I am fortunate indeed in having been able to secure this debate. I am pleased to have done so because asbestos sufferers are suffering great anxiety, and what is happening in the industry is of great concern to us all. Recent actions by insurance companies, asbestos manufacturers and, in particular, the courts give sufferers the impression that there is a concerted effort to avoid liability and responsibility to those suffering from an asbestos-related disease contracted in the course of their employment and, in most cases, through negligent exposure to asbestos dust.

I have three main points. First, I want to make the Chamber aware of the size of the problem and to emphasise that it is not only historical but very current. Secondly, I want to highlight the difficulty that many people encounter in trying to establish their eligibility for an award under Department for Work and Pensions procedures, and to suggest how that process might be made easier. Thirdly, I want to refer to recent events and, in particular, to draw the attention of the Chamber to the judgment made on 11 December in the Appeal Court. I want also to suggest a way forward.

At present, asbestos dust is responsible for more work-related deaths than any other single cause—a fact that is not always appreciated. The victims are not located in any single industry, but spread throughout UK industry, although it is fair to say that there are more sufferers in industries such as ship-building, construction and energy. Asbestos-related disease creates a chronic respiratory problem for sufferers, many of whom find that their mobility is severely restricted. The dust can also cause mesothelioma cancer, for which there is no cure, and it is associated with other types of cancer which, according to the Health and Safety Commission, are on the increase.

The latest statistics provided by the HSC make a new prediction that male deaths from mesothelioma cancer are likely to peak in about 2011. I say "new prediction" because earlier predictions were based on the work of Professor Peto, who predicted that the peak would come later. The HSC, working on current cases, considers that it will be a little earlier, but I emphasise that its figures relate to male deaths. Mesothelioma deaths in women are running at about a sixth of the rate for men, and the difference is due to exposure to asbestos.

There were 1,595 deaths from mesothelioma in 1999, the last year for which figures are available, and the HSC reckons that there are one or two cases of other asbestos-related cancers for every mesothelioma case. Working from the statistical information provided by the HSC, the GMB union considers that about 4,000 people die in the UK annually as a result of exposure to this fatal fibre, and the number is increasing.

The reason for the increase is that the peak of exposure was in the mid-1960s, when blue and brown asbestos were used widely. After the 1960s, exposure levels seemed to fall as workers became much more aware of the dangers. I would contend, however, that one of the major factors in reducing exposure to asbestos was the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. The Act and its associated regulations covered all workers, but the fact that it also created the opportunity to appoint workers safety representatives and set up safety committees meant that it put in place a mechanism to extend meaningful protection to workers in asbestos manufacturing.

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify for the Chamber the statistics that he quoted? I have figures from the Financial Times of 11 December which, reporting on the case to which he referred, says:

"The number of mesothelioma cases is not expected to peak until 2020. An estimated 10,000 people will die from the disease in that year—twice the number killed annually on the roads".

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has seen that information. How does it correspond with the information that he has?

I referred earlier to the new figures from the HSC, which relate to the year in which it expects male deaths to peak. I said that the prediction was new because the earlier work was done by Professor Peto, who believed that the peak would come later. That may be so—much of the work is based on estimates. The HSC bases its estimates on the current number of mesothelioma cases, which in 1999 was 1,595. The difference between the figure in the Financial Times and mine is merely due to the difference between the estimates from the two sources, Professor Peto and the HSC. We must bear it in mind that the HSC figures do not include female deaths.

Although blue and brown asbestos were banned in 1985, and white asbestos in 1999, it should not be assumed that there is no danger at present. In addition to its industrial use, asbestos has been used in more than 1 million public buildings, and I have seen reference to a figure of more than 1.2 million. From this year, the owners of buildings will have a duty to manage asbestos in their buildings, but workers will still be exposed to it. Electricians, plumbers, joiners and heating engineers are all likely to come into contact with asbestos and risk developing mesothelioma cancer. We know from medical evidence that mesothelioma can be caused not only by long exposure, but by intermittent exposure, to asbestos dust. The risk therefore is current, not merely historical.

Claiming benefit for asbestos-related disease or mesothelioma cancer can be a trial. I dealt with such a case about two and a half years ago, and I still represent people in medical appeal tribunals on Fridays, although not every Friday and not as often as I used to. The case to which I referred is that of Ted Dudley, deceased. After he was diagnosed as having mesothelioma cancer, we still had to prove to the tribunal that he had worked in an industry where he was exposed to asbestos. We had to do months of work conclusively to prove to the tribunal with engineers' reports that he had been exposed to asbestos while working as a miner. After that, he had to prove to the satisfaction of the Benefits Agency doctor that he was suffering from mesothelioma, despite the fact that he had been diagnosed as such by his own consultant.

The Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association, to which I pay tribute, has long contended that only a small proportion of people suffering from an asbestos-related disease are in receipt of an award. It will produce statistics in a forthcoming pamphlet which clearly show that. For example, it will show that while it is accepted by insurers in the United Kingdom that 80 to 90 per cent. of mesotheliomas are caused by exposure to asbestos, the number of people receiving industrial disablement benefit does not exceed 38 per cent. Moreover, the OEDA believes that for lung cancer that has been caused by exposure to asbestos, fewer than 3 per cent. of people who could reasonably be expected to receive benefit do so.

In mesothelioma cases and asbestos-related lung cancers, the current dual diagnosis procedure should be ended. Even if a man is diagnosed by the consultant treating him as suffering from the disease, he still has to go to the Benefits Agency doctors for confirmation of his condition before benefit is paid, which can take up to six or seven weeks. That time can be ill-afforded because mesothelioma victims generally have a short lifespan. A way forward would be to end dual diagnosis and use the treating consultant's report as the basis for the disablement assessment and awarding disablement benefit. Benefit for mesothelioma victims should be awarded at 100 per cent. because of their short lifespan.

As if being diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease were not sufficiently traumatic, developments in the insurance world and asbestos companies have thrown into question the likelihood of victims being able to claim compensation for that terrible disease. Last October, Chester Street became insolvent and Iron Trades was sold off, which left hundreds of pre-1972 cases in limbo. My hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) raised the issue in an Adjournment debate and I shall not go over the ground that he covered. After a great deal of work by my hon. Friends, a number of whom are in the Chamber today, and the Treasury, to which I pay tribute, a scheme was worked out with the insurance industry that covered the pre-1972 cases left by the Chester Street debacle. I understand that under the scheme, the pre-1972 cases, which were a big worry, are receiving 90 per cent. of the full value of their claims.

I very much understand the disappointment of claimants who are not receiving the full worth of their claims. I had hoped that in the Chester Street case the resources apportioned by the administrator would have been added to the 90 per cent., taking the figure nearer to 100 per cent. compensation for victims, but that does not appear to be the case. Lawyers tell me that many people who suffered as a result of the Chester Street collapse have not yet received a pay-out under the scheme; the Minister may be able to check that. From 30 November last year, the Financial Services Authority established another compensation scheme to replace the previous insurance board protection scheme.

The situation is not the fault of the claimants, who are double victims. First, they were negligently exposed to asbestos by their employers and, secondly, they were let down by the failure of insurance companies, particularly in the Chester Street case, but also in the Turner and Newall case, by the route taken by the parent company, Federal Mogul, to escape liability. The next devastating blow for claimants came when Federal Mogul filed for insolvency in the USA. My hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) and for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) gave the House details of that case only last week, so I need not go over them, except to say that there is a document on the web that clearly points out that Turner and Newall and Federal Mogul have taken the insolvency route to escape their responsibility to asbestos victims and their families. The Government must consider that and what route to take to address the issue seriously.

One concern of the victims of Turner and Newall—as my hon. Friend said, they are victims because of the recklessness of asbestos companies in their heyday—is that the Federal Mogul operation not only protects the company in the United States, but may also formally protect the assets of Turner and Newall in the UK within the Federal Mogul empire, so that they will not be available for UK victims of asbestosis and mesothelioma.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. There is a real difficulty. As I understand it, Turner and Newall insured its own risks. In addition, its assets are now owned by Federal Mogul, an American company. Even if we can bottom the situation, there is a question about whether Turner and Newall would come under the remit of the FSA compensation scheme, so there is a genuine worry. I understand that the Treasury is working to try to bottom the issue, but it is certainly a great concern. If the victims do not fall under the FSA scheme, the Government and the insurance industry must consider how to address their situation. I shall come to that later.

The hammer blow for sufferers of asbestos-related disease was delivered in the Court of Appeal on 11 December 2001 as a result of the Fairchild case. The Court of Appeal stated that if two defendants equally exposed a claimant to asbestos, the "guilty" fibres could not be identified, so both defendants escaped liability. The judgment specifically says:

"if there has been more than one employment involving asbestos exposure there is no means of determining from which employment was derived the fibre or fibres which brought about the malignant transformation".

That decision effectively overturned the apportionment principle that has existed in the courts in such cases for at least 25 years. Usually, defendants would be joined and liability apportioned according to the time that the person had worked with each employer.

Does not that judgment make it imperative that the Government introduce a national policy of compensation for asbestos workers? In most instances, particularly in the building industry, where people may have worked in 30 locations for a dozen employers, it is impossible to prove the source of the disease, and such people have nowhere to go in law. They stand no chance of getting compensation unless a national compensation scheme is put together by national Government.

I agree with the last point. The court decision was a scandal. Using a brief from a causation expert, I hope to demonstrate that the court got it wrong. The difficulty is that leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused. The decision means that thousands of victims of the fatal disease mesothelioma have been deprived of compensation. The decision was first made in the High Court and the case then went to the Court of Appeal, so asbestos victims have been in limbo for nearly two years. That decision was wrong.

In support of the case made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), the judgment on fibres is the equivalent of saying that if someone is killed by two bullets, that person is responsible or is not really dead. The courts and the companies seem to be mocking the victims. People who have already won justice in the courts cannot get the compensation that they have been awarded because of corporate gamesmanship by companies that say that they are going into bankruptcy when they are trading and making millions of pounds. We cannot wait for 10 years of extended court proceedings. We need concerted, joined-up, co-ordinated Government help to break through the proceedings, rather than allowing them to drag through the courts for ever.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's comments.

I have a brief provided by a causation expert, Mr. Alan Care, of the chemical poisoning department of Russell Jones & Walker. It refers to the court decision and how it dealt with the medical evidence. Mr. Care states:

"The established way in which to deal with causation has already been decided by the world's medical profession in any disease case. It is the Bradford Hill criteria and the twin concept of dose significantly increasing the risk of developing any disease. For causation to be established the following must apply—

• Strength of association;
• Temporal sequence;
• Biological gradient/plausibility (and a dose-response gradient);
• Specificity;
• Coherence with biological backgrounds and previous knowledge;
• Experimental evidence."

Mr. Care continues:

"All of these criteria are met in the case of asbestos induced mesothelioma and this has been accepted for many years. By the gold standard of the Bradford Hill criteria for 'cause' or aetiology for all disease and illness is defined. Asbestos exposure at work caused mesothelioma; of that there is no doubt."

The brief adds:

"The Court of Appeal has made a fatal error and has effectively usurped the established medical and scientific community approach as to cause and causation. The Court of Appeal has asked the question that the medical profession cannot answer—'which fibre?'. It is precisely because medical science cannot answer such a question that Bradford Hill is the gold standard. The Court of Appeal should have kept to the law and not muddied its decision by wrongly questioning the accepted basis of causation by seeking to identify the 'guilty fibre(s)'. This is simply not possible."

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is just another part of the saga? Previously, the argument was that white asbestos was good enough to eat, and that it was blue asbestos that caused all the problems. That argument has had to be rejected, so the credibility of the medical and scientific establishment in the matter is akin to its credibility in the BSE tragedy.

I agree. There is no doubt that there were people who believed that white asbestos could have been spread on cornflakes and eaten for breakfast. It was only the studies carried out in France and later by the Health and Safety Executive that identified white asbestos as a carcinogen. It may be recalled that as a result of the information gained by the French authorities, asbestos was banned in France. Following the ban, the Canadian producers took them to the World Trade Organisation. The WTO tribunal upheld the right of France to ban white asbestos because it was shown to be a carcinogen.

Has the hon. Gentleman seen the Library brief on the case to which he referred? It might interest him. It states:

"The judges at the Court of Appeal admitted that their decision amounted to 'a major injustice crying out to be righted' by the government or by the insurance industry, but refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords."

That request was made on 21 December 2001. Will he join me in hoping that their lordships expedite their decision on whether there should be an appeal, and that when the appeal is heard, it will be heard quickly?

The lawyers will petition the House of Lords, and if the House of Lords decides to hear the case, it could be some considerable time before the case is heard. Meanwhile, the victims wait for justice. We must ensure that the case is heard speedily or that another route is taken.

I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that there may well be another route: a scheme devised by the insurance industry to pay compensation at the levels that the court has been determining, but possibly through some sort of no-fault liability arrangement. I do not expect an answer this morning, but I ask him to consider that proposal, discuss it with colleagues and determine whether the Government could work with the insurance industry to create such a scheme.

If that cannot be done, we need the House of Lords to consider the case, and speedily, but it must be recognised that the House of Lords may well go the way of the Court of Appeal. In that event, the issue of the victims would still have to be addressed. We would require an insurance industry-initiated scheme to be introduced speedily to pay compensation equivalent to that awarded by the courts in similar cases.

I ask the Minister to give consideration to those two courses of action: proceeding speedily to the House of Lords, or discussing with the insurance industry the implementation of an appropriate scheme to compensate the victims quickly.

There was also some argument in the Fairchild hearing that the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 might enable claimants to obtain compensation. Again, I doubted whether that could happen when I first heard about it. I have received an opinion from APIL, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which clearly states its view that the regulation in question would not apply to Fairchild and others in his position. A barrister member of APIL has said that claimants and their families recently caught by the Court of Appeal's decision on Fairchild have no claim under the 1979 Act, which, apparently, serves as a safety net for claimants with neither a defendant nor insurance. In the Fairchild case, there was a defendant and insurance, but no liability, so the case falls outside the Act's safety net. It may well be, therefore, that the route considered by judges in the Court of Appeal is not a way of dealing with such cases. Will the Minister consider that issue when he consults his colleagues on the best way of dealing with compensation in these cases?

My hon. Friend makes an important point, but does he agree that even if a route were available through the current workers' compensation scheme, the compensation would be a matter only of thousands of pounds? With proper justice, such compensation may amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds, so the scheme is not adequate in its own right.

I agree completely. The scheme pays small amounts that are linked to weekly payments through the award system of the Department for Work and Pensions. The compensation is nothing like that paid in the courts when negligence is established. I believe that people were negligently exposed in all the cases. If there is to be a scheme, or if the pneumoconiosis compensation scheme is to be the route through which compensation is obtained, it must be significantly enhanced and pay lump sums equivalent to those decided previously in the courts. I urge the Minister, when considering any scheme, to remember that the lump sums, or even periodic payments, must be equivalent to the compensation that people are generally paid in the courts.

The hon. Gentleman is developing his argument well, but there is an unknown factor: the countless tens of thousands of people who cannot prove the origin of their asbestos-related illness. Many such people will not have recourse to the law as they have no such proof, so they will get nothing more than inadequate sums. One of my constituents gets £22.58 a week in industrial benefits at the age of 62, for an illness that is going to kill him and is undoubtedly a result of his working career. What should happen to people who cannot prove where they contracted their illness, are not covered by any sort of insurance and cannot obtain legal redress?

That is an important point. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why the pneumoconiosis workers' compensation scheme came into being in 1979. The scheme was introduced to provide a means of obtaining compensation when the responsible company had disappeared and the insurance company could not be traced. However, only pitiable sums are payable under the scheme, which needs to be considered in its entirety with a view to enhancing the payments, which are very small.

I began by saying that much is happening that gives asbestos sufferers the view that a concerted effort is being made to deprive them of their compensation. I want to finish my speech by referring to an article that appeared on 13 December in Post Magazine, which is produced for the insurance industry. The article states:

"Employers liability insurers could escape millions of pounds of disease-related claims in the wake of this week's landmark Court of Appeal ruling, which will leave hundreds of mesothelioma claimants without compensation."

The article quotes Chris Phillips, head of insurance litigation at Halliwell Landau, which represents one of the defendants, as saying:

"We believe the logic in Fairchild may be applicable to any claim where a single act causes damage including cancer and asthma—and this is the line of inquiry being taken actively and considered by the same team of solicitors and counsel."

That shows clearly that some lawyers in the insurance industry are working not to seek justice for their defendants, but to find a route around the liabilities and responsibilities that the industry has in respect of its asbestos victims. That is a scandal.

The Fairchild case must be put in its historical context, given the scandalous way in which millions of workers in the 1950s and 1960s were exposed to asbestos in UK industry, despite the fact that the dangers were known in the 1930s, when the first legislation was introduced, and even before that. Now a Court of Appeal decision has legally deprived sufferers of the rightful route to compensation. That decision is wrong and shameful. We cannot allow it to stand and the Government must act to put in place a route for compensation for asbestos victims.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) has campaigned on these matters for many years and it is to his great credit that he has secured this debate. Having sat in the ministerial chair, I must say that I have never seen such a debate so well attended. That tells me that this matter should be given Government time and be properly debated on the Floor of the House, where it can be fully aired. We are discussing one of the most important and lethal legacies of the 20th century, and it will have to be dealt with in the 21st century. I have recently spoken in the House on these matters, so I shall not detain hon. Members, as I know that others wish to contribute and speak for their constituencies.

I represent a community in Armley, Leeds, where asbestos dust was blown out of the J. W. Roberts factory and on to the neighbouring streets. People who lived in the neighbourhood and played in the dust years later have contracted mesothelioma and died from it. It took us 10 years to fight the owner of the factory, Turner and Newall, which denied that it owned the company or had any records or documents, even though we unearthed 27,000 documents about what was happening. We won the 1995 case of Margereson and Hancock, who courageously took on the company and won a verdict saying that it was responsible for polluting them and their neighbourhood. It was a groundbreaking case. At the time, I thought that, as a Member of Parliament, I could then leave it to lawyers to do the decent thing, put the other cases forward, get the medical evidence, take them to the courts and get the compensation. Some 15 or 16 people were paid compensation, but others are in train and waiting to go through the process. Some hundreds of people are waiting. Some cases remain to be filed, while some people are waiting for medical evidence.

What happened next? From being a national company in Britain, Turner and Newall became part of a mega, multinational company—Federal Mogul in the United States of America—which started to play global corporate games and decided that it could wrap all the claims together, bury those of Armley and hold off liabilities. Consequently, even those who had won their case in court found that the cheque from the company bounced. Solicitors' letters stated that the company had been put into administration, was filing for bankruptcy and therefore did not need to respond. That process of administration could take years.

It has been reported that the company is trying to sort out the claims, but was Turner and Newall properly insured from the outset? From 1977, the board minutes show that there were doubts about its insurance. Who were the insurers? Nobody knows. When the case was won in 1995, Sir Colin Hope, the chairman of the company, said that he was confident that there was money in the kitty to pay the claims. He was confident that claims of up to £1 billion would be covered and that the victims of Armley would get the money. Where is it? Where is the money for the victims? Is it locked in administration? Why cannot we know? Why are we told that Turner and Newall's insurance cover is commercially confidential? Victims' lawyers cannot know about it.

If the company is not properly insured, it should be prosecuted. The Department of Trade and Industry should have prosecuted it in the past for illegal trading. If it is properly insured, why cannot the insurance money be made available to victims now, outside the administration process?

Games are being played in the world of insurance. We are in murky waters when we consider Turner and Newall's insurance cover. It now claims to be self-insured. I have a copy of the "General Report and Background to the Proposals of the Joint Administrators". The company went to the administrators and asked, "Please make us bankrupt", even though it is trading, getting millions of contracts every week and making millions of pounds. The report to the administrator states:

"In 1996, T&N purchased a £500 million layer of insurance, through the UK Group Company called Curzon Insurance Limited"—

it trades from Guernsey rather than the rest of the United Kingdom—

"which itself reinsured the cover through three major insurance companies. This will be triggered should the aggregate costs of claims made or brought after 1 July 1996 exceed £690 million. Management now believes that the aggregate cost of claims made or brought after 1 July 1996 will exceed the trigger point. Based on this assessment, the FM Group recorded an insurance recoverable asset under the T&N policy of US$577 million in the fourth quarter of 2000."

The report continues:

"One of the reinsurers, European International Insurance Company Limited (which is an affiliate of Swiss Re), issued proceedings on 22 November 2001 in the High Court to seek a declaration that it was entitled to avoid the reinsurance agreement."

The company is trying every trick in the book to avoid its liabilities.

We need a co-ordinated, joined-up Government response that involves the Treasury as well as the Department of Trade and Industry because the victims cannot wait for 10 years of litigation. The Armley victims have won court cases that prove the company's negligence. They are not covered by the workers' occupational schemes because they did not work in the company. The employers' liability schemes would not therefore cover them. We need a separate package for them. The proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone are along exactly the right lines and further proposals could tackle matters in the interim. Victims cannot wait for years for the determination of the court cases.

The companies are engaged in corporate gamesmanship on a massive scale to evade their liabilities. In other contexts, we have discussed corporate manslaughter. We are currently considering a classic example. We are not discussing hired hands in the 19th century; people's lives have been taken and the companies walk away and are not held to account. That is wrong and scandalous, and the Government must tackle it.

Time is not on our side, and I therefore make a plea for brevity so that as many hon. Members as possible can speak.

I shall try to be brief. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) and for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) on their speeches. I want to pick up on the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West that the Government must act more co-operatively. Sometimes there almost seems to be a conspiracy to hit the people who have suffered from such an appalling disease. Everyone appears to be lining up to beat them. They come into contact with the Government through the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Health, social security and the legal system. They receive a good service from none of them. The Government must therefore be much more proactive.

We were delighted when the Government produced a response in early May to the Chester Street debacle. However, if it had not been for a handful of Members of Parliament and for asbestos campaigners, thousands of people would have suffered from what is called the genius of capitalism, whereby companies walk away from their responsibilities and profits remain high.

We met the Financial Services Authority when we were campaigning for improvements. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone agrees that it was a bemusing experience. The FSA did not appear to understand that the matter had anything to do with it. We could not understand why the FSA had approved the Chester Street restructuring when it was obvious that the company was headed for oblivion. The FSA interpreted its duties as protecting the companies and their shareholders, not the customers and the small people who were the victims of the action. That view persists.

We subsequently met the liquidators who were checking the way in which the company had been run. Again, that was a disturbing experience because their statutory duty appeared simply to be to ascertain whether the board had taken proper advice, even it was bad, and protected shareholders' interests. They did not understand that there was something appallingly wrong in a chief executive taking more than £1 million from a failing company and thousands losing the insurance that they believed that they had. They did not appear to have a duty to consider that.

I am worried about the new scheme that the FSA introduced at the beginning of December because hardly anyone knows about it. I receive many letters from colleagues who are asking about its details. The FSA introduced the scheme without consulting Members of Parliament who campaigned on the issue, asbestos groups or victims. Document 108 sets out the scheme, but I look around the room and see people who have actively campaigned on the matter and do not know about it.

I shall not say much about the Fairchild judgment because it has been covered admirably, but it is a disaster. The law made itself an ass in that case. Everyone knows what constitutes justice. People have been poisoned by employers who knew about the risks for years. If those employers will not face up to their responsibilities, the Government must ensure that they do. I have lost faith in the courts. The Government must have a law ready to do justice to the victims.

Why will not the Government or the FSA tell us what they are doing about Federal Mogul and Turner and Newall? This company has for years flagged up the fact that it is a chancer. Clydebank suffered under a Turner and Newall company for years. It eventually went and, as always under the genius of capitalism, the public had to pick up the cost. It cost between £10 million and £12 million to make the site safe, and Turner and Newall did not pay a penny. We have to ask the Government what they are doing about this. I do not want letters from the Minister saying that they are monitoring the situation. I know what the word "monitoring" means. It means that they are lying back and hoping that nothing comes to their attention. I want something active done about Turner and Newall.

I want to raise an issue that has not been raised so far, and I shall refer here to British Shipbuilders. A press release from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 10 May 2001 contained the very welcome news that the uncertainty of asbestos sufferers would soon be over, due to a partnership between the Government and the insurance industry. It stated:

"The Government will itself fund the compensation owed to former employees of public sectors for whom it is liable."

That includes British Shipbuilders.

I am told—if necessary I could provide names—that British Shipbuilders is now not paying up in settled cases. In other words, it is becoming a debtor. Far from co-operating, it is refusing to pay what it has agreed to pay in judgments. Furthermore, in cases in which it had previously agreed liability, it is now withdrawing admissions of responsibility. Just what is going on? Will the Minister give me an undertaking that he will find out, and apply the necessary pressure on British Shipbuilders to act decently and honour the Chief Secretary's promise?

In several of these instances, there are implications for Government expenditure if the insurance industry and the courts do not play the game. We will have to pick up the bill. We are in danger of losing the much-deserved credit that we gained for the Government's response to the Chester Street case if we do not get these other matters right. People in my constituency ask me all the time about how the new scheme is being administered, about Turner and Newall, and about British Shipbuilders.

I would also like the Government to launch an inquiry—and to provide us with the resulting information—into whether payments have dried up, as is stated in complaints that I am receiving. That applies whether the payments were set up under the old Policyholders Protection Board or under the new arrangements. Will the Minister produce some statistics on that? What has been happening to the paying out of compensation over the last few months? Will the Minister also, through Government channels, please tell the FSA that it is simply failing to communicate to the people we represent about how it is responding to their needs. I am delighted that we have had this debate today; I wish that it could have been much longer. The turnout in the Chamber proves how necessary it has been.

I congratulate my colleague on securing this important debate; I also welcome the opportunity briefly to highlight a couple of issues.

First and foremost, I want to highlight the severity of asbestos-related diseases in the country and, more specifically, on Tyneside. I was also going to expose the injustice of the Fairchild judgment, but that has already been well covered today. I shall mention the case of a constituent of mine later. I do not need to explain the horrors of asbestos-related disease, because hon. Members know about that only too well from their constituents, whether through their mailbags or from their neighbours.

I do, however, want to reveal the extent of the problem. It is known that there are more than 50,000 sufferers nationally. Locally, on Tyneside, there are more than 10,000. Over the past four years, one person has died of asbestos-related disease every three days on Tyneside. This will only get worse as we come to terms with our industrial past, and with the hard life that people in shipyards, ship repair and shipbuilding—as well as building workers—have endured over the years. They never had it easy. They endured hard conditions involving night shifts, work in dock bottoms and low wages. When those people make claims, all sorts of blocks are put in their way by evasive employers such as Turner and Newall, and evasive insurance companies such as Chester Street. The recent judgment in the Fairchild case only adds insult to injury.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the effect of the Fairchild judgment in the north-east has been to stop many former shipyard workers living in Jarrow and Durham, for example, getting any access to justice? The nature of the industry was that people moved around from one employer to another, and Fairchild has, in one fell swoop, stopped access to justice for thousands of former workers in heavy engineering and shipbuilding in the north-east.

That is an excellent point. The Fairchild judgment is unfair; it denies justice to people with mesothelioma—the cancer caused by asbestos. Workers in the shipyards and in the building industry often work for a number of different employers, so how on earth can they prove where a single fibre came from?

I want to highlight the problem by mentioning the case of a constituent of mine, Mr. William Cuskin. He worked as a painter in the shipyards for many years. He worked for a number of companies and came into contact with asbestos on a daily basis. He contracted mesothelioma and, sadly, died in August last year. He contacted me earlier last year, having sought legal advice at the time, and I am dealing with his case now. He died an agonising death, but because of the Fairchild judgment, no compensation will be paid, which is absolutely disgraceful. That is the travesty of justice that people face today. That is the main point that I wanted to raise and, as many hon. Members want to speak, I thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Stevenson.

I shall be brief. I endorse the remarks made by all the previous speakers. The history of suffering in the asbestos industry has been one of companies behaving recklessly. Their consideration for their moral obligations has been so low that they deserve condemnation for their actions past and present. That must be placed on record because they are corporate fat cats who, living successfully themselves, have been quite prepared to dismiss with absolute contempt the needs of some of the most victimised people in society. We have heard this morning how large the scale of asbestos-related suffering is.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) raised many issues about the way in which Turner and Newall is using legal devices to avoid obligation. The Government must satisfy themselves as to whether the company was legally insured under the national employers obligation scheme. That is central to the argument, because if it was not, the company should have been prosecuted for that failure, and if it was, that insurance should now kick in.

There are huge questions about the irresponsibility of the insurance industry. Insurance, by its nature, is about the taking on of risk, and about making payments when that risk goes wrong. The insurers try to ensure that they take the money at the front end, but attempt to deny liability in all circumstances. That is a disgrace, because, by definition, we are not talking about a group of claimants who can sit and wait for government processes, court processes and administrative and bureaucratic systems to work. People do not have that time. The lifespan of someone diagnosed with mesothelioma is about 19 months.

If they are lucky.

Indeed. That means that all those people with the disease who are around at the moment will be dead before their claims are settled, unless central Government say to the insurers, "You have to do something very quickly. To do otherwise flies in the face of morality." If the Government would not let them even contemplate that flight from responsibility, they would be forced to act.

I make an appeal to the Minister: please can we have joined-up government? Will Ministers from the relevant Departments get together, so that we do not find ourselves here in a year's time saying that we are monitoring progress? We should be here in a year's time saying to the Minister and his colleagues, "Thank you very much for moving this matter forward on behalf of those people in society who deserve a lot better from those who have betrayed them."

I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on having had the good fortune to be able to introduce the debate and, more important, on the consistency that he has shown in fighting this cause and bringing it to the House's attention on numerous occasions. He has displayed continued determination over getting justice for so many people.

The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) referred to corporate manslaughter and I agree with him entirely. I would go further and say that there has been corporate fraud. The directors of those companies are nothing short of corporate spivs, as they have given people no support, no protection under the law and little or no opportunity to get decent compensation, which is a fundamental issue because the private sector is not the only party involved and the Government are not blameless. They are not the first to admit liability. Employees who were able to track their work record back have been denied justice and service personnel have been denied justice and told that they must claim.

The statistics are interesting. In the year up to 1998, 11,400 people with asbestos-related illnesses received industrial benefit and 12,900 claimed benefit in 1995. There is a genuine issue here: those who can claim find it difficult to get benefit because of dual diagnosis. They have to go through two hoops, as they have to get their own doctor and a consultant to agree and then convince the Benefits Agency that they have a claim to make. If they are successful, the maximum they are entitled to if they are 100 per cent. disabled because of asbestos-related illness is £108 a week. That may be topped up by other benefits, but only to a maximum of £237 a week.

I am speaking on behalf of a number of my Liberal Democrat colleagues today, and, as is the case for many Members, hardly a day goes by in my constituency without a coroner's court addressing a death from asbestos-related illness. That is not unique to Portsmouth, although the situation is worse in the Portsmouth area because of the high concentration of asbestos in ships and the fact that many of the 40,000 people employed in Her Majesty's dockyard 50 years ago worked with asbestos each day.

I shall give two examples of the difficulties. Mr. Winnicott of Eastney in Portsmouth worked in the building industry for 40 years. He recognised that his asbestos-related cancer was caused by working on the docks in Southampton—the very city that the Minister represents. His only benefit is £22.58 in industrial benefit. He has been to several solicitors, none of whom want to take his case on because of the difficulty of the burden of proof.

The example of Mr. Leigh Tongue shows how such a situation can arise so quickly. Mr. Tongue was a pretty formidable character who led a good life. Early in 2000, just before his death, but before he knew he was ill, he wrote to his colleagues to say that he had a great job, a lovely home, a wife he loved and who loved him and two beautiful children. He added, "Life does not get much better than this." On 29 November 2000, he was diagnosed as having cancer through asbestos. He died on 1 March 2001. He was 44. He had run in the Portsmouth command field gun crew twice and he was a physical training instructor in the Royal Navy. He had a great career in civilian life in front of him, having left the Navy.

I took the case up and the Minister wrote to me to say that Mr. Tongue's wife had redress through the benefits system. The benefits system could never replace what she lost and it is hopelessly misplaced as a solution in respect of compensation for that man's two young children. He was denied at least 20 years of working life and his family have been denied his presence for ever, yet the Government suggest that the benefits system can cope with compensation.

I want a system introduced similar to that for the mining industry. I recently asked questions about miners' compensation. On average, it takes 16 months to process a miner's claim from start to finish under the Government's scheme. In November 2001, they processed 7,000 claims totalling £47 million. The number of claims stands at 173,600; a total of 58,000 have been settled and £238 million has been paid out. There are 133,000 vibration white finger claims and £438 million is being paid out.

I want the same justice to be given to those with asbestos-related illnesses. Many suffer an agonising death and every Member in the Chamber will have had first-hand contact with constituents who went through that. I am dealing with more than 200 cases and 30 have been submitted to Ministers for them to use as a test for introducing a Government-related scheme. All 30 involve Government employment in one form or another. We may criticise private companies, but we are not blameless and it is a national disgrace that this moral obligation has not been taken up sooner.

I am delighted that so many Members are here to have their say. Many people fought their claim, but were denied justice. They went to the grave knowing that their families would have to continue the battle or give up. That simply is not right. We are short of time, but I am pleased to have played a part in the debate. However, I hope that we are doing more than playing a part. The Minister must take back the strong message that the majority of the House of Commons demands action to deal with this issue in the private and Government sectors.

Thank you for allowing me to catch your eye, Mr. Stevenson. I shall be brief in order to give the Minister time to respond to the widespread concerns expressed in the Chamber. I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the debate, and a number of Labour Members and my Liberal colleague, the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), on ably expressing the anxieties over this serious issue.

There were 1,595 new cases of asbestos-related disease in 1999 and 678 in 2000. Sadly, those figures are likely to represent a rising trend. The Health and Safety Commission 1993–94 annual report confirmed the continuing upward trend in deaths from asbestos-related diseases in Britain and predicted that the number of such deaths will probably increase until 2010 and possibly 2025. That is a serious problem and it will get worse.

Much has been made of the way in which Chester Insurance Holdings Ltd. was able to become insolvent and avoid its liabilities. The Government should look into that very carefully. The Financial Services Authority needs to take much tougher action in this respect. Without rehearsing the whole history of how the company went into insolvency, it is worth remembering that it was taken over by an American company whose rules on chapter 11 corporate insolvency are considerably different. It has used those rules deliberately to avoid its liabilities. Constituents of the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone and others are therefore unlikely to receive the insurance cover to which they are entitled. That is a disgrace, and the Minister should say something about it when he winds up.

I should like the Minister to comment on the various insurance schemes that are available, and on how they are working. We know that the insurance industry—through the Policyholders Protection Board—

"will ensure that private sector employer companies, or, where that employer no longer exists or is insolvent, the affected individuals, receive 100 per cent. of compensation awarded in respect of injuries incurred after 1972 (1975 in NI)(up to the statutory limit of £2 million per claim).

For injuries sustained prior to 1972 … employees whose private sector employer no longer exists or is insolvent, will receive payment of 90 per cent. of the compensation they would have been entitled to from their employers."

It would be useful to know from the Minister how the two schemes are working. We know that the pneumoconiosis claims scheme in the mining industry is working quite well. There is inconsistency, in that miners can receive quite generous compensation—

Well deserved.

It is well deserved. I am casting no aspersions, nor am I wishing to downplay the deservedness of miners' cases. I am merely seeking to highlight the fact that they are getting generous compensation while people with asbestos claims are suffering and are not receiving the same generous treatment for the same type or class of disease. The Government should look at the issue in the round and make sure that the two sets of claimants are receiving the same sort of compensation.

In order to give the Minister plenty of time to reply, I will bring my remarks to a close. He has much of substance to deal with. Many Members have raised concerns today about a huge issue that affects many constituents, particularly in certain constituencies. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say.

First, I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing the debate. The attendance and the forcefully expressed sentiments of hon. Members this morning underline the importance of the issue and the need to ensure that we deal with it in a way that provides justice and reflects the severity of certain people's plight and the speedy loss of life that can occur after mesothelioma has been diagnosed in patients.

There is a need to ensure that compensation, where it is required, is delivered speedily and effectively to those who have contracted those awful diseases as a result of their work, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) has said, as a result simply of being in a certain neighbourhood where an industrial process is taking place.

I am aware of the efforts that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone has made, and continues to make, on behalf of the sufferers of dust-related diseases. The Government are very sympathetic about the concerns that he has expressed about many issues, particularly the effect of the recent judgment of the Court of Appeal on the Fairchild case on sufferers from work-related mesothelioma who wish to claim compensation and who feel that their scope for bringing claims against employers in the courts has been reduced.

My Department has a particular interest in the matter, to the extent that we administer a scheme—the pneumoconiosis (workers' compensation) scheme—that provides for the payment of compensation to sufferers of certain dust-related diseases who are unable to obtain redress in the courts because the employer has gone out of business and there is therefore no one at whom they can direct a legal action. We have received inquiries about the effect of the ruling on the pneumoconiosis (workers' compensation) scheme, as set up by the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979.

It is worth emphasising that, overwhelmingly these days, the compensation scheme does not provide compensation for miners. The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) indicated the existence of the separate miners' scheme. Overwhelmingly those people who are provided with compensation have not spent their working lives in the mining industry.

Members are also right to say that the number of cases and claims is rising and that that is likely to continue for some time. Indeed, the number of claims made in the last complete year of the scheme stood at almost 1,000, whereas the number of payments to date over the 20 years from 1980 is less than 10,000. Those payments are clearly going up annually at present.

It might be helpful if I outlined the Fairchild judgment and what it means. One might liken some of the considerations in the Fairchild case to the consequences of the legal proceedings following an attack on a passer-by by six hoodlums. Witnesses have said that the passer-by was beaten-up by a group that they can identify, but because they cannot state with certainty who landed the blows and kicks, no one is prosecuted. That seems to defy common sense. The Fairchild judgment—whether or not it is correct in terms of the exact legal definition—frankly seems to lack justice in terms of people's judgment of the concept of a just outcome to a certain event.

The Court of Appeal commented that for the claimants not to receive compensation was a major injustice—it said that its own judgment was a major injustice—and that it was one that should be remedied by express statutory provision or by an agreed insurance industry compensation scheme. There is a fine balance to be struck. It could be said that unfairness would have been created whichever way the Court of Appeal had ruled, resulting either in the claimants not receiving compensation or defendants having to pay damages for injuries for which they may not have been responsible.

In the six appeals that the Court of Appeal heard, it decided upon three different issues that arise in cases where a claimant suffers or may suffer asbestos-induced mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos dust having worked for more than one employer. Historically, there have been cases where the proportion of the compensation between different employers has effectively been worked out as a method of joint payment. The Fairchild judgment appears to suggest somehow that that route produces injustice to the employer. That is not entirely in accordance with common sense.

The funeral will take place tomorrow of my neighbour and constituent Mike Ledger. He worked for two employers, and worked with asbestos for one, Harworth Glass Bulbs, for 33 years. How could justice be served proportionately by deeming that the 33 out of the 39 years of his working life that he worked with asbestos were not relevant to the cause of his death?

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The commonsense view of what has happened to my hon. Friend's constituent would fly in the face of the direction of the Fairchild judgment. We are grappling with that issue.

The judgment suggests that as the claimant cannot establish, on the balance of probabilities, when it was that inhalation took place of the asbestos fibre or fibres that caused a mesothelial cell in the pleura to become malignant, he cannot show that a particular defendant was responsible for causing the disease, and cannot recover any damages. The Court of Appeal considered that the claimants could not prove on the balance of probabilities which period of exposure caused or materially contributed to the cause of the mesothelioma. Bringing a case when the case has not been made out on the balance of probabilities may impose on an employer with whom the claimant was employed for quite a short time in a long working life liability for the whole of an insidious disease. The Court of Appeal considered that allowing such a claim to succeed would be yielding to a contention that all those who have suffered injury from which someone else should have protected them should be able to recover compensation, even when they are unable to prove who was the culprit.

The Court of Appeal said that the only damages that can be claimed are for contracting the disease. Until the disease develops, the employee does not know that they have an injury capable of giving rise to a cause of action. Once it does develop, he has to establish on the balance of probabilities that the particular defendant caused the disease. None of the claimants in Fairchild could establish that.

The Court of Appeal's judgment made reference to the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979, and the scheme that my Department administers under it. We are looking very closely—we are not simply monitoring what is happening, but are actively involved—at the implications of the Fairchild judgment on the pneumoconiosis compensation scheme and I hope to be able to let my hon. Friends know the outcome of that in due course, and at an early stage.

It would be a travesty if the insurance industry were able to jettison its responsibility and liability and leave it with the taxpayer. If the Minister is exploring the potential use of the pneumoconiosis scheme, I suggest that discussions should be held with the insurance industry with a view to its contributing to the scheme, to enhance it so that it could make reasonable payments.

Discussions are being held with the insurance industry. I am sure that my hon. Friends will accept that simply introducing a Government scheme that allows all the people who have been mentioned this morning to walk away from their liabilities would not be a satisfactory way forward. It is right, as far as the pneumoconiosis scheme is concerned, that in the first instance action should be taken against former employers of people who contract one of those awful diseases. Only when it is not possible, for various reasons, to establish the liable employer does the pneumoconiosis scheme take over. That is right in principle, but we must balance it against the other point that, because of various activities, some of which hon. Members have mentioned this morning, it is possible that some people—for reasons entirely beyond their influence—will not get the compensation that they deserve, and it is important that the Government take that into account.

Does the Minister accept that some companies have gone into liquidation or otherwise disappeared, but others—as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle)—are using tactics such as voluntarily going into liquidation to avoid liability? They are a very different proposition from the companies that have genuinely gone bust.

My hon. Friend is right. I was attempting to draw attention to the general principles of the scheme, which should hold. However, in the particular circumstances in which a company has gone into administration or an insurance company has gone into liquidation, we should rightly distinguish between the generality of the principle and the specific circumstances of those cases.

While the Government consider whether the insurance companies or the employers should bear the liability, people are suffering and many will die. Can the Minister give us some assurance that the Government will consider the problem urgently and ensure that—unlike the pneumoconiosis scheme in the mining industry—a scheme is drawn up quickly and people get the money to which they are entitled?

The Government are urgently considering the issue, for precisely the reasons that I have mentioned. It would not be right for the Government to stand aside while the issues are debated protractedly, to the detriment of those people who have deserving claims. At the same time, it is important that the principle of the pneumoconiosis scheme is upheld. As hon. Members have agreed, it is not right that companies that are properly liable should simply be able to walk away because a scheme has been put in place that somehow absolves them of that liability.

The real concern is that many crooks are involved, some of them in high places in the insurance and other companies. Will my hon. Friend undertake to bring those people together and tell them that if they do not act quickly, the Government will make them act? That is the real issue.

I would love to be able to do that, but frankly the situation with several of the companies is that the process of legal examination of their positions has to be gone through. The issue is the extent to which—as a result of those legal processes being pursued—injustice is meted out, simply by the effluxion of time, to people who are entitled to receive quick compensation. The Government must ensure that the issues relating to the companies are properly expedited, but at the same time we must not lose sight of the fact that people are suffering while those legal discussions are taking place.

One of the companies involved is Chester Street and I note the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone on that issue. I will ensure that the concerns he raises are investigated and I will write to him. On the question of delays in payments, under the Policyholders' Protection Board scheme the board's processes to validate the claims and make payments are usually completed within one week, once the provisional liquidators' team has brought the claim to settlement point, obtained a signed deed of assignment from the policyholder, satisfied its own tests to establish eligibility for protection and sent the appropriate documentation to the PPB. I share the concerns of my hon. Friend to ensure that all valid claims are paid as quickly as possible to those who are eligible for compensation. The PPB and the provisional liquidators are conscious of the need to speed up the totality of the settlement process and are continuing to work together towards that end.

The Minister has addressed the problems in the private sector. Will he also give an undertaking to speed up the Government's response to claims lodged against them?

The hon. Gentleman has made that point and I am happy to write to him.

What about shipbuilders?

My hon. Friend mentions British Shipbuilders and I am happy to undertake to write to him. Indeed, several letters will be sent after the debate, but it is important that the issues are given proper consideration.

Under the insurance industry's scheme, it is taking a total of four to five weeks to settle and pay most claims, including a seven to 10 day turnaround at the Association of British Insurers—the ABI. The insurance industry has paid about £350,000 so far under the scheme. Occasionally, claims may be delayed beyond the time scales indicated. The provisional liquidator has a duty in the interests of the creditors of Chester Street to defend the assets of Chester Street against invalid claims. Some claims are delayed by gathering and evaluating evidence, disputes over liability, and litigation. Those delays would have happened irrespective of Chester Street's insolvency. After 30 November, the financial services compensation scheme has worked with the provisional liquidators to ensure claims which are eligible for payment by FSCS are paid as quickly as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) mentioned Turner and Newall. Unfortunately, it would take more time than we have to tease out the details of what has happened with Federal Mogul and Turner and Newall. I endorse many of my hon. Friend's comments about what has happened and the effect on those poor people who have been caught up in claims from across the Atlantic in which they have no part and with which they have no power to deal. My hon. Friend mentioned Turner and Newall last week and I know that the legal specialists are working hard to resolve the insurance position. On that occasion, the Minister replied to my hon. Friend that she had asked officials in her Department's insolvency service to keep her in touch with the progress of the case; she also invited him to discuss further with her in the Department the aspects to which he wanted to draw attention.

A week is a long time in politics. Only seven days ago, in a debate on the London underground in this Chamber, I was bemoaning the fact that, although I had been putting in slips every week, my name was never called to initiate an Adjournment debate. However, as luck would have it, I have been called to speak on a most important issue. I suspect that shows one of two things: one should be persistent or one should moan often enough and someone in the Speaker's Office will look after one.

Metropolitan police funding is important. Letters on the subject have made up a significant element of my constituency postbag during recent weeks and months. I can confidently assume that the same applies to the other 73 London-based MPs.

I accept that the Metropolitan police work under strong constraints. Even the Home Secretary, in his keynote speech in Sheffield last weekend, recognised that policing in London is more problematic than elsewhere.

There is clear evidence of police overstretch in London. I am sure that other London Members will agree that a blind eye is being turned towards what the police might regard as minor crimes, but which none the less cause great anxiety among the stable long-term residential population—for example, aggressive begging and mobile phone theft, which have made the headlines during recent months. There is a also wide feeling in the business community that there is insufficient concentration on ensuring the core responsibility of the police to tackle crime.

Recent press reports, including one in The Sunday Times of 6 January from which I shall quote, suggest that

"people in London are now six times more likely to be assaulted or robbed than the residents of New York, which was once considered the most dangerous city in the world."

Apparently, in November alone, 2.5 in 1,000 inhabitants of London were victims of violent crime compared with 0.4 in 1,000 in New York. In essence, that means that one in 400 people in London was the victim of some form of criminal activity in one month alone. During the past three years, muggings have risen by about 28 per cent. Violent crime in London outstrips even such hot spots as Chicago, Los Angeles or Detroit.

I realise that the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs will want to comment on the comparisons with the other side of the Atlantic as well as those within the UK, but it is simplistic to compare the London experience directly with that of New York. However, it is interesting to note the divergence in crime and, most important, in public confidence in security over the past five years. Under Mayor Giuliani and his team, New York has adopted a high-profile zero tolerance policy that has concentrated on ensuring visible and aggressive policing in neighbourhoods that previously suffered high crime rates. That has resulted in the prosecution of even relatively minor offences.

I want to say a few words about retention and recruitment in London—two of the most important issues—and to give a London overview. Obviously, there have been factors that made a difference both pre and post-11 September. Then, if the Minister will forgive me, I want to be a little parochial in relation to Westminster. I see that my Westminster neighbour and colleague, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) is in the Chamber.

Londoners and the police agree that a high visible police presence is essential, not only to detect criminals but to ensure adequate prevention of crime and to counter the real perception of fear of crime. Successive Home Secretaries have heralded record levels of police recruitment. Such claims pre-date 1997—I do not want to make a narrow party political point about that. They mask a particular problem for the Metropolitan police—retention.

There has been much talk of the inclusion of a new warden rank in London in future years. That will offer an important short-term fix, but it is equally important that the warden rank is not included in all the official statistics, although we accept that front-line policing requires adequate civilian back-up. A raw head count should not be seen as the be-all and end-all of London resourcing.

In 1991, there were about 28,485 police officers in London. That number has been reduced to about 25,500—about 3,000 short of what is widely recognised as the minimum necessary for effective policing of the capital.

From my experience as a relatively new Member of Parliament during the past seven months, representing a most inner-city of inner-city seats, as well as my experience as the prospective candidate during the previous two years, I have realised from speaking to many people that there is a multitude of reasons why officers want to leave the Metropolitan police. The 30-year rule, whereby pension rights are made considerably more attractive, causes real problems that will come to a head during the next few years as a great bulge of the intake come up to that 30-year deadline.

All too often, police officers want to transfer and move to other parts of the UK in order to obtain a better quality of life and standard of living. In recent years, there has been low morale and resignation from the police service as a whole but also directly from the Met.

When I talk to junior police officers, they tell me that London is an exciting place to come to early on in their police careers. A young policeman working in central London and the west end is very much at the centre of things. There is no doubt that the Metropolitan police are able to take on many raw recruits, but that gives rise to many management problems. Many young officers in their early to mid-20s enjoy the experience of working in London, but when they have four or five years' experience under their belt and are just at the threshold of becoming useful officers they move elsewhere. All too often, apart from anything else, that is due to the cost of accommodation. Many police officers, even those working in the centre of London, live in far-flung places in Hertfordshire or Kent. It is thus unsurprising, especially in view of the transport crisis, that the prospect of daily commuting is daunting, notwithstanding the positive initiatives that the Government have taken to help towards transport costs. Such quality of life factors mean that after a while many junior officers decide to move out.

Retention rather than mere recruitment is important. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments as to what we might do to address that issue in London.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that retention will be crucial in sorting out the staffing problems in the London police force over the next few years. Is he aware that the Metropolitan police service has been carrying out exit interviews with officers who have been leaving the force, either to take up other employment or to join other forces? Some of those interviews do not focus as much as one might expect on quality of life issues, but on what are euphemistically described as management issues. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the overall results of those exit interviews need to be made public so that we can understand some of the problems in the Metropolitan police service, especially as regards retention?

I shall certainly take that on board and I hope that the Minister will have some thoughts on the matter. For obvious reasons, some management-related information would properly need to remain confidential.

One problem relates to one of my earlier points. There is a significant number of extremely young officers in London, many of whom are probationers and trainees. Achieving the correct balance between probationers and experienced officers often means that junior officers feel that they are not getting the on-the-job training that they might receive in other parts of the UK.

I feel strongly about key worker housing, especially in central London. We must try to ensure that key workers, whether in the public or the private sector, are given preference in central London. I appreciate that that is a much broader problem than can be answered in this debate but I wanted to raise it as an important factor. I suspect that there is no political divide on this matter. We all realise that in central London there is a massive polarisation between individuals who are wealthy enough to live in the area and those who qualify for social housing. Unfortunately, that means that the people who are the glue of our society—the people who become shopkeepers, police officers or nurses and who do everything in day-to-day society—do not have the opportunity to live in central London.

I should like some more imaginative thinking to be done on the matter. The Mayor of London, Mr. Livingstone, has put together a rather prescriptive policy that ensures that 50 per cent. of new build will be earmarked for social housing. However, the danger is that a too-prescriptive policy will put developers off building in central London, with the result that we miss out on opportunities. I want the Greater London Authority and local councils to have more leeway when it comes to the allocation of scarce resources.

The hon. Gentleman may not like my question, but does he agree that the £27 million owed to Westminster as a result of the homes-for-votes scandals, if we are successful in recovering it, should be directed towards increasing the stock of affordable housing?

I had a feeling that that might be the hon. Lady's line of questioning, but I should prefer to draw a slight veil over that matter. An amount of money is due to Westminster city council, which is taking action to recover the funds. Clearly, that money would make some difference.

I turn now to the important question of national pay bargaining. The London weighting is totally inadequate to take account of the cost of living in London. Far more significant premiums should be paid, and I know that London Members have been asked in the past few weeks to make representations to the GLA about London weighting. The debate should cover quality-of-life issues as well as the expense of housing and transport, although I accept that the Home Office has moved in the right direction in relation to transport costs in the past few years.

As a central London Member, I know that many of my constituents owe a great debt to the increased numbers of officers on anti-terrorist duty since 11 September. Clearly, though, having more police on the streets of Westminster and the City of London has been to the detriment of many suburban areas.

I appreciate that the debate is about the Metropolitan police, but my constituency also covers the City of London, and I wish to devote a brief aside to the City of London police, who are under intense pressure. Although the 3 per cent. capital city allocation in the Metropolitan police budget recognises that extra resources are needed to provide national and capital city functions, as well as to police the very shop window of what is a large part of central London, it is wholly inadequate. That was true even before the heightened tension of the international terrorist crisis.

The City of London police's anti-terrorism responsibilities are of a continuing nature, as is the international remit involved in the protection of the constant stream of VIPs who come to the City for both business and ceremonial purposes. However, I share the disappointment felt by many central London Members at the one-size-fits-all approach to the entirety of London policing adopted by the Metropolitan police authority when it comes to calculating its resource allocation formula. That approach fails to recognise the different strains felt by different parts of London.

I am also very concerned at the zero-sum game that effectively means that central London must suffer if the suburbs are to get more money. I hope that the Metropolitan police authority and the Home Office will ensure that London gets the larger slice of the financial cake that is its right.

There has also been insufficient recognition of the fact that London is the economic powerhouse of the country. The city also makes enormous earnings from international investment and tourism. Mayor Livingstone is proposing additional burdens for the Metropolitan police, who are expected to transfer scarce resources to the enforcement of the new bus lanes. The police will also have to enforce the congestion charging zones, assuming that the scheme comes into force as planned from next February. We must get the priorities right, as the relatively modest 3 per cent. increase in the Metropolitan police funding has been accompanied by a whopping increase of 41 per cent. in the demands on the force's headquarters.

Above all, Londoners deserve better. Public services such as health, transport and policing are deteriorating while London tries to perform a role as a truly global centre. As I said, London is the economic powerhouse of the country, and central Government should ensure that we are rewarded for the important role that we play.

Slightly parochially, I wish to speak about a police section house in Soho called Trenchard house. Not everyone in the district, or beyond, will be familiar with it, but the Metropolitan police authority wants to sell it off, for short-term financial reasons. I do not expect the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs, who will respond to the debate, to comment now, but I hope that he will come back to me about the matter at another time.

I recognise that that is not, strictly speaking, a Home Office matter, as I wrote to the Minister in November and received a reply in those terms. However, given the housing shortage in central London, it is a source of great concern that Trenchard house could be disposed of. That would fly in the face of what the police are trying to achieve in other ways with regard to retaining staff.

Since 1995, the number of police officers in Westminster has fallen by some 28 per cent., or about 600. That compares to a drop of about 7 per cent. in the number of officers in London as a whole. The residential population in the city of Westminster, which covers a large chunk of my constituency and that of the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, has risen by some 30 per cent. in the past seven years. There has also been a 12 per cent. rise in net employment over the past five years. Some 900,000 people come to work in my constituency every day of the working week.

The current police work force in Westminster is about 1,513 officers. The proposal is that, as of the end of March, the figure will rise to about 1,650, although that depends on the Mayor of London delivering the 1,000 or so additional officers that he has proposed. However, a strict application of the resource allocation formula that applies to the whole of London policing suggests that Westminster is entitled only to 1,418 officers. It has been agreed that there will not be a reduction in the number of officers in Westminster, but the 1,418 figure will be used as a baseline for future reference.

I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman with increasing hidden fury. He is making his case for Westminster, and I hope, if I catch your eye later, Mr. Stevenson, to make some points about Barnet at greater length. In Barnet, we have twice Westminster's residential population, but only a third as many police officers. The geographical area in Barnet is such that the whole of Westminster could fit into two of my council wards. The hon. Gentleman is somewhat over-pleading his case.

In a sense, that is my role, and I suggest that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) would probably have made a similar case before May 1997, when he was a city councillor in Westminster. However, my argument is that there should be a bigger cake, and I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman should get furious at what I am saying.

I do not believe that we should be playing a zero-sum game, so I do not suggest that funding should be taken away from the suburbs, which I fully appreciate face some major policing problems. We need considerably more police throughout London. Central Governments, both before and after 1997, have benefited from the party-political squabbling among hon. Members with London constituencies. I think that we should all work together in this matter.

The current formula gives considerably greater weight to the perception of need than to demand. That puts inner London at a strong disadvantage. For example, the capital city allocation is very much top sliced rather than needs driven. That allocation should reflect the special circumstances of policing in central London, taking account of state visits, ceremonial events, state security, and all the royal and diplomatic protection that has to be provided.

At present, the allocation offers only an additional 360 officers for Westminster as a whole. That does not cover the enormous task of managing the streets in the face of weekly demonstrations and the very real late-night disorder that officers encounter. Hundreds of often inebriated revellers remain on the streets of places such as Soho and Covent Garden because they are unable to get home.

Central London also plays an important role in implementing some very high-profile and labour-intensive schemes such as the rough sleepers initiative. I appreciate that extra Government funding has been made available for some of those tasks, but they are massively labour intensive. I have spoken to Superintendent Burman and Inspector Walsh at the Belgravia station, who have played an important role in developing that initiative.

I should also mention Operation Lilac, in which Westminster works alongside Camden. I spent half a day at Savile Row station with Superintendent Ingledew and saw how hard the officers there work. Such initiatives are high profile and trend setting, and are enormously labour intensive. The necessary funding has to be available. Exceptions must therefore be made for London as a whole, and for central London in particular.

I appreciate that several other hon. Members would like to speak, so I shall wind up my speech by making a few comments. All that I have said must be viewed in the light of the determination in central London to create a better quality of life, not just for the residential population—important thought that is—but for the 900,000 workers who come here every day and, indeed, the tourists who spend enormous sums each year to ensure that we have a thriving economy.

I have worked with Westminster city council, alongside my Labour counterpart, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North. We have individually undertaken large-scale consultation exercises with the public in the past year, and local policies have been developed in the light of many of those results.

An integral part of the civic renewal and regeneration of each of England's cities involves rapid and firm action against antisocial behaviour, which requires labour- intensive policing. We need sufficient resources for effective policing, as well as concrete policies to compensate adequately for the much higher living costs in the capital and to ensure that we have good and stable levels of staffing in our police service.

I would plead that urgent action needs to be taken by the Home Office to ensure that Londoners get a fair deal. I draw the Government's attention to the demographic time-bomb, which is likely to result in the significant departure of many senior police officers in the next five to 10 years, and ask for an assurance today that well-thought-out steps will be taken to ward off what could be a very problematic development.

Finally, I welcome the high-profile initiatives mentioned in the national news last week. Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, is ensuring that 315 traffic police will be redeployed to front-line street duties, but that is a drop in the ocean in relation to London. I reiterate the fact that we are roughly 3,000 policemen short and crime—more importantly, the fear of crime—grows almost daily for many residents.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on securing this debate. I share many of the concerns that he has expressed, which I shall deal with a little later, but I shall concentrate my remarks on three things. First, I want to comment on the level of policing in London, and I will support and underpin what he has said about that in many ways. Secondly, I shall talk about the impact of the resource allocation formula on Westminster. Thirdly, I shall talk about the fight against crime and antisocial behaviour, the responsibilities and duties of the local authorities and the way in which the Government have sought to support Westminster council and Kensington council in doing that work, and I have a couple of criticisms to make of the local authorities in that respect.

I should like to place on record my warm congratulations to the police teams in Westminster and the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the work that they have done over the years, especially since 11 September. One of Britain's major mosques—the Regent's Park mosque—and the Muslim cultural heritage centre are in my constituency. I have heard nothing but praise from the directors of both those organisations for the way that the police responded swiftly and thoughtfully to the events of 11 September. Since then, the police have worked closely with the local communities in monitoring the risk of racial incidents and in helping to defuse any of those tensions, and it is right to praise them for their work.

I should also like to praise the work of my local police teams in the general fight against crime and antisocial behaviour, which is a serious problem on my constituency's streets and estates. There is no doubt that crime and the fear of crime, and antisocial behaviour, which are distinct but related issues, represent the top or the second from top concern of almost all my constituency's residents.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the case for London, and I strongly support that case. It is on record that police numbers have declined to a most unsatisfactory level during most of the past decade, although the figures are now rising again, and I shall refer to that fact in my closing remarks. We should be pleased that the tide is definitely turning, but the decline has been substantial and long term. It is undoubtedly the case that police on the beat may not always represent the most effective way to stop crime and catch criminals, but it is none the less true, as policing since 11 September has confirmed, that high-level, visible policing is greatly appreciated by communities and has a knock-on consequence for people's sense of care for their community and in reducing the fear of crime, so allowing more people to go out and about without fear.

I fear that, for many years, London's special needs have not been fully recognised in the funding of the police service, as the hon. Gentleman has said. London has extraordinary costs, especially in relation to housing. That has been mentioned, so I shall not go into detail, but I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman's comments on the recruitment and retention difficulties in the London police service, and housing costs are a key part of that.

We have had rapid population growth in the past few years, as a consequence of which our communities are extraordinarily diverse, which is a challenge for every public service—health, education and policing. That diversity is exciting, but it undoubtedly presents a challenge and involves several cost pressures.

I ask the Minister to consider—I have told the Metropolitan police authority about this, and I believe it to my core—that we need to address more seriously the fact that London, and central London in particular, has the highest incidence of mental ill health in the country. It is a recorded fact that Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster health authority has the highest incidence of mental ill health, especially psychotic illness, in the country. There is no question but that mental ill health is closely related to the pressures on police services. It is about time that all the agencies involved began to collect systematic and comparable data on mental health services and their implications for policing, so that we have an indicator that would be of considerable benefit to virtually every part of the London police service.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I, too, was a little disappointed by this year's settlement for the Metropolitan police service. Although I am sure that there is scope for further efficiency savings, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will use his powers with the Chancellor in the comprehensive spending review to urge for a better deal for the police service, especially the Metropolitan police service, in the forthcoming spending round. Further settlements along the lines of that which we have had will not be sustainable. That has been underpinned by Ian Blair, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police service. In giving evidence on the budget to the Metropolitan police authority, he said that, although he can manage with the budget proposed for this year, any further reduction or additional non-Treasury-funded expenses would be impossible to manage. It is clearly not the case that this year's settlement has been generous, and we need to press the case for a more generous settlement for the Metropolitan police in future.

I agree with the hon. Lady's point about the comprehensive spending review settlement for the Metropolitan police, but does she agree with the bid submitted by the Metropolitan police authority for the forthcoming budget for the 2002–03 financial year, in which they have asked for £97 million to assist in the extra work that they need to undertake next year to tackle the capital's extra security problems? We need an early decision on that request; we can wait no longer. The Home Office needs to assure the Metropolitan police authority and the Greater London Authority that £97 million will be forthcoming, so that, on 13 February, the GLA can set the budget with some certainty that it will have that Home Office grant.

I am certainly happy to support the principle that there should be an early decision. I have not gone through the budget in detail, so I cannot say whether I would agree with every dot and comma, but I certainly agree that the earlier that decision is taken the better.

My second set of comments is on the resource allocation formula. I hit the roof when I saw the first draft—I think it was a leaked draft—of the resource allocation formula figures, for the reasons that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster has also outlined. I am afraid that the resource allocation formula process was not handled well. Lessons need to be learned from that, because much misinformation was put out. People were allowed to panic when they saw the first draft and before they were reassured that the process was a consultative one. That was deeply regrettable.

I welcome the fact that, as a result of the consultation process, the worst-case figures were to some extent ameliorated. The "pure" resource allocation formula for Westminster began with the figure of 1,410 and ended up with 1,541. In Kensington, it began with the figure of 498 and ended up with 544. We finished better off than we first thought and with no loss against the highest point figures for 2001.

I have spoken to borough commanders about the issue on a number of occasions, and the borough commander of the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea is not dissatisfied. He would happily support claims—I am sure that this is true of others—for additional policing resources, but he is certainly not saying that the final settlement in the resource allocation formula is unsatisfactory.

However, I am afraid that I will now come close to terminating a 20-year close personal friendship with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) by saying that central London has a powerful case, and we sought to make it when we clawed back on the worst figures in the resource allocation formula. However, that case has not been properly accommodated, given the high crime figures in central London and the high day-time and night-time populations in central Westminster. They are the result of the tourist trade, on which criminals seeks to prey, and the fact that people congregate in licensed establishments at night.

The crime figures in themselves justify a much higher level of policing in central London than in many other areas. It is completely counter-intuitive for the resource allocation formula not to have supported claims for additional policing, given the extent of crime in central London.

There is also the popular assumption that Westminster and Kensington are uniformly prosperous boroughs, and they do indeed include some of the most prosperous areas in the country. However, there are also high levels of deprivation in both, and they are almost exclusively in my constituency. As on so many other issues, we suffer from the tyranny of the average, whereby acute pockets of deprivation do not always receive the attention and the resources that they deserve because of the way in which the prosperity of Belgravia and Knightsbridge flattens out the borough-wide figures. In the arguments about the resource allocation formula, it was pointed out that deprivation is an indicator for police resources and that people from deprived areas come to central London and Westminster to take advantage of the presence of the large day-time population there.

As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster pointed out, Kensington and Westminster have taken a disproportionately large cut in police numbers over the last decade. To my intense dissatisfaction, that fact was initially denied when I made representations on the resource allocation formula and was told that there was no evidence that Westminster and Kensington had received a larger cut than anywhere else.

However, I received an answer to a parliamentary question at the end of October last year and it demonstrated that in 1993, which is when the decline set in, the City of Westminster had 1,901 police officers but only 1,642 in September 2001. Kensington had 655 police officers in 1993, but only 577 last year. The fall in numbers in those two areas was significantly higher than the fall in numbers in the Metropolitan police as a whole. The position has been worsened by the fact that police strength is significantly lower than the numbers for the work force that have been budgeted for, which means that in practice significantly fewer police are available for duty on the streets and estates than there should be.

Although I am not as unhappy as I was when the resource allocation formula first came out, I cannot claim to be satisfied with the level of police services in Westminster or Kensington. I would strongly support any arguments in favour of additional resources for the Metropolitan police authority as a whole and for central London to have its share of those resources.

Although police numbers are rising—that is extremely welcome—it is obvious that, no matter how many police we recruit, it is unlikely that police officers will be available on the streets when most crimes are committed. We know the figure for the chances of a police officer stumbling across a crime being committed. We must therefore ensure that policies and strategies are set in place to reduce the incidence of crime. The Government have done a great deal on that and helped the local authorities that have a critical front-line role in helping to tackle crime. For example, Westminster received a grant of just under £2 million to help it to tackle—I am afraid I am straying into the hon. Gentleman's constituency—crime in the Charing Cross area. It has suffered seriously as a result of the drugs trade and associated crime.

More locally, Westminster and Kensington have both received Government funding from the neighbourhood renewal fund, which has been directed towards helping to improve security and tackling crime in the deprived areas of the boroughs. The councils also received a 7 per cent. increase in their general funding this year, which is the equal highest in the country. The local authorities have had the assistance that they need—I accept that there is always a case for more—to tackle the causes of crime. They have introduced practical security measures and have attempted to divert young people at risk of offending by providing alternative activities for them.

My criticism, however, results from the fact that Westminster council in particular has a deplorable record on that front. Its youth service was a disgrace and Ofsted strongly condemned it. In practical terms, in most areas of the constituency there is little or nothing for young people to do and there has not been for years. That is beginning to change but almost exclusively because of central Government support through single regeneration budget funding and the neighbourhood renewal fund.

I cannot resist the temptation to defend the honour of Westminster council. Clearly, it is well appreciated that its youth department has suffered difficulties as a result of the borough's geography. However, in fairness, as the hon. Lady knows, education results have improved in the past two or three years and it must be pointed out that social services—.

Order. We do not want to get into a debate on education or social services. Will the hon. Gentleman make his point briefly in his intervention?

I just wanted to say that the social services department has received a benchmark award in recent years. Although I do not suggest that everything is wonderful, there have been positive developments. The department is making its contribution to the quality of life issues that we are debating.

I will not argue about that, but my central point was that the council's record on youth services has been absolutely deplorable. Young people excluded from school are on the streets, and there is a long way to go before the situation is turned round.

I know that other Members wish to speak, so I shall draw my remarks to a close. However, I must point out that on a cluster of estates—the Amberley estate, the Lydford estate, the Avenue Gardens estate, the Hall Place estate, the Church Street estate and around Scott Ellis gardens and the Lisson Green estate—we face serious problems with what is usually lower-level crime and antisocial behaviour. That is directly linked to the failure to sort out the services, support and intervention for young people at risk of committing crime.

Street lighting services, which can also help to prevent crime, are appalling in some areas of the borough. Last year, Westminster council had to admit that it had lost control of the street lighting contract, plunging areas into darkness and creating a muggers paradise. I live in north Westminster in what is virtually tunnel, so I can substantiate that point from my experience. Local authorities can do a great deal through environmental and social measures to prevent crime at every level, but Westminster council does not do anything like enough on that. To coin a phrase, we have to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Local authorities are at the forefront of that and not doing a terribly good job.

In summary, I am delighted that police numbers in London as a whole are rising after many years of decline. There is a strong case, which I support, for more police overall. There is also a strong case for additional police resources in Westminster and Kensington because of our high levels of crime, the day-time population and the deprivation in parts on those boroughs. That has not been properly accommodated in the resource allocation formula, and I will continue to make that case. The local authority can do much more to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour.

I strongly support the Commissioner's proposals to introduce auxiliary support to help the police in their work. There is a great deal that the police can do to free up police officers for a front-line policing role by using people to act as their eyes and ears in the community. I once again congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster on securing this helpful debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on giving us another opportunity to discuss police resourcing and the wider issues of policing in London.

I often find myself whingeing on in Westminster Hall and the House about what we want in Hillingdon. As that makes me sound a bit more like Victor Meldrew than I should, let me start by saying that the previous formula for resourcing was incomprehensible and what we have now is a vast improvement—but I would think that because the London borough of Hillingdon is a winner. However, that is relative because it was a loser for so long, with a constant erosion of police officers. We need an extra 93 officers to reach a target strength of 463. That might, on the surface, seem a good target and it is welcome, but it should be seen against what we have lost over the years. People in Hillingdon are happy to have those extra officers, but it does not mean that the problem is solved.

My hon. Friend referred to the danger of party political squabbles, and it is fair to pay tribute to my two colleagues whose constituencies are also in the London borough of Hillingdon—my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip—Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). We have put aside party political matters to work together with the London borough of Hillingdon and the excellent police consultative committee. I hope that our unified front has helped us to obtain the increase.

In addition to the constant erosion of police numbers in Hillingdon, the civilian work force has been cut by 30 per cent. so we still have many gripes. Staffed front counters are virtually non-existent in police stations— not that there are many in my borough. It is difficult to find a front counter in West Drayton that is open for more than a couple of hours a week, which is a source of great annoyance to my constituents. There has also been a huge increase in the precept that we have to pay.

I do not want to enter into an argument in which the suburbs and the centre of London square up against each other, although Labour and Conservative MPs are present in roughly equal numbers today. The point has been made that we should all argue strongly for increased funding for the Metropolitan police because London is a diverse and special case. It is not just the centre that has problems; the suburbs also have peculiar problems. My borough is diverse. It covers a large area and it is important to recognise its problems.

I want to draw the attention of hon. Members to an excellent pilot scheme that started last Friday evening, when I went out with the local police force. It is trying to be more visible and a large number of vehicles and officers were on the streets to stop antisocial behaviour. It was interesting to discover that many of the people who were involved in under-age drinking were known to the police as burglars and petty criminals. There is a strong tie between the two. People ask whether tackling under-age drinking is a priority—it should be because it is where crime can start: we picked up a young 13-year-old with a knife, and there were other incidents.

I know that most Members of Parliament go out with their local force and it is a real eye opener. I was struck by the sheer size of the division. When a call comes in, it could be for eight or nine miles away. The traffic in the borough, even in the evenings, is not conducive to getting there quickly, which is another source of great annoyance to the public.

The problem with the increase in police numbers in Hillingdon is that it is a target. I emphasise the need for recruitment and retention. We have problems similar to those in central London. The price of housing in suburbia is sky high. There is a great temptation for officers, once they have trained with the Met, to go to other forces where they have a better standard of living. They want to be in the Met, but the housing problem puts them off. I acknowledge that a Conservative Government sold off the housing stock. In retrospect, that was possibly an accountant's move and it has been a problem. Although there has been a climbdown on the Golden Jubilee medal, the five-year service cut-off is a source of great annoyance. At a time when we are trying to recruit and retain people, such small things add up and cause more frustration.

Hillingdon has started a scheme to use street wardens. Although it is welcome in some ways, the police told me that it creates serious problems. The police receive, as I saw at first hand, little respect from certain sections of the community and the street wardens will have even less. Indeed, the police were recently called out to rescue them from an unpleasant incident.

I should like to know how the recruitment of special constables is proceeding. Two specials were on the exercise that I attended and it was interesting to hear their views. One WPC said that she was happy in her usual job, but going out with the specials at the weekend was the highlight of her week. The sergeant who was with her was working hard to recruit her for the regulars and I hope that that works out. That must be a good way to get people into the force so that they can see what it is really like.

I make one plea, which I have made before, on behalf of a Cinderella part of the Metropolitan police. The wildlife service investigates wildlife crime. Although that might seem insignificant, much of that crime involves unsavoury people and is often linked to organised crime. It does not sound as serious as the major incidents that we hear about, but the department must not be forgotten.

I hope that we do not divide ourselves into suburbia and central areas and that we fight hard together, whatever Government are in power, to ensure that we get more funding for the Metropolitan police and more police officers on the beat who are visible to our constituents.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on securing this important debate. I should declare an interest in that the Police Federation is a client of my law firm; however, the views I express may not coincide with its policy, as I have not discussed them with the federation.

I agree with the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall): we should not turn this into a suburbs versus inner-city debate. I hope that my remarks will be seen in the context of needing more police officers in London as a whole, as well as the resources to pay for that. To some extent, the changes to the resource allocation formula have been a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I shall focus on that aspect.

I was pleased with the original draft of the resource allocation formula, because it would have resulted in a significant increase in the number of police officers in Barnet—the original allocation approached 600. I am therefore horrified that the net result has been, in effect, a transfer of the proposed increase in numbers from Barnet and other suburbs to inner-city areas, no doubt after special pleading from the two MPs for Westminster, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster and my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck). The formula has not dealt fairly with inner and outer London. Under the "pure" RAF formula, Westminster would have had 1,410 officers, but under the "no losers" formula, which rigs the system, it ends up with 131 more officers than it is justified in having, and those officers to some extent come at the expense of outer London.

I emphasise the capital city formula, which includes an extra 360 officers for Westminster and 50 for Kensington and Chelsea but does not prevent demands being made on outer-London boroughs for additional police officers to support special operations. My chief superintendent told me this morning that only last night, at the drop of a hat, local police were asked to provide one sergeant and six constables from the late turn—one third of the officers available for patrolling in our borough—to support special operations. Given all the additional officers they have received, it is a bit rich for other forces to expect us to provide even more for special operations.

I am pleased that the number of officers available in Barnet is to increase by 50 from a low of 485 in April last year. With a target of 535, we now have 522.79 officers. My borough commander took some trouble to explain to me how it is possible to have 0.79 of an officer; I am still not sure I understand, but I am sure that there is a logical reason. None the less, with the police college in Hendon full to the seams with recruits, it is somewhat irksome that the patch in which it is situated is short of police officers. I also question the use of the commissioners' judgment formula, which strikes me as a bit of a fiddle. It seems that numbers are just thrown up in the air, and decisions are made on the final outcome, irrespective of analysis.

The net result is two-tier policing in London. I have experience of policing in Westminster and in my Hendon constituency. If I call the police from my Westminster flat, they will arrive in two or three minutes if the call is urgent; if I make the same call from my flat in Burnt Oak, I am lucky to get a turnout within half an hour. That is not an unusual result from a comparison between outer and inner-London. It is wholly unacceptable that such two-tier policing is developing.

Might that have something to do with the fact that the hon. Gentleman was more respected as a councillor in Westminster than he is as an Member of Parliament in Hendon?

That may be so, but I dispute it. I never plead rank when I call any of the emergency services, and it would be wholly improper to do so. I doubt that the person who answers the 999 call knows me from Adam.

When the hon. Gentleman talks about the threat of terrorism, he ignores reality. I believe that Hendon has suffered more bomb attacks than any other constituency. Last year, there were two bomb attacks in Hendon. Recent years have witnessed the bomb attack that blew up the flyover at Brent Cross and one on Mill Hill barracks. To suggest that terrorism is confined to inner London is wrong. Resources to fight terrorism should be allocated more fairly across the city.

We must bear in mind the geography of outer London compared to that of inner London. The central activity zone of Westminster covers about half a square mile—an area that would fit into a polling district in my constituency. The whole of Westminster would fit into two of my wards, yet we have only a third of the number of police officers to police the same area with twice the night time population. Geography creates serious problems for officers trying to get from one end of the borough to the other. That, too, leads to two-tier policing.

It is important to examine the reforms that are to be made. Auxiliaries are an interesting and welcome idea which builds on the neighbourhood warden services which are growing throughout London. The hon. Member for Uxbridge commented on his local service, but I have nothing but praise for the system introduced by the London borough of Barnet. We have a growing neighbourhood warden service, which has been well received by the local community, at a price of 14p a week on the council tax. The service works well with the Metropolitan police and has already scored some remarkable successes, even though it has been going for only a few months.

We should consider the extent to which jobs done by uniformed officers could be carried out by civilians. Those civilian workers should be paid properly. I have been told by my local police station that there is a freeze on recruitment of civilians. That is a false economy. We should also examine the issue of long-term sickness and recuperative duties. This morning, my chief superintendent told me that 50 of her officers—10 per cent. of the total officer force potentially available to her—are currently either long-term sick or on recuperative duties.

I welcome the decision in the short term to transfer traffic officers to the boroughs for front-line policing, but I hope that in the long term it will be possible to replace those officers on traffic duties. Perhaps we might establish a traffic police force, building on the traffic warden service, using people who are traffic wardens but training them properly to carry out more traffic enforcement activities, which are an important task. I do not want people to have to consider whether it is better to be mugged than to be run down by a speeding motorist, which is the sort of decision that we might have to make.

A traffic police force might be a welcome long-term development. All of us have been told by police officers that when they catch someone for speeding they are often asked, "Why aren't you out catching burglars?" A traffic police officer could respond, "It's not my job to catch burglars. I catch speeding motorists."

We should also examine police service shift patterns. I know that a lot of work has been done in that respect lately. Negotiations are under way with the Police Federation and the Metropolitan police to ensure that police are on the street at the times they are needed, not at the times the shift pattern dictates they should be there.

We must recognise that the police cannot do everything. We impose unreasonable demands on our police service, whether through people making daft 999 calls, or expecting them to investigate trivial crimes to the nth degree. Barnet police service has taken wonderful strides to target policing and concentrate on crime hot spots, and it has reaped dividends from an intelligence-based approach. We expect too much from our police, and not only in the light of resources, although more resources are needed throughout London. We must be realistic and fair about what we expect them to do.

In closing, I pay tribute to Chief Superintendent Akers, my borough commander, who has worked hard to build links with the local community and ensure that local police priorities reflect the needs and demands of the community. I also pay tribute to her hard-working and overstretched officers, who provide an excellent service despite all the demands on them, which, in some cases, are somewhat unreasonable.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on securing this helpful debate. I also congratulate Sir John Stevens and his team at New Scotland Yard: whenever I have had dealings with them, they have been both courteous and extremely helpful. Finally, I congratulate Commander Brathwaite, who leads the Kingston division. I have met and spoken with police officers in my area and I am amazed by how overstretched they are. They have to make difficult decisions and fine judgments. My conversations and meetings with them fill me with admiration for their work. That is why debates such as this, and their tenor, are welcome.

The debate has focused on resources for the Metropolitan police. There are two sources: the Home Office and council tax payers in London. I want to have a pop at the Home Office, because I do not believe that its grant to the Metropolitan police authority is sufficient.

I suspect that all hon. Members would agree that there is a case for a larger Home Office grant. Under the Conservative Government in 1995, an adjustment was made to the formula between the different constabularies. I hope that the Minister can assure us that we will not see the like of that again. There is supposed to be one more round of transitional adjustment to implement that 1995 decision, which would work against London, but I hope that the Government will cancel it and reconsider the issue. London's share of the overall cake is not sufficient.

In speculating about how that problem has come about, I wondered whether it was because London has only one voice on the Association of Chief Police Officers, and whether the greater number of chief constables in other parts of the country has outgunned Sir John Stevens and his predecessor, good though they may be at arguing London's case on that body. Will the Minister ensure that in future we do not allow that weighting against London on ACPO?

The evidence from the front line is that London is under-policed, and I am sure that that is felt in all our constituencies. I sometimes wonder whether there is greater inefficiency in constabularies in other parts of the country.

I am delighted that we now have a Metropolitan police authority that can argue London's case. That is an important development, but the authority needs to work with London Members to ratchet up the call for a better deal for London.

In my intervention on the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), I mentioned the MPA's bid to the Home Office for another £97 million for 2002–03 to take account of the extra activities that are having to be undertaken to deal with the terrorist threat. The MPA is still waiting for an answer from the Home Office, even though it must set its budget as soon as the middle of February. It would be nonsense if the Government could not give the MPA an answer on that, and I hope that they will agree to that bid in full, so that London has the Home Office support that it needs to deal with that threat.

Other issues relating to the Metropolitan police could do with proper funding from the Home Office. Negotiations on pay are taking place, and we do not know how that will work through. There is a legacy of Home Office inefficiency with regard to the MPA. It is interesting talking to colleagues on the MPA and the Greater London Authority. When they began to scrutinise what has been going on in the Metropolitan police service, they discovered the inefficiencies and inadequate accounting practice that were allowed to continue when the Home Office was in charge.

The Home Office should be careful when it decides whether to give the MPA less money, because it should apologise for its lack of scrutiny of the Metropolitan police service and its failure to get greater efficiency. At least in the short term, while the MPA is doing its job of scrutinising the service, the people of London should not lose out due to long-term Home Office inefficiency in managing the Metropolitan police service's budget.

I am concerned about how the Government are sorting out the funds for front-line policing. There was a 6.1 per cent. increase in the police budget from the Home Office, but police authorities across the country are getting 2.8 per cent., so a lot of money is being held back centrally. We see that in public service after public service. That does not create stability or get money to the front line, and it results in little pots of money that police authorities and other public services have to bid for, which is a terribly inefficient way of delivering those services.

The Minister may tell me that I am factually wrong, which would go against what police officers have told me, or, like his colleagues in other Departments, he may now see the error of his ways. He should ensure that the money is out there and not put in a central pot for that inefficient bidding process.

Council tax receipts make up the other side of the resource equation. People in my area say that they pay more and get less. That is a real problem. I shall deal with the resource allocation formula in a second, but if people are asked to pay more by the Mayor and the Greater London Authority, they want to get more as a result.

The Mayor's budget proposals are being analysed by the GLA and the MPA. I have sneaked a look at the report. We will discover what the different parties on the MPA say about the proposals. I was concerned about what happened last year when the GLA had this debate. To try to get a lower council tax precept, Conservatives on the GLA voted against £48 million for the Metropolitan police service budget. I hope that they will not do that again this year. As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster rightly argued, the MPS needs extra resources.

Will my hon. Friend join me in adding further issues to the list of items that the Government should consider? For boroughs such as his and mine, there will be no increase in numbers next year. A system in which people pay considerably more of their local tax through council tax undermines their willingness to contribute towards better policing in London. That problem needs to be examined.

There is a list of matters for which the Government have principal responsibility in addition to those that my hon. Friend has mentioned. They include whether forces such as the Metropolitan police that train a huge number of people who then leave within 10 years should be able to recuperate a training levy for doing all the work. The latest figures show that about 40 per cent. leave to go to another force.

Before we debate the police reform legislation, we should consider the general formula for allocating resources around the country, and decide whether to revisit the division between what is expected to come from the council tax and what from the Home Office allocation. As my hon. Friend said, there was a 6.1 per cent. increase for policing, but less than 3 per cent. of that was allocated.

Order. This intervention is turning into a speech.

It was an exceptionally good intervention, and I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said.

Reform of the resource allocation formula has taken up a lot of my time and that of other hon. Members. Although the process could have been improved, the reforms have resulted in a more transparent formula that has enabled us at last to ask some intelligent questions about how the police cake in London is carved up. I hope that the new resource allocation formula will be revised fairly soon. I am told by people on the MPA that that may come in the next two years. From my constituents' point of view, it could not come soon enough. Significant mistakes have been made, which I have brought up with the people in charge on the project board.

PA Consulting, which was hired to do the research, based its weighting and its results on a regression analysis. It is all in the report. When I raised this matter at a seminar with the analysts who carried out the research, they said that I had a good point. My point was that the data that they used in a least squares regression analysis was for one year. They used one year's data to work out the relationship between crime in different boroughs and police officer allocation. One does not need to be Einstein or a great mathematician to work out that one year's data in one regression analysis is not a strong basis on which to build a case for a formula. We must seriously examine that analysis on which so much weight has been placed to see whether it is stable over time and sensitive to changes in the data. I doubt that it is, and am concerned that the whole resource allocation formula debate is based on inadequate analysis.

Another major concern about the resource allocation formula, as it relates to my constituency, is the new and welcome opening-the-shop component, which recognises the fixed costs involved in providing the police service. In small boroughs such as Kingston, Richmond, Sutton and one or two others, those fixed costs can take a significant slug of the resources for policing. The opening-the-shop component is supposed to recognise that, but unfortunately it is far too small. When that formula is revised in two years' time, that component will need to grow.

My second point about the resource allocation formula and the review process is that it considers only territorial police officers, so large parts of the Metropolitan police service budget are not taken into account. Who decides how many police officers go into the territorial force and how many come out of it? That fact did not emerge from the review. I hope that the MPA will look at that division, because the centrally provided services may well be getting too many officers, some of whom could go to the front line. As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, Sir John Stevens almost admitted that when he decided last week to transfer officers from the traffic police to other duties. I think that the results would be better if that decision-making process were closely scrutinised.

The hon. Gentleman's point on retention is crucial. We have to solve the retention problem, and on that point the current debate on police reforms is important. The proposal to reduce overtime pay may well affect London officers more than those in any other area. Their pay could fall steeply, which could severely undermine efforts to improve retention. While the Government are in debate with the police negotiating board, the Police Federation and other bodies, they must bear it in mind that their proposed pay reforms could have different effects in different parts of the country. Given that London has a huge retention problem, can the Minister assure me that any reform of overtime pay will not hit London as badly as I fear that it might?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster on securing this debate, which I understand is his second in two weeks; he obviously has a knack that has eluded me. He addressed many important issues and raised the spectre of dispute between London boroughs. Several hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have referred to the need to avoid that, and as I do not represent any part of London, I have no intention of entering into any dispute.

On that point, does my hon. Friend recognise that certain outer London boroughs, such as Havering, have specific problems? Havering comprises three constituencies, including Romford, which has the highest concentration of nightclubs in the entire Metropolitan police area, excluding the west end. The police in Havering face great demands, and that leaches manpower from Upminster. Often on Friday and Saturday nights, there are no police at all on duty in Upminster. That situation should be reflected in the resource allocation to the London borough of Havering.

My hon. Friend is right, and I am sorry that she did not have the opportunity to make her points more fully.

There are big question marks over the resource allocation formula. I do not feel competent to enter into the detail of how it needs changing, and I certainly do not intend to do so in the short time that is left. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) emphasised parts of the formula that need to be reconsidered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) mentioned the problems of the police requirement where there are many nightclubs, and I suspect that when the police reform Bill is introduced we shall debate whether there should be a mechanism for charging for a private sector activity that places huge demands on the police. We have introduced such a mechanism in football, and some senior officers demand that we consider charging for policing in areas with a high concentration of nightclubs or similar establishments.

I know that many hon. Members will want the Minister to respond fully to the debate, so I do not want to take up too much time. We must reflect on what the Home Secretary has said in the past few months. Listening to him, one would assume that the whole of Labour's first term in government had been wasted as far as policing and crime are concerned. There is ample evidence of that in London, where there have been huge increases in crime. Robbery has increased by 56 per cent. and violent crime by 23 per cent. since 1998–99, when the method of calculation changed.

In the most recent year, up to November 2001, just two months ago, the figures are even more stark. The total number of offences has risen by 9.2 per cent., and robbery has increased by 50 per cent. In only one London borough was there a reduction in robbery in that year; other boroughs recorded increases in robbery of more than 100 per cent. There is a serious issue to be dealt with, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, according to those up-to-date figures, a Londoner is five times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than somebody who lives in New York, despite the Prime Minister's assertions to the contrary last week.

Unsurprisingly, the trend in police numbers is the converse of that in the number of crimes. Police numbers are down, and before the Minister chides me for ignoring boundary changes, I point out that even when one allows for the notional reduction of 887 in the Met establishment because of boundary changes, there are nearly 1,000 fewer officers than there were in 1997. As my hon. Friend rightly reminded us, even the 1997 figure is lower than those from earlier in the 1990s.

In March 1997, there were 356 officers per 100,000 head of population in the Met, but by last September, that figure was down to 353.5. That was an improvement on the situation a few months earlier, which is welcome, but it is still lower than the figure with which we started under the present Government. At the end of November, only four boroughs had experienced an increase in the number of officers.

I am sure that the Minister will refer to the fact that the Mayor is now primarily responsible for funding. No doubt he will seek to blame the man who in many Labour circles is considered a rogue mayor. However, the Minister should not be too quick to blame the Mayor because to his credit—I am not one to give the Mayor credit often—he has set out to try to increase police numbers. He has asked the MPA to budget for an extra 1,000 officers a year. In the past four years, expenditure on the police in London has gone up by 20 per cent., but the council tax element of that expenditure has gone up by 141 per cent. There has been a clear shift to the council tax payer, even though there has been only a very small increase in funding. As someone said, we are paying more and getting considerably less.

I am sure that the Minister will want to respond to those figures. He needs to understand, however, that it is not inputs that matter to people. They do not listen to how many millions or billions of pounds are being put into a service—that does not mean much to the average person. What matters to them is outputs—what is being achieved by that money. We are considering police numbers, but we are primarily looking at crime and people's experience and perception of it. It is clear that there has been no improvement; indeed, the situation is worsening.

Only yesterday, a senior police officer told me that the police periodically have to decide not to arrest people who are committing crimes on a large scale, during festivities for example, because if they did they would denude the streets of officers, who would all be back in the station doing the paperwork. Although the Home Secretary has made many noises about paperwork and set up another taskforce, he seems to have ignored the fact that a Cabinet Office report on that subject, called "Making a Difference", was published two years ago. We are told that the Cabinet Office will publish another report this year. It is time that we stopped commissioning reports and started reducing paperwork so that police officers can stay on the streets and do their job more effectively.

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

No, I am sorry, but I want the Minister to have his full allocation of time.

There is no doubt that reform of the police is necessary not only in the Met area but throughout the country. Opposition Members will support many of the proposals in the White Paper, but there are others against which we will argue most strongly. We welcome the increases in officers that are beginning to occur, even though most of those increases are a promise rather than a reality. The clear message from hon. Members of all parties in this debate is that the Government have a great deal more to do if the Metropolitan police are to be able to deliver the service that the people of London want and, perhaps more importantly, are increasingly being asked to pay for.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on securing this useful debate. The odd element of partisanship has crept in, but it can generally be described as a pro-London and pro-police debate, which all contributors will welcome. Depending on the business managers, there will be an opportunity in the not too distant future for the annual debate on the police funding settlement as a whole, but we have had a useful chance to look at the situation in London.

I took comfort from the widespread recognition, implicit and explicit, that the Government have got to grips with the situation and are turning things round after many years of decline. Everyone has been honest enough to acknowledge that the decline in Metropolitan police numbers began a long time ago, back in the early 1990s under the previous Administration. During the period in which the Conservatives were in power, crime nationally doubled. So far, the present Administration have achieved significant falls in recorded crime as measured by the British crime survey which shows that the chance of being a victim in England and Wales is the lowest since the survey began. There have been falls in crime in London in recent years. Recorded crime in London fell by 2.2 per cent. in the year to March 2001, and burglary alone came down by 3 per cent. in 2001 compared with 1998. Of course, we have a problem with street crime and robbery, which we have acknowledged in recent weeks and to which I shall return. Our response is under way, but more needs to be done.

Will the Minister give way?

Will my hon. Friend allow me to continue for a moment?

We need more police officers. As I have said, we are increasing police force numbers in England and Wales, and London as well. Recruitment is going well, as I shall explain. We need to ensure that resources are used in the most effective way. I shall not get involved in the borough by borough debate that we have had, but everyone will accept that it is important to deploy police officers where they will be most effective in catching persistent offenders, and in tackling and reducing crime and the fear of crime. To do so, we need to make the best and most effective use of the increasing number of police officers; that is what police reform is all about. It is about cutting bureaucracy and red tape, enabling people to spend less time in the police station and making better use of civilian staff, both in patrol duties and in police stations.

Will the Minister give way?

I shall finish dealing with this issue, then give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) and the hon. Gentleman.

Police reform is about improving performance. Everybody accepts that if one compares basic command units within London with those in other parts of the country, performance varies from one place to another. The new standards unit is finding out what works most effectively in tackling crime and making sure that standards are raised everywhere. Police reform is about tackling long-term intractable problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) spoke about long-term sickness; it is for precisely that reason that we need a national occupational health strategy in the police force so that people do not suffer long-term sickness and can be helped back into policing duties. Police reform, in London and elsewhere, will help to underpin the changes that need to be made.

The Minister mentioned the problem of street crime and the need to tackle it, for example in our high streets. Will he comment on the impact of closed circuit television? The Government have had an important programme of boosting CCTV installation. Can we have a renewed programme for CCTV concentrated mainly in city centres, but in other areas of London as well? Will he press for tax incentives for small business and shops to install CCTV? Can it also be installed on the underground and bus and rail stations in London?

In looking to expand the CCTV programme, I am sure that my hon. Friend has in mind areas such as Leyton and Wanstead.

We have allocated £36 million to about 80 schemes in London in the past couple of years; some of those cameras are in place and others are being installed. They play an important role in tackling a wide variety of crimes, including street robbery, especially where their use is well co-ordinated with targeted police activities. The funding for next year's safer communities initiative is still being worked on, but there are opportunities under the communities against drugs funding to use CCTV in a wide range of crime prevention. I can therefore tell my hon. Friend that there are already opportunities in the system worth exploring, but we are obviously looking at future streams of funding.

The Minister has been characteristically generous in giving way. He mentioned bureaucracy. No doubt he accepts that 20, 30 or 40 per cent. of police time could be released if bureaucracy could be cut, enabling the police to get on the streets and do what the public want to see them doing. Is he aware that the Government promised IT computer systems to help cut police bureaucracy? Those systems are now years overdue and chief constables are anxious to get hold of them to help cut bureaucracy. When will they be available?

Systems such as case and custody, which are being tested now, are an important part of custody and bureaucracy. We are anxious to roll them out to the police force, but want to do so when we are confident that they will deliver what we have promised they will deliver. However, I recognise the importance of the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Turning to funding, last year, overall expenditure on the police increased by 10.1 per cent and in the coming year it will increase by 6.1 per cent. That comprises money that goes to police authorities as police grants; in the unique case of London, it forms part of the overall funding to the Greater London Authority for all its services. Overall funding for GLA services increased by just over 4.1 per cent, although it is not necessarily expected that the police will receive that; that is for the GLA to decide. As part of the increased grant, there are allocated sums of money for expenditure on front-line services, most importantly the crime fighting fund, which funds the cost of additional recruits and police officers who are trained out on the streets. The fund is earmarked, and clearly delivers front-line services; £43 million will be paid into it this year, and there will be an increase next year of £19 million.

Although yet to be announced in detail, additional capital funding will be made available to police authorities, including the Metropolitan police authority. A further element is the special payment in the Metropolitan police service grant allocation in recognition of national and capital city functions, which has increased from £151 million in 1998–99 to £191 million in 2001–02; the year after, it will be £197 million. The funding of the Metropolitan police is more complex than that of other police authorities because decisions have to be taken by the GLA and the Metropolitan police authority about the overall allocation of funding to different services. However, there is no doubt that there has been a much more significant increase in Government funding for the police service in London, both last year and next year, than was the case under the previous Administration.

rose—

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I have already given way a couple of times.

The MPS is recruiting strongly and on track to take on the full allocation of crime fighting fund recruits this year. Indeed, it is sufficiently successful for me to agree that the Metropolitan police can bring forward to this year 50 recruits for whom it had been allocated funding next year. That is a measure of the Metropolitan police's success in recruitment.

Retention is an important issue and one reason why this Administration have significantly increased the allowances payable to officers in London and support for travel costs. While it has always been the case that some officers leave London to work elsewhere, it is equally true that others migrate to London, especially from neighbouring south-eastern areas. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said that we need to look at exactly why people leave. Where there are management issues rather than other issues, we need to make sure that they are effectively addressed.

We are delivering extra resources and extra police numbers. Police reform will ensure that those officers are used effectively and, as the commissioner has recently set out, well supported by the deployment of civilian staff.

Although the full title of the debate is "Measures to reduce the incidence of under-age drinking", that is not primarily what I intend to discuss. I shall explain why.

I could pretend that I had extraordinarily good foresight and wisdom, that I had anticipated the news at the weekend about Prince Harry and his rather unfortunate exploits, and that with great timeliness I had chosen the debate. As nice as that would be for the press, it is not true. I hope that that will be the first and last reference to the young man.

I asked for the debate following a meeting I had with the midland counties Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association just before Christmas. A number of concerns were expressed, but the two main ones were reform of licensing law and proof of age cards. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who will reply to the debate, may want to comment on the reform of licensing law, but the important matter is proof of age cards.

The west midlands brewers outlined their involvement in a group of interested organisations including the British Retail Consortium, the Trading Standards Institute, and CitizenCard, among many others. They asked for standard information criteria that would include a colour photograph, a hologram PASS logo—PASS stands for proof of age standards scheme—and the date of birth and/or the age of the holder. Their request seemed reasonable.

I wanted to explore in detail whether the Government planned to introduce a national proof of age card scheme, which the industry wants and which it thought the Government supported. At this point, the fun began. I wanted to table a question. The Table Office told me that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had assumed responsibility for the matter. I was somewhat surprised, but bowed to the superior wisdom and greater experience of Table Office staff. By and large, I have found that when I have had doubts about advice from the Table Office, they were right and I was wrong.

My question was referred to the Home Office and a reply duly arrived on 29 November 2001, in which the Minister responsible, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs, stated:

"The Government have no plans to develop a standard format for a proof of age card or to introduce a single national proof of age scheme. The Government welcome the recent initiative by the British Retail Consortium proposing to develop agreed standard design criteria and methods of accreditation for the various proof of age cards which currently exist so that retailers can be assured of the status of the cards presented to them."—[Official Report, 6 December 2001; Vol. 376, c. 485W.]

That was entirely in line with an answer given by Lord Bassam on 16 November 2000, in which he stated:

"We have no plans to introduce a national proof of age card and so no plans to pilot one. But we are looking at the possibility of incorporating a proof of age function in the proposed Connexions card; and we support the use of industry-based credible proof of age cards such as the Portman Card and Citizen Card, which are already widely available across the country."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 November 2000; Vol. 619, c. WA 44.]

I wanted to initiate a debate about why the Government have no plans to introduce a proof of age card scheme, so I went to the Table Office and asked for an Adjournment debate on proof of age cards. The reply was, "Sorry, that cannot be done. As the Government have no plans to introduce such a scheme, there is no Minister with responsibility for it. Therefore, a debate under that title is not possible." Hence, my diversionary tactics in the choice of title for the debate. Proportionately, proof of age cards probably have a larger effect than any other measure on under-age drinking.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing such an important subject to the attention of the House. She will no doubt mention the Portman Group proof of age card, but is she aware that legislation on under-age drinking came into force in 1997? It deals not only with under-age drinking, but with the supply of alcohol on the street to people who are under age by people who are of age, who would have a proof of age card, get the alcohol and supply it to their friends on the street. The legislation allows the police to deal with that, thereby keeping youngsters out of trouble and stopping them becoming a nuisance to themselves and the community. It has been used successfully throughout the country. Will the hon. Lady urge police forces around the country to consider using existing laws?

I strongly support the hon. Gentleman's views, and I recognise that various agencies already have a willingness and a great number of means to address the problem, but the journey that I described to secure the debate highlights one of the problems that must be recognised: we will deal with problems such as under-age drinking only through a variety of agencies working together and using their existing powers in a co-ordinated fashion. Even in the House, it is sometimes difficult for us to co-ordinate Government activities to address the issue.

No single agency will be able to resolve the problem; they must all focus on it. On under-age drinking, drug abuse and other issues concerning young people, agencies ranging from schools to law enforcement agencies and the health service must all work together. For all of them, such issues are on the edge of their other responsibilities. If a police force is required to deal with a robbery and, at the same time, an 18-year-old providing drinks to younger people, there is always the danger that the under-age drinking problem will be seen as peripheral. I am trying to find a way of moving it closer to the centre, making it easier for everyone concerned to focus on it. Rather than asking for new measures, I am trying to achieve a more co-ordinated framework.

I finally managed to table a request for a debate on under-age drinking. At first, the debate was referred to the Department of Health. I assured my colleagues there that a Health Minister was not the right person to reply. It was then referred to the Home Office, which did not want to take it. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. I cannot imagine a situation in which I would rather not see him-he is one of the more delightful people whom I can think of meeting on such an occasion. I hope that he understands my reasons for saying that. I hope that he will reassure me that I am lobbying the right Minister for the introduction of a proof of age card. If he is not, I hope that he will help me to reach the right Minister to take up the matter.

As we have discovered, the debate is wide ranging. Proving one's age is difficult, and it is impossible to decide whether a young person is 15, 16, 17 or 18. However, there are many occasions when the precise differentiation between a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old is important—for example, for buying cheaper rail fares, hiring a video or buying alcohol.

Retailers of age-restricted products need a system whereby they can verify a person's age. Cinema seats, gambling, lottery tickets, glue and knives are part of a long list of such products. I take the opportunity to congratulate the Portman Group on its work in this regard. It introduced a card scheme called "Prove It", which was successful in allowing 18-year-olds to prove their age, but of course that did not address the problem of 16 and 17-year-olds.

To highlight the important work of the Portman Group, it may be useful to draw attention to its current campaign, "I'll be Des". I have seen the advertisement, which is extremely attractive. "Des" is short for designated driver, and the campaign is intended to encourage young people who go out in a group to designate one person to drive and therefore not to drink. It was a positive message, but it was not delivered in an authoritarian way. It was not the kind of thing that their middle-aged parents would tell them to do. It was jokey and funny, and I believe that it will be successful, like the campaign against drink-driving.

The Portman Group has been very helpful. Its work shows that, by and large, retailers and people in the drinks industry—not least the larger organisations—are willing to stay within the law. I simply want to make it easier for them to do so. As I said, the problem with the "Prove It" card is not merely that it addressed only the 18-plus group, but that it declined in popularity when photographic driving licences were introduced, as they were an easy means by which youngsters could prove their age.

Another Department then came into play. In June 2000, the then Department for Education and Employment announced in a press notice what it called a multifunctional smart card for teenage students, entitling them to a variety of discounts and containing curriculum vitae information about the holder. The card was scheduled for national launch in autumn 2001 and its roll-out in England should be completed by autumn 2002. Again, the card applies only to England, although the problem is nationwide. Furthermore, the Connexions card is not a dedicated proof of age card, but is intended to encourage young people to remain in some form of learning and personal development, although it carries the holder's name and date of birth and can therefore serve as a proof of age card. I hope that it will be included in the proof of age standards scheme. If Government forecasts are correct and the roll-out works in the anticipated way, it is likely that a total of 1.8 million cards will be in circulation by 2003. My main objection, however, is that the card serves a purpose other than that of proving age. Although I welcome the scheme, I must point out that if a card entitles youngsters to all sorts of benefits, they may be reluctant to take it with them when they want to go out for a night's entertainment. We lose cards, but youngsters lose them even more.

I should put it on record that, in my experience, the vast majority of retailers want to stay within the law. We are very much aware of rogue retailers. I accept that they exist, but I do not subscribe to the idea that the vast majority wish to circumvent the law. For reasons that I accept and understand, the Government have not opted for compulsory identity cards. Personally, I have never had any problem with identity cards and would have no problem with carrying such a card, but I realise that the vast majority of people in the country do have problems with the idea. I accept that the Government have decided not to introduce a compulsory card. I do not propose that it should be compulsory for 16 to 18-year-olds to carry cards that prove their age.

I think that the majority of people in this country would welcome identity cards.

In that case, this is yet another occasion on which I would dearly love to be proved wrong.

Why are we shying away from making it easier for everyone to stay within the law? I do not believe that young people would resist carrying cards that prove their age. Many youngsters look older than their age, but just as many look younger. Somebody who is 18 but appears to be 16 should not be denied the opportunity to buy a pint in the pub. I do not think that youngsters would resist carrying such a card.

Ideally, I would like the Government not only to support the PASS scheme, but to provide a national overall framework, as the huge variety of cards makes it difficult for retailers to deal with them. For example, a framework of colour-coded cards in which orange signifies an age of 16, green signifies 17 and red 18 would be easily recognised and verified. However, I am a realist, so I know that I may not get a firm commitment on that point. Failing that, the Connexions card is another way forward. If it could be used effectively as a proof of age card, that would be an important step. As I said, my reservation about the Connexions card is its confusion between a variety of purposes. If a card provides access to other services, kids will get confused. Why cannot we have a card that is very simple, can be used for purchases in relation to which age is important and is easy to use for retailers? The Government should provide the framework for a nationally recognised scheme that will allow young people and retailers alike to stay within the law. Surely, that is something that we should all be able to support.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) for raising this very important issue. She has long been concerned with the welfare of children and these matters are vital for all hon. Members. I know that she has been raising them in her constituency for a long time and that they cause a great deal of anxiety in all our constituencies. I am sorry if she believes that she has got the wrong Minister in this debate.

As my hon. Friend said, proof of age cards are within the remit of the Home Office, but she is wrong to assume—I am not saying that this entirely describes her position—that such cards are a panacea for solving this very complex problem, which I believe will be best addressed by a review of the whole licensing system, as well as—dare I say it?—the culture in this country, about which we at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are very concerned. However, if I may, I shall try to deal with proof of age cards, as our Department has something to say about them. After all, tenuous though this point may be, I am a member of the Government.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will recall that when we came to power in 1997 we promised to tackle the problem of alcopops. She was at the forefront of those expressing concerns about the problem, which was perceived to be very serious. I certainly worried about it a great deal. Alcopops were an issue of great concern to many parents and there was a worrying trend in their use, not least as the original alcopops began to be replicated across the whole range of alcoholic drinks. Working closely with the Portman Group, we called on producers and suppliers of alcohol to discharge their social responsibilities with regard to the problem of under-age drinking. A range of additional controls within the Portman Group's code of practice was introduced and had a significant impact on the merchandising and packaging of alcoholic drinks. I pay tribute to the manufacturers and retailers for their work. The number of complaints made to the Portman Group's independent panel about the marketing to children and packaging of alcohol has now dwindled to almost nothing, which is a significant step forward.

In 1999, we gave our wholehearted support to the private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell). I think that the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) was referring to that Bill, which was introduced in 1999 and not 1997.

I was referring to the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Bill—a private Member's Bill that I introduced in 1996–97 with all-party support.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I assumed that he was referring to the later Bill, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey following the tragic death of his 14-year-old constituent, David Knowles, and which became the Licensing (Young Persons) Act 2000.

The 2000 Act closed a loophole in the main licensing statutes that had allowed some staff in licensed premises to sell alcohol to children without fear of prosecution or conviction. The Act also introduced for the first time a new offence that prevented adults from hanging around off-licences and buying alcohol on behalf of under-age persons outside. In April 2000, we announced a raft of measures to tackle under-age purchase and consumption of alcohol in the White Paper "Time for Reform: Proposals for the Modernisation of our Licensing Laws". My hon. Friend has urged us to implement the reforms at the first opportunity, and we will do so. I know that many in the House would have liked us to move more swiftly on reform in general, but we cannot be criticised for any delay on the measures regarding children, whom we have always put in the forefront of our concerns.

The White Paper proposals tackle under-age drinking in several ways. They were given priority before general reform and included in the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. Three crucial measures have been brought into force since the general election.

On 1 December last year, the test purchasing of alcohol was put on a statutory footing for the first time, bringing it into line with the arrangements for tobacco. Trading standards officers can now send minors into licensed premises to attempt to buy alcohol—a valuable deterrent that has heightened the risk of detection and prosecution for unscrupulous traders who make a profit out of causing physical harm to our children. They are a minority, but there is no doubt that they exist.

The 2001 Act also placed a new positive duty on licensees and their staff not to sell alcohol to children. The defences that can be mounted against prosecutions have been amended, and it has been made easier for enforcement agencies to secure convictions. Retailers now know that in the case of any doubt about age, they simply should not make the sale. I shall consider that in more detail shortly because it is not a matter of one-way traffic. I shall try to prove that although a proof of age card may help in some circumstances, it is not a panacea.

The Act has also made it easier for local authorities to designate areas in their towns and cities where alcohol may not be consumed publicly by under-age drinkers or those who can buy and consume alcohol legally. We have expanded the powers of the police to confiscate alcohol that is carried by children in those areas.

I recognise that licensing law can be only one element in a much wider strategy. Data from research sponsored by the Portman Group strongly suggest that children are obtaining a great deal of cheap alcohol from unlicensed individuals who peddle smuggled alcohol. That is serious; it is a cynical trade with little regard for the consequences for the young and, indeed, for parents. The Government have stepped up their campaign to defeat the bootleggers. The Treasury is providing more customs officers dedicated to detecting those involved.

Our wider strategy includes the vital work of the Department for Education and Skills, the Department of Health and the Portman Group in providing more health education resources for children and parents about sensible drinking. Most of the alcohol obtained and consumed by minors is provided by parents, and public education to change some of our entrenched attitudes is essential.

A great deal has been done and a great deal is happening in the public and private sectors in licensing, health and education, but there are no easy or quick fixes for under-age drinking. Most hon. Members know that; it is a difficult matter.

A Government proof of age card is often portrayed as a panacea. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will want to weigh all the evidence before agreeing to the introduction of such a card. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston to consider why no Government since the second world war have introduced such a card. The test is whether proof of age cards would significantly reduce the amount of under-age drinking. Neither the Government nor previous Governments have been convinced.

The problem is not only adequate proof of age. Professor Paul Willner of the University of Wales conducted test purchasing studies, using 13 and 16-year-olds, which were published by the Alcohol and Education Research Council in August 2000. Each of the children held a valid and well known proof of age card showing his or her correct date of birth. In 80 per cent. of cases—the figure was higher for girls—16-year-olds successfully made a purchase, despite showing the cards. Almost a third of the 13-year-olds were successful. As many as 60 per cent. of the 16-year-olds were not even challenged for proof of age. Worse, many retailers who demanded to see valid cards went on to make the sale despite seeing a card that confirmed that the child was under age.

Let me turn the Minister's test around. Instead of asking, "Why introduce a card?", we should ask, "Why not?" Such a card could cover a range of products; we do not need to isolate alcohol. For example, it could apply to purchasing lottery tickets. Every retailer would then know about such a straightforward and simple system. The industry would support it if the Government provided the framework. Why not introduce such a card?

My hon. Friend asks a good question and I shall try to give a good answer. All Governments must decide whether such actions will be cost-effective. Until now, they believed that the considerable money and resources necessary for such a large, bureaucratic arrangement could be better spent elsewhere. I am not convinced that introducing such a card is the best use of taxpayers' money. I am sure that that also applies to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but perhaps he will be convinced of the argument for a card. I dealt with such matters as a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry and as an Education Minister, and I remain unconvinced.

That does not mean that the range of cards available, such as Validate UK, Connexions, CitizenCard or the Portman card, are not good and valuable. They contribute in a small way and, in some cases, a large way, to reducing the problem. However, a card is not a panacea or necessarily the best way of tackling the problem.

We may learn more about the potential impact of such cards from the introduction of the Connexions card, which my hon. Friend described. It has a proof-of-age function for those enrolled in higher education between the ages of 16 and 19, and has begun to be introduced nationally. She is right that the speed of roll-out, to use an awful expression, remains to be seen.

I acknowledge that we can do much more in the general reform of licensing. Our licensing laws are archaic and incomprehensible to many parents. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has taken over responsibility for licensing from the Home Office. Until I became a Minister in the Department, I did not know the law on children drinking in pubs or what happened when people took their children into a pub. I am sure that hon. Members will be amazed to discover that although minors cannot purchase alcohol in pubs and nightclubs, children as young as five can lawfully consume alcohol in pub gardens and some family rooms. Consumption is prohibited only in the area of licensed premises known as "the bar". Only the landlord knows what constitutes the bar. It is a dotted line on a map.

That means that children over four can drink alcohol freely in a licensed restaurant that has no bar. We should not be fooled by the counter from which drinks are supplied. That is often not a bar as understood in law. It is no wonder that most parents find all that utterly confusing. We intend to sort it all out in the general reform of licensing law. A Bill will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time permits.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising such an important matter. I hope that a good, proper and robust study of the use and effectiveness of proof of age cards will continue to be conducted. If I am proved wrong, I shall go along with the results. Until then, I hope that my hon. Friend will accept at least some of the arguments that I have tried to present in response to hers.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a serious failing of successive Governments to put right an injustice that has existed for 50 years. It concerns the recognition of almost a quarter of a million men who served their country in the Suez canal zone between 1951 and 1954.

A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have been concerned about this issue, and have written to Ministers about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid—Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) is present and hopes to speak in this debate. She has my permission and that of the Minister to do so briefly.

I am particularly grateful to Lieutenant-Colonel Ashley Tinson, retired, and to Charles Golder for the excellent briefing that they have provided, and for keeping me up to speed on this issue. I also want to pay tribute to the work of other hon. Members, particularly the hon. Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) and for Wentworth (John Healey), who have pursued this question in a variety of ways for some considerable time. The Minister will know of the strength of feeling behind this matter. A petition of 20,000 names was presented in 1998, and during the last five years there have been two Adjournment debates and many hundreds of letters from MPs on behalf of constituents.

The emergency in the Suez canal zone began on 8 October 1951 when the then Egyptian Government sought to abrogate its treaty agreement that British troops and airmen could be stationed in the canal zone. British armed forces and installations came under attack soon after that abrogation, and for three years our armed services faced a series of terrorist and paramilitary attacks.

The scale of the deployment to counter the terrorist threat and protect British citizens in the canal zone reveals the seriousness of the events. After the first attacks, the British garrison was increased to 80,000 troops, and possibly as many as 250,000 troops were stationed in the area during the period. In his book "The Regiments Depart", Gregory Blaxland said that the deployment was

"the swiftest build-up ever achieved by the British Army in peacetime, and included the air despatch of 6,000 men, 170 tons of stores, and 330 vehicles in a matter of ten days."

The scale of military operations was significant, and the deprivations suffered by the service personnel and their families were considerable. For example, in January 1952, the Lancashire Fusiliers supported by tanks and armoured cars stormed the police barracks. In that action alone, British casualties included four killed and 10 wounded. During the three years, 54 service personnel were killed in action and more than 300 died from all causes, many of whom would have survived had they served in the UK. This is the eighth highest incidence in the table of British casualties since the second world war.

Still there is no formal recognition. There is no Suez medal. The question appears to turn on whether the Army Council ever formally considered the request made by the Commander-in-Chief, middle east forces, General Sir Brian Robertson, in January 1952 for the general service medal to be awarded to his troops serving in the canal zone. This matter was, therefore, being raised 50 years ago.

In 1999, further papers came to light. The Army historical branch considered the papers and came to what I consider to be the surprising conclusion that they contained nothing to justify an approach to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. I, too, have examined those papers. They deal almost exclusively with the question of operational gallantry awards, military medals and the like. The only mention of a general service medal is in the January 1952 reply from the Military Secretary, Lieutenant-General Sir Euan Miller, to General Robertson, in which he says that he will "sound out" the Adjutant-General. The later—February 1952—memo from the Military Secretary to the Army Council, which included the Adjutant-General, deals exclusively with operational gallantry awards, and contains no mention of a general service award.

On 20 February 1952, the Military Secretary wrote to General Robertson in response to a letter that he had written on 2 February about an award to Brigadier Exham, who had led the assault on the Egyptian police barracks of which I spoke earlier. Again, the exchange related exclusively to operational gallantry awards, and to the need for those matters to be put to the Army Council before going to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. The Military Secretary went on to say:

"I had no sooner done this than the King's death took place, which led to everyone concerned in the A.G.'s department becoming extremely involved in ceremonial."

I wonder whether that understandable distraction might have led to this matter being overlooked? In March 1952, the Military Secretary wrote to General Robertson to inform him that the Army Council had decided that

"the scale and the scope of the operation do not justify the granting of purely operational awards."

Again, there was no reference to a general service award.

Does the hon. Gentleman share the concern of my constituent, Mr. R. T. Wilson, who represents the Havering Suez Veterans Association, who was advised by the Ministry of Defence to go and buy a general service medal from a medal dealer for £50?

If that was the case, it was clearly a callous and thoughtless thing to say, and I am sure that the hon. Lady will have taken it up with the appropriate authorities.

Between 18 January and the 7 March 1952—the period during which these matters are supposed to have been considered—the available documentary evidence confirms that only operational gallantry awards were considered. There appears to be no documentary evidence in any of the relevant files held by the Public Record Office to show that the Army Council gave the request for a general service medal any formal consideration. It is this missing link that should give rise to fresh consideration of the original request, and to a submission to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals.

Looking through past written answers and ministerial correspondence on the Suez emergency deposited in the Library of the House, I notice that a recurring theme is that the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals has a long-standing policy of non-retrospection. However, if no evidence can be found to show that the original request was properly considered—no evidence has been presented—that policy should be set aside to allow the case to be considered on its merits. Indeed, I understand that, last June, the Prime Minister said that the chairman of the committee was carefully considering the matter. Will the Minister tell us whether Sir Richard Wilson has reached any conclusions?

The emergency in the Suez canal zone is unique in that it is the only major post-1945 campaign not to have been recognised by the awarding of a medal. Given the events of the time, and set against the standards of the period, it is hard to fathom why no medal was granted. Looking back over 50 years of history, it is even harder to understand. So, what evidence is required? In March last year, the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), then the Minister with responsibility for the armed forces, in reply to an intervention from the hon. Member for Wentworth, said:

"Evidence relating to, for example, the Army Council could persuade me to alter my position."

He went on to say:

"Evidence relating to whether the case was considered properly in terms of procedure might constitute grounds for reconsideration."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 14 March 2001; Vol. 364, c. 302WH.]

Given the meticulous way in which records are kept, the fact that the Department is unable to turn up conclusive evidence that the matter was ever properly considered should be sufficient grounds for the matter to be reopened. If the evidence that I have put to the Minister today is correct—that, apart from some informal soundings about a general service medal, the matter was never progressed—a great injustice has been done to many troops. I hope that, in those circumstances, the Minister would feel that he could use the powers of his office to ask the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals to give the matter further formal consideration.

Further careful reading of the evidence can lead only to a single clear conclusion. I am not asking the Minister to rewrite history; rather, I am asking him to right a wrong that has remained on the Department's books for far too long, and to find a way to recognise those veterans who served their country in Suez between 1951 and 1954 and who have not been recognised.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) on securing the debate, and thank him for allowing me to speak. I pay special tribute to the Suez veterans who, individually and through their organisations, have kept up the fight for recognition of the part that they played in our history, and also to the many MPs who have raised these issues over a long period of time.

As a new Member, one of my first surgery appointments was with Mr. John Friberg, the Dorset representative of the Canal Zoners, who described the situation to me. I must confess that I knew very little about the activities of our troops in Suez between 1951 and 1954. Most of my generation can just remember 1956, but we do not know much about those earlier years. Perhaps that highlights why it is so important to redress this injustice. My fear is that, rather than be remembered, "they will be forgotten", as one service man said on a recent television programme. He went on:

"All we've got is egg on our faces; we are swept under the carpet".

But why?

There is no doubt that conditions were dangerous and unpleasant and that troops were on declared active service. As my hon. Friend said, 54 men were killed in action and it is claimed that there were 613 casualties during the period. A recent letter says:

"I had a brother killed, Jan 19th 1952, age 18. We have a wreath sent every year, November 11th. It would be wonderful to receive a medal on this anniversary—50 years this coming November—to pass on to our next generation. We believe Arthur was guarding water tanks and a bomb was in a barrel of oranges—Arthur and another boy got blown to bits."

The veterans have many stories of armed attacks, sniping and even mutilations. Since 1945, life has been lost in at least 16 conflicts around the world involving this country, but service in only this one appears not be to recognised. The negative replies to requests for recognition over the years represent a vicious circle. Put simply, a case was not established at the time, so one cannot be considered now. Round and round we go. My hon. Friend ably argued that there is no evidence that the case for a general service medal was ever considered, which I hope is sufficient to break that circle and lead to a positive outcome.

I am heartened by last July's letter from the Deputy Prime Minister's office, to which my hon. Friend referred, which states that

"the possibility of some kind of recognition is currently under consideration by Sir Richard Wilson in his role as Chairman of the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals".

In the week preceding Remembrance Sunday, the BBC showed in the south a documentary entitled "Suez—the Forgotten Campaign". I have a video copy to present to the Minister if he did not see it. The programme contains the observation that, last year, the Suez veterans were invited to march to the cenotaph for the first time. There was no Suez medal to wear, of course.

Veterans point out that a medal is wanted not only to recognise those who survived, but primarily for the dignity of those who died. My constituent, Mr. Friberg, wrote to me:

"I shall continue to campaign until I draw my last breath against the injustice done by my country in not giving us just a small token of gratitude for services rendered."

I urge the Minister to facilitate a positive reconsideration of a unique case in the Queen's golden jubilee year.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) on securing the debate and I assure him that I listened carefully to his points and those made by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke). I can make no specific comment on the intervention of the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) as I am completely ignorant of the matter, but if she writes to me I promise that we shall look into it.

This subject is one on which I have corresponded with many hon. Members and it was debated here early last year. Circumstances have not changed recently and I am afraid that I must repeat much of what has been said before. It is well known that very little contemporary correspondence about a campaign medal for service in the canal zone in the early 1950s survives. For the sake of brevity, I shall not go into the details of the various correspondence between senior military commanders at the time, but it is clear that there is no definitive record of events and it appears that consideration of an award was at least mooted.

Canal zone veterans and their supporters have been particularly active over the past 12 years or so. During that time, there have been a number of reviews by successive Adjutant-Generals, two Chiefs of the General Staff have interested themselves in the case and in 1998 my predecessor instigated a full review of all available documents, including those held by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Public Record Office. Other documents found in the Ministry of Defence or offered by veterans or their supporters have also been carefully studied.

None of those reviews has given us any reason to think that the matter was insufficiently or improperly dealt with 50 years ago or provided us with the necessary material to make a case for submission to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. The committee has a long-standing policy that it will not consider instituting awards and medals for service given many years earlier. It will not look back at claims for medals if the operation concerned finished more than five years previously. That is because it feels that if no contemporary claim was made, it cannot second-guess why those in a position to ask for a medal to be awarded decided not to do so.

Claims rejected at the time, either by the Ministry of Defence and its predecessors or by the committee, were based on contemporary evidence. Those who rejected them had access to the full facts and would have had valid reasons for rejection. That policy has been in force since the end of the second world war, but no retrospective institution of medals has occurred since the 19th century.

The Minister's argument does include points made in the debate last year, but is he telling the Chamber that the burden of proof rests with the veterans? Have they to come to him to show documents that the Department cannot find to prove that the matter was not considered? I have presented evidence today showing that only operational gallantry awards were considered. Why not accept that the evidence to support the Government's position is not there and allow the matter to be reconsidered?

The unfortunate fact is that there is no evidence either way. What exists neither confirms nor denies either position. There are two points at issue: the contemporary record and the policy of the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. In the Department's opinion, both in themselves constitute sufficient grounds for not proceeding to review the case.

I return to the question of why no case was put to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals in the 1950s. The evidence suggests that the Army Council simply did not think the operation to be of sufficient scale or scope, but that is not to denigrate in any way the sacrifice made by those involved. It is merely a reflection of how the campaign was viewed at the time, in the shadow of the second world war.

A number of more sinister reasons have been suggested over the years. One is Foreign Office "interference" in the procedure. I should make it clear that the Foreign Office would have had a legitimate interest had a case gone to the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals. After all, service deployments are part of a foreign policy, which covers diplomatic, economic and military aspects.

The Foreign Office was represented on the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is now, but no evidence has been found of any consultation on the subject between the War Office and the Foreign Office and there is no record of the Foreign Office expressing a view. Furthermore, there are two suggestions why the Foreign Office might have intervened, and they conflict with each other. One is that the Foreign Office did not want to upset the Egyptians by admitting that we were, in effect, at war. The other is that awarding a medal would have pleased the Egyptians by conferring the status of military operation on what was in fact terrorist activity.

However, the views of opposing nationals clearly did not prevent the award of medals for contemporary or near-contemporary security operations in places such as Palestine and Malaya and neither argument about the effect on the Egyptians would have carried any weight when the further opportunity to make a case arose in 1956.

As well as embarrassing the Foreign Office, for whatever reason, it has been claimed that a case for a medal would have embarrassed the War Office. If we try to look at the operation from the viewpoint of the Army of 50 years ago, it is difficult to see why the War Office might have felt embarrassed. Troops were deployed in the canal zone to ensure the safe passage of shipping and protect a limited British presence, which existed by treaty with the Egyptians. That they did conscientiously and successfully, without unnecessary use of force, and there is nothing discreditable about it.

Had the War Office been embarrassed, the Military Secretary would not have taken the steps, which we know that he did, to ensure that those stationed in the canal zone received a good share of the awards in the 1952 birthday honours list. A similar allegation is that the War Office was influenced by the strength of public and political opinion against the operations. Opinion was in fact divided and we have no reason to believe that the War Office was swayed either way. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir William Slim, is widely acknowledged to have been the finest "soldier's general" since Wellington and it is very unlikely that he would have been deterred if he thought that a good case existed.

It is also claimed that the members of the Army Council in 1952 were unaware of the conditions in the canal zone. That is not so. The Secretary of State for War had visited the area and spoke about it at a meeting of the Army Council. It is inconceivable that the most senior officers in the Army were ignorant of the situation in what was the biggest British forces base in the eastern Mediterranean and middle east, or that they did not understand the implications. They had all been operational commanders at a high level. It was known then, as we know now, that the canal zone was unpleasant and, at times, dangerous, with an oppressive climate and sparse living conditions. In those days, however, British troops were stationed in many overseas garrisons where conditions were harsh.

Moving on from what are claimed to have been the factors that influenced decisions fifty years ago, I should like to look at some of the arguments that have been put forward recently in support of making a case for a medal now. The first is that troops were on declared active service. That is perfectly true, but it is not an argument for a medal. Declarations of active service are made when, for example, it is necessary to introduce greater disciplinary powers.

The declarations of active service made by the General Officer Commanding British Troops Egypt between 1950 and 1954 state:

"It is emphasised that this is a purely administrative decision in order that the status of British Troops in Egypt regarding Courts Martial shall remain unchanged".

There is no automatic connection between active service and campaign medals. The British garrison in Berlin was on active service from 1945 to 1990 because of its status as an occupying power, but received no medal. Conversely, members of the armed forces who serve in Northern Ireland are eligible for the general service medal but have never been placed on active service.

Much has been made recently of the number of British deaths in the canal zone during the period from 1951 to 1954. One of the veterans' organisations claims that the total is in excess of 600. A more modest figure of 54 was attributed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in remarks supposedly made by him in November 2000 when he announced proposals for a new memorial to service personnel who have been killed since the second world war. I understand that the first figure was provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and relates not to the number killed on duty, but to the number of graves in cemeteries in Egypt maintained by the commission.

The second figure was not included in the announcement but appeared in some newspaper commentaries on it; we are unaware of its origin. The official total of troops killed during the period of unrest from October 1951 to May 1954, provided by the Adjutant General's statistics branch in 1955, was 40, with a further six missing and 75 wounded. We have no reason to doubt these figures.

It is often claimed that service in the canal zone was the only action after the second world war for which a clasp to the general service medal or a separate medal was not awarded, and that medals were awarded both at the time and subsequently for operations that were on a much smaller scale and had a lower casualty rate. The latter point is made particularly in relation to medals for present day deployments. The first point is, in fact, incorrect. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, there were more than a dozen internal security deployments for which no medal was issued—for example in Libya, Burma, Singapore and Hong Kong.

On the matter of the scale of the canal zone operation in relation to others, I have already mentioned that the Army Council did not think that the situation in the canal zone warranted operational awards. We must remember that the second world war had ended only six years previously. Even more recently, during three years of internal security operations in Palestine, about 260 service men had been killed and 700 wounded. The Korean war was still in progress. I do not believe that comparison with present day deployments is relevant. Policy on medals changes over the years, and different views are taken at different times.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way for a second time. I invite him to look again at the chronology of the correspondence during the period in 1952 about which we are talking. He should reflect upon that and upon this debate, as the correspondence and the debate show that only operational gallantry awards were considered, and not the general service medal. If he finds that to be the case, as I have, will he refer the matter on again?

I shall certainly look at the chronology again, although I must tell the hon. Gentleman that I have looked at it on several occasions and I do not take the same view of it as he does. With regard to the Cabinet Secretary's investigation of the general procedure, his inquiries are still on-going and have yet to reach a conclusion.

To sum up, the War Office did not submit a case for a medal at the time of the canal zone deployment or shortly after, and we have no good reason to believe that that was a result of improper or inadequate handling. There have been successive reviews over the last twelve years but no evidence has come to light that demonstrates that the War Office got it wrong. The circumstances have not changed and our position remains clear.

Documents do turn up, and have done during the intervening 50 years. Should anything further turn up that gives a different slant on proceedings, we will look at it. At present, there is no evidence that such contemporary background material actually exists.

Mr. Amess, it gives me great pleasure to be here for this debate under the fixity of your pensive gaze. I preface my remarks by making it clear that if I refer to "the Americans", I am speaking not about the American people—for whom I have a great deal of affection and regard and who remain warm and generous of spirit—but about the American Administration.

National missile defence, as it used to be known, is, I would argue, one of the biggest—if not the biggest—threats to global stability that we face in contemporary times. It unravels a whole series of treaties on the basis of unproven and undeveloped technology, an improbable threat and a huge financial cost, both materially and politically. I would also argue that it is against the interests of the United Kingdom, despite repeated Government denials that that is the case.

What is national missile defence? First, it no longer exists; it has been renamed missile defence. The reason for that is that the new title suggests that, in some way, it is a transportable system, appropriate to more than the defence of the continental United States. But as Southampton university's Mountbatten centre for international studies has argued:

"It is highly debatable whether or not missile defence can be transferred to a British or European context."

Quite simply, it is important that we put on the table what missile defence is, as it is a piece of jargon for the average elector and, I would argue, possibly for the average hon. Member. "Missile defence" is the notion that missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction can, if they are in small numbers, be knocked out of the sky by other missiles. It has been likened to a bullet hitting a bullet at a combined speed of 15,000 mph.

It is further argued that it is important that this notion be embraced because there is a small group of rogue nations that might very well attack the United States using intercontinental ballistic missiles. Missile defence supporters say that this arguable threat needs to be met with a layered defence, giving the United States options to take out the rogue missiles at different stages in a putative attack.

Finally, the present American Administration argue that missile defence is entirely consistent with the legitimate interests of other powers in the world, including Russia and China.

I would aver that none of this is true, as I hope to demonstrate. Moreover, I think that our Government have hitherto been economical with the truth on these matters and are, in my view, failing to act in the British national interest.

I shall take hon. Members through some of the fallacies underpinning the American Administration drive for missile defence. The first general area of doubt about the efficacy of these proposals is the technology itself that is required. Ever since the ill-fated strategic defence initiative under President Reagan, trillions of dollars have been spent in researching missile defence. One of its prototypes was the Patriot system, which was devised by the Raytheon Corporation and deployed in the Gulf war. I am sure hon. Members will recall that we were told a great deal about its success in downing Iraqi Scud missiles. However, the House of Representatives noted that

"the claims of success were false."

The then Administration and their contractor, Raytheon, misled the public and Congress. Those are the words of a reputable Committee of the House of Representatives.

What has changed with the current research and promises of success? Not a lot. If people doubt that, they should read the Scientific American of August 1999, which contains an article entitled "Why National Missile Defence Won't Work", written by three authors. One of them is Theodore Postol, who developed the Trident 2 missile system. He is not a peacenik or naive about such matters, but he felt compelled to write to the White House and to contribute to the article to express his concerns about the distorted test results used to argue in favour of missile defence.

Even more convincing is a letter sent to the Republican and Democrat leaders in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on 12 November 2001, if for no other reason than that it was signed by 50 American Nobel laureates, each one an eminent scientist in his—there were no women—field. The letter stated:

"America faces security needs far more substantial than a technically improbable defence against a strategically improbable Third World ballistic missile attack."

That is aptly put. After all, the test flights that have been successful so far have been so only because a homing device was placed inside the target rocket and—as Theodore Postol demonstrated—a decoy was placed on the opposite side of the incoming extra-atmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV, which is one of those marvellous pieces of jargon associated with the Dr. Strangelove world of missile defence.

The tests in December were also delayed by inclement weather. Missile defence would appear to be a technological miracle that requires a homing device in the target, decoys on the right side of the rocket and fine weather before the intercepting missiles can be used.

I am humble enough to recognise that those technical problems might be overcome, but to what end? The standard response is to counter the rogue states, which appear to be defined as those which refuse to recognise US hegemony. Admittedly, many are nasty regimes—North Korea, Iran and Iraq, for example—but so are many American and British allies. The key might lie in what constitutes a threat.

The US Administration appear to rate as a threat those states which they know or suspect to be developing such missile technology. Traditionally, in this country and in Europe we have not restricted implied threat to capability but have linked it to intent to use the technology. Why should one of the three states that I have mentioned seek to threaten the US with an ICBM, in the knowledge that the retaliation by the US to an attack with weapons of mass destruction would be terrible and total? The events of 11 September demonstrate that there are far more devilish ways to wreak havoc than using an ICBM, without attracting the national annihilation that would surely follow such an attack.

The cost of missile defence is soaring exponentially. The Pentagon has claimed a cost for the life cycle of missile defence of $43 billion. Others place the true cost at anywhere between $60 billion and $120 billion. The cost of just one component—the space-based, infra-red, missile-heavy satellites, the eyes in the sky for the system—have increased already from $10 billion to £23 billion. That gives some idea of the way in which the cost of the technology is racing ahead of all the computations. The emergency funding remitted to the US Executive after 11 September was $40 billion, $20 billion of which has already been spent in Afghanistan, so I wonder how sustainable those huge costs will be.

The British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Michael Boyce, commented on 28 July 2001:

"There is no way I'm in a position to suggest we can pay for any missile defence from within the existing budget".

As always, he was being remarkably frank. What would our Chancellor have to say about a British commitment to spiralling expenditure on missile defence? I raise that point because it is not only an American issue. If anyone doubts that, I refer them to the legislation sponsored by Representative Allan in the House of Representatives, entitled the Missile Defence Burdensharing Act 2001, which seeks hefty compensation from allies for any extension of missile defence to cover their countries to meet the purchase and research and development costs of missile defence.

It is remotely possible that we could overcome the challenges of technology and cost, but what of the politics and the alleged destabilising effects of missile defence? We must consider those issues in the context of the present US Administration's unilateralism and, in particular, its military application. The US Department of Defence issued a document entitled "Joint Vision 2020" on 30 May 2000, which stated:

"The label full spectrum dominance implies that U. S. forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains—space, sea, land, air and information."

That is a statement of intent for total and unbridled American power. Many people will go along with that and I can understand the Americans wishing to do so, but I question whether it is in the British national interest. For example, is it in our interest to see the militarisation of space?

We should set that declaration against America's actions in a wider context under the present Administration. For example, they have announced withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty; brought the biological weapons convention review conference to a halt; renounced international efforts to negotiate a verification protocol to the biological weapons convention; abandoned Kyoto; refused to reconsider the comprehensive test ban treaty; rejected the International Criminal Court; discarded the convention on the prohibition of land mines; gutted the United Nations conference on small arms; dismissed the UN convention on the rights of the child; boycotted the comprehensive test ban treaty review conference in New York; supported a continuing unilateral embargo on Cuba; and have now announced plans to place weapons in space.

Is it any wonder that China is set at least to quadruple its force of ICBMs and equip it with multiple warheads, as reported by the CIA? Is it any wonder that Russia is feeling peeved and let down after the American admission that instead of negotiated weapons removal, the weapons will merely be mothballed? That is the context—the background for the decision. America is embracing the concept of missile defence in the context of a rapidly fading credibility as regards its commitment to any international agreements.

I ask hon. Members not to take only my word on these matters.

"President Bush has dismissed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as a relic of the Cold War. He's right. The treaty was signed in 1972 by President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev—names from another time, another world. Unfortunately, Bush's idea of an anti-missile defence system is even older than the treaty that he is trying to kill"—

those are not my words but were part of an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 13 December 2001.

On the same date, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated:

"Thus the President has created several bad outcomes: abandoning yet another international agreement at a time when the US is relying on world-wide coalition against terror; making Russia, which sees the ABM treaty as the last vestige of its superpower days of glory, very upset; making its NATO allies nervous, and setting the US on a course to spend anywhere from $60 billion to $200 billion in the next 10 years on a missile defense system."

Again, those are not my words but those of a very sensible middle America and they are coming through strongly.

The key question for us is where does the UK stand? My argument is simple. We disingenuously await a formal approach from the US to use Fylingdales and Menwith Hill as part of the system, although we know that they are already being used under previous agreements. However, to use that as an excuse for avoiding debates such as this one is disingenuous.

We are giving slavish support to the US Administration, much to the consternation of our European allies—with all that that means for us in the short, medium and longer-term future. Perhaps more critically for most people in this country in this rather improbable doomsday scenario of rogue states launching missiles against the United States, we become a front-line target in a way that beggars belief.

We knowingly defy the sound logic of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. For 50 years, that logic has been based on three tenets: deterrence, multilateral arms control and national security. Missile defence actually turns those three tenets on their head. The silence of the Government on this issue hitherto can be interpreted only as a wish to curry favour with that most ideologically driven of American Administrations—an Administration who are, unfortunately, locked in a rather paranoid view of America's place in the world.

I have the greatest regard for the Minister of State. He knows that my remarks are not personal; I am making a necessary and legitimate political argument. Will the Minister, on behalf of the Government, act as America does and put our national interest first? I do not object to America putting its interests first. I have no locus in American politics, but we all have one in the politics and national interest of this country.

Missile defence is an offensive, not a defensive, system. It will lull not only Americans but Europeans and many others into a false sense of security. There is a strong view among strategic thinkers that missile defence makes a first-strike policy more rather than less likely.

If we have a special relationship with the United States, we should be using it to tell the Americans what we really think. We should tell them how they are wrong. We should be critical friends of the Americans; we should point out that NMD is not in the American interest and that they are using the wrong strategy against the wrong enemy at the wrong time, especially post-11 September.

I ask my right hon. Friend not to forget about one Labour Government who were under great economic pressure from the United States, but managed to stay out of the fold when they felt that the involvement of the British people was inappropriate. I refer of course to Harold Wilson when he came under that pressure during the Vietnam war. Harold Wilson resisted that pressure in far more parlous times—politically and economically—than the British Administration face at present.

With all humility, and with the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, I point out that, although Harold Wilson was no angel, only fools rush in where angels fear to tread; angels would very much fear to tread along this path.

I certainly do not speak as an angel but as a Minister. I do not know whether angels have ever been Ministers—after a long, hard search, historians might find one.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) on securing the debate, and I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to set out the Government's position on this issue. I take his point that his remarks were not aimed at me personally, because our friendship goes back a long way. We have shared the same political enemies, but I distance myself from his hypercritical comments about our closest ally—the United States. The tenor of my speech will touch on some of those points.

The potential threat from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which include ballistic missiles, and their means of delivery is widely recognised and accepted. Since the events of 11 September, the possibility that terrorists could use weapons of mass destruction against the UK or our allies has understandably been a cause of particular concern. Many people say that the world has changed since that day, and I share that general view.

However, that certainly does not mean that we should relax our vigilance against other dangers, including the danger that could be posed by ballistic missiles. The events of 11 September show us that there are people who will seek to threaten the US, its friends and allies with all available means—in future, that could include ballistic missiles.

I do not want to be alarmist. Our assessment remains that there is currently no significant threat to the UK from ballistic missiles. Indeed, the threat from ballistic missile attack has diminished considerably since the end of the cold war. Furthermore, I can assure hon. Members that we continue to monitor developments closely. We are conscious, however, that the UK often deploys its armed forces to areas of the world where ballistic missiles are available to our potential adversaries, and where such weapons have been used previously. In parts of the world where tensions remain high, it is a cause of concern that some states are trying to develop or acquire ballistic missile capabilities of increasing range.

We need to tackle that potential threat. It is important to do so with a comprehensive strategy that encompasses diplomacy, arms control, export controls, counter-proliferation, conflict prevention, intelligence co-operation, deterrence and defensive measures. We are already working hard in all those areas with our allies, partners and friends. We must look to do more where we can. Furthermore, we must consider new elements for inclusion in that comprehensive strategy.

Before I turn to the detail of missile defence, I make it clear that the US agrees with us on the need for such a comprehensive strategy. There is no difference between us on that point. Missile defence is not a substitute for other measures as a response to the proliferation threat. I remind my hon. Friend that last February the Prime Minister and President Bush agreed in a joint statement that:

"We need to obstruct and deter these threats with a strategy that encompasses offensive and defensive systems, continues nuclear arms reductions where possible, and strengthens weapons of mass destruction and missile proliferation controls and counter-proliferation measures."

It is of course right that diplomacy should form a central strand of our response to missile proliferation—as for any security issue. Work on conflict prevention and resolution can reduce tensions and increase stability, thereby removing the conditions in which proliferation thrives and the use of ballistic missiles becomes more likely.

It is for that reason that the UK remains strongly committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the biological and toxin weapons convention and the chemical weapons convention. We want all nations to sign up to those regimes but, more important, to implement them.

Specifically on missile proliferation, the UK has played a key role in working towards an international code of conduct on ballistic missiles. Once established, this will be the first step towards a set of international norms in the field of ballistic missiles.

However, the fact is that implementing non-proliferation and arms control agreements, and seeking to enforce them, is simply not enough. While those mechanisms continue to play a vital role in slowing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, they have not stopped such proliferation. That is the harsh reality that has to be faced up to, and it is why the UK and our allies also need to be able to deter and defend against these threats.

My. hon Friend raised the issue of the threat level and the relationship between capability and intent. Threat consists of capability and intent, and it is important to take that into account. However, we must recognise also that the development of ballistic missile capabilities is a fact, and that intent can change rapidly. We must therefore take the potential threat very seriously indeed.

It is against that background that the US missile defence proposals have to be judged, based upon the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

No, as I wish to consider a wide range of issues. I shall do my best to allow my hon. Friend to intervene a little later, but I want to deal with the issues raised in the debate.

The US has made clear its commitment to deploying limited missile defences against emerging threats. That is one element of its response to the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

For our part, we have consistently made it clear that we understand the role that missile defences can play. We welcome the US continuing commitment to consult with NATO allies, Russia, China and others on this important issue. That shows that the US is not proceeding in a unilateral manner. We will continue to engage actively and constructively in these discussions as close allies with common strategic interests.

The US has made clear its intention to conduct an intensive programme of research, development, testing and evaluation of a wide range of missile defence options. Some of those options are prohibited under the terms of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. That is why the US announced in December that it had given Russia six months' notice of its intention to withdraw from that treaty, as it was entitled to do under the terms of the treaty. The ABM treaty is essentially a bilateral issue for the US and Russia, and its future is a matter for them.

I shall develop that point a little further, as it is important to recognise that the strategic context is changing even as the process that I have just described continues. We have all seen in recent months the emerging strength and stability of the new relationship between the US and Russia, which I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton will warmly welcome.

President Bush and President Putin have stressed their desire to work together to establish a new strategic framework based on openness and mutual trust rather than on enmity. Both recognise the need to focus on tackling today's emerging threats, including international terrorism and the proliferation of ballistic missiles, and both have made it clear that this new relationship is strong enough to withstand disagreements on individual issues.

The Government welcome the fact that the US and Russia have committed themselves to significant reductions in their levels of operationally deployed nuclear weapons, and that they will this year continue discussions on future arrangements for transparency and verification of their nuclear arsenals. We see no reason why the process of nuclear arms reduction should not continue.

It has been suggested that US missile defence proposals could cause a new arms race. That is simply conjecture; it is not a proven case. I would argue that, in debating this matter, we have to distinguish between cause and effect. I recognise the view taken by my hon. Friend and others, but I would ask him to consider the opposite point—that missile defence can be viewed as a response to an existing proliferation problem, not as a cause of that problem.

Improved defences against ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction may indeed help to tackle proliferation by reducing the perceived value of pursuing such programmes for any state that has not yet renounced weapons of mass destruction capabilities, or which is seeking to acquire them in contravention of its international legal obligations.

We should not underestimate the extent to which proliferators—rogue nations and others—have been trying for many years to get hold of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, nor how great have been the efforts to prevent those weapons' non-legitimate use. We will continue to face that challenge, regardless of how the US decides to proceed with missile defence. The current context of world events shows that the threat will remain.

I would also point out that we understand the US argument that missile defences might actually reinforce deterrence. Not only would any attempted ballistic missile attack by an irresponsible state on the US meet with a powerful response, but defences would make a potential aggressor unsure whether his attack could succeed at all.

There is a wider point here. We need to get away from the idea that the concept of mutually assured destruction is relevant to deterring all the threats of the future. It has been argued that mutually assured destruction, or the balance of terror, was a logic which, although deeply unpleasant, led to stability between the two superpowers in the bipolar cold war world. The thousands of warheads aimed at each country's territory threatened the destruction of each country.

The cold war is over, and Russia and the US are no longer enemies. It is hard to see how the logic that applied to their cold war relationship is relevant to the future deterrence of multiple limited threats to the US. It is indeed ironic that many of those who vigorously opposed the deterrence logic of the cold war now object to the US seeking to explore alternative ways of deterring and defending itself against ballistic missile attack in a changed and changing strategic environment.

My hon. Friend raised questions about the efficacy and cost of the US missile defence proposals. He quoted extensively from expert witnesses to the effect that the system would not work. I could ask my hon. Friend what he is worried about: if the expert opinion is that the system will not work—and those eminent people seem to know better than anyone else—why is he worried about the US proposals?

The answer is simple. I believe that the money could be put to better useߞin the military sphere, or in terms of aid or peacemaking. The amount of money involved is inordinate, given that the experts say the system will not work.

I was coming to that point. The efficacy of certain US systems is, first and foremost, a matter for the US. That does not mean that my hon. Friend cannot comment on it, but it is a matter for the US and its people. Too much tends to be read into the success or failure of any given test. I am sure that my hon. Friend and his expert witnesses would accept that these are long-term programmes. They will need to be judged on final results, rather than on the smoothness of progress along the way. Indeed, I think that my hon. Friend recognised in his contribution that the experts may have got the matter wrong.

It is also up to the US Administration to decide how they spend their money, and to determine their relative priorities. Of course, as I recognised earlier, there are other means of delivering weapons of mass destruction, but it is wrong to think there are either/or choices here. Responsible states should consider their options for defending against all such possible forms of attack.

My hon. Friend commented on the view of the Chief of the Defence Staff. In that context, I should like to set out briefly the UK's own position on missile defence. We believe that it would be premature to decide now about acquiring such a capability, either for deployed forces—for which we already have considerable capabilities for passive force protection against weapons of mass destruction—or for the defence of the UK.

However, our options for the future remain open. We continue to assess the threat posed by ballistic missiles, and to assess ballistic missile defence technologies, which are evolving rapidly. As well as this national work, we fully support the ongoing NATO theatre missile defence feasibility studies, and we have a long-standing technical dialogue with the US on the subject.

Let me make it clear that it also remains the case that the US has not decided what sort of missile defence system it will ultimately seek to deploy. As I have said, it is currently considering a range of options. These include sea and air-based systems, as well as the land-based system that was at the heart of the thinking of the previous US Administration.

The simple fact is that the US has not yet asked us for facilities. Clearly, we will consider such a request if, and when, it is made.

As I said at the outset, the Government welcome this debate. It has allowed me to touch on some of the important issues that have to be addressed. I recognise that my hon. Friend has strong views on this subject—