Whenever I partake in debate in Westminster Hall, Madam Deputy Speaker, you seem to be in the Chair, and I am deeply honoured to see you again.

I wish to advance and enhance the debate commenced on 6 November 2001, when I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland:

"If she will make a statement on proposed changes to the Scotland Act 1998 to alter the number of Members of the Scottish Parliament."

She answered:

"The Government have made it clear that we would take into account the experience of the first years of the Scottish Parliament's operation and be pragmatic in our response to that. I can therefore announce today that I shortly intend to launch a consultation exercise on the size of the Scottish Parliament. It will not involve any postponement in the boundary commission's ongoing review."

I asked the following supplementary question:

"Does she also agree that the Act and the Scottish Parliament should be left alone, so that they have a chance to bed in before any review takes place?",

whereon she answered:

"I understand my hon. Friend's point, but the consultation is open ended. One reason why the devolution settlement has proved so successful to date is that it was built on a spirit of consensus and co-operation, and I shall seek to broker such consensus through the consultation exercise.—[Official Report, 6 November 2001: Vol. 374, c. 91.]

I said then that I was looking forward to the consultation period, and I view this morning's debate as another step on the road of that consultation.

My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Scotland Office has informed me that the consultation document will be released in a few weeks' time, so our debate may be a few weeks too early, but we should try to take the discussion a step forward. I want to appear conciliatory and helpful to the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister will respond to my and other hon. Members' questions today. That will be a further contribution to the consultation exercise.

I see that members of the Scottish National party are present. As a party, they did nothing to contribute to realising the Scottish Parliament. These were the people who said, "Labour couldn't deliver a pizza, never mind a Scottish Parliament," so I will be interested to hear what they have to say today. The fact that the new Parliament has worked so well is not because of but in spite of them. Those who truly helped to create the Scottish Parliament can congratulate themselves on doing such a good job on an untried system.

The Law Society sent me a letter today, which states:

"The Scotland Act 1998 is working very well. The legislative framework has produced no substantial problems of interpretation and although the effect of importing the ECHR into the domestic law has been far reaching it is viewed as being beneficial."

That body has no political affiliations, so if it is happy, we should all be happy.

The first question is whether we should open up the Act. If we do, the entire measure must be examined and amended as necessary.

One of the most contentious points, which I raised in my question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is the right number of Members of the Scottish Parliament in relation to regional list MSPs. For the record, I shall quote the Act:

"So far as reasonably practicable, the ratio which the number of regional member seats bears to the number of constituency member seats shall be 56 to 73…The number of regional member seats for a region shall be…one eighth of the total number of regional member seats, or…(if that total number is not exactly divisible by eight) either one eighth of the highest number which is less than that total number and exactly divisible by eight or the number produced by adding one to one eighth of that highest number".

Let me put that into English. The ratio of constituency MSPs to list MSPs is 73:56, but if the boundary changes are pursued, the number of constituency MPs for Westminster will decrease to about 57.

The number is not necessarily set at 57. Taking account of sparsity of population and geographical factors, it could be somewhere between 57 and 60.

I am aware of my hon. Friend's point. I used the number 57 only as an example; I was not saying that that would be the number. Far be it from me to pre-empt what the Boundary Commission will say. If the number of constituency MPs went down to 57, the number of list MSPs would go down to 45, which would result in 102 MSPs under the Act as it stands. That will be determined by the Boundary Commission, whose report is due between December 2002 and December 2006.

The matter raises a number of questions, which I am sure other hon. Members will also ask. Should the boundaries for MPs and MSPs be coterminous? Do we retain 129 MSPs? Do we keep regional lists? Should there be regional lists? Should someone be able to stand as a candidate and for a list seat? Are the people of Scotland getting value for money? [Interruption.] I would argue yes, but there is always room for improvement.

I should like to address some of these questions with my own observations. Coterminosity—if that is a word; if not, I have just invented it—is vital. The need for MPs and MSPs to work together is paramount for the people of Scotland. Things are hard enough at present, with regional list MSPs cherry-picking casework that does not relate to their remit. Let us imagine what things would be like if there were three or more first-past-the-post MSPs and seven or more regional list MSPs per MP constituency. What sort of partnership would that foster?

Council wards would have to change, but how would we do that? That is an important question for the Scottish Executive. To whom would the public go for advice and help? They may know their MP but not their MSP, who could be one of many. How do we regulate for who should do what? There are too many grey areas.

I return to the current list system. I appreciate that we cannot turn the clock back, but we must consider the interference from list MSPs in MP and constituency MSP casework. Taking on high-visibility work and sending a constituent to an MP or constituency MSP because their case involves work without any glorification is not on. Hon. Members know what I am talking about. It has been suggested that some minority parties are deliberately using that approach to undermine the important work that a colleague is trying to do for his or her constituents. That must stop. Playing politics with someone's life is not on, and this could be a good time to put a stop to that practice.

To that end, I have two suggestions that could be considered: changing the voting system or changing the regional lists to a national list. The voting system that has been widely mentioned is that involving two first-past-the-post candidates—one man, one woman—in all the current seats, giving 144 MSPs or, with the boundary changes that would reduce the number to 57, 114 MSPs. The gender balance would be fairer and would match that of the population of Scotland. For those who like proportional representation, each constituency could have an alternative vote system and elect the first man and first woman to secure more than 50 per cent. of the electorate's vote. I add that as a thought-provoking comment, and not as my own view on how the system should be.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the existing system needs to be changed in circumstances where 5,455 people can vote Liberal in Orkney and Shetland and elect one MSP, but in Glasgow 112,588 people can vote Labour and get no one elected at all?

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Those who have indulged in PR might think it somewhat imbalanced and not the right direction in which to go. However, we must take into consideration the size of some constituencies. Although Orkney and Shetland has been treated differently from other constituencies, there is probably a fair case for PR because Orkney and Shetland are so far apart. If we open the Act, we must consider every case on its merit. There may also be a case for Western Isles to have a separate seat, but where do we stop?

Western Isles has a separate seat, as far as I know.

The hon. Gentleman is right. At the moment, it does, but under the Act it would not with changes to the boundaries.

With whom would the hon. Gentleman plan to twin Western Isles in that case?

Why twin Western Isles with anything? The system seems to work quite well at the moment, so why change it? If it's not broken, don't fix it. I am glad that hon. Members intervened, because I want to put the facts straight. An article appeared in The Herald on 15 November that was written by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), whom I am pleased to see here today. The article was followed up by a letter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. The hon. Gentleman said:

"Donald…"—

—Donald Dewar, the First Minister, who died this time last year—

"made it abundantly clear that this matter would be left open-ended—regardless of the provisions of the forthcoming Bill—and that the Government would deliver the necessary legislative changes to secure the number of MSPs at 129 at the appropriate time…The referendum took place on the basis that Scotland would achieve a parliament of 129 members, enabling it to have a strong and effective committee system, and represent all parts of the nation."

I know how I felt, but I must say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—who is not here—answered that perfectly. She said:

"It is laughable to suggest that the SNP was 'part of a consensus that led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament'. Your party boycotted the Constitutional Convention which planned it and consistently denigrated its work…To suggest that a man who devoted his life to the creation of a devolved Scotland would have done secret deals with a party whose aim is to destroy it beggars belief. Donald can no longer defend himself, but I can and will."

I would like to reiterate that.

Why should it be an attack on Donald Dewar to detail the fact that in 1997 there were a number of meetings and arrangements to construct a common platform to fight a successful referendum campaign? That was one of Donald Dewar's greatest achievements. The hon. Gentleman knows that some of the meetings were detailed in the press while Donald was alive, and he did not challenge the fact that they took place.

Once again, the hon. Gentleman's case is not based on what was said in public. There was never a statement that he or Donald had a secret deal that guaranteed 129 MSPs. On what part of the road to Damascus did the hon. Gentleman experience his conversion? From not taking part in the establishment of a Scottish Parliament, he is now suddenly its saviour That beggars belief. Apart from the hon. Member for Perth (Annabelle Ewing), who seems a bit upset, hon. Members know that.

I will describe the background to the Scotland Act 1998, and put the record straight concerning my predecessor, the late Donald Dewar—the architect of the Act—what he said, how he felt about the Scottish Parliament and how it should develop. Donald was the first First Minister. He was Secretary of State for Scotland from 1997 until the commencement of the new Parliament. I was his election agent and constituency chairman, and we had regular meetings and telephone conversations, at least once a week. Sadly, we had more telephone calls than meetings during the latter days. We had many discussions while he was preparing the Scotland Bill, and even longer ones when it was complete. I am not the sharpest tool in the box, so he had to explain it to me—sometimes in quite vociferous detail—and we had many arguments about it. We continued in that manner up to the election and beyond.

Some people have taken political advantage of Donald's death, and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan is one of them. The hon. Gentleman's deal was imaginary, a misunderstanding, or perhaps he was a victim of Donald's legendary sense of humour. If it took place, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. The hon. Gentleman would claim that he invented the wheel, if he thought that he could get away with it. It is unlikely that any meeting occurred. Donald was arguably the most respected politician of his generation, and perhaps of other generations, in Scotland.

Regardless of who may have said what to whom in meetings that may or may not have taken place, has the hon. Gentleman considered the proceedings in Committee and on Report of the then Scotland Bill? Does he accept that it was made clear at that stage, at least in spirit, that the size of the Scottish Parliament would be maintained at the current level?

The short answer is that I have looked at various bits and pieces. I was involved, and I do not necessarily agree with the hon. Gentleman's interpretation of what was said. Donald intended that the Scottish Parliament would eventually consist of about 105 MSPs. However, we always agreed—I know that this is contentious with some of my colleagues—that the number of Westminster Members would decrease due to the existence of a Scottish Parliament. If we are going to reopen the Scotland Act, we must consider that.

Can the hon. Gentleman explain why Donald Dewar, against my advice on the chosen site, went ahead with the construction of a new Parliament building for 129 MSPs?

A new building does not necessarily have to have 129 seats. You wanted a Scottish Parliament; you got one. I do not mean you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am talking about the Scottish people.

On behalf of those who were there at the time, I remind the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan that far from it being the case that Donald and others agreed that the number should remain at 129, it was written into the Act that the number should go down. It is inconceivable that there was an agreement that the number should stay the same yet legislation was drafted differently. I remember, having believed that the number should remain at 129, being defeated in that argument at the time as, regrettably for the cause of Scotland, I was in so man) other things.

Scotland's loss was Westminster's gain. My hon. Friend makes a valid point. To put to bed the point about the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, I want to finish with a bit of humour; well, I found it very funny. It is something that the Minister said about the hon. Gentleman on the BBC programme "Newsnight Scotland". He accused him of indulging in a complete fantasy in trying to rewrite history. That sums it up perfectly.

Does my hon. Friend remember that on that programme I challenged the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan to come up with just one piece of evidence to corroborate his fantastic claims? He did not do so. The debate on the matter has been going on for many weeks, and the hon. Gentleman has not explained why he waited until a few days ago to engage in it. Does not that indicate that it is complete fantasy?

My hon. Friend makes a good point; he has obviously read part of my script and knocked three minutes off my speech, which everyone will be glad to hear. I ask hon. Members whether Donald Dewar would confide in a political opponent rather than a friend or colleague. Least of all would he confide in the person in politics—I do not mean to be disparaging—whom he detested the most. The hon. Gentleman has at best been set up or is being economical with the truth. I should be interested to hear and see the proof of his argument.

Many matters need to be addressed, not least the size of the Scottish Parliament. It is clear that I have spoken for too long, but I hope that I have achieved what I set out to do—to advance the debate, leaving plenty of answers for the Minister to give and others to think about that. We have a long way to go in the debate, but whether we are Members of Parliament, Members of the Scottish Parliament or political activists, it must be our goal to ensure that the people of Scotland and the United Kingdom, not the politicians, are the winners.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing the debate on this important subject. He did not refer to alternative systems of proportional representation. He referred to the alternative vote system, but that is not a proportional system. Electing a man and a woman in the same constituency using an alternative vote would mean that the same party would win both seats.

It is proportional where I come from.

Even in Glasgow, the Labour party does not get 100 per cent. of the votes. At the last council election, the Labour party secured fewer than half the votes, but because of the unproportional electoral system, it was elected with a large majority—[Interruption.] I do not carry the figures around in my head.

If we had a PR system and the single transferable vote, every Member of the Scottish Parliament would have equal status. If that vote were used in constituencies with four or five Members, we would achieve genuine proportionality and genuinely equal status for every Member. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the list system creates many anomalies. An STV system would be the perfect solution to the problem, although it is a solution that may not receive unanimous support from the House of Commons.

The hon. Gentleman said that when the number of Members representing Scotland is reduced to between 57 and 60 following the Boundary Commission report, boundary anomalies between MPs and MSPs would be created if the number of MSPs were not reduced to the same number. However, that is not a problem. The Scottish Parliament needs its 129 Members and its many Committees. Its Committee system is much better than that of the House, allowing its Back Benchers to get involved in legislation at the pre-legislative stage without oppressive Whips telling them what to do. Even if the Scotland Act 1998 were not amended and the number of MPs and MSPs reduced, there would be an intervening period of two or three years—although it could in theory be as long as four and a half years—before the first Parliament were to be elected under the new boundaries. During that long period, MPs and MSPs would represent constituencies with different boundaries. That situation would arise even under the Act.

I turn to another section of the Scotland Act, of which both the Minister and I have been aware in recent months. It is part II, E3 of schedule 5, which sets out financial assistance for shipping services that start or finish, or both, outside Scotland as a reserve power. I wish to relate that power to the efforts to reopen the ferry service between Campbeltown and Ballycastle. The hon. Gentleman will recall that that service was started during the previous Conservative Administration, but the then Secretary of State, now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, adopted an ideological position and insisted that it be run by a private operator without a subsidy. That Government gave that operator a hidden subsidy by handing it a CalMac boat for nothing. The service failed because it cannot be run without a subsidy and because the operator was not under a duty to market the service adequately. It failed also because all the operator wanted was the boat; it sailed away with it, leaving the people of Campbeltown and Ballycastle without a ferry service.

Efforts have recently been made to get that service started again. A meeting on the issue took place last night, and I believe that the Minister intends to introduce an order to transfer power to the Scottish and Northern Ireland Executives. I am sure that the Minister realises how important the service is, particularly to Kintyre, with its high unemployment rate. The people of Kintyre are becoming impatient because the service did not run last summer or the summer before. Given continuing delays, they are concerned that it will not run next summer. I hope that the Minister will inform us of his plans and that he will do all that he can to get the service up and running for next summer.

I am grateful to be called in this important debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) certainly did an excellent job in making his case, but I would like to be a wee bit more forthright. He is a bit of a gentleman, but I am not; I am a red-blooded socialist. If ever anything made me angry, it was when the Home Secretary appointed Lord Jenkins to take over the commission and issues to do with proportional representation. It was like a farmer appointing a fox to look after the chickens while he was away.

I well remember a Liberal Democrat meeting that I had the opportunity to attend, at which the main speaker was Lord Jenkins. He pleaded every angle. We know how democratic and consensual he is: he wanted to govern the country with a gang of four. Obviously, he got the message. However, he is now in a higher place and using his position to every advantage.

In my lifetime, I have never seen as undemocratic a process as what is happening in Scotland now. When we were debating the Bill in 1997 and being urged to vote for a Scottish Parliament, it was assumed that just under a total of 2 million votes would be cast for the parties in the Scottish Parliament, with the Scottish National party getting about 690,000 votes and the Tories 394,000. Under proportional representation, the SNP went from six to 28 seats and, in the latest election, to 35. The Tories went from no seats to 22, and Labour got 53. The Liberal Democrats went from 22 to 28 seats and are still at 28. No one can tell me that that is a democratic system.

The first thing that we should do—I am dying to do it, and I hope that it is why we are here—is open the Scotland Act and push for 129 seats to be retained in the Scottish Parliament. Is this democracy? The use of the list system resulted in people running around half a dozen constituencies up and down the country, accountable to no one. They were paid to visit constituencies in which they had no electors and ran up bills at taxpayers' expense. That was not the system that I was looking for. Let us consider the numbers in Scotland on a proportional basis. I could make a case for retaining the number of Scottish MPs; we are looking after 55 million people, as opposed to 5 million.

I never was one to believe in consensus or coalition politics nor ever identified myself in any way with the Tories. In fact, all my life, I wanted to keep them out. That was my job, during my 30 years in office as a Labour Member of Parliament and as a Labour council member. I saw the state that the city was left in—the slums and the poverty—after it had been under the control of the Tories for decades.

We know exactly what Liberal Democrat councils did when they had their first taste of power. How could I, or any socialist, support a coalition with Liberal Democrats and Tories—especially with Liberal Democrats? What did they do for the poor during the days of the poll tax? They posted the names of people who did not pay their poll tax in the local Safeway.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the Liberal Democrats are a thoroughly bad lot. [Interruption.] I am glad to hear that that has universal acceptance. Does my hon. Friend agree that one possible coalition is between the Labour party and the Co-operative party? Indeed, on the general election result, if the Co-operative party stood in the second ballot in the areas where Labour chose not to stand, the Co-op would win 28 seats, and the Labour party 55. It would be a far more reliable and trustworthy coalition partner than that bad lot, the Liberals.

I agree with those percentages, but I would go even further. The people who best represent the working classes and know most about them, wage restraint and poverty are the trade unions. Why do we not allow every trade union in Scotland and the rest of Britain to throw a candidate into the ring? I know where that would leave the Tories and Liberals. This is a mathematical fraud which was brought out by the man who chaired the commission. It is unfair and undemocratic.

I understand that many hon. Members want to speak, so I will finish quickly. The only Tory who got the whole thing right was Shirley Bassey—the winner takes it all.

I did not know that Shirley Bassey was a Tory; that is news to me. I was more disappointed to discover that Lulu was a Tory, although she has perhaps changed her mind. [Interruption.] We could go through a range of potential supporters.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing the debate, although I cannot bring myself to congratulate him on the content. I was asked why I had waited until now to write to the Secretary of State. The answer is simple: I was lying in bed, ill, watching Scottish questions, during which I saw a procession of people, led by the hon. Gentleman, who can be described only as having the most malign and hostile attitudes towards the Scottish Parliament. I commend the video of Scottish questions to hon. Members. It was not until I saw that Question Time that I realised that Labour Members were so resentful of the institution that they helped create.

No; come on.

The Minister says no, but I believe that even he was taken aback by the procession of people, led by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland, who wanted to knock down the Scottish Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman must have missed the opening gambit of my speech. Not only did I say that the Scottish Parliament had worked well, I quoted what the Law Society had said about it. He may have missed one other point, which was that the Parliament has done well not because of his party, but despite it.

The hon. Gentleman resented the voting system and the list MSPs. He said that the Parliament was interfering in business, that the system was not working and that he wanted a reduction in numbers. There is a seam of hostility towards the Scottish Parliament on the Labour Benches here in Westminster. It is based not on any democratic theory but on the fact that so many Labour Members feel that they cannot get in the newspapers because some upstart MSP is taking away their publicity and most of their functions. If hon. Members looked in the mirror, they would see the basis of the hostility, which is unfortunate and unlike the atmosphere of 1997.

The hon. Gentleman said that the SNP did nothing to secure the Scottish Parliament, and he found it strange and inconceivable—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will in a few seconds, if the Minister allows me. I know that he will want to intervene after my next comments.

The hon. Gentleman found it inconceivable that the late Donald Dewar would want to build a common platform with the SNP for the referendum. That shows how out of touch he was, even working as Donald Dewar's election agent. As Secretary of State in 1997, Donald Dewar—to his great credit—was intensely interested in building that common platform. I do not know about meetings with other party leaders at the time, but there were seven meetings with me—two in Scotland, four in Westminster, either in the House or Dover house, and one in a restaurant not too many hundred yards from here. They took place in May, June, July and August 1997—[Interruption.] I can furnish the Minister with the dates if he wants proof that the meetings took place. I take great exception to the Secretary of State's attack and argument that that somehow demeans the memory of Donald Dewar. It was to Donald's eternal credit that he helped to build that common platform which was so successful in 1997.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way to the Minister in a few seconds.

I did not wait until Donald was dead before I revealed that the meetings took place. The contents of those meetings were revealed in a series of articles that I had in Scotland on Sunday in September last year, when Donald was still alive. The key issue for us was not the number of MSPs, but Donald's acceptance and acknowledgement that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people would have the right to move to independence if they so chose through a single question referendum. That was the key assurance. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head. I do not know whether he disagrees that that was the key assurance. Donald Dewar stated that in the House on 24 May and 4 June, subsequent to those meetings. To challenge that, as the Secretary of State seemed to do when she said that it was inconceivable that Donald would have those meetings and make arrangements with me or anyone else, flies in the face of all history and what happened in 1997. I shall give way to the Minister now. I hope that he makes it clear that he does not doubt that these meetings and arrangements took place.

The hon. Gentleman entirely misses the point. No one on the Government Benches questions that the meetings took place. We question his word about what Donald Dewar said and the pledge that he gave at those meetings. It is inconceivable that he would pledge automatically to change what he had agreed, as the hon. Gentleman claims. Donald Dewar said publicly that once the Scottish Parliament was up and running we would review the numbers, and that is precisely what we are doing. We are fulfilling his promise, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will stop misquoting Donald Dewar and dishonouring his memory.

The Minister is struggling, because that is not what the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland said. He seemed to argue that it was inconceivable that he, Donald Dewar's election agent, would not know that such meetings took place. I take it that the Minister does not doubt that the meetings took place or that arrangements were made to construct a common platform for the referendum campaign. What is wrong with that?

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but I did not say that. I said that it was inconceivable that Donald Dewar would say one thing to the hon. Gentleman and something else to his friends and colleagues. I do not have the exact words in front of me, but that is what I stated. I never mentioned myself personally; I simply said that his friends and colleagues were involved too. Is it conceivable that he would tell the hon. Gentleman one thing and all those people something else?

As I remember it, the hon. Gentleman seemed to doubt that Donald Dewar would have meetings with someone he detested. Well, if that was his attitude towards me, I would have had to join a queue. Many of those he detested were in his own party and some serve in the present Cabinet. The hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that because Donald had those personal feelings about me he would not have such meetings, or make arrangements with me. That is not the case. In 1997, both Donald and I found co-operation through the referendum campaign one of the most fruitful periods in Scottish politics.

As I said, the number of MSPs was not the most important target for the SNP. It may have been a much stronger issue for the Liberal Democrats. They can have the opportunity to speak and put forward that point of view. The matter was raised and it was discussed—on the basis first that Donald wanted to know whether there would be any dissent from the argument that a reduction in the number of Westminster MPs from Scotland was a quid pro quo of devolution. I do not think that anyone seriously argued at that stage that that should be challenged.

Secondly, Donald Dewar told me and others too—I think that I can provide evidence—that the argument for contiguous boundaries came from elsewhere in the Cabinet. I assumed that he meant the Prime Minister, although he did not say so. That argument was put forward by Donald and was certainly suggested to Jim Wallace by Henry McLeish and others at other stages. Certainly, it was said to me.

Thirdly, as the Minister rightly said, Donald said that the argument could be revisited. I doubt whether there is serious argument about that as Donald said so the following year on the record. Henry McLeish, as Minister of State, argued that, as did Lord Sewel in the House of Lords. There is no serious argument about that. Fourthly and crucially, Donald told me explicitly that he thought it inconceivable for the numbers in the Scottish Parliament to be changed over the heads of MSPs. There was no question of that.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland suggested that I may have been misled. I do not think that I was misled, but if I was, it would not be to my discredit: whatever was in the White Paper or the Bill, the matter could, and would, be revisited. I am not the only person to get that impression, or the only person to believe that the onus on reducing the number of MSPs did not come from the Scottish Office at the time. It did not come from Donald Dewar, and certainly not from Henry McLeish or Lord Sewel, but from forces elsewhere in the Cabinet outwith the Scotland Office.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland suggested that the SNP contributed nothing to the referendum campaign. I have also heard that refrain from the Minister of State. I was wondering whether there was an independent way to judge and verify who contributed what to the referendum campaign of 1997, and decided to use a search engine in the Scottish News archive that searches all the Scottish press. I inputted the words "Liddell referendum Scotland 1997", "Foulkes referendum 1997", "Salmond referendum 1997" and "Dewar referendum 1997".

There were 120 references to speeches that I made during the referendum campaign. Donald did rather better with 183 references. The Secretary of State was mentioned four times, two of which referred to the 1979 referendum and one to the Monklands, East by-election. The other referred to a Treasury leak that doubted the credibility of the financial powers allocated to the Scottish Parliament. The Minister of State had one hit, on the day after the referendum, which welcomed the result.

What were the responsibilities of my hon. Friend the Minister? What were the duties of the current Secretary of State? They certainly were not in Scotland, and in those circumstances one would presume that they would not be able to make any contribution to that debate.

The hon. Gentleman takes me to my next point, which was that the Secretary of State was in the Treasury deploying her expertise on pensions. The Minister of State was in the Department for International Development, and was in Montserrat for most of the referendum campaign sorting out the mess about the "golden elephants", and going into the lions' den, as he put it in the Sunday Mail.

I am not arguing that the Secretary of State and the Minister of State should have been hyperactive during the referendum campaign in Scotland. I am merely pointing out that the facts show that they were not involved because they were doing other jobs. Therefore, they are not familiar with what was actually going on in 1997 in Scottish politics and are in no position to judge, or to say who was doing what with whom at what meetings, because they had no knowledge of that.

I can understand why the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to defend himself and, to an extent, to revisit history. However, I invite him to move the debate forward and to address the points on which we probably agree: the retention of a more substantial number of MSPs than 105 is essential for the effective operation of the Scottish Parliament and, as he says, the views of the MSPs must be, if not of prime, of substantial importance.

I welcome that intervention.

The hon. Gentleman is right. While he was talking, I was listening, and I would recommend that to him.

The Minister confirms that he was not in the front line of Scottish politics in that period, but I willingly concede that he was in the front line in Montserrat. That was his job, and no one would doubt that for a second. Some people think that he should have stayed in that Department because he was doing such an excellent job—[Interruption.] I thought that that was a compliment.

Order. I should register my concern at this point. Adjournment debates are essentially for Back Benchers and for those who want to engage them. It is customary in such 90-minute debates to commence the winding-up speeches 30 minutes before termination, which is in 11 minutes' time. Several hon. Members have indicated in writing that they want to speak. Apart from the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson), who opened the debate, hon. Members have so far spoken for only six minutes each. I counsel hon. Members to make their remarks concise, clear, to the point and not self-indulgent.

I accept your advice, Mr. Cook, but I was under considerable personal attack and felt entitled to respond. I am sure that you accept that.

To be concise and to the point on the substance of the issue, there are two arguments for retaining 129 MSPs. First, the Committee system is built into the Scotland Act, and there is no discretion over it. Secondly, reducing the numbers would put at risk the proportionality between the parties. The opposition of some hon. Members to proportional representation is long-standing; indeed, the Minister led the campaign against it in a former existence. Most of us think, however, that it is right to have a proportional Parliament in Scotland.

The fundamental question is not whether there should be 129 MSPs, or even whether the Scottish Parliament should be proportional, but about where it is right to decide on its construction. It was extraordinary, in our debates on the matter, that even the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) did not support the idea that Westminster should interfere with the numbers. He saw that as a source of tension. Even the arch anti-devolutionist sees that such matters should he decided from the Scottish Parliament perspective. MSPs are best able to judge the issue. The White Paper that we debated and voted on in the 1997 referendum also made the point about consultation with the Scottish Parliament.

Consultation with the Parliament that operates the system is what should matter. Members of this Parliament may or may not have a vested interest, and it is nonsense to believe that they should dictate the numbers to the Scottish Parliament. There should be consultation, and the view of the Scottish Parliament is what should matter. I would welcome it if the Minister could find it within himself to say that it would be inconceivable to change the numbers in the Scottish Parliament over the heads of parliamentarians in Edinburgh.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing this debate. However, he will not be surprised to hear that I shall speak against the principle that he supported. He knows that I disagree with him on how we should tackle the issue of numbers in the Scottish Parliament.

We cannot discuss the Scotland Act 1998 without considering what went before. The great consensus on Scottish constitutional convention involved all of civic society in Scotland—the trade unions, the churches and the voluntary sector. Indeed, only the Tories and the Scottish National party did not join it. That consensus led to the writing of the Act, and there was little deviation from the consensus as the measure went through Parliament and on to the statute book. I am happy to say that, because I and other Members present were involved from the beginning. That is the principal reason why it is too soon to consider making fundamental changes to the voting system or the numbers. We must give the Scottish Parliament an opportunity to settle in.

I worry about the media reaction in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament. The Parliament is doing a great job, delivering for the people and operating to their advantage. It is appalling that the same journalists and media people who told us, in the run-up to the 1997 election, that we would never deliver the Parliament have turned against it in the past few years. The Scottish National party told us that and has turned against the Parliament as well, which is appalling. It did not give the Parliament any time to settle down and criticised the calibre of the Members. We must remember that we come to this place as Back Benchers and learn our trade, but MSPs all went as brand-new Members into a goldfish bowl. They had no opportunity to learn their trade on the Back Benches, and their job has been difficult under such scrutiny. I think that the Parliament is settling down and delivering. One has only to consider how well its Committee system operates to understand why we need to keep the number of Members at 129.

In 28 months, 24 Acts have gone through the Scottish Parliament. We would have been lucky to have had two or three Scottish Bills in Westminster during that time.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

No. I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way.

In the next year, another 18 Bills are expected to go through the Scottish Parliament. These measures will affect the health, education and lives in general of the Scottish people. The Parliament was set up to have such an impact, so I disagree with hon. Members who say that the most important issue is coterminous boundaries. No one cares about that issue. Despite the fact that we think we are all important, the average person does not know his Member of Parliament or Member of the Scottish Parliament until he needs them, when he can quickly find them.

I hope that I have shown that there is such broad disagreement that, until we have consensus, we should leave things as they are.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing this overdue debate. It comes at a time when we require answers to many questions, so I welcome the opportunity to contribute to it.

My hon. Friend asked whether we should open up the Scotland Act 1998, which is an important question. If we do, on what time scale will that be? I understand that the commissioners' report is on its way, if my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not already received it. After she has considered it, we should know her proposals on the new Scottish boundaries, so far as Westminster is concerned. We have not heard anything about that from my hon. Friend the Minister, so I would welcome some suggestion of the time scales that are involved.

The numbers have been mentioned. From reading the 1998 Act, I understood that only one seat in Scotland—Orkney and Shetland—was protected, and that all others would be considered on the basis of population alone. I have discussed the subject with the commissioners' secretary, who has the same understanding, so the proposals have been made to the Secretary of State on that basis. That is the English average, which is about 73,000. Given that the 1998 Act suggests that the number of constituencies would then be reduced to 58, and given my understanding that contiguous boundaries are at the centre of the calculation, there would be 58 constituency Members if that figure was followed absolutely.

My proposal for some months has been that, if the 1998 Act were opened up, as is possible, the new constituencies should have two Members of the Scottish Parliament, with an added list of 13 that applies centrally to take the numbers up to the 129 Members that there are now. If that system were in place, all the problems that Opposition Members spoke about would be taken care of and the 129 Members would be retained. It would mean that all the pretty new offices in the Holyrood building would be occupied, which would deal with the remarks of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond).

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing the debate. We shall, to judge from the number of contributions and the strength of feeling that has been evident throughout the debate, return to the subject many times. It is good to have the present opportunity.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman also on beginning his remarks by highlighting the success of the Scottish Parliament. It has undoubtedly been a great success, although not an unqualified one. There is no such thing as a perfect Act of Parliament, and there were bound to be some problems. However, broadly speaking, the Scottish Parliament has delivered on the objectives that were set for it. They were, first, to achieve the Scottish people's long-held ambition for self-determination in home affairs; secondly, to provide an open, accountable, democratic system involving consultation; and, through those things, to start the process that probably everyone in this Chamber would want to happen—reconnecting the voters with those for whom they vote and giving more validity to the political process.

The Scottish Parliament has, in the main, fulfilled those aims. The hon. Gentleman quoted a letter from the Law Society. I was clearly up too late last night, because I received that letter and was going to bring it with me, but managed to leave it in my office. However. I remember the sentence that I underlined, about the Scottish Parliament being an undoubted success. I did manage to remember to bring a copy of the "Scottish Parliament Annual Report 2001", which I took from the internet. The Presiding Officer, in his foreword, states:

"We have now reached an important landmark—halfway through the first session of Scotland's first Parliament for over 300 years. The Parliament has found a personality and I believe it is now central in Scots life."

I think that we would all concur. George Reid MSP, the convener of the convener's liaison group, has stated in another foreword:

"During their second year, the committees have been widely acknowledged as a success story."

The Committee system has been one of the most successful elements of the Parliament. I have been involved in helping constituents in consultation on two Bills and undoubtedly the pre-legislative scrutiny, followed by the detailed Committee work, has been a great success. We should bear in mind the hours and work that that has entailed.

In participating in this debate, I have an incredible sense of déjà vu. That is because I spent much of a very happy Session, in 1997–98, on the Front Bench in another place dealing with what became the Scotland Act 1998. However, having listened to the debate my sense of déjà vu has given way slightly to an understanding of what it must have been like to make "Walking With Dinosaurs".

I should like to contribute a little of my personal knowledge, concerning two conversations that I had with the much-missed Donald Dewar. During the consideration of my amendment to decouple the Boundary Commission for Scotland, so that the Scottish Parliament would effectively be given an independent assessment by the commission and Parliament would have the power over numbers, Lord Sewel advanced much the same argument that we have heard today about, among other things, the need for coterminosity.

The proposal came before the House where, not surprisingly, it was rejected. When it returned to the other place, I was unable to persuade my former allies in the Conservative party to join me in the Lobby, so the amendment fell. When the Bill was enacted, I had a conversation with Donald Dewar, who left me with the clear impression—I put it no stronger than this—that he felt that the case that I had argued was right. He said that he had been unable to persuade his Cabinet colleagues, and that as a dutiful Cabinet Minister he was merely pushing through the agreed line.

I turn to what I feel is the key point. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) began by saying what he thought the key point was, and I thought that he would steal my thunder, but he did not. In my judgment, the key point is that the Parliament should be effective, deliberative, consultative and work for the people of Scotland.

My second point is allied with that. The Parliament should be demonstrably democratic and should reflect the wide diversity of culture in Scotland. It should not be based on any one part of that culture. There are 129 MSPs and the structure of the Parliament deliberately gives a bias in the list to the more rural areas, just as in the United States Senate, as opposed to the House of Representatives. The intention is to seek to provide a geographic as well as a population balance. The construction of the Scottish Parliament broadly delivers that balance, and we would be ill advised to interfere with that settlement.

I am not hooked on any particular number of MSPs, but the number of 129—give or take a few—has worked remarkably well. I hope that hon. Members have time to consider the report, as the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) has clearly done, from which they will see how many hours are spent in debate on the issues facing Scotland. After the past couple of days in this House, we cannot hold up our heads and claim to have debated national issues at any great length. The new system enables Scotland fully to ventilate the points that matter to Scots, in a Committee system that may introduce Bills, as it has done for the first time in the past year. It takes time, work and people to man the Committees and to run the Government—if there are any people left after that, it is nice to have a few of them in opposition. That effort requires a certain number of people.

The key point is whether the Scotland Act should be opened up at all. I accept the first point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland, which is a stark point in the debate. Should we accept the Act as it is without opening Pandora's box, or should we open it? We should reflect on that point, but when we have done so, I believe that we should open the Act in this case. My hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) made the valid point that coterminosity will be lost for four years while the two Parliaments are out of sync. I remember the noble Lord Sewel, in another place, telling me that the basic building block of all constituencies was local council wards. To my great surprise, I find that I represent a constituency whose boundary drives straight through the middle of a council ward, which I share with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy).

We should not consider what we, personally, would like. We must return to the fact that all those involved in the constitutional convention have delivered, historically, for Scotland. The constitutional process is iterative, and evolutionary. not revolutionary. I hope that the House of Commons will continue with that process, not for personal gain, but with the good of the people of Scotland in mind.

It is a great pleasure to be present. This is the first debate on Scottish business in which I have been able to take part. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) on securing the debate, to which I come with a fresh eye. Having considered its title, I thought that it would be an opportunity to discuss things other than just the number of MSPs. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) did not mention that the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament has recently given evidence to the Parliament on the changes that he believes are required under the Scotland Act 1998. Some of them sounded very sensible. For example, all of us would find it difficult in this place, except under programme motions, to ensure that our contributions lasted only four minutes. Sir David Steel—I am sure that we all join in wishing him good health and a speedy recovery—made that point very ably. He also pointed out that that his health problem means that the Parliament will have problems, because it cannot appoint another Deputy Presiding Officer.

The other point—I am sorry to give the Liberal Democrats such credibility but the points were sensible and we should be debating them—was that the Parliament is unable to change the Presiding Officer's title. I do not wish to become involved in the question of whether the title is right or wrong, but the issue is indicative of one of the problems of the Scotland Act, which is that the Scottish Parliament remains in the control of Westminster or the Government, even on such minor matters such as how long a Member of the Scottish Parliament can speak. I thought that the debate would be a good opportunity to open up such issues.

That is not an issue. The length of speeches is set by the Scottish Parliament and is entirely an internal matter for it. The matter was not part of the Scotland Act.

I am happy to stand corrected, but I did not understand that to be the case from the Presiding Officer's report. I took the word of a Liberal Democrat—I must be mad.

Hon. Members have cited the Law Society of Scotland, and I met its representatives on Friday. They said that in general the society was very happy—and it has written to everybody to say so—with the operation of the Scottish Parliament. However, they were concerned that the Sewel convention did not allow sufficient time for the Parliament to discuss Westminster legislation, and that that needed to be examined.

Interestingly, we also discussed how the society finds itself obliged to pick up on many Westminster Bills drafted in Whitehall, in which, although they mention the obvious Scottish implications, the Scottish dimension has not been properly thought through. If we were to open up the Scotland Act, that is another area that would be part of the ensuing discussions. I can see a solution in the way in which any Secretary of State has to guarantee the compliance of legislation with the European convention on human rights. I suggest to the Minister that we could use the same mechanism. He may care to comment on that.

We have spent the bulk of the debate talking about the number of MSPs. Although the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross mentioned Lord Sewel, it should not be forgotten that Lord MacKay of Ardbrecknish, who is sadly missed, proposed an amendment that would have got the Government out of the problem by allowing the Scottish Parliament to make its own decision about the number of MSPs. However, the control-freakery that this Labour Government display time and time again applied to that issue as well.

In order to get themselves out of a mess of their own making, the Secretary of State for Scotland, in answer to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland, announced the consultation exercise, to which we all look forward. I was fascinated to learn that the document is due out in the next few weeks. By my calculation, rough as it is, the Christmas recess starts in three weeks and a day or two. That leads me ask whether the Minister expects the consultation document to be published before we rise for Christmas, or whether—if such a thing could be thought—it will be published between Christmas and the new year and quietly lost. I am sure that Labour Back Benchers will ensure that it is not lost, but it could be lost to the attention of the Scottish public. I hope that the Minister will say what is meant by a few weeks.

I seek an assurance also about the contradiction that emerged today between the original press release that I received from the Scotland Office, which states that the consultation period will be three months, and what was said by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland, who is under the impression that the Secretary of State said that it is open-ended. An open-ended consultation that lasts for three months is a slight contradiction in terms. If the Scottish Parliament can choose the number of MSPs to ensure its effective working—that seems a most sensible way to proceed, because the Scottish Parliament should be answerable to the Scottish people—that should lead automatically to the opening up of the Scotland Act, unless there is some sleight of hand in amending previous legislation.

Given what the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) said about coterminosity and given the times at which the Boundary Commission reports, I would expect the argument to fall because coterminosity will happen every 10 years. Giving the Scottish Parliament control of the number of MSPs seems the most sensible way forward, and I would entirely support the amendment that Lord MacKay put to the House of Lords.

For the record, let me say that Lord MacKay did not put the amendment to the House of Lords. I did—it was my amendment that was carried; and Lord MacKay came into the Lobby with me.

I am happy to accept that, but Lord MacKay was advancing that argument on behalf of the Conservative party in the House of Lords.

We need to ensure that the consultation document is not slipped out quietly. We should ensure also that, unlike the Scotland Office press release, consulting the general public is not at the end of the list of requirements but at the beginning. We should consult not Scottish politicians but the Scottish people on the number of MSPs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) has chosen an interesting and somewhat provocative topic, and we have had a useful debate.

As my hon. Friend said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, at Scottish questions on 6 November, referred to the forthcoming consultation on the size of the Scottish Parliament. To avoid raising over- optimistic expectations, I should say that my remarks cannot go beyond the terms of that answer; however, I shall elaborate on it.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear the Government's position. We are honouring commitments given during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. as described by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) and others, to keep under review the linkage between the Westminster and the Holyrood parliamentary boundaries that was established under the Act. Ministers advanced important arguments on the rationale for that linkage. However, there was also full acknowledgement that the matter could be re-examined once we had experience of the operation of the Scottish Parliament. We have now had two years of that experience.

I say to hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), in response to his last provocative—but I am sure well intentioned—question, that in line with our earlier commitments, we seek genuinely to ascertain everyone's views. I emphasise to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), who may be interested in the size of the Scottish Parliament, that the Government will not propose the retention or rejection of the current statutory provisions. We will set out, objectively and factually, the legislative, practical and other operational factors surrounding the general issues of the size of the Scottish Parliament and the linkage with Westminster constituency boundaries. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna), whom I like and respect, that the question of coterminosity exercises individual hon. Members. I do not accept that good, active constituency Members are unknown. That is not my experience.

The issue is one of coterminosity. All that we have heard this morning highlights the fact that the important people are the public in Scotland. Does my hon. Friend share my experience that when people have a problem, irrespective of what it is, they seek as much support as possible? If we do not have coterminous boundaries, people may almost chase to the ends of the earth to try to resolve their problems.

I understand that point. It is one that can be made during the consultation. Several MPs and MSPs share offices, and that might be difficult if there were not coterminosity. The consultation will be open-ended. I say to the hon. Member for Beckenham that it is open-ended in terms not of purpose, but time. Her contribution was rather muddled; she has a little to learn about Scottish politics. We will elicit comment from a wide range of sources. The working of the Scottish Parliament, including the issue of its overall composition, will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) said, touch on the lives of every individual in Scotland. I say to the hon. Member for Banff and. Buchan that it is not a matter solely for constitutional experts or parliamentarians, at Holyrood or Westminster.

I hope that every hon. Member who has spoken today—and those who have not—will submit their views in the consultation. I expect my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make a statement before the recess on its publication. There is no intention to hide the consultation. Quite the reverse; we want it to be as wide as possible.

The Minister has accepted that there was a commitment to revisit the issue if necessary. I hope that now that he has had independent verification, he will accept what the late Donald Dewar said to several people: that the arguments for linkage came from not the Scottish Office, him or Henry McLeish, but other forces in the Cabinet. What is the Minister's opinion, not of who should respond to the consultation, but of whether it is conceivable that the numbers in the Scottish Parliament could be changed over the heads of the parliamentarians in that Parliament? Is that right or conceivable?

On the hon. Gentleman's first point, the arguments advanced by Lord Sewel in the House of Lords and by the then Secretary of State Donald Dewar in the House, and indeed by Henry McLeish, were clearly made on behalf of the Government.

I shall respond to the hon. Gentleman's second point later. I want first to reiterate two clear conditions that were established by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in her announcement on 6 November. First, we are not consulting on a case for review of the position affecting Members representing Scottish constituencies at Westminster. The Boundary Commission for Scotland is in the throes of its independent—I stress its independence—examination of that matter. I cannot comment on that in detail as the report has not yet been submitted. The first proposals will be published early in the new year, and after consultation and, if necessary, inquiries, the final report will at some time, which we cannot yet determine, be submitted to the Secretary of State.

As my right hon. Friend established, we have no plans to change the existing electoral system for the Holyrood Parliament, by which I mean the general configuration of constituency and regional list arrangements established by the Act.

Several hon. Members made less than complimentary—

Will the Minister give way?

No.

Several hon. Members made less than complimentary references to the workings of the Scottish Parliament. My right hon. Friend and I do not share that view. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth; I have visited the Parliament and seen it in action on several occasions and met every Minister of the Scottish Executive either formally or informally. The Member of the Scottish Parliament for Midlothian, Rhona Brankin, gave evidence to a UK Select Committee and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe gave evidence to the Scottish Select Committee. There is effective co-operation and the Parliament is working extremely well. As my hon. Friend said, it has now passed 27 Acts dealing with matters of great importance to Scotland. It is notable that they become law after scrutiny in only one Chamber, which is possible partly because of the system of pre-legislative scrutiny and the strong Committee structure, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said.

Will the Minister give way?

I do not have much time to deal with all the matters raised during the debate, especially those raised by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid). We both take a great interest in the Campbeltown to Ballycastle ferry and are keen to see it reintroduced. I put proposals for the reinstatement of that ferry service at a meeting yesterday; they will go to the Scottish and the Northern Ireland Cabinets for consideration and, I hope, approval. We agreed to reconvene yesterday's meeting in two or three weeks' time to take a final decision. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased with that progress.

Unfortunately, I do not have time today to go into detail about the great co-operation between the two Parliaments and the two Executives. As well as lauding the work of the Scottish Parliament, I reiterate strongly, through the House to the media, that there is still an important role for Scottish Members in the United Kingdom Parliament in areas such as the pre-Budget report, unemployment, social security, foreign affairs, defence and international development, to which the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan so kindly referred earlier. Those are important matters.

I want to refer to the comments made by the hon. Gentleman, which I shall try to do with my usual courtesy. As my right hon. Friend said, the hon. Gentleman seems to be at pains to reinvent history in a way that defies belief. He claimed that during the exchanges, which no one doubts took place, there was an absolute, unqualified assurance that the linkage would be set aside. I am absolutely sure, knowing Donald, that that is not what he said. What he said, and what he pledged at the time in public, was that in the light of the experience of the Scottish Parliament we would revisit the matter. and that is what the consultation is all about.

The hon. Gentleman has allowed the passage of time to play tricks with his memory; he told us that when he was listening to Scottish questions he was ill. I do not know what made him ill, but I can guess.

Will the Minister give way?

No, we do not have time. I challenged the hon. Gentleman on "Newsnight Scotland" to give one piece of evidence to substantiate his claim, but none was forthcoming, so I repeat that challenge. He said that I was not active in the referendum campaign because I was in Montserrat. He was not active in the consensus that built up the proposal for the Scottish Parliament; he derided the Scottish constitutional convention, which devised the Scottish Parliament and built a coalition of Scottish civic society to support it. It kept the campaign for devolution alive during the dark Tory days, those 18 awful years of Conservative Government. Where was he? He was carping from the outside, attacking and undermining all the work that was being done. He and his party may have been in the referendum campaign, but they saw the way that the bandwagon was going and, like Johnny-come-lately, they jumped on to it.

This has been a useful debate; it has allowed an airing of views and an exchange of comment on an important democratic and constitutional issue. We are committed to examining the case for retention or rejection of the current legislative provisions in the Scotland Act affecting the size of the Scottish Parliament. We shall approach that consultation with an open mind. We shall not introduce proposals, but we want to have the views of every person in and, indeed, outwith Scotland, because devolution is experienced and appreciated beyond these shores.

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. Some feared that the creation of the Scottish Parliament would be the first step on a slippery slope to separation, but I still believe that in stemming the growth of narrow nationalism—

Order. We come now to the next topic for our consideration. I ask those right hon. and hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber to do so quietly.

I thank you, Mr. Cook, for giving me the opportunity to introduce the debate. I also thank the Minister for kindly giving up the time to respond to it only two weeks after another debate on the subject.

In the United Kingdom, we are proud upholders of the principle of democracy. Not to elect our representatives to this place would be an alien concept to us. We elect those representatives and, ultimately, the Prime Minister and the Government in the most free, fair and open way possible. Nor would anyone in the UK see as even vaguely acceptable any attempt to control the press through coercion or to deal with Opposition parties by deadly force.

If the people of this country are unhappy with the Government, they can go to the ballot box, which is presented every five years by statutory guarantee. It can and will be used without the election's result being managed by the incumbents. However, as we constantly see on our televisions and in the newspapers, that is not the case in Zimbabwe. That is why I requested the debate. We simply cannot stand back and allow such a brutal regime to flout democracy so horrifically.

We all know about the racially motivated persecution of the white farmers, with measures in place to nationalise up to 90 per cent. of all white-owned land. There is also a massive food shortage as a result of the fact that many farmers have already been evicted from their businesses and land. Indeed, the very people whom we wish to help more than most—the black people of Zimbabwe—suffer most from that horrific way of attacking established farms and communities, which employ many local people.

It is worth considering how many people are affected by the policy. In April this year, it was reported that there had been a 20 per cent. reduction in agricultural production as a whole, with a 40 per cent. reduction in maize crops, which form the main part of the nation's diet. It is estimated that if the land grabs continue, 250,000 commercial farm workers will lose their jobs, displacing 1.2 million dependants.

Land grabs have continued, but the problems go much deeper, challenging every remnant of freedom left in the country. The international community simply cannot ignore those problems on the grounds of not wishing to interfere in another country's affairs or to shape the world in our image. It must act on the grounds of stopping a humanitarian crisis and preventing the creation of yet another unstable and dangerous rogue state.

In the summer of 2001, the International Crisis Group published a detailed report that found Zimbabwe to be in severe political and economic crisis. It characterised that through the state-directed violence aimed at crushing any political opposition and through the growing potential for internal conflict and regional instability. The group concluded that the international community needed to make a serious effort to persuade President Mugabe to conduct the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for April 2002, freely and fairly, on a level playing field, to mark the return of Zimbabwe to the rule of law.

Fears that the elections will be conducted less than fairly are constantly reported by the press and articulated by the opposition parties. For example, a recent report in the state-run Herald newspaper stated that the Zimbabwe Government—on the recommendation of the justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, who wishes to amend Zimbabwe's electoral Act to allow only civil servants to monitor the polls—planned to ban foreign and independent local monitors from observing the 2002 presidential elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change unsurprisingly condemned that move by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front, which it believes

"shows clearly that they want to cheat."

What other purpose could any Government taking such measures intend? Surely other hon. Members will agree that a regime too frightened to allow its actions to be observed by independent witnesses is up to no good.

Past experience strengthens that argument. Last year, non-governmental organisations trained 24,000 monitors to observe the parliamentary elections, but at least 34 people were killed before the polls were opened among widespread violence and intimidation. This time round, the presidential election will be dirtier and nastier than we could imagine.

The South African Mail & Guardian reported on 13 November that Zimbabwe's central intelligence organisation has been given a 142.6 per cent. increase in its budget. Human rights groups have identified that organisation as working closely with ZANU-PF in a campaign of terror against its opponents.

A recent MDC press release reports that the Government have already started intimidation tactics, including the setting up of a hit squad to assassinate David Coltart, the MDC Member of Parliament for Bulawayo, South. It mentions plans to plant arms in MDC member's homes to "discover" them, and the fear that ZANU-PF supporters and war veterans intend to visit Victoria Falls, ahead of the party congress, to

"beat up, abduct and harass"

MDC members.

On 14 November, The Star drew attention to links between Mugabe and the Libyan President, Colonel Gaddafi, with a reported $900,000 donation to Mugabe's re-election bid. That presumably relates to the statement in Zimbabwe's The Financial Gazette that Libyan entrepreneurs are to receive a dozen large farms—the equivalent of 10,000 hectares—from Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, the Zimbabwean Government have suspended the teaching of human rights and democracy in secondary schools. They have ordered—thankfully unsuccessfully—the country's only independent newspaper to close and they are contemplating the unthinkable action of assassinating the opposition leader. Recent opinion polls show the MDC leader nearly six points ahead of Mugabe. Unchecked, Mugabe is likely to do all that he can to secure another six years in power. On 20 November, Business Day (South Africa) reported that Mugabe could ban the opposition or jail its leadership if he feels vulnerable in the run-up to the election. Take, for example, the somewhat bizarre attempts by other countries, organisations and newspapers to link support for the MDC to the support of terrorism. I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on condemning the Zimbabwean Government as reported in The Independent on Sunday. According to the report, that Government accused six Harare-based journalists who criticised Mugabe of assisting terrorism. Mugabe's definition of terrorists is his opponents. That is a shameless attempt to link the atrocities of 11 September and the international war against terrorism with Mugabe's domestic situation. Will the Minister assure me that the Foreign Secretary's response is not simply a reaction to domestic media pressure?

According to a United Nations report, Mugabe believes that those so-called terrorists are sponsored by the British Government. He cites the death of his loyal supporter Cain Nkala as

"the brutal outcome of a much wider terrorist plot by internal, and external terrorist forces with plenty of funding from commercial farmers and organisations like the Westminster Foundation, which we have established without doubt gets its dirty money for dirty tricks, from the British Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and also of course from the Government of Tony Blair."

That is quite a claim. I dare say that he could not substantiate it. It serves only to highlight a desperate man's attempts to shape the minds of people through propaganda.

I have worked closely on projects funded by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and I can assure hon. Members that it does a great deal of wonderful work to spread the message and values of democracy—values that we all hold dear—to those states such as Zimbabwe that neglect the views of their own people.

I was angered by the attacks on the Movement for Democratic Change, which I welcomed last year into the International Young Democrat Union, of which I am chairman. I know that the MDC is a strident believer in democracy and the rule of law. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of meeting four farmers who represent communities in Zimbabwe and they later spoke at a dinner in the other place.

It is clear what the international community must do. As long as Mugabe maintains the pretence of supporting democracy, we must ensure that elections are free and fair. That will not be an easy task and no one must pretend otherwise. A careful line must be navigated. Mugabe, scared of election observers revealing the truth about his methods, will not even allow aid agencies into the country to relieve the starvation of the estimated 1 million Zimbabweans in desperate need of food, for fear of election observers being smuggled in with them. However, the right lead, and enough pressure through threats of sanctions and loss of international recognition, could force the issue and allow election observers, if they report the elections to be anything other than free and fair, to give the rest of the civilised world a mandate to take action against Mugabe.

I could go on listing more reported atrocities, unacceptable acts and examples of actions that those of us who live in freedom find so abhorrent. I will refer only to one example, which was handed to me yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), who is the Opposition spokeswoman on overseas development. This is an e-mail that was received recently from a lady called Tertia Geldenhuys, from Two Treehill Farm, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe. She wrote:

"On Tuesday. the 7th August, black men beat up dozens of white women and elderly white men in Chinhoyi. It was as if a racial war had started in Chinhoyi town. Each time they asked the same question: 'Are you a farmer's wife?' Without waiting for an answer, they tripped and beat up the women. White people were warned on the Community Radio Network not to come to or proceed through Chinhoyi"

About 10 war veterans shouted at the lady's husband to come out. She continues:

"He went out to the gate, which was locked, and I heard them shouting: 'We want you out. We want you out here! We want to see your blood flow! Come out! Come out here!' I started praying because I knew it was only God who could save us now."

This morning's debate has not been to rehearse the problems that we already know exist, but to prompt recognition of the task ahead. We must not allow an election to take place if the result is already decided and people will be murdered or put in jail to reach it. We must not allow the continued starvation of the people of Zimbabwe because its Government refuse to allow white farmers to own and work their land. They are the families of people whom we as a country encouraged to settle in Rhodesia at the end of the first world war, and whose industry raised the average standard of living for the people of Rhodesia way above the African average.

To retain anything of an ethical foreign policy, the Government must not ignore Zimbabwe. They should take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that the Zimbabwean presidential elections are impartially observed. They should make it clear that any move by Mugabe to control forcibly the result will be met with the alienation of the international community. If we fail, we will have let down millions of people—the starving, silenced and oppressed—and we will have ignored the potential creation of a threatening rogue state.

The recent history of Zimbabwe has been one of violence, intimidation and human rights abuses, to say nothing of embezzlement. To my way of thinking, that all adds up to a terrorism perpetrated by Mugabe on his own people. What a far cry that is from those days of Lancaster house, now seemingly far off, when Zimbabwe faced a new dawn. I apologise for not attending last week's debate, at which I know that the Minister spoke.

Many hon. Members have received letters from concerned relations in our constituencies, because the links of people in this country with that part of the world are deep. We have an obligation to those who are still trying to live a life there. I was contacted on behalf of my constituent, Dennis Wade of Lympstone. Like many farmers, he was recruited, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell) said, to start farming in post-war Rhodesia to help build up the country. He developed two farms, hacked out of rocky scrub, one in the high veldt and the other in the low. By the end he had a labour force of 90 people living on his farms and a further 450 who were casually employed. He knew that they needed an education, perhaps the best gift that anyone can be given, particularly in those circumstances. Like so many others, he built a school. He was not in any way unique.

Another constituent, Mr. Peter Bibby of Axminster, has written about his cousin who is also a farmer. He was arrested on his farm on 15 September. He was accused of murder because two different groups of war veterans who had occupied his farm fought one another and two men were killed. As the landowner, he was held responsible. This is a 70-year-old man, who also happens to be a British citizen. He was carted off to the police cells. His head was shaved and he was not charged for three days and four nights. He was kept in a high security cell along with murderers and armed robbers for nine nights. This is human rights Mugabe style.

What comfort can the Minister give these people? What comfort can he give another constituent, Mrs Wellington of Chardstock, who is concerned for her first cousin and her husband, an Anglican priest? She is concerned for them as they are concerned for themselves at having to renounce their British citizenship and produce a citizenship or renunciation as required by Mugabe. A desire to retain their British citizenship is more than just sentimentality. For them and many others it is like being asked to renounce an insurance policy. They have my sympathy and I hope that of the Minister.

Sympathy and empathy are not enough. Mugabe is terrorising his own people. He is no better than those terrorists whom we have been discussing in the House since 11 September. Indeed, in many ways he is worse. How many deaths is he responsible for in the Matabeleland massacres between 1982 and 1987? Some 20,000 were killed by the notorious fifth brigade, to say nothing of 3,000 extrajudicial executions, hundreds of disappearances, more than 7,000 cases of beatings and torture and more than 10,000 arbitrary detentions.

Many people cannot understand why this Government talk tough on terrorism but seem too afraid to mete out the justice that Mugabe deserves. That view is shared by his people, who wonder whether they are to have any chance of surviving in that once great country, which was the jewel in the crown of that troubled continent. It is not just the white farmers who are suffering. They are part of the problem but by no means the whole problem. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office website states that Zimbabwe's economy is now in crisis. Inflation is around 80 per cent. Interest rates are unsustainably low. Unemployment is around 60 per cent. and rising. A chronic shortage of foreign exchange has led to fuel shortages and power cuts.

What is Mugabe's response? It is to increase funding for his central intelligence organisation by a massive 143 per cent. in the run-up to the presidential elections. It is not surprising that he wants to sit in power, supported by the likes of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi who, some sources suggest, has given Mugabe $900,000 for his re-election bid. That might explain why there is a marked increase in the number of Libyans in Zimbabwe, many of whom have been given land outside Harare.

The Government should stop handling Mugabe with kid gloves. They behave as if in some way the British are guilty. That is part of the Labour party's continuing embarrassment about Britain's colonial past—at least it seems as such to many of us. However, Britain has a role to play, not least on account of the massive investment that we have put into Zimbabwe: £500 million in bilateral aid, according to the Minister, and £40 million for land reform. How much of that money has been used to help the ordinary working man and woman in that country and how much has gone to Mugabe and his cronies? Has some been spent, perhaps, on Mugabe's new mansion, said to cost $6 million? I salute his ability to make his annual salary of £15,454 stretch so far; either that, or he has a very benevolent mortgage arrangement. I have seen Mugabe and his wife in London on shopping trips. They were based at Claridge's, of course. I am sad and angry when I see what he gets away with.

Mr. Louis Michel, the Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs, recently led a European Union delegation to Harare. The Times of 24 November reports that he received a brutal reaction from Mugabe when concerns were expressed about the recent surge of violence and repression as the country moves towards the coming elections and that EU senior officials left Harare on 23 November, shocked after a confrontation with President Mugabe. They were dealing with a man who is an embezzler and a terrorist.

Mugabe has forfeited the right to be treated as an honest and democratic politician. The Government and the Commonwealth must treat him like the terrorist and criminal that he is and must ensure, as far as we are able, that the forthcoming elections are fair. If nothing else, we owe that to the people of that benighted country.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell) on initiating the debate. I hope that the Minister will admit that it comes at an appropriate time and will indicate in his reply the action that the Government intend to take against the excesses of Mr. Mugabe and his Administration.

I have visited Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and Zimbabwe several times during the 30 years that I have been a Member of the House. It is a country that I love—I do not utter the word easily or lavishly—and its people, the Matabele and the Mashona, are wonderful friendly people. Until recent times, the country has been the larder of central southern Africa and has been a net exporter of food and products to all parts of that area. Yet today, for the first time in its history, Zimbabwe is importing food. I wish to concentrate my remarks on that issue.

As the Minister knows, the World Food Programme has warned that more than 500,000 Zimbabweans face severe food shortages. That is an underestimate, if the information that I get from my many friends in Zimbabwe is accurate. One of the most chilling things is that black farmers themselves have said that, if they do not plant now, they will starve. Arable land in that wonderful, productive country is being destroyed. Wild animals, which are one of the reasons why people want to go there as tourists, are being shot. The beef herd is renowned, but many domestic animals are starving.

The Agriculture Minister said in a statement—one of many from his mouth—that all farmland not so far listed for seizure would be governed by regulations on maximum hectares. Owners would be required to subdivide their land if it exceeded the specified limit of 500 acres for farmers and 4,000 acres for ranchers. That decision was not made on the basis that the farms would become more efficient or that more food and cattle would be produced to feed the people of Zimbabwe. At least 3,000 industries that depend directly on agriculture will collapse if something is not done, and done soon—7.2 billion Zimbabwe dollars-worth of revenue a month will be lost to Zimbabwe. Thousands of other companies are threatened—reports in The Financial Gazette refer not just to commercial organisations but to banks, insurance companies and, of course, the more typical clothing manufacturing companies of Zimbabwe.

The exchange rate is approximately 73 Zimbabwe dollars to the pound, but the black market exchange rate is 400-plus Zimbabwe dollars to the pound. There is a huge black market in Zimbabwe dollars because of what the Zimbabwe Government are doing. They are desperate to clamp down on dissenting voices and to prevent such information from getting out. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) highlighted some personal cases and I congratulate him on his contribution to the debate.

This week, the Zimbabwe Government announced a public order and security Bill, which will ban public gatherings and make it an offence punishable by life imprisonment or death to publish or communicate

"statements prejudicial to the state … that incite violence, that affect the defence and economic interest … undermine the authority of the President by making public statements or publishing statements that provoke hostility."

Some hon. Members are worried about the legislation that is going through this Parliament, but it is nothing like the dreadful measure that Mr. Mugabe wants to enact. The Justice Minister, Chinamasa, said on television that it was being done to combat criminal and terrorist activities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romford mentioned the mock terrorist activities that the Zimbabwe Government are trying to use to undermine the opposition party in Zimbabwe. The Government went on to name newspapers that they say are distorting the facts and assisting terrorists. They named The Times of London, The Independent of the UK, The Star of South Africa and the Zimbabwe Independent.

President Mugabe's Government have announced that they will not allow aid agencies to distribute emergency food supplies to Zimbabweans affected by famine. The ban will wreck a relief operation that was being mobilised, as many of us know, by the United Nations, several international aid agencies and charities including Oxfam.

Western diplomats have said that nearly 1 million people are now in dire need of food according to a survey last month by the World Food Programme. Food stocks in Zimbabwe are expected to start running out in December of this year, that is, next month. Even the Government say that at least four times as many people will be affected as the famine worsens. Yet Jonathan Moyo, the Information Minister, said that charities would use food relief to campaign for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Is that not absolute nonsense? Do they care for their own people? That is what I have to ask.

According to The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), which is state controlled, the Information Minister said that aid agencies were planning to smuggle election monitors into Zimbabwe using the guise of food aid to continue with their plans to destabilise the present Zimbabwe Government ahead of next year's presidential elections. Suggestions by those groups that food should be distributed through non-governmental organisations were totally unacceptable, the same Information Minister said. They say that the Government alone will distribute food.

Surely the biggest concern among international donors is the strategy of ZANU-PF, the ruling party, of issuing emergency relief only to their own party supporters and cutting off areas of the country that are in famine, but have a record of support for opposition parties. Is that the way that a responsible Government operate? I do not think so.

Diplomatic sources confirm that international donors have decided to exclude the Government from the distribution of their food supplies. A source said,

"no one must be allowed to go without food because they support this or that party".

Is it not an absolute tragedy that a Government who came into power just over 20 years ago with such good will and started so well, because reconciliation was part of their policy and programme, should have deteriorated so that the people of their country are suffering desperately badly?

Zimbabwe has asked the United Nations for millions of pounds in food aid after President Mugabe's campaign of harassment against white farmers, which has halved food production in that country, as we know. Victor Angelo, the United Nations development fund's Zimbabwe representative, confirmed that there has been a formal request from the Zimbabwe Government for relief assistance from Simba Makoni, the Finance Minister, which he was, of course, considering. He did not disclose the amounts requested, but the independent weekly, The Financial Gazette, said that Mr Makoni had asked for help in raising about 11 billion Zimbabwe dollars, which is equivalent to about £140 million.

I would say to the Minister, and to my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) on the Opposition Front Bench, that we are looking for action from the United Kingdom, as head of the Commonwealth, to bring some sense to that wonderful country in central southern Africa. I make a plea to the Minister. Let us take whatever action is necessary to bring stable government to a country that once again can be a leader in central southern Africa and can contribute to food production.

The British Government are in a unique position. Mr Mugabe has let down the Commonwealth. He has breached the assurances that he gave to Commonwealth leaders. The Commonwealth as a whole, led by the United Kingdom, should take action to bring democracy, peace, and stability back to that wonderful country.

As other hon. Members have done, I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell) on securing a debate on this important issue. He and others painted a depressing picture of the situation in Zimbabwe, but it is none the less the reality.

Zimbabwe is a country where the law no longer seems to rule, free speech is harder to enjoy, violence is a daily reality and hunger is a growing fear for many. The Zimbabwean Government are an international disgrace and show little interest in or capacity for sorting themselves out. The problems of the country came to international attention with the seizure of farmland on behalf of war veterans. Violence related to farmland continues, and it is colour blind. It is not directed simply at whites, but affects the black population as well. Out of it, a series of issues has come to the fore that must cause growing international concern.

We have seen many Government attacks on alternative sources of influence. Judges have been intimidated. The outcomes of Supreme Court decisions have been ignored. Journalists have been expelled and others who still seek to trade there have been threatened. There have been murders and attempted assassinations of opponents. In the ultimate twist to the sick situation, the Zimbabwean Government have used the tragedy of 11 September as an excuse to clamp down with further ferocity on their opponents. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) mentioned the public order and security Bill, which would ban, among other things, bail for anyone accused of treason. It is a draconian measure that we in this country must surely reject. There have also been attempts to avoid municipal elections, for fear that the opposition forces will show well in preparation for next spring's presidential elections. In recent days, we have seen calls from the war veterans' leader to cancel those elections.

Added to that uncertainty is the worsening humanitarian situation. Several hon. Members have mentioned food shortages and rationing, which are increasingly widespread in the country. Aid agencies are not allowed to do the basics of food distribution. According to the World Food Programme, more than 1 million people are in desperate need of food there. How can any Government in the world with a conscience allow that to happen?

All those aspects of the problem focus us on next year's elections. They are a key issue for those of us outside Zimbabwe, on which the Government must take a strong position. We have recently seen how European Union representatives have been abused for having the temerity to suggest that observers ought to be present at those elections. Louis Michel, a Belgian Foreign Minister, described the meeting with the president of Zimbabwe as "brutal". In our response, I hope that we will be robust. Surely the requirements for a proper election are fairly straightforward. There should be core minimum standards, an independent electoral commission, equal access to the media for all parties and, perhaps most crucially, an accurate and up-to-date voters roll.

The international community has not been silent on the issue. It has given the Zimbabwean Government time to sort themselves out. We might think that, on occasion, too much time has been allowed. The Abuja agreement of recent weeks set out clear requirements, agreed by the Zimbabwean Government, for a way of going forward properly and peacefully. Among other things, the Government in Zimbabwe gave assurances that there would be no further occupation of farmland. They made a commitment to restore the rule of law to the process of land reform and, most crucially, they made a commitment to freedom of expression and firm action against violence and intimidation. How hollow those words sound, and how worrying it will be if nothing develops to change the current state of affairs before the run-up to the elections.

The postponement of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, planned for several weeks ago, was understandable in the aftermath of the tragedy of 11 September, but it was particularly unfortunate with respect to the Zimbabwean situation. We must ensure that the diplomatic momentum that could have been continued at that meeting will not be lost. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) called for smart sanctions to tackle the Zimbabwean regime. That might include an arms embargo, the freezing of overseas bank accounts and restrictions on overseas travel—for shopping trips or otherwise—for key individuals in the regime. Perhaps even suspension from the Commonwealth should be considered.

If the elections are not prepared properly or are unable to meet international standards, the question will increasingly arise whether we should recognise their outcome. Javier Solana, the Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union, said recently that without minimum standards

"it will be very difficult for the presidential election to be recognised by the EU".

It would be helpful if the Minister could explain what the UK stance will be.

Zimbabwe is in a fragile state. Neighbouring states rightly fear the consequences of further decline towards anarchy. The international community has been ignored so far and must now respond.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell) on initiating the debate. He is a new Member of Parliament showing a lively interest in foreign affairs and he painted a most effective picture of the current crisis.

I pay tribute also to my hon. Friends the Members for East Devon (Mr. Swire) and for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), who both spoke movingly and passionately, highlighting some of the key issues that give rise to concern and basing their remarks on considerable knowledge. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon reminded us that the human stories in the tragedy of Zimbabwe show us how fortunate we are to live in a peaceful and democratic society.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) made several points about the so-called anti-terrorist legislation—also remarked on by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield—and about the attempts to delay or cancel elections and the failure of the Abuja agreement. We have heard some excellent contributions, but I regret that no Labour Back Bencher has felt able to attend the debate.

For decades, Zimbabwe was the bread basket of southern Africa. After independence, its future was bright. It was at the forefront of international hopes for southern African democracy and for a prosperous and stable future for its people and the region. Alas, today it is a sorry sight—a veritable tragedy. Since the 1980s, successive British Governments have given around £40 million to the Government of Zimbabwe to effect fair land reforms. Recently, at Abuja, the Foreign Secretary once more focused efforts on that issue.

The problem is that the money has not been used for land reform. It has been wasted, salted away and stolen by Mr. Mugabe and his corrupt cronies. Worse than that, however, not content with simply misusing much of the money, Mugabe's Government have taken to oppressing the citizens of that country. They have interfered in the independence of the judiciary, culminating in the forced resignation of Anthony Gubbay, the chief justice, at the start of this year. They have undermined and clamped down on free media organisations. It is a brave man who dares to venture a critical opinion in public and such oppression is unacceptable.

Let me be blunt with the Minister. We have been dismayed at the pusillanimous and unfocused approach of our Government. We have repeatedly called for travel bans the freezing of overseas assets and suspension from the Commonwealth, which is the tough action that is required to combat Mugabe's thuggery. It is sad that our European partners in France and Belgium welcomed him in March, and it is disappointing that our own Government did not feel moved to speak out at the hospitality of those Governments. The publicity and international acceptance was a huge propaganda coup for Mugabe. Indeed, following the recent meeting in Harare between Mr. Mugabe, Louis Michel, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Lord Patten, the European Union Commissioner, and Javier Solana, the European Union High Representative, Mr. Michel referred to Mugabe's brutal reaction to them. That is the richest of ironies.

The land issue remains a flashpoint and the consequence is agricultural collapse. We are witnessing economic refugees fleeing in their hundreds of thousands to South Africa, food shortages, requests for international aid to avert starvation and rampant inflation. The problem is that while the images of land theft by Mugabe's thugs are horrific, the land issue is something of a red herring. It suits Mugabe that it is something of a distraction, despite its terrible consequences. The real issue is how this previously affluent, hopeful and successful country—this regional lynchpin—is being destroyed by a megalomaniac thug who recently responded to his people's hunger by purchasing a new fleet of luxury Mercedes-Benz escort cars for his motorcade.

Zimbabwe stands at an historically important crossroads. It is make or break. The future of the people of Zimbabwe and the whole region is at stake. If Mugabe wins next year's elections through violence and corrupt electoral practices and thereby denies the Zimbabweans the chance freely to decide their own futures, we risk the final implosion of the economy. For a clear example of the economic turmoil that another term of office for Mr. Mugabe could cause, we need look no further than South Africa this year. In the past few months, the value of the South African rand has dropped by approximately 20 per cent. Investors will inevitably shy away from the whole region. There are no internal economic factors that could justify such a dramatic fall in the currency in such a short time. South Africa, which is the powerhouse of sub-Saharan Africa, is being adversely affected by the instability engendered in the region by Zimbabwe. South Africa needs foreign businesses to invest their money to provide the economic growth to absorb high levels of unemployment and Zimbabwe, under Mr. Mugabe, is an important factor in stalling that essential growth.

If Mugabe wins next spring, it is equally likely that Libyan influence will increase to the extent that the peace and cohesion of the surrounding countries may be affected. If, on the other hand, free and fair elections take place that are properly monitored, Zimbabwe may return to stability with the hope of prosperity for her people and be able to resume her role as an important regional power and valued member of the Commonwealth.

Does my hon. Friend agree that next year's elections are the crux of the issue? Should the Government not tell Mugabe and his cohorts that unless the elections can be independently and freely observed, expulsion from the Commonwealth will follow forthwith?

I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend's remarks, and I shall deal with the importance of the election monitoring procedures. My hon. Friend is right—

Order. It is important that the Chairman can hear what is said.

I am sorry, Mr. Cook. I said that I agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan). I shall deal in a few minutes with how the election should proceed and how it should be monitored. If it is a failure, we shall have to revisit the question of Commonwealth membership, to which my hon. Friend rightly alluded.

A recent opinion poll suggested that the MDC, whose leaders and activists are so mercilessly harassed and attacked, has a good chance of winning the elections if the Government do not gerrymander them. Free and fair elections are crucial to Zimbabwe's future. The key to free and fair elections is the electoral recommendations of the 14 members of the Southern African Development Community. Hon. Members may be aware of them, but they deserve to be described in detail as they are vital.

SADC's recommendations include the acceptance of impartial international and regional observers from the earliest possible stage, which is now. They call for an independent electoral commission that is totally free from Government intervention and for all parties to enjoy equality of access to the media and to funding. SADC also encourages the use of private media, although we should note that what free or private media there are in Zimbabwe are under constant threat of Government and ZANU-PF violence. The freedom to campaign unhindered by the Government during elections features highly in the recommendations, which then turn to the registration process for voters and to the administration of voting. If Zimbabwe is to have the slightest chance of fair elections, those recommendations must be acted on now because voter registration is already under way and we are getting reports of abuse and intimidation. The recommendations also call for an electronic electoral roll to be freely available to all parties and for nondiscriminatory nomination and voter registration procedures to be enshrined in the national constitution. There should also be free and impartial policing.

Mugabe cannot deride those recommendations as colonial or as having been imposed by Europeans. They come from African countries and represent regional concerns. Most importantly, Zimbabwe itself signed up to them earlier this year. It is vital that international support and pressure hold Mugabe to those recommendations.

Whatever the temptation to focus on other aspects of the Zimbabwe issue, we must not be distracted from pressing for free and fair elections. We must not engage in a debate about what constitutes observers and monitors; that is merely semantics. We must be clear that what we want and what Zimbabweans deserve is independent monitors or observers—we can call them what we will—who have open access to every aspect of the election procedure, including early registration, and who can state with authority whether the elections are indeed fair and free.

We must work with SADC to solve that problem. I was, therefore, somewhat disappointed by written answers to questions that I tabled on the issue. The Minister's replies made no reference to SADC and offered no appreciation of its role. Instead, they focused entirely on the role of the European Union.

The United States of America takes an active interest in the matter. It is hoped that the Senate and the House of Representatives will soon implement restrictions and sanctions against Zimbabwe. The international community has a duty to play its part. We should—indeed, we must—give our total support to the SADC proposals, to ensure that the elections are free and fair. Zimbabwe's proper participation in the region is crucial to ensure long-term regional stability and prosperity for people in neighbouring countries. We must work tirelessly to ensure that its people are given the opportunity, free from intimidation, to choose the path that they wish their country to take in the years ahead. We owe it to southern Africa and the people of Zimbabwe to push for the restoration of justice and democracy that the elections represent. We must act now—there is simply no time to lose.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell) on securing the debate, and a number of other hon. Members on their excellent and heartfelt contributions. If there were no crisis in Afghanistan, the seriousness of the situation in Zimbabwe would put it on the front page of our newspapers virtually every day and give it a far higher profile.

As several hon. Members have said, a human tragedy is unfolding in Zimbabwe as a direct result of Zimbabwe Government policy. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire), read out moving e-mails. We have all received such e-mails containing testimony of the oppression and injustice being meted out to the Zimbabwean people. Hon. Members will know that this is our second Adjournment debate on Zimbabwe within a matter of weeks. It is a measure of the deep concern in all parts of the House at the situation in that country. In the last debate on 7 November, proposed by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), I set out the five principles that underpin the Government's policy on Zimbabwe. It might help hon. Members if I restate those principles.

The first is our wish to see a stable, prosperous and democratic Zimbabwe for all Zimbabweans. For the sake of the whole region, Zimbabwe's slide into political and economic chaos must be reversed. The second principle is that. Zimbabweans deserve and should get the help of the international community. The European Union signalled its concerns on 29 October by opening formal consultations with Zimbabwe on human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, under article 96 of the Cotonou agreement. If those consultations do not lead to remedy after 75 days, the EU may take "appropriate measures". As several hon. Members have mentioned, a senior EU ministerial team visited Zimbabwe last week to explain Europe's concerns openly to President Mugabe. The way in which that team was treated can only rebound badly on the Government of Zimbabwe.

The Commonwealth, in an initiative of President Obasanjo of Nigeria, brokered an agreement at Abuja on 6 September. Among other things, the Zimbabwe Government committed themselves to respecting the democratic and human rights principles contained in the Harare Commonwealth declaration and the Millbrook action programme. They committed themselves to refraining from further occupation of farmland; the movement of occupiers to legally acquired land; a process of land reform; the restoration of the rule of law; and respect for freedom of expression. They also gave an undertaking to take firm action against violence and intimidation.

However, three months on, I am afraid that there is little evidence that the Zimbabwe Government are honouring any of those commitments. That inaction is seriously undermining the Abuja agreement. The Commonwealth must now press the Government of Zimbabwe to take the action that they agreed and to protect the integrity of the Commonwealth Harare declaration. Zimbabwe will no doubt feature prominently in this context at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next March. Hon. Members will know that the United States has repeatedly condemned the violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe. Mindful of the economic damage that Zimbabwe is inflicting on the region, the countries of the Southern African Development Community have set clear benchmarks against which they will measure the Zimbabwe Government's conduct.

We welcome SADC's efforts to encourage stability and dialogue in Zimbabwe. I apologise to the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) if he feels that we do not. We do. Indeed, we give it a great deal of support for the measures that it is taking. The hon. Gentleman put his finger on something important. The reason that SADC can be so effective is that, because it is made up of neighbouring southern African countries, it removes President Mugabe's ability to try to portray it as some sort of neo-colonial problem.

The Minister said that it was important for the Commonwealth to press the Zimbabwe Government to go along with the Abuja agreement, but he immediately conceded that the Commonwealth Heads of Government would not meet until March to discuss the matter. That is a long time, during which intimidation will continue. What precise steps is the Commonwealth taking now?

I would not want to prejudge what steps the Commonwealth might take before the March meeting, but the fact that the meeting does not take place until then does not mean that discussions about the serious situation in Zimbabwe are not continuing almost every day among Commonwealth members.

SADC has framed impressive electoral norms and standards for the region, which we believe should guide the international community in assessing Zimbabwe's forthcoming presidential election. The growing international consensus will be the most effective means of holding the Zimbabwe Government to account. It will bring concerted international pressure and the prospect of concerted international action. It will also allow a number of respected international envoys to become active in Zimbabwe, as most recently Chief Shonekan has on behalf of Nigeria's President.

Our third principle is that Zimbabwe's future prosperity depends on respect for the rule of law and an end to political violence. We will not be deflected from pressing the Zimbabwe Government on their disregard of fundamental rights, or from drawing international attention to those abuses. I reassure the hon. Member for Romford that the strong language used by the Foreign Secretary over the weekend is not simply a response to pressure from the press; the Government feel strongly about the matter, and we used similar language when the Zimbabwean Government last behaved unacceptably.

We have already taken a number of measures. We have imposed a complete embargo on arms sales to Zimbabwe, we have cut non-humanitarian aid, we have withdrawn our military training team and we shall continue to encourage international consensus for a change of direction in Zimbabwe. In the light of more worrying recent developments, the Foreign Secretary said at the weekend that he would be speaking to European Union and Commonwealth colleagues to consider how else we might respond.

I am listening carefully to the Minister's constructive response to this important debate. Following the intervention of the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), does he believe that it would be appropriate for the Commonwealth to meet exceptionally, so that it can take a decision on what should be done in Zimbabwe if there is no change in the policy of harassment and the total lack of law and order in that country? Otherwise, the so-called re-election of Mr. Mugabe will take place and the problem will continue. Is it not important to have an exceptional meeting of the Commonwealth to take action in the very near future?

It certainly would not be sensible to rule anything out. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Commonwealth meeting is four or five months away. That is a long time, and if the situation does not improve other exceptional measures may have to be taken. There has been much talk of targeted sanctions, a subject raised by the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore). They could include a ban on travel, the freezing of assets and, ultimately, suspension from the Commonwealth.

It might help if I explain why the Government have not yet taken those steps. There are three practical reasons. The first is timing. As I have already said, we are working hard with the EU, the Commonwealth and others to persuade the Zimbabwe Government to change course. Those processes, including Abuja, must be given a chance—Abuja goes back only to the beginning of September. However, the processes are not open ended. The credibility of the efforts depends on immediate action by the Government of Zimbabwe to honour their commitments.

The second reason is effectiveness. Further unilateral UK measures would not be effective. We must not play into President Mugabe's hands by engaging in a bilateral spat. The hon. Member for West Suffolk lauded the efficacy of SADC and acknowledged that it was effective and should be supported because President Mugabe could not portray it as a colonial body. My difficulty with the tactical approach advocated by some Opposition Members is that it would play directly into President Mugabe's hands. We do not want to do that. I shall quote briefly from an interview given by the leader of the Zimbabwean opposition on the "Today" programme last Wednesday. When asked by Sue MacGregor whether the international community or Britain could be doing more, he replied:

"Well, we've seen a lot of initiatives on Zimbabwe but all of them, unfortunately, have failed to produce the requisite result. So I think that it is really up to Zimbabweans to ensure that changes obtain."

From the conversations that we have had with him, I think that he was trying to get across his belief that if Britain were seen to be doing something unilaterally, stepping out of line from the rest of the international community, that would play directly into President Mugabe's hands.

The hon. Member for East Devon said that we should treat the Government of Zimbabwe in the same way as we have been treating international terrorists since 11 September. One should not underestimate the seriousness of the situation in Zimbabwe, but I do not accept the accuracy of his parallel if he means that we should take military action against the Zimbabwean Government, as we have against al-Qaeda and bin Laden. That would be a foolish mistake.

The third reason that we have not yet taken the practical measures that several hon. Members have advocated is the reality of the modern Commonwealth. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) asked why, as head of the Commonwealth, we could not do something. It is the Queen who is the head of the Commonwealth. We are just one of its 50 members and it works on consensus. However, there is a growing concern within the Commonwealth at the Zimbabwean Government's blatant disregard for the principles of the Harare declaration. The Commonwealth may well need to take some tough decisions in the run-up to CHOGM in March.

We are also determined to pursue our fourth principle, that Britain will help a democratic Zimbabwe achieve prosperity through successful land reform. That is central to fair and equitable economic development in Zimbabwe. The hon. Member for West Suffolk said that land reform was a red herring used by President Mugabe. While it is true that he blames all his problems on it, that does not mean that land reform is not important. It is very important, not least to the people of Zimbabwe.

Successive British Governments have been extremely generous to the Government of Zimbabwe, in an attempt to effect land reform. It simply has not happened. We have to remember that, despite the money that has been given, we have not had the land reform that is held to be desirable. The money has been abused. That was my point.

Yes, I agree. Land reform in Zimbabwe cannot simply be an exercise in compensating commercial farmers. Donor funding will depend on a land reform that empowers the country's rural poor and creates greater equity in the ownership of the country's resources. However, we will not write blank cheques. The Abuja agreement made it clear that land reform would need to be based on the proposals of the United Nations development programme of December 2000.

The hon. Member for Macclesfield raised the serious problem of the terrible state of the Zimbabwean economy and made the good point that in the past Zimbabwe was the bread basket of the region, a net exporter and full of natural resources. There is no reason why it should not be an extremely successful country that sets an example to all its neighbours.

Hon. Members might like to have some figures that illustrate the dire state of the Zimbabwean economy. At the latest count, unemployment was 60 per cent. and rising. Inflation is 86 per cent and is expected to rise to 100 per cent. There was negative growth in the past 12 months of 8 per cent.

Our fifth and final principle is that the future must be left in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe. As a number of hon. Members have said, there will be presidential elections by mid-March. We want the people of Zimbabwe to be given a genuine opportunity to make their voice heard. That means avoiding the violence and intimidation witnessed during the last parliamentary elections. As hon. Members have said, that violence continues today, often against those who merely express a different point of view from the Government's. It is becoming clear that the Government of Zimbabwe are taking steps that will make a free and fair presidential election next spring more difficult to achieve. Campaigns of harassment against non-governmental organisations, judges and independent journalists remain commonplace.

The hon. Member for Macclesfield drew attention to the newly proposed public order and security Bill, which could place further restrictions on freedom of expression. A large number of Zimbabweans could be disfranchised. The management of the election rests with the supervisory commission appointed by the Zimbabwe Government. They have also decreed, as the hon. Member for Romford reminded us, that only civil servants can monitor the conduct of next year's poll. The Zimbabwe Government should know that there are bound to be searching questions in due course about the legitimacy of the poll if those efforts to manipulate the process continue.

The people of Zimbabwe showed courage and dignity last year when they voted in large numbers, despite the levels of intimidation. They showed that they expect and deserve genuine democracy. Britain and the international community will respect the will of the people of Zimbabwe at the presidential election, whatever their decision, so long as the campaign and poll are demonstrably free and fair.

As the Minister is obviously coming towards the end of his speech, would he deal with the policy of the Zimbabwe Government under Mr. Mugabe in respect of humanitarian aid to that country? They will not allow the independent charitable agencies to distribute it and insist on distributing it themselves, perhaps to ensure that it goes only to their supporters. The Minister also touched on the importance of land redistribution. If land is being taken off the commercial white farmers, those black Zimbabweans who take over must be taught to farm it so that it does not go back to the bush.

Yes, the humanitarian aid is still going through via NGOs. The British Government have been extremely careful in recent years to ensure that, with two small exceptions, our humanitarian aid programme goes through NGOs rather than through the Government of Zimbabwe. As the hon. Gentleman says, we do not trust the Government of Zimbabwe to administer it effectively. He is also right about the future role of agricultural workers from Zimbabwe. One of the great tragedies is that although most of the violence that one reads about in the papers here is against white farmers, violence against ordinary black farm workers is more regular and frequent. There is a huge refugee problem spilling out from the borders of Zimbabwe into neighbouring countries.

I was talking about what would happen if we did not feel that next year's elections were being planned in a fair and democratic way. If, as President Mugabe has said repeatedly, he truly believes that he enjoys the backing of his people, he need not fear the outcome of a genuine democratic process, but the Zimbabwe Government's approach gives little cause for optimism. That is why the European Union, the United States and others are insisting on international election observers being in place well before the election.

As I said on 7 November, anyone who ever doubted that good governance is essential to sustainable development need look no further than the crisis that has befallen Zimbabwe in the past few years. Worse still, as hon. Members have mentioned today, Zimbabwe's tragedy threatens to infect the whole region by weakening business investment and sentiment. Investor confidence in Botswana and South Africa, two of the region's modern-day success stories, has already been unfairly tainted by Zimbabwe's bad example. Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi are suffering from the dislocation of thousands of Zimbabwean farm workers and the downturn in regional trade.

The Government of Zimbabwe know what they need to do to return to the international fold, but they are not listening. Let us hope that future Governments get back on the side of their own people and the law. If they do, Britain and Zimbabwe's many friends in the international community stand ready to help. If they do not, the prospects for that wonderful country look grim.

I am pleased to initiate this debate, because my constituents and people throughout Scotland who subscribe to the services of Atlantic Telecom are facing serious problems. The company appeared to be successful, but it went into administration in October, leaving its many thousands of cable customers in the lurch. On 9 November, telephone services were completely withdrawn. I propose to focus less on the short-term issues, however important, than on the longer-term consequences of the collapse.

I am grateful to the Minister for E-Commerce and Competitiveness and to the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Executive—by happy chance his sister, making it a family affair—for working together to find the funds for an emergency system that will allow telephone calls to continue in affected cities. It is only a short-term solution, and by the end of January 2002 the problems faced particularly by businesses will not have gone away.

Does my hon. Friend agree that this problem shows the weakness of existing legislation? If it were not for the helpful actions of the Minister and his sister and of British Telecom, the crisis would indeed have been grave.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although I am grateful to the Minister for spending £500,000 of public money on the rescue effort, it shows that the structural problems are deep.

I have heard various figures for the number of Atlantic Telecom customers. BT told me that the number was 16,000. However, the Atlantic Telecom figure is nearer 12,000 customers, 2,000 of which are businesses that are concentrated mainly in Aberdeen, but are also in Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester.

Domestic consumers have been seriously hit. Telephone services were withdrawn with minimum notice. Most people found out from the local newspaper on the morning that the services were withdrawn that they would not be able to make telephone calls. However, most domestic consumers have been able to have lines installed or get on to a programme to have lines installed.

The most serious consequences have fallen on the business consumers. This is the second collapse of a telephone supplier since competition was introduced in the telephone industry. It is the largest and the most significant collapse, and there are serious lessons to be learned from it, the most important of which is that there is almost no protection for the consumer in the regulatory system.

All consumers were given notice of the intention to withdraw what the Office of Telecommunications calls "the complete service". The minimum legal obligation on a telephone provider when it decides to withdraw a service is to give 14 days' written notice to its subscribers of its intention. It has to provide access to emergency numbers only, so consumers cannot make outgoing calls, but they can receive incoming calls. In the case of Atlantic Telecom, the 14 days' notice expired on 25 November. I mentioned earlier the rescue plan that has been put in place, and I have tested the system. People are receiving calls, which is important.

By far the most serious consequence for businesses has been the fact that, if they had an Atlantic Telecom line, they have lost that number.

A taxi company in Aberdeen has suffered as a result of the collapse of Atlantic Telecom. If someone is drunk in Union street in Aberdeen and is looking for a taxi, especially on a Saturday night, that company's number might be the only one that they remember or that is pre-programmed into their mobile phone. The loss of a well-known number is very serious, especially for a taxi company.

I agree with my hon. Friend, although I do not accept that anyone is drunk in Union street in the heart of my constituency on a Saturday night. That apart, I agree entirely.

I will give some examples of businesses that have been affected. My hon. Friend mentioned Abcabs, which is a small business in my constituency that started up three years ago. It was extremely successful and is now the third most used taxi company in Aberdeen. It had a very memorable number—45 45 45—and got a lot of business from that. On 9 November, it learned that its telephone service was to be withdrawn. It was in an awkward position, because it had foreseen the problems with Atlantic Telecom and had asked BT to install a new system.

That system was in place and was due to be implemented on the Wednesday after Atlantic Telecom went bust. In the meantime, the company was using its Atlantic Telecom number to forward calls to its new system. No calls were forwarded, because the Atlantic Telecom system could not make outgoing calls. For a company that expects 2,000 calls a day at the weekend, the sudden disconnection of the telephone line has had a devastating effect on its business. It advertised for three years, invested in literature, and put the number on its cabs—a huge investment—but what it considered its most valuable business asset was suddenly pulled away.

Another small company, Aberdeen North-East Heating Ltd., supplies and fits boilers. It is five years old and began work in a rural area but set up in the city three years ago. The company, which is important in my constituency, supplies about 120 to 130 boilers a year and is an approved contractor for the Government's energy efficiency scheme. It tracks its advertising, which appears only in Yellow Pages and on yell.com, and knows exactly where its business comes from. Ninety per cent. of its business comes from the Yellow Pages advertisement.

The company's telephone number has been taken away. Yes, it can still receive incoming calls and, because of the Minister's intervention, will be able to do so until the end of January, when it will have to reconsider its position. The problem is that people do not use a heating company every day of the week. They go to Yellow Pages and run through the list to pick someone who suits their needs, based on an advertisement that attracts them. Yellow Pages in Aberdeen will not be republished until June, which is six months later.

The company is looking at other means of advertising—it will do everything that it can to let the citizens of Aberdeen know about the business—and there will be a small amount of business from word of mouth, but it feels that 90 per cent. of its business will collapse from the end of January. That successful small business, which employs four people, is afraid for its future.

Those examples show that serious consequences stem from the loss of a telephone number. The Office of Telecommunications, which is the industry regulator, has spent a great deal of time and used much advertising space to tell us about portability. Telephone numbers are supposed to be portable. I looked on its website and picked out a couple of random statements. One is from a review of portability that was published in 1998:

"Changing number can be a major inconvenience for customers and a barrier which prevents them from exercising choice and taking advantage of growing competition in the telecommunication market. Number portability means that customers can change to a new operator without the hassle of having to change their number."

We all welcomed that important statement as a sign of progress in the newly liberalised telephone market, but what happens when an operator goes into administration or withdraws from the market? Atlantic Telecom customers discovered that portability was meaningless because, when the company collapsed, Oftel automatically reclaimed all the numbers. I asked Oftel why the numbers could not be reallocated to BT, which had put in the emergency services and was to be the new provider. I was told that the numbers could be redistributed only in tranches of 10,000 numbers, and that there were various technical reasons why the numbers could not be transferred. I understand those reasons, but it seems that the system militates against the consumer. There is a drive for portability, which is sold as a benefit of the system, but in practice there is no portability if the supplier does not continue in business.

A problem with competition is that there will be failures, even if they are not as spectacular as Atlantic Telecom's. From my experience of the gas market, which I know a little better than the telecoms market, I know that companies come and go. They may not go bust, but if they do not achieve their aspirations, they will move on to other areas in which they prefer to invest their money. In this age of communication, customers are put at a distinct disadvantage in such a situation.

I am uncertain about one matter, which I would like the Minister to address. I asked for a short brief on the consequences of reclaiming the numbers and what it would mean for existing consumers who had already transferred their number to another organisation, such as BT, and were no longer Atlantic Telecom customers at the time of the collapse. The response stated that

"if a number was allocated by Atlantic this cannot be ported to a new supplier. Number portability obligations on telecoms operators work on the basis of reasonableness and although it would be possible for all Atlantic's numbers to be transferred to other operators, this would be technically difficult and expensive as it would require operators to reconfigure the databases in their exchanges to recognise the new numbers."

I would appreciate it if the Minister would tell me whether I am interpreting this correctly. The response seems to say that, as well as existing customers, any customers during the lifetime of Atlantic Telecom who took their numbers to a new supplier such as BT will lose their number, despite not being a customer at the time of the collapse. That seems to me the logical interpretation of that response.

What protection is there for consumers in that situation? If I have read the response correctly, it implies that portability depends on the liquidity of the supply company and on historical factors. It is a serious situation, and I have tried to understand why it has occurred. I understand the technical reasons and financial consequences—I have been told that it may cost as much as £1 million for BT to take all the Atlantic Telecom numbers and reconfigure its own system to deal with them. However, I cannot understand why the relatively small number of consumers who decide to take advantage of portability should be punished and put at risk. I still do not know whether that is happening because it is more convenient for or a requirement of the regulator. I do not accept that we cannot devise a regulatory system that protects consumers, or that the problems of technical difficulty and cost in transferring telephone numbers between companies to sustain the portability principle are insurmountable. The system seems to operate for the convenience of the industry, not the consumers.

There has been a failure of regulation in television, which is another aspect of Atlantic Telecom's business. It took over Aberdeen Cable, but the business went bust before the telephone system went down. People in Aberdeen arrived home to discover a message on their television to say that they had lost their service. There is a problem with regulation, or more particularly consumer protection. We must ensure that people continue to have a service when companies go bust.

That is right. We are shortly to have a telecommunications Bill, and I hope that that topic will be addressed.

My point follows that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg). My hon. Friend has rightly concentrated on the business implications, but it is important to emphasise that domestic customers who lost both their television and telephone service at the same time have been caused considerable stress.

Again, I accept that point, and I hope that it will be addressed in the telecommunications Bill.

There are serious implications for competition in the telecoms industry. The collapse of Atlantic Telecom has shown that there is no protection for the consumer in this new era of competition in the telephone industry. In any competitive situation, some companies will succeed while others fail. If a company fails or decides to pull out of the market, services are liable to be withdrawn overnight and telephone numbers, which may be a small business's single biggest asset, could be taken away without compensation. That would have a devastating effect on the businesses concerned.

The issue is not local to Aberdeen and the other centres that I have mentioned; it affects the whole industry. We encourage individuals and businesses to enjoy the new marketplace in telephone services, but there is no health warning and nothing to tell consumers of the risks that they are running. If consumers knew the risks that they were taking, would there be any competition in the telephone market? Would consumers take the risk of leaving large but apparently stable companies such as BT to sign up to companies like Atlantic Telecom? If they knew the whole picture, I doubt that they would. What incentive would they have under the current regulatory framework?

The Minister and the Scottish Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning have done everything possible to mitigate the immediate effects. I take their intervention as an admission of the seriousness of the problem. They have dealt with the short term, but the long term must involve a complete overhaul of the regulations governing the telecoms industry in order to give consumers more protection and tilt the balance away from the industry. I welcome the Minister's public statement at the weekend that he will consider the regulatory framework. All the evidence from Atlantic Telecom's collapse is that such a review is needed extremely urgently.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) on securing the debate. I acknowledge his diligence in representing his constituents' interests at this difficult time, following the failure of Atlantic Telecom. I welcome the debate as an opportunity to place in context the announcement that the Scottish Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning and I made on Saturday afternoon. I hope that I can assure my hon. Friend and others affected by the closure of Atlantic Telecom that, working together, the Minister and I are doing everything possible to ensure a smooth transfer of telecoms services.

I shall address the circumstances of the weekend's events, before discussing how I intend to take forward the policy issues raised by my hon. Friend. Atlantic Telecom was a company of about 260 employees, with a total of 128,000 customers—7,000 of whom were business customers—covering the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Manchester. As my hon. Friend said, the challenge was not confined to the Aberdeen area.

Some of those customers were served by a fixed wireless access telephone system. The company was established in 1991. Atlantic Telecom went into administration on 5 October 2001. At the time, there was a fair degree of confidence that the company would be sold. However, five weeks later, on 8 November, the administrators concluded that they could not sell the company as a going concern and duly informed Oftel that the fixed-wireless network was likely to be switched off shortly, without notice to customers.

Administrators are appointed by a court to try to rescue a failing company or to achieve a better return for its creditors. To help them to do that, the company is protected from any legal action while the administrators are in place. That includes enforcement action by Oftel, which is the independent regulator established under the Telecommunications Act 1984. It is specifically charged with responsibility for promoting the interests of consumers and ensuring that telecoms services are provided in the UK to meet all reasonable demands. Oftel cannot require an administrator to act in breach of its duty, but after intensive discussions on 8 and 9 November, it agreed that the administrators would maintain the network with a minimum service until 25 November. It also agreed that the administrator would give all customers immediate written notice to that effect.

The Government hold the view that competition brings choice of services to customers, encourages innovation and drives down prices. That is why we believe in promoting competition widely. It is a fact of life that, in a competitive environment, not all companies are guaranteed to succeed, as my hon. Friend said. When a telecoms company fails, the customers can usually be easily transferred to alternative suppliers. Indeed, that has happened for most of Atlantic's customers. Those using Atlantic's indirect access service have a wide choice of alternative suppliers. Those using Atlantic's fixed-line network have been able to transfer to BT or another cable operator.

BT and other telecommunications companies that have received orders for new lines have been working as fast as possible to process the orders. However, it was proving impossible for BT or any other company to provide services to everyone by Sunday 25 November, when the administrator planned to switch off the Atlantic network. Some of Atlantic's customers would have realised only late in the day that they had to make alternative arrangements for their telephone services. That is why the Government, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Scottish Executive resolved to act to ensure that Atlantic's customers—particularly its business customers—were given a reasonable time to make the switch to an alternative network provider before the Atlantic network was completely switched off.

My hon. Friend mentioned that Atlantic Telecom used fixed radio access. Did that technical issue make the problem worse?

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. We struggled with several technical issues during the hours immediately before the switch-off. One of those was the nature of the access provided by Atlantic Telecom. As I understand it, following the provision of a wireless service, lines into some properties had been removed. That obviously made the problem more complicated and increased the delays for those seeking alternative line access. Despite the technical constraints, BT and other telecom companies that received orders for the new lines worked as fast as possible to process them.

I met my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central on 19 November and he spelled out the concerns of his constituents at that DTI meeting. The following day I met the director general of Oftel and expressed my resolve that everything possible should be done to smooth the transfer of customers from Atlantic to other operators. On 21 November, I met my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) and for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), who explained the problems that their constituents were having in transferring telephone numbers and obtaining alternative operators. I pay tribute to all those hon. Members for their effective and constructive representation of their constituents.

The next day I arranged to meet the chief executive of BT, Sir Peter Bonfield, and the group commercial director, Colin Green, to seek their assistance in expediting the connection of Atlantic customers. At that meeting, Sir Peter assured me that BT would do all it could to help facilitate a quick transfer of customers. He confirmed that the company had already diverted resources from elsewhere to help speed up the process, and that it would work closely with Oftel and the DTI to minimise the disruption to Atlantic's customers.

The Scottish Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning—my sister, Wendy Alexander—met the Stop Atlantic Closure campaign on 21 November and again on 23 November. She also met the administrators on 22 November and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and Scottish Enterprise on 23 November. From those meetings we were clear about the importance to Atlantic's business customers of not losing telecom services for any period, and about the difficulties surrounding the transfer of numbers.

We required a complex deal. We needed to persuade the administrators to keep the Atlantic network running long enough for Atlantic's customers to obtain telecom services from BT or other operators, but all customers with a number from Atlantic's allocation would lose its use as soon as the network was switched off. We therefore decided that the Atlantic network must be kept running until customers had had a reasonable time to organise alternative arrangements. For an interim period, a messaging service was also needed to provide the new telephone numbers when calls were made to the old Atlantic ones.

The administrators would not fund that arrangement, so we quickly secured the Treasury's approval and considered whether providing public money to support businesses in that way would constitute state aid, which the European Commission permits only in limited circumstances. We believe that the money meets well-established criteria for rescue aid. This week, we are notifying the Commission of that aid, and we believe that it will be approved.

I pay tribute not only to the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, but to my officials in the DTI, the Scottish Executive and the staff of Oftel who, under considerable pressure, worked flat out on this package on Thursday, past midnight on Friday and again on Saturday morning. Everything was in place and the deal was concluded with the administrators by Saturday afternoon, when we notified the campaigners and announced the deal publicly.

As part of the deal, we are working with Oftel and telecom companies to ensure that a message to every caller on the old Atlantic numbers provides the appropriate new numbers. That service will remain in place during Christmas and new year. By 2 January 2002, not only will all Atlantic's fixed wireless customers have working fixed lines, but businesses will have had several weeks to advertise new numbers. Some of those who benefit from the messaging service will want it to remain for longer, so at least one switch in the Atlantic network will have to continue operating. Those customers must arrange the financing.

Assuming that people act on the notice of network closure from the administrator, the rescue package announced on Saturday will ensure that 12,000 residential users and 2,000 businesses have time to get a new telephone line and to advertise the new number. This time of year is traditionally busy, and the £500,000 grant provided by the DTI and the Scottish Executive is essential to maintaining vital telephone services. We have financed the administrators to keep the Atlantic network operating with a messaging service up to 2 January 2002.

I want to consider the regulatory regime under which the events took place. In future, the regulatory regime should provide adequate consumer protection in a fully competitive telecommunications market. The regime presently provides several safeguards, the terms of which merit consideration.

I see that the Minister is on the last page of his speech, and I do not want him to sit down without addressing the concerns of business consumers, who are losing a major business asset. What does he have to say to them?

My hon. Friend asked whether customers who moved from Atlantic before it went into administration, and who transferred their old numbers to an alternative supplier, would lose those numbers when the network closes. That is the case, because of the technical difficulties, but the possibility remains of further discussion about a messaging service based on a single Atlantic Telecom switch.

Under current terms, BT is subject to a universal service obligation. It will provide a service to all Atlantic's customers who make a reasonable request. Other operators, such as Telewest Broadband and Thus, are also taking ex-Atlantic customers. It should be possible for all Atlantic's fixed wireless customers—business and residential—who had placed an order with another operator for a replacement service by last Sunday to receive that service in two weeks—or four at most.

As for portability, telephone customers have the right under present arrangements to require the transfer of a telephone number from the existing operator to a new operator if that is reasonable. However, I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the terms of that definition, especially the word "reasonable". It is for the operator to judge what is reasonable, although ultimately it may be a matter for the director general of Oftel, who would consider whether the operator had complied with its obligation on number portability.

It is technically possible for all Atlantic's numbers to be transferred to BT, but it would have to rebuild the databases at each of its exchanges. BT has intimated in discussions with the regulator that that would cost about £1 million—an amount that the company does not consider reasonable—and would take several weeks to complete. Given the technical and operational characteristics of Atlantic's telecommunications system, similar difficulties would arise if numbers were transferred to other operators. Ultimately, the director general of Oftel may have to consider the reasonableness of a request for a number.

The Atlantic case has shown the clear limitations of present customer protection measures. Now that the rescue package is in place, I assure my hon. Friend that I shall review whether steps should be taken in the light of those limitations. I welcome the views of all hon. Members, as we seek to establish appropriate further action. My hon. Friend accepted that providing such assistance is not something that the Government do lightly. Atlantic did not ask for assistance. We took action because the administrator, acting in the interests of the creditors, announced that the network would be switched off faster than Atlantic's customers could transfer to alternative operators. For reasons beyond their control, that placed those customers—especially businesses—at unacceptable risk. Jobs were clearly at stake at a peak period of the year for many of the companies, and at an especially sensitive time for their employees.

We have listened to Atlantic's customers. The DTI, in close partnership with the Scottish Executive and Oftel, worked hard and fast under real time restrictions to find what we believed was a workable solution. The other operators have also played their part—

Order. We now move on to the next debate.

I welcome the opportunity for a short debate about GoVia services in south London. I hope that the Minister can respond today to the issues, about which he has received advance notice.

The Minister may be tempted to stray from the subject of today's debate to that of Liberal Democrat spending plans, so I want to put one thing on the record. In a recent debate, the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) asked me how much of the Liberal Democrats' tax increase of 1p in the pound, which we proposed at the general election, was for transport. My response, correctly, was none. because that increase was earmarked for education. However, our spending plans for transport at the general election included the same level of funding as the Government's 10-year transport plan. If the Minister intends to criticise our transport spending plans, he will also be criticising the Government's plans.

The Minister will not have missed the reports in Sunday's and yesterday's papers about the state of transport infrastructure in the United Kingdom. According to a report commissioned by the Government, Britain has the worst transport system in Europe. The most congested roads, the longest commuting times and some of the highest rail fares can be found in the UK, according to the Government's Commission for Integrated Transport. The franchise process was an opportunity under the Labour Government to start to tackle such problems. I want to focus on the transfer of the Connex South Central franchise to GoVia, and whether it is tackling the problems outlined in that report.

The experience has not been entirely happy so far. I want to refer to a letter and two e-mails that I have received in the past couple of days from constituents who were aware that this debate would take place. Mr. Brown said:

"Since GoVia took over the franchise from Connex South Central, the services to Victoria from Carshalton and Carshalton Beeches have been appalling."

Another constituent told me that she used to catch the 7.30 train from Hackbridge to Victoria, which was always crowded, but it has now been cancelled. She said that she dreaded to think what the overcrowding on earlier and later trains would be like. A third constituent who travelled on the 7.33 train from Hackbridge to London Bridge alleged that since GoVia took over the train had not run on time once and some services had been cut out indefinitely.

I am realistic, as my constituents probably are. There was no way in which the service would improve miraculously, or even perceptibly, as soon as GoVia took over. However, people did not expect it to deteriorate to the extent that it apparently has. Many of the services that GoVia was to provide have been removed in a revised timetable that it had to issue, as it hoped to be able to guarantee a particular level of service. That is not a good omen.

It seems as though the handover process has failed in some respects. I hope that the Minister can say what lessons the Government have learned from this franchise experience, and what changes, if any, they intend to make to the process to ensure that future franchise renewals give passengers what they want.

There are a number of problems with the franchise bidding and renewal processes. First, there is the too-many-cooks syndrome. GoVia was selected in the final stages of the franchise bidding process from a shortlist of two companies—Connex and GoVia. One must question whether a real choice was possible with only those two companies bidding. However, at the end of that process, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions were happy that the contract should be awarded to GoVia, and that GoVia should take over the franchise. The Office of Fair Trading then became involved, and that significantly delayed the process, but it raised no queries. Clearly, during that period, a great deal of confusion was created for GoVia, its staff and commuters, as they expected the handover to take place, but it did not happen. That led to a loss of morale among staff, and probably caused significant problems in retaining the staff within Connex who were going to be taken on by GoVia. Perhaps the Minister, as a result of that delay, has reflected on what can be done to shorten the process and to ensure that all Government Departments are on board with the company shortlisted by the Government, rather than allowing such a delay to occur.

The second problem is the lack of information about the service and the staff that were employed. Clearly, much of that information is commercially confidential, but driver shortages and the need to recruit more maintenance engineers are the two most significant problems that GoVia has reported to me that affect its ability to deliver the new service. What action are the Strategic Rail Authority and the Government taking to ensure that, within the bounds of commercial confidentiality, all parties bidding to take over the franchise are aware of the staffing levels in the organisation that they will succeed, and what maintenance regime applies? Connex assured me that, if GoVia had wanted the information about the maintenance regime, it could have obtained it. That may be true, but it would appear that GoVia did not do so. In future, will the Government ensure that that information is available at the beginning of the process, so that companies bidding for the franchise know where they stand, without having to delve into areas that they did not realise they had to delve into?

That matter is pertinent not only to the franchises but to the public-private partnership for London Underground, which is another transport plan close to the Government's heart. Clearly, if the consortiums involved in that partnership do not know the staffing levels in London Underground, I can guarantee that when they take over the service they will say, "We did not know how many staff there were, so we will not be able to deliver because we are understaffed."

The third problem is that of driver shortages. The Minister may be aware of correspondence from Connex and comment in the press from GoVia about where responsibility for the driver shortage problem lies. In a letter to Go Via, Connex said that when it handed over the franchise, South Central was 14 drivers short of establishment. If that was the case, GoVia did not need to implement cuts on the scale that it has. Connex claimed that the service was only 14 drivers short, but GoVia said that it had to rejig the timetable completely.

Even if the issue of train drivers were clear—and it is not—that does not explain why so many GoVia services, which affect my constituency as much as the hon. Gentleman's, are running short trains and why trains are being reduced from eight to six or four carriages. That is a matter of service, not drivers. Many of my constituents used to write to me saying that the franchise should be taken away from Connex because the service could not get any worse, but I am now inundated with letters from people who say that they were wrong and that the service has got far worse.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those helpful comments. The issue was highlighted in an email that I received from a constituent who could not understand why a short service was running during the peak period—it was cancelled, in any case—whereas long trains were running during off-peak periods later in the day. That seemed to her to be a rather illogical approach to providing the right capacity. I shall be interested to hear whether the Minister has had discussions with Connex or GoVia about driver shortages, and when he expects the problem to be resolved and the normal service—I say that hesitantly—to resume.

The new franchise is the fourth problem area. Commercial confidentiality may prevent the Minister from telling us what is happening with the new franchise, although GoVia is the sole company involved in the negotiations, so there cannot be too many such issues. None the less, I should like to know whether GoVia is on track to sign a new franchise deal in 2002, and what guarantees the SRA is seeking from GoVia on levels of investment. It would be useful to have key, tangible indicators that commuters will be able to understand at the end of the new 20-year franchise, if that is what it is to be. For example, how much new rolling stock will have been rolled out?

I must again refer the Minister to an issue that is of great concern to commuters in my area. Which stations will train services from my constituency go to? We have been told that they might go to London Bridge, but not Victoria. Clearly, the majority of commuters would prefer them to go to both. When the SRA gets involved in the negotiations about franchises, will it consider that level of detail, which commuters understand and can use to judge improvements to the service?

The sudden switch from the new extended 20-year franchises that GoVia is negotiating to short extensions to existing franchises has introduced some confusion into the new franchising arrangements. Connex must be spitting, because it sought a three or four-year extension to its franchise a few years ago in the belief that that was the best way to guarantee significant improvements in investment and new rolling stock. It was told that that was not an option, and that the Government were going for the long, 20-year franchises. However, shortly after negotiations started with GoVia on the new extended franchise, that approach was no longer taken, and the Government were considering two or three-year extensions to existing franchises.

I want to give the Minister a decent length of time in which to respond, so I shall come to my final point, which is about the impact of Railtrack going into administration on the investment plans of GoVia and other train operating companies. The Minister ran out of time when I raised the subject at column 219WH in a debate on 30 October. Fortunately, he will have longer to respond today.

What assessment was made before Railtrack was put into administration of the impact on the investment plans of GoVia and the other train operating companies? What assessment has been made since? In response to my parliamentary question 9894, the Minister said:

"The recent Railtrack developments will not impact on the existing or new franchise"—[Official Report, 29 October 2001; Vol. 373. c. 479W.]

Why did he say that when Metro had reported on 26 October that GoVia had already suspended a £330 million upgrade of track and signalling on lines into Victoria because of uncertainty about the Railtrack plans, and when it had been reported in the Evening Standard's News and City section on 25 October that Connex South East had put

"a question mark over £900 million plans to alleviate overcrowding"?

Does he still maintain that there has been no impact, despite what Go Ahead stated in a letter to me on 12 November? It said:

"We require clarification from Government on infrastructure projects which impact on South Central to allow us to proceed".

As recently as yesterday, GoVia stated that uncertainty surrounding Railtrack and its future structure was not helping it to progress its work, especially on infrastructure improvements.

Handing over the franchise to GoVia was supposed to launch a renaissance of the railways. Instead, we appear to be slipping back into the dark ages. I hope that the Minister will confirm that lessons have been learned from the GoVia franchise, and that future franchise renewals will be a guarantee of improvements in service.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), resplendent in his new hairstyle—it seems to be catching, Miss Widdecombe—on securing the debate. I also thank him for giving me prior notice of some of the questions. It is a pleasure, Miss Widdecombe, to serve under your watchful eye. It is the first time that I have had that pleasure. I recall that you were once a candidate in the constituency that I now represent. Sadly, I was not a candidate there then, but had I been, we could have both lost together.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the days when I used to sit in this Chamber and say nothing, the tradition was that you would be addressed as Madam Deputy Speaker, rather than as Miss Widdecombe. If that has been changed, I should be grateful to know.

I am not a Deputy Speaker. I am afraid that I am plain Miss Widdecombe.

Thank you, Miss Widdecombe. Having also served as a Whip in this Chamber, I keep up to date on matters of House procedure. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Jim Dowd) is a stickler in such matters, but on this occasion I seem to have the edge on him.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington raised some important points and I shall endeavour to cover as many as I can, as always. He rather spoiled the beginning of the debate, sullying it with a bit of party politics. There is obviously some sensitivity about matters that have been raised in previous debates. We are delighted to hear that the Liberal Democrats' spending plans for transport are equal to the Government's. Perhaps at some future date, when there is more time, he will tell us how they could afford them.

The hon. Gentleman shows a keen interest in rail issues, and we have had an opportunity to debate some of them previously. I shall try today to cover some of those that we have perhaps not dealt with in as much detail as we should have done. The hon. Gentleman's constituency is served by South Central and Thameslink, and as he said, both those franchises are owned by GoVia.

Before I respond on the main issues, it will be helpful to provide an update on the operators' current service provision. As the South Central franchise was transferred from Connex to GoVia only on 26 August, it is still too early to make overall judgments on GoVia's performance. However, there is a driver shortage across the whole network. When the franchise was transferred there was a driver shortage as well as a shortage in depot fitters. Those staffing shortages have led South Central to make a number of cancellations to its services in recent weeks. It takes several months to provide full training for new drivers, and that should not be speeded up at the risk of compromising safety. However, I am informed that there is already an accelerated programme of driver recruitment and training, which I hope will secure drivers in excess of the current establishment by next spring.

The problem of staffing shortages was added to by a deal that was concluded by the previous incumbent, Connex Transport UK, for a 35-hour four-day week for drivers plus an additional four days leave per annum, which came into effect in September. I understand that South Central is seeking to buy back drivers' annual leave by agreement to help alleviate short-term difficulties. I hope that that is helpful in dealing with driver shortages.

As it was clear that a full service timetable could not be met, the Strategic Rail Authority, in discussion with South Central, the London Transport Users Committee and the rail passengers committee for southern England, agreed a revised timetable. That timetable mitigates the effects of unplanned cancellations on passengers by providing a timetable that can be delivered reliably to passengers so that they can plan their journeys accordingly. I would be the first to accept that that is hardly satisfactory, but at least there is now a degree of predictability in the services that was previously lacking. The revised timetable took effect from 12 November: it will apply beyond Christmas and may last until Easter next year. The Strategic Rail Authority will closely monitor South Central's progress towards the reintroduction of a full timetable. I am sure that that is good news for the hon. Gentleman's constituents. I expect every effort to be made to restore a full service as soon as possible.

The latest performance statistics published by the Strategic Rail Authority in July show that improvement also needs to be made in the performance of Thameslink services. The figures show that from 27 May to 23 June, 74 per cent. of Thameslink's trains throughout the day arrived on time, with 71.2 per cent. arriving on time during peak periods. Services are deemed punctual if they arrive at their destination within five minutes of the timetable.

The Connex South Central agreement was due to be transferred to GoVia in June. That was not possible as compliance with competition legislation had to be shown before the takeover could happen. The change of control was dependent on the decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the competition issues involved. As I said earlier, the handover eventually took place on 26 August. South Central Ltd will continue to run the franchise under the terms of the existing agreement until a new franchise agreement is concluded.

The new South Central franchise is a particular interest of the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington. Some issues surrounding it are also important to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West, who takes a great interest in these matters on behalf of his constituents and has written to me copiously on them recently, which I appreciate.

Negotiations between the Strategic Rail Authority and GoVia are continuing towards a new 20-year franchise agreement. There is no fixed timetable for completing those negotiations, but we have made it clear that we want to see more benefits for passengers secured in the near future, so there is every incentive for early resolution.

As I said during the debate secured by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) on 31 October, a series of major enhancements are planned over the term of the new franchise to boost capacity and improve service frequency and comfort. It is also worth reminding the House that total investment of £1.5 billion is planned by GoVia to improve South Central services. It is too early to say when those new agreements will be made.

I note from the debate secured by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington referred to a delay to his journey caused by a slam-door stopping train. There was not time to cover that issue on that occasion. The South Central franchise agreement included a commitment by Connex to replace mark 1 rolling stock by 1 January 2005 as required by Health and Safety Executive regulations. On 26 August, that commitment was passed to GoVia. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that GoVia has subsequently ordered the first 240 new vehicles to replace slam-door mark 1 stock. The new vehicles are due to start entering into service on its South Central franchise next year.

The current Thameslink franchise is not due to run out until April 2004. On 14 September last year, the Strategic Rail Authority announced the eight companies that had successfully met their pre-qualification criteria to allow them to compete for the new Thameslink franchise. Since then, the Secretary of State has announced his new policy statement on franchising, which the hon. Gentleman touched on.

The hon. Gentleman asked what lessons the Government had learned from the franchising process. He may be aware that the Secretary of State has asked the Strategic Rail Authority to concentrate on negotiating improvements for passengers under existing franchises, or to negotiate short two-year extensions, and to make the early replacement of franchises the exception rather than the rule.

That new approach focuses on the key 10-year plan targets, which both parties can afford, and aims to deliver earlier passenger benefits such as improved performance and better rolling stock and passenger facilities. We do not rule out the early replacement of the shorter seven-year franchises, but our approach will be adopted only if benefits cannot be obtained in other ways.

The Strategic Rail Authority has reviewed its franchise replacement programme, and is seeking the Secretary of State's approval for a revised programme that will follow the draft directions and guidance and his policy statement on franchising.

The Strategic Rail Authority has been given the priority of reducing overcrowding and achieving better reliability on commuter services. That can be achieved by providing reliable, extra, new rolling stock, tougher performance targets, extra drivers, spare trains for emergency use and enhanced maintenance cover.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Railtrack administration. We have touched on those issues in debates in the other Chamber, but I am happy to reinforce them. The placing of Railtrack into railway administration by the High Court should not affect the Strategic Rail Authority's ability to conduct a franchise replacement programme. For some time now, we have envisaged that special purpose vehicles and other such innovative mechanisms could complement the more traditional approach to financing railway enhancement investment projects. In particular, we acknowledge that some projects cannot be undertaken by Railtrack alone because of the risks involved.

A financially robust successor to Railtrack plc will be important to ensure the delivery of replacement franchises. However, while the company is in administration, passenger safety and services will not be affected. We will ensure that the administrator has the funds necessary to maintain the full operation of the rail network.

Benefits such as improvements to rolling stock and to the resilience of train operating companies, which, in turn, will enable better performance, are independent of infrastructure network ownership. When major infrastructure improvements are necessary, the Strategic Rail Authority considers that long-term franchise replacement is not the only key delivery mechanism. The programme of long-term franchise replacement has made slower progress than hoped, largely because of Railtrack's inability to deal with infrastructure enhancements on the contractor model, by which it would provide initial capital and be remunerated through access charges after completion of the new asset.

That problem was recognised in the project endeavour agreement between the Government and Railtrack in April, under which Railtrack was to concentrate on operations, maintenance and renewals and co-operate with the Strategic Rail Authority and the Government in devising an alternative framework for the procurement of enhancements.

The method that the Strategic Rail Authority now envisages for enhancement projects is the special purpose vehicle—bespoke joint-venture companies. Those would have been largely separate from Railtrack plc, and we have confirmed that that separate approach will be pursued when the successor to Railtrack is established.

I hope that I have managed to cover the major concerns that were sensibly and rightly raised by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington on behalf of his constituents, many of which are shared by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West. We accept that a lot more needs to be done to improve the railway service across the whole network, not only in south London. I hope that hon. Members will agree that we are taking bold steps to ensure that the framework is in place to ensure that improvements happen. Our 10-year plan provides the investment, and the Strategic Rail Authority will shortly publish its strategic plan that sets out its priorities for enhancement to the network. The newly appointed chairman of the SRA, Richard Bowker, will bring fresh ideas to the industry and will play a key role in delivering a better, safer railway.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising those matters, and for giving me the opportunity to answer some of them in this debate.

I am grateful to have obtained a debate on the important subject of compensation for retired miners and, by implication, widows. The subject was raised in the House, and in Westminster Hall on 13 March when we last debated the matter at my request.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and Energy will be aware that the matter is on-going, but important. I welcome him to his comparatively new responsibilities, but as he comes from Ayrshire with all its mining influences, I am sure that he understands all the issues and how those of us in Lanarkshire feel. We recognise that he also has responsibilities for such matters in the United Kingdom.

Compensation for miners is of great concern to my constituents. I am grateful to my local branch of the Retired Miners Association, which meets frequently, and especially to the branch secretary, Eddie Hendry, and the chairman, Peter Downie, who ensure that I am kept fully informed on the matter and who invite me to meetings. At the last meeting on 26 October, I undertook to seek the debate and am pleased to have been able to obtain it so quickly.

I am also grateful to the National Union of Mineworkers in Scotland. The Minister will understand that my thoughts are with the union today when it struggles with the problem of Longannet. We trust that it can save as many jobs as possible in that difficult situation.

I sought the debate because, despite the progress made since we last discussed the matter in Westminster Hall, there are still great problems with regard to compensation, prioritisation and ensuring that if tests are necessary they are carried out with the maximum sensitivity. When decisions are taken, they should be implemented as speedily as possible.

I am aware of the backdrop to the issue of compensation for retired miners. There was inactivity and indolence for 18 years, and the new Labour Government took on the responsibility and accepted that there were problems. The Minister is aware of the Government's sensitivity in recognising the suffering, pain and hardship of people with lung disease, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema, the consequences of which we have both seen in our constituencies and elsewhere. The Minister is also aware of the suffering of those who have experienced the problems of vibration white finger.

We are debating again today the biggest industrial compensation scheme in history, perhaps in the world. Unfortunately, there are still many people who recognise the concept but feel that it simply has not yet applied to them in their homes and villages. In March this year, the estimated costs were £2.4 billion for the lung scheme and £2.1 billion for vibration white finger—£4.5 billion in total. The Minister will have the up-to-date figures, but I understand that the total has gone up to £5 billion. Of course, that money is welcome, but the concern is—as it has been since the scheme was announced—to ensure that compensation is delivered.

I am revisiting the debate that I was able to obtain on 13 March 2001 because there are outstanding issues in Scotland and in other important mining areas of the United Kingdom. When the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Peter Hain), replied to the previous debate, he acknowledged those problems. Concerns remain about implementation and administration to ensure that the compensation reaches the miners and the widows, many of whom have waited for far too long.

A few days after the then Minister replied to that debate, he was kind enough to come to Scotland and visit my constituency. He visited the Miners Institute of Auchengeich, which was appropriate because in 1959 Auchengeich experienced the ultimate sacrifice when 47 men were killed in a dreadful disaster. To many people, that remains the price of coal. I pay tribute to him and to all my colleagues who have held that post, including my hon. Friend who will reply to the debate today.

On his visit to Scotland, the then Minister met Lawrence Lumsden, the solicitor who advises the National Union of Mineworkers in Scotland, as well as retired miners and their families. That visit was very welcome, and Mr. Lumsden acknowledges that much progress has been made. Given Mr. Lumsden's standing on these issues—he is mentioned a good deal in the Library notes—I would like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to some of the points that he made in a paper that he provided me with only yesterday. I make these points for the record, as I am sure my hon. Friend will understand that, with the greatest respect to him and to his predecessors in that post, it is only fair that Mr. Lumsden's views are noted in this debate.

Mr. Lumsden said:

"In summary, the position is that despite undertakings made to the mining community that the speed of settlement of claims would increase, and payments made would increase significantly, progress has been disappointingly slow, with very few seriously disabled live men paid their full and final settlement amounts and no real progress made to date, in prioritising elderly widows' cases amongst the posthumous cohort of claims."

He went on to say that

"the Government must be just as disappointed at the rate of progress."

I am sure that my hon. Friend can give us more up-to-date figures.

The previous Minister, on a visit to Scotland on 16 March 2001, forecast that the rate of payment would increase dramatically over the following six months to the end of September, rising across the United Kingdom to a total of £360 million. The actual amount paid out to miners by the end of September was £210 million, which is about £150 million short of the forecast.

In Scotland, the forecast was for £26.1 million to be paid out by the end of September. The actual amount paid was £16.7 million. My hon. Friend will understand that we are keen to distribute the other £10 million to those in Scotland who qualify for it and who very much need it.

I am sure that my hon. Friend is too experienced to take this personally, but Mr. Lumsden states:

"The new minister announced recently that his target was for 3,000 of the most compelling cases to be the subject of full and final offers by the end of the year with a target of 50,000 full and final offers during 2002. It is to be hoped that these promises which echo similar commitments made by his predecessors, do come to fruition but it is regrettable that announcements of this kind have been made well in advance of tangible evidence that the elaborate machinery set up to compensate miners and their families for occupational respiratory disease, is capable of producing any significant number of settlement offers at this stage."

I accept that that is pessimistic and extremely worrying, but my hon. Friend will recognise that it is what many people think, not least in my own constituency. Although the situation has improved for many people since the spring, frustrations remain for those who are still looking forward to settlements, and have been for a long time.

At the meeting in Auchengeich on 26 October, I had a brief discussion with a man named Alex Anderson, who was 75 years old and had a 75 per cent. loss of lung function. He was a widower living with his son Brian. I have a poignant recollection of his comment to me: "Tom, by the time these payments are fully made, some of us won't be around." Sadly, he died the following week. Another constituent, Arthur Stewart, died last week in Muirhead. He was 69 and had a 40 per cent. loss of lung function. Again, the final settlement that people are desperate about had not been received.

I know that my hon. Friend agrees on the need to prioritise claims, and I welcome everything that he has said and done since taking up his post. However, it is because of our interest in prioritising claims that we are still calling for improved procedures, extra resources where necessary and more urgent payments to needy groups, including widows. Is the Minister satisfied that medical assessments are completed as quickly as they should be, and is he constantly reviewing Healthcall's performance?

My right hon. Friend, the then Minister, said in the debate on 13 March:

"We are trying to recruit, partly by advertising more widely, a large number of additional respiratory consultants because there is a national shortage."

He went on:

"I am bound by a court judgment, which has been both an opportunity and a frustration. We would not have started from this position. When the Labour Government of the 1970s granted compensation for pneumoconiosis, they were not constrained and straitjacketed, as they are now."—[Official Report, 13 March 2001; Vol. 365, c. 223.]

Has my hon. Friend the Minister obtained the views of the Scottish sub-group of the monitoring group on the progress of this and other matters? I am sure that he welcomes, as do I, the appointment to that monitoring group of our hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire). She replaces Eric Clarke, who did an absolutely first-class job. Has my hon. Friend had discussions with them about the input of IRISC Claims Management's Edinburgh office? I am sure that it would argue that older, sicker miners need to be dealt with first.

There is evidence that, because of the way in which respiratory tests work and because the process moves on to the second stage, the vast majority of offers have been made not to men with the most severe disabilities but to men suffering from lesser complaints. I cannot believe that it is fair for compensation of hundreds of pounds to be given precedence over compensation that runs to thousands of pounds and is obviously vital in cases of chronic bronchitis or emphysema.

I should like to ask a few quick technical questions. Will my hon. Friend comment on the implementation of schedule 10 as a calculating model? There is much concern in England and Wales about the many lawyers involved, but in Scotland there is only one. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) had an answer to that on the Floor of the House. It would be helpful if my hon. Friend could comment on that. Would he also ensure that up-to-date Compensation Recovery Unit certificates are on file when full and final offers are made? Will he afford appropriate authority to the Department's claim-handling contractors, IRISC Claims Management, to negotiate full and final settlement amounts with solicitors without referring back to the Department of Trade and Industry civil servants in London, sometimes on relatively minor matters?

I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend for what he is about to say, and by inviting him to visit my constituency where he will be made very welcome. He should tell it straight and let my constituents, the people of Scotland and the former miners of Britain know that he is on their side and is determined to ensure that this scheme works with the utmost urgency.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) for giving me this opportunity to update hon. Members on our progress on the compensation schemes for vibration white finger and respiratory disease. I shall deal with as many points as I can, and I shall write to him about those that I do not reach.

I am in no doubt of the importance and the emotive nature of this issue and the strength of feeling to which it gives rise in the mining communities. My right hon. Friend made an important point that should be reinforced: whatever the problems with administering the scheme and putting a system in place that will deal with claims more effectively, the Government have accepted the legal and moral obligation to meet all the claims of miners, former miners, and their widows and families. It took so long to reach that point, and there is an ever increasing sense of urgency. A large number of claims are being pressed, many of them relating to events that took place many years ago. If that responsibility had been accepted long ago, we would not be faced with such a compressed timetable, which is the source of many of our difficulties.

Although I have done a great deal to solve these problems since I became the Energy Minister, this is the first time that I have replied to a debate on the coal health issue. I welcome the opportunity, and should also like to reinforce the point that, with over 300,000 claims registered, this is the biggest personal injury scheme in the UK, and indeed in the world. It is absolutely enormous. More than 1,200 new claims continue to be received each week, so it is impossible to say when the final claims will be settled. Therefore, even the figures that my right hon. Friend quoted are speculative. No one can say that the final figure will be £4.5 billion or £6 billion, as is being predicted, because we do not have all the claims yet. It is important to emphasise that there is no cap in the scheme; each case will be judged on its merits and payment will be made in full. There is not a certain size of cake that must be divided between a finite number of claimants.

In letters to my hon. Friends that they pass to me, the feeling is often expressed—it has been encouraged in some quarters—that there is a clandestine benefit to the Government in delaying payment, because the claims will go away. I stress that none of the claims will go away. There is no Government vested interest in delaying settlement, because ultimately the Government will pay more if the ex-miner has died than they will if a claim is settled while the miner is still alive. It is in our interest to deal with claims as promptly and fairly as possible.

It is important to stress that we are not acting unilaterally. It is fair for my right hon. Friend to quote the views of solicitors, and it is fair for me to say that we cannot do anything without agreeing with solicitors. Structures were in place long before I was around for agreeing how to proceed through consensus with solicitors. The solicitors have to answer for the positions that they take in reaching that consensus. The Government cannot, with a stroke of the pen, make everything work more efficiently. Solicitors, rightly, represent their clients' interests, and they are cautious about any changes to or refinements of the scheme. They have to judge the likely impact on their clients.

The structure is working well, but it is worth bearing in mind the fact that, when solicitors complain about delay, at least part of the problem is due to the structure, which I am sure they would not sacrifice.

Why cannot the letter saying that the claim has been finalised be written to the claimant rather than to the solicitor? There are delays in solicitors' offices; solicitors get the cheque, which goes into their account where it might stay for a couple of months before the client knows that he has his final settlement.

My hon. Friend is right. At a recent meeting of the Welsh monitoring group, our hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) mentioned six cases in which there had been inordinate delays. In three of those cases, payment had been made, but it was lying in the solicitors' office. Such things happen, and I have discussed with solicitors ways in which they could deal more efficiently with large numbers of claims. Solicitors are paid; they do not act out of philanthropy, so there is no reason why they should not have people to answer the phones and to deal expeditiously with the business. I am willing to listen to criticisms of solicitors, but I must point out that we work with them in everything we do.

Another constraint on our ability to act unilaterally is the fact that we can act only within the terms of the judgment, which is complex. It insists that each case should be settled individually according to the particular circumstances of the individual ex-miner, which is in the interests of the claimant. Any talk about blanket payments is outwith the terms of the scheme, because it would disadvantage many claimants, as some would end up getting much more money than they would do if there were an across-the-board settlement.

My right hon. Friend referred to a constituent to whom he had spoken a week before he died. That is the ultimate tragedy, but it is in the nature of the scheme. The long delay between the men retiring from the pits and lodging claims means that many of them will be very old and very sick. Therefore, the challenge is to minimise the number of people who die before their claims are met. Given the chronology, that will sometimes happen, but our highest priority is to minimise the number of such cases.

I had a productive meeting recently with solicitors representing claimants. I also met mining union representatives, coalfield campaigners and the Department's contractors under the auspices of the ministerial monitoring groups. I went to coalfield areas, including Cumnock, where I met claimants and heard their views. Their overwhelming message, which I took on board, was that we need to do more to deliver the benefits of the scheme.

I thank the Minister for giving way. and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) on securing this important debate. The Minister met some former miners from Barnsley a fortnight ago to discuss the issue, and I thank him on their behalf. They really appreciated his attendance. MPs from the mining areas appreciate the enormous number of claims before the Minister and the problems that he faces. He is sincere in wanting to clear the claims as quickly as possible.

Will my hon. Friend say something about the bereavement awards, which are based entirely on paper evidence, such as the death certificate and the former miner's work record? Such claims should be dealt with in a much shorter time than they are at present; they should be on a fast track.

I agree with my hon. Friend in principle. A bereavement is a bereavement; I do not know why there should be any delay in confirming it. Part of my approach, on which we have made progress with the solicitors, is to try to stop the paper chase—the exchange of correspondence about work records.

Sometimes there are letters about what people were doing 30 or 40 years ago, which go into the finest points of detail, before an offer is made. Agreeing with the solicitors that their client will have the right to accept a full and final offer based on our information is one of the factors that will speed up the number of such offers.

I am aware that time is moving on and, as I said earlier, I shall write to my right hon. Friend and to hon. Members who raised matters that have not been dealt with in the debate. I want to correct the impression that nothing is happening, because a lot is happening and a lot of money is being paid out. In order to give hon. Members better information, as from today constituency breakdowns of payment figures will be available on the website.

I have today written to all hon. Members who are dealing with registered claims. For example, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis), £16.28 million has been paid to claimants for vibration white finger and £5.5 million to claimants for respiratory disease. Roughly £22 million has gone into that mining community, as of absolute right. I believe that the figures will ultimately be eight or 10 times that. That gives me no satisfaction, but it is important that people know that progress is being made and money is being paid. For the most obvious and natural reasons, people who do not receive money sometimes talk about it more loudly than those who do, but it is important that my hon. Friends have that information. In the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston, the problem is not of Barnsley proportions, but £500,000 has been paid out for vibration white finger and £358,000 for respiratory disease.

I never turn down an invitation to visit Coatbridge, although I have not received many.