loose and open to interpretation.

Order. I repeat that interventions must be brief.

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting those concerns and we shall take them on board in our deliberations on the White Paper.

The Broadcasting Act 1996 promotes plurality and, therefore, consumer interests through restrictions on media ownership, including radio. Notwithstanding my hon. Friend's concern, it is important to say a little about this. As well as the provisions that apply nationally—for example, those preventing any one person from holding radio licences accounting for more than 15 per cent. of the total number of points available, with such points being attributed to licences depending on audience size—a number of restrictions will prevent the concentration of ownership of local radio. A person is allowed to own one FM and one AM licence that share a potential audience. However, a person may hold a second licence on the same waveband with the same potential audience only if the Radio Authority is satisfied that the holding of that licence could not be expected to operate against the public interest. A person wishing to control three radio licences that share a potential audience must have one service on each of the AM and FM wavebands. In considering the public interest, the Radio Authority must consider the effect of the proposal on the range of independent radio programmes in the area and, in particular, the impact on diversity in the sources of information available and opinions expressed.

My hon. Friend referred to the need to maintain quality, diversity and choice, and I can reassure her that that is one of the Government's priorities. The authority takes a firm and objective stance in support of the development and growth of a successful UK independent radio network that offers a wide listening choice.

A key point in today's debate is the future for local radio in the context of the communications White Paper. The available spectrum for new radio services is extremely scarce and there is strong competition for new analogue licences, which continue to be advertised by the Radio Authority. Demand for new licences outstrips supply. The Radio Authority, in deciding licence awards, has to strike a difficult balance between the demand from large and small organisations.

Digital radio has now commenced and the Radio Authority is advertising new local multiplex licences at the rate of one per month. Although digital technology enables the available spectrum to be used more efficiently than the equivalent analogue spectrum by increasing the number of services available, the spectrum continues to be limited at present. Digital technology is also enabling broadcast and communications to converge.

The Government are, therefore, concerned that an appropriate system of regulation should be in place that will allow the radio industry to grow, but which will also protect consumers' interests. Last February, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced, jointly with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, that we would publish a White Paper later this year. My hon. Friend has obviously been studying the progress made on that. The White Paper will set out the Government's proposals for the reform of broadcasting and telecommunications regulation. A joint communications team from my Department and the Department of Trade and Industry has been set up to examine how the broadcasting and telecommunications industries will develop over the next 10 years, and what regulation will be appropriate in this converging digital environment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West and I have exchanged correspondence about the review of spectrum. The Government commissioned a review of the use of FM frequencies earlier this year to determine the likelihood of FM frequencies being found in the United Kingdom for new radio services. The conclusions of that review will help to inform our deliberations on the White Paper.

We consulted widely while drawing up the White Paper and, earlier this year, the team carrying out those consultations invited comments on a range of issues. They included the pace and direction of change in the communications markets; the needs and demands of consumers; the objectives, principles and systems for content regulation; and the implications of conclusions on those issues for the organisational structure of regulation. We received a number of responses to this consultation from both larger and smaller radio stations. I assure hon. Members that those responses will be given careful consideration. I cannot, of course, discuss the Government's proposals in detail before the publication of the White Paper.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Radio Authority's proposal for access radio. We are looking closely at that issue, and I note her concerns about how it might or might not work. I assure her that we are considering that very carefully. It might be possible to establish a fund to assist small-scale, non-commercial radio. Such a fund could maintain, at a low cost, a richly innovative range of services with significant public support, some of which could play a major social role in addressing problems in difficult neighbourhoods. That would fit in with the Government's agenda on social exclusion.

I would like to emphasise once more that the Government appreciate the concern expressed over the sale of local radio licences. We want all participants in the radio industry—large and small, and including, as my hon. Friend said, the BBC—to succeed, as they all have an important role to play in its continuing development. I thank her for bringing the matter to my attention, and I hope that she will give us her views on the White Paper when it is published.

We come now to the final topic for our consideration.

I last raised the issue of road safety in Derbyshire with the Minister on 20 June, when I expressed my concern about the dramatic number of fatal accidents that we have seen on Derbyshire's roads over a six-month period. The latest figures show that there have been some 59 fatalities.

It is incumbent on all hon. Members to consider the subject of road safety and to raise concerns about specific danger areas. For that reason, I want to return to two issues relating to the A50, which runs through part of the southern end of my constituency and has become extremely busy—it is now, in effect, the link road between the M1 and the M6. It has about 38,500 traffic movements a day, and that figure is growing at a rate that is to be expected on such a busy road.

The crossing at Sudbury is the only crossing on the A50 from the M1 to the M6 that is an unmarked crossing going through a central reservation. There is a big pedestrian crossing a mile or two further down, which ensures that people can visit Fosten prison safely. However, people in my constituency who have to use the Aston crossing cannot do so safely. On 1 September this year, I attended a protest when a number of local residents temporarily brought the road to a standstill to demonstrate the great problems that they have in crossing it.

The crossing is just a gap in the central reservation for people who wish to cross from both sides to get to the bus stop, which is the sole reason for using it. I visited the site on Saturday with June Smith, Christine Hickson and Bob Jeffreys, the chairman of Sudbury parish council. The speed of the traffic that went past us was frightening. It is unacceptable to have to try to cross the road in those conditions: something must be done, as a matter of urgency, to put that right. All the indications that I have received so far suggest that there is no intention of doing so.

I received a letter from the Highways Agency, which states:

We are considering a longer-term solution for this section of the A50 that would provide a two-level junction. That would include facilities for pedestrians to cross the A50 safely without conflicting with dual carriageway traffic. We have started the process by asking our Agents to investigate matters further, though this will take some time to complete.

I am worried about the length of time that it will take to improve the road. I know that several hon. Members use it, but I doubt whether any have noticed the existence of the crossing. It is extremely dangerous, and I hope that the Minister will tell me that he will instruct the Highways Agency to look into this problem as a matter of urgency.

On the A38, two sets of pedestrian traffic lights have been installed at the Markeaton island and the Little Eaton island. The Sudbury crossing deserves at least that, as a move in the right direction. We should not be told that we have to wait endlessly while the Highways Agency investigates the whole area to consider whether further measures should be taken.

I should also like to discuss the new part of the bypass, known as the Doveridge bypass, which is the main part of the link road, and the noise on that road. I raised the issue with the Minister on 20 June, when I pointed out that much of the A50

goes through open countryside and has a whisper concrete surface. However, concrete has been used on a small section of the road, which goes through Doveridge, and the noise increase in that area is amazing. As soon as one hits the concrete surface, the noise level rises. It seems unbelievable to me that Connect, who built the road, was allowed to lay a noisy road surface on the most populated stretch of the A50.

I asked the Minister to send a strong message to Connect to consider the issue and make changes. The problem has a tremendous effect not only on the people who live in Doveridge, who hear the noise of the road, but on people living in Somersal Herbert and Marston Montgomery.

On 20 June, the Minister said:

I come now to the problem of … the A50 … The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Highways Agency has a programme to quieten particularly noisy stretches of road. The A50 Doveridge bypass was not included in the list of most pressing cases, but in view of local concerns, there is no reason why it should not be assessed retrospectively in line with the original criteria. The Highways Agency is considering whether the circumstances at Doveridge warrant further noise analysis as a precursor to early maintenance work, which in turn could reduce the … noise from the road.—[Official Report, 20 June 2000; Vol. 352, c. 23–26WH.]

Having pressed the Department and waited for a reply, on 19 July I received a letter from the Under-Secretary of State, the noble Lord Whitty, which states:

Turning to noise, at the time the Doveridge Bypass was planned, brushed concrete was an approved surfacing material for roads carrying up to 75,000 vehicles per day. The then specifications allowed a range of surfacing to ensure best value, bearing in mind the local availability of construction materials. The quieter surface materials now used were still on trial at that time and, unfortunately, were not adopted in time to be used in this case.

My attention was drawn to a campaign about the A30, which has a similar surface to the A50. I tabled some parliamentary questions to the Minister, which he answered on 27 July. He said that noise tests were being done on the A30 and that its surface was going to be changed. I then asked him to include the A50 in that scheme. On 27 July, he answered:

I have asked the Highways Agency to draw up a programme for all such trunk roads for agreement. The A50 at Doveridge will be included in this programme. No detailed estimate of the cost of resurfacing …. at Doveridge exists.—[Official Report, 27 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 787W.]

I very much welcome, and was pleased to receive, that answer from the Minister, because it took us forward in a constructive way. However, as often happens, I subsequently received a further letter from the noble Lord Whitty on 12 October, which states:

The A50 Doveridge noise study is progressing well but is taking longer than anticipated to complete. Until we have the results of the study we are unable to indicate the priority cases for treatment.

My constituents were pleased when they heard that there was a good chance of the A50 being resurfaced. However, they were worried that that was being discussed in the context of the Government's 10-year road transport plan. They rightly want to know where they stand in that 10-year plan. On their behalf, I should like to ask how it is being put together, where the road is in the lists, and when they can expect some relief from the tremendous noise level increase.

I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will instruct the Highways Agency to consider the unsafe crossing to which I have referred. I also hope that he can tell us how the work is progressing on the noise studies on the A50, and when he expects a resurfaced road to be laid through the Doveridge section.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) on securing another debate on the A50 trunk road. He mentioned my reference to A50 noise during the Adjournment debate on 20 June. As he knows, a 30-year design, build, finance and operate concession for the A50 Stoke-Derby link was awarded to Connect A50 Ltd., a private consortium, in May 1996. Part of the consortium's remit was to construct the Doveridge bypass. I know that the hon. Gentleman supported the scheme, which provided traffic relief to the village of Doveridge and was fully opened to traffic on 6 February 1998.

The specification at the time allowed the main carriageway of the bypass to be constructed in concrete. I am aware of local concerns about the traffic noise created by the popularity of the route linking the M1 and the M6. The Highways Agency and Connect A50 held a public meeting on 21 November 1998, which the hon. Gentleman attended. They explained and clarified the decisions taken on design and construction at that time. Connect A50 is required to operate and maintain the A50 Stoke-Derby link until the end of the concession period in 2026. There will almost certainly be a need to resurface the Doveridge bypass in that period. As it is a new road in good condition, and given the condition of the pavement, that will not be necessary until after 2010.

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged the Government's commitment to surface all concrete trunk roads with low-noise surfacing in our 10-year plan for transport. My noble Friend Lord Whitty, the Minister responsible for roads, has decided to consult widely to develop criteria for prioritising the resurfacing of all concrete roads. All local authorities will be consulted in the next two months, and the consultation letter will be published on the Highways Agency website. The Government will study the comments received and finalise the criteria by March 2001. I expect a list of those sites likely to be resurfaced in the next three years to be available early in the spring. I shall ensure that the Highways Agency keeps the hon. Gentleman fully informed of developments.

The hon. Gentleman made a point about road safety. Sudbury is located at the western end of the FostonHatton-Hilton bypass, which opened in 1994 and upgraded that section of the route to dual carriageway standard. With the opening of the Derby southern bypass in September 1997 and the Doveridge bypass in February 1998, we became aware of increasing local concerns about road safety due to traffic speeds at the A50-A515 Sudbury roundabout. As a result, the Highways Agency was instructed to introduce several local safety measures in spring 1998. They resulted in an observed improvement in safety at the roundabout, and were well received by the local community.

The Highways Agency was also instructed to commission a further investigation into options for additional improvements, especially regarding the difficulties experienced both by pedestrians crossing the trunk road to the west of the Sudbury roundabout in the small hamlet of Aston, and by drivers accessing the roundabout from the Aston lane side road. A report was produced in August 2000 and a copy was supplied to the chairman of Sudbury parish council for his consideration. The main conclusions were that in the five years to December 1999 there were no accidents that involved pedestrians; the measures that were introduced in spring 1998 have been successful in improving safety and remain so; queue lengths and waiting times at the roundabout are not excessive; and pedestrian movements, even allowing for suppressed demand, are very low.

The report therefore recommended that additional modifications could be made to signing so as to increase drivers' awareness of pedestrian movements and to further encourage lower speeds, and that monitoring of the site should be continued to identify further options for improvement. I have asked the Highways Agency to organise a meeting with the parish council and local residents to discuss the report's findings, consider possible options for the future and report back to me. That meeting will take place on 28 November.

I have also asked the Highways Agency to commission a study of roundabout junctions along the Stoke-Derby route to ensure consistent standards. The study will commence in March 2001 and, when I have received the results, I shall consider the need for major scheme construction within the 10-year transport plan. I recognise, for example, that full-grade separation at junctions could incorporate facilities that would enable pedestrians and side road traffic to cross the A50 without coming into conflict with through trunk road traffic.

Increased signing or new signing will not be a significant enough solution to the problem. That is not acceptable, nor should my constituents be asked to cross the road when the amount of traffic is increasing. Several measures have been imposed for pedestrians in other cases, but that has not happened in the case under discussion. That has been due partly to the fact that the whole road was not completed in one go, but was built in bits, which has led to such a huge increase in traffic. I urge the Minister to consider the problem seriously. The days are now getting shorter and the traffic volumes are tremendous. June Smith told me that it once took her 20 minutes to cross the road. That is not acceptable.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his further exposition of the difficulties experienced by his constituents. He is right to press as hard as possible for a solution to the problem. I hope that I have given him some reassurance that the Government, via the Highways Agency, are seriously considering the problem. There will be an opportunity for the parish council and local residents to discuss matters further with the Highways Agency at the meeting to be held later this month.

Finally, 1 advise the hon. Gentleman that full grade-separated standards, with ample facilities to cater for the safety of pedestrians and other road users, will be fully considered within the Government's route management strategy, and that implementation of the strategy will deal with the safety concerns at the locations to be discussed. I will make it my business to let the hon. Gentleman know when we are ready to announce the route management strategy for the A50, which will incorporate the whole length from the M1 to the M6.