I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the issue of asylum seekers from France.

Mrs. Thatcher said of Lord Young of Graffham that most people brought her problems, but he brought solutions. Most people bring to the Chamber problems and issues that they want to highlight. I want to emulate Lord Young and bring a solution, or at least a partial remedy, to a problem. I do not need simply to highlight the problem and issue of asylum seekers from France, as that is constantly before us in the newspapers. We are aware of a continuous stream of people who often risk their lives and great hardship to get to this country across the channel from France. We know stories of attempted mass breakthroughs at Christmas. Only the other day, gangs' attempts were discovered to rig the signals so that people could stow away on Eurostar trains. People are conscious that the flow has become one way. Asylum seekers come from France to this country and they are not returned.

I want to make a practical proposal, which I hope that the Government will take seriously. They should have taken this measure four years ago to alleviate the problem, but they could still implement it if they set about it with a will. I will set the scene in relation to asylum seekers. The House of Commons believes that we should be and remain a safe haven for that minority of asylum seekers who genuinely suffered persecution and torture in their home countries, or who face persecution and torture should they return. I go further: we should be sympathetic to most asylum seekers, although they are "bogus"—a word that the Prime Minister used—and are not genuine asylum seekers. [Interruption.] I assure the Minister that the Prime Minister described them as bogus. They are economic migrants who seek to enter this country to better their conditions and those of their families. They are often admirable people who would be of great benefit to this country. However, hon. Members from all parties recognise that this country is simply not in a position to become a country of mass immigration. We cannot alleviate the problems of economic migrants or of the troubled, disturbed and impoverished countries from which they come simply by allowing them unlimited entry.

The most humane thing that we can do is speedily to return economic migrants whence they came. That is humane to them, as it avoids the prolonged anguish and agony of a long drawn-out process during which they out down roots. We have to uproot them to return them r we create an unsustainable position in this country. It also humane, as it sends the message down the chain that it is pointless for others to try to enter this country—an attempt that, sooner or later, we must render impossible.

In principle, the easiest group to return rapidly whence they came are those who have crossed the channel from another safe country. The Geneva convention, under which we operate and by which we are bound, specifies that asylum seekers should seek sanctuary in the first safe country that they come to; they do not have the right to shop around for the country offering the most favourable conditions. Consequently, if they pass through one safe country to another, the end recipient has the right to return them under the Geneva convention, yet people pour in from France in significant numbers and are not returned.

From 1995 to 1997, many asylum seekers were returned to France under a bilateral agreement that was negotiated by the Conservative Government but allowed to lapse in autumn 1977. My modest proposal is that the Government should renegotiate the agreement. They should have done so four years ago, but it is far more important that they do so now than that I try to lay blame for the past. They would have my support and, I believe, the support of the House of Commons and the country.

The bilateral agreement between the United Kingdom and France specified that we had not only the right to return unacceptable asylum seekers to France within 24 hours but the obligation to do so or, if there were practical obstacles to overcome, to state within 24 hours that that was our intention. The agreement reflected the cordial relations that prevailed then between the United Kingdom and France. It was reciprocal and allowed movement both ways on equal terms, although in practice the flow was largely one way. We were able to return large numbers of asylum seekers who had entered the country from France.

As I said, the agreement reflected the cordial relations that existed between the United Kingdom and France, and which happened to be dear to my heart: I am a registered, paid-up and leading Francophile of long standing. It worked well: both sides had the right to terminate it with two months' notice but neither did so, because they were satisfied with it and accepted that it was a logical, sensible arrangement. I believe that the agreement remains in force for non asylum seekers; according to the Home Secretary, some 6,000 have been sent back under the agreement. However, it contained a clause that allowed the arrangements for asylum seekers to be superseded by the Dublin convention, which came into effect in September 1997. The asylum seeker aspects were allowed to lapse at that point and have not been renewed.

The Dublin convention was intended to make general what the bilateral agreement had achieved for Britain and France; namely, the return of asylum seekers to the first safe country that they reached in the European Union. In practice, the convention failed to achieve that. Instead, it makes the return of asylum seekers more difficult and complex than was previously the case. It was negotiated in the late 1980s and signed in 1990. Since then, asylum seeking has grown out of all proportion and out of all recognition in scale and sophistication. A large industry, which has grown on the back of asylum seeking, has learned how to exploit legal complexities in a way that no one envisaged when the Dublin convention was negotiated.

With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, we can criticise the 12 or so Governments, including ours, who signed the Dublin convention for failing to foresee the situation 10 years later when it came into force. However, if the Minister wants to rest on criticism of the past, it should apply even more strongly to those who, in 1997, let the Dublin convention supersede the bilateral agreement between Britain and France without foreseeing that, in practice, it would remove our ability to return asylum seekers to France.

It was certainly inexcusable that, once the problems emerged, the Government did not renegotiate the bilateral agreement with France, within the terms of the Dublin convention, to restore speedy "refoulement", as the conventions call the return of asylum seekers to previous safe countries. Labour Ministers have defended their inaction by saying that the rules of the Dublin convention rule out such bilateral agreements, but that is nonsense. Since the Dublin convention came into force, Germany and Denmark have agreed a similar bilateral agreement to the one that we had with France, and it works well. It enables Denmark to send back 18 per cent. of the asylum seekers who make their claims in Denmark. In contrast, under the arrangements that have been established in this country, we send back only 1 per cent. to all safe countries, not just France.

I hope that the Minister will answer the following questions. First, have the Government attempted to renegotiate the bilateral agreement between France and the United Kingdom to extend it again to include asylum seekers? Secondly, if so, will they place a paper in the Library that details the renegotiation process: the dates of meetings, participants, proposals, where and when things were discussed and why the negotiations failed?

Thirdly, if the Government have not tried to renegotiate the agreement, will they do so forthwith? I believe that that would have the wholehearted support of the House of Commons, including, I hope, my party. I look forward with interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). If the Government seek to renegotiate the agreement, we will certainly be there to help them.

If the answer to those questions is no, why are the Government not taking steps to renegotiate the bilateral agreement? They sometimes give a second reason for not re-establishing the bilateral accord, which is that the French would not want it. However, they wanted it in 1995 and continued with it, even though they had the right to withdraw from it. The fact that the Government say that re-establishment is impossible is all the odder when they constantly caricature the relations that prevailed between Britain and our European partners in the past as hostile. In fact, as our success in negotiating the agreement revealed, our relations then were extremely cordial.

The Government say that they are now at the heart of Europe, have warm, friendly relations with our continental partners and have made a range of unilateral concessions—from signing the Amsterdam treaty and the social chapter to agreeing to a European defence force—in the belief that that will give them greater influence. If that is so, let them call in their chips. If the Government have greater influence and better relations with our partners on the continent, let them turn that influence into something that is useful for Britain, in the shape of a renegotiated bilateral treaty for the rapid and speedy return of asylum seekers who reach our shores from France—a safe country.

A longer-term issue relates to the flow of asylum seekers from France. To be fair to the Government, one factor that aggravated the problem of refoulement was the decision of the British courts to rule that France and Germany were not safe countries to which we could return asylum seekers. They said that we interpreted the Geneva convention to include persecution not just by states but by rebel and opposition groups in the countries from which people came, so that people from Algeria, for example, which has endemic civil disturbance, could claim either to have been persecuted by the Government or to face persecution by the opposition. Continental courts and Governments who do not interpret the Geneva convention so widely believe that it applies only to persecution by a foreign state. The courts reached the conclusion that the foreign courts' narrow interpretation was not correct and therefore that those foreign countries were not safe countries to which we could return asylum seekers.

I am not here to make party political points. I support what the Government did in 1999 in overriding that ruling by introducing the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which specified that all EU countries were deemed to be safe places to which to return asylum seekers. We hoped that that nonsense had been put to an end. However, that decision is open to challenge under the Government's own legislation—the Human Rights Act 1998. The court, in a case last Friday, ruled that the Home Secretary cannot rely on the 1999 Act alone to rebut such claims under the Human Rights Act; it upheld him in that case, but it was a worrying caveat that the 1999 Act alone cannot provide a rebuttal of human rights claims. How do the Government interpret that case, and will they need further legislation to prevent that loophole from reopening if, indeed, it is possible without amending the Human Rights Act?

Meanwhile, however, an absurd situation arises: while our courts have ruled that French and German courts are not safe places to which to send asylum seekers, we are invited to introduce a European arrest warrant that will allow UK citizens who are not asylum seekers to be arrested at the behest of those courts and sent, without any real right of review under habeas corpus, to France and Germany to face trial in courts that we have been told are not safe for asylum seekers.

The Government's justification is that those courts are bound by the European convention on human rights; yet if our courts have said that continental courts cannot be trusted to interpret the Geneva convention safely, how can they be relied on to interpret the European convention on human rights accurately or safely if British citizens are to be sent back to them? I ask the Minister to think again about creating the extraordinary anomaly that the Government propose to introduce in the extradition Bill.

I said that I came here in the spirit of David Young, offering solutions rather than problems; I have become something of a purveyor of policy to Her Majesty's Government in recent months. I made proposals on reform of the cannabis laws, which were initially rubbished, but then the Home Secretary acknowledged that there was sufficient truth in them to move some way in the direction that I proposed. Earlier, I made proposals for reform of the health service that were initially rubbished, but now the Secretary of State for Health has adopted the rhetoric of patient choice and patient power that I proposed.

In all modesty, therefore, I make my proposal for the Government to renegotiate with France an agreement that will enable us to return to that country asylum seekers who arrive at our ports. People will welcome that essential step to stem the unsustainable flow of immigrants from the continent to this country. I remind the Minister why they come here: it is because this country is a more attractive place and a softer touch for immigrants than other continental countries. The judge in the court case that gave rise to the conclusion that France and Germany were not safe countries noted that the evidence showed that 80 per cent. of asylum claims by Algerians in France were rejected and the claimants were liable to be sent back to Algeria. Only 5 per cent. of Algerians who made claims in this country were refused asylum and sent back to Algeria.

Britain is therefore a magnet for asylum seekers. It is only right that we should try to restore the bulwarks against that excessive flow of people seeking to enter the country and return those who should, in all conscience, make their claims elsewhere. I hope that the Minister responds positively to that proposal.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) on securing the debate and raising, in measured terms, concerns that are shared by many hon. Members on both sides of the House, some of whom are unable to be present, and shared particularly by those who, like myself, represent what I would describe as a front-line constituency.

I represent the seat of North Thanet, which is, with Dover and South Thanet, the recipient of considerable numbers of those crossing the channel by legal or other means to seek asylum in Britain. The county of Kent—of which I am proud to represent a small part—has paid a considerable price, literally and metaphorically, because of the number of people coming into the country from the other side of the channel to claim asylum. The Minister and the Government should not underestimate the real concerns of the people of most of the constituencies in Kent, who are paying through their council tax to provide education services, health services, policing services and social services that are already overstretched. The demands on housing are already too great for us to meet. The additional burden is considerable.

When I raise the subject, I am normally branded as racist. I am not. As I have mentioned before, I think that I am still the only hon. Member who has entertained and looked after an asylum seeker in his own home and who, under those circumstances, sought and won from a Minister in the previous Conservative Government leave for that asylum seeker who was under my care—a young Romanian—to remain permanently.

I want to place it on the record immediately that I do not regard the hon. Gentleman as racist. I would not bandy such words about, in an attempt to create a low debate, when we have to deal with difficult and serious issues to which there are no easy answers.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that measured response to my concerns. She will know that people outside the House read the reports of our debate in the Official Report and may think otherwise. It is for that reason alone that I feel obliged to put my position clearly on the record.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden said, this country has a proud and honourable tradition dating back not just many decades but many centuries. The United Kingdom has for hundreds of years played host to refugees from all over the world, fleeing from all manner of persecution. Long may we conduct our business in a manner that continues that proud tradition. However, if that is to happen and the British people are to welcome with open arms those in genuine need of relief, succour and a safe haven, we must exercise proper controls to ensure that our systems are not exploited by those whose demands are other than asylum and safe haven.

My right hon. Friend referred to economic migrants. It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of those reaching our shores from across the channel, sometimes from halfway around the world—whether by container lorry, car, bus or truck—are economic migrants rather than asylum seekers.

We all understand the desire of people from impoverished, developing countries to better their lot and, by working over here, to send money home to support their extended family in their own countries. We also understand and sympathise with the desperation with which they seek—by almost any means, even at the risk of their own life—to come here to what they regard as a better, more prosperous and more advantaged nation.

It is impossible, however, for a small island to continue to take all corners from anywhere under any circumstances so that our ratepayers and taxpayers see their money spent to fund people working in the black economy who are not paying taxes, have no right to be here and no work permit and who, too frequently, disappear into the black economy from the registers of asylum seekers. I do not have the up-to-date figures— the Minister will be able to tell us—but a guesstimate for a two-year period is that between 20,000 and 30,000 people simply disappeared into the system. Those were people who could and should have been sent back whence they came once their cases had been determined, but of whom there is no trace. Some of those people are therefore living in the United Kingdom under entirely false pretences and circumstances.

It is incredibly easy not just to cross the channel, but to cross and re-cross it. A young man released from prison into my care, for whom I had accepted responsibility, managed to cross the channel three times with no documentation whatever. He not only came into the United Kingdom but left it to go and see a girlfriend in Germany, where he claimed that he was being persecuted, and returned to the United Kingdom. I discovered that rather later in my representations than earlier, but it did not colour my judgment in respect of his particular need.

We have a very real problem. Arguments about the Geneva convention have been well rehearsed, as have arguments about the origins and paternity of the Dublin convention. Successive Ministers of both parties have sought to blame each other. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden said, the Dublin convention has done more harm than good: it has not achieved what it set out to achieve, it has undermined the bilateral agreement with France and, with the wonderful gift of hindsight, it has been proved not to do the job.

I am not here to score party political points this morning, but I must tell the Minister that her party, now in power for five years, has had considerable opportunity to observe the effects of the problem and to seek to effect change. I agree with my right hon. Friend that moves must be made to renegotiate a bilateral agreement. He is absolutely right that the argument that it cannot be done because of the Dublin convention is nonsense. It can be done. It has been done between Denmark and Germany and there is no reason—give or take the willingness of the French Government—why we cannot renegotiate a bilateral agreement with France.

I believe that certain things must be done swiftly. The previous Home Secretary sought to introduce a system of dispersal, to ease the burden on counties such as Kent and constituencies such as my own, by placing asylum seekers in communities of their own kind around the country. That system simply has not worked. The recipient local authorities have been few in number and considerably unwilling. The placements place a demand on their limited resources, and there is no record of the number of people who have been dispersed under the scheme. The Home Secretary said recently that it had been a great success. Having challenged him and been challenged by him on the Floor of the House, I tabled a parliamentary question to find out the measure of that success, but the Home Office had no statistics to say how many people had been dispersed, from where or where to.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way to the Minister, but she may want to comment on my next point. In answer to either another parliamentary question or a letter—I cannot remember which—the Home Office said that people were being dispersed and one place that they were going was Thanet. We thought that Thanet was one of the places from where they were being dispersed.

We have numbers on the cluster areas from where people have been dispersed in the National Asylum Support Service scheme, which is post 1999 and the relevant legislation. However, we have difficulty with the pre-1999 situation, in which local authorities often organised dispersal themselves. It is possible to have an area that has no NASS dispersals but does have asylum seekers who have been dispersed there by local authorities that had made arrangements with other authorities. We are trying to get a handle on the situation by conducting surveys and contacting local authorities to establish the position, bring the different schemes together and obtain a better idea of the overall situation. The work is continuing, but at the moment, our figures cover NASS dispersal, rather than the interim scheme dispersals that have gone on with bilateral agreements between local authorities.

That is very helpful, and I thank the Minister. I wish only that some small part of that helpfulness had been reflected in the parliamentary answer. I do not want her to disavow the Home Secretary—and nor would she—but none of that information was forthcoming when I asked my question. I shall be delighted to table a further parliamentary question on the statistics that are available post 1999. I think that I am right in saying that the scheme was first introduced on all fools' day which, with hindsight, seems appropriate.

It is too early to say whether the introduction of identity cards will help, and I would welcome any measure that began to address the problem, however late in the day. I fear that we are sticking a small plaster over a large wound. The fact that the Home Secretary met a French Employment Minister begs the question: what is the Foreign Secretary doing about the situation?

I turn to the thorny issue of Sangatte and the Red Cross centre. I recently visited the migrant helpline service in Dover. It has grown like Topsy, and consists of dedicated people doing their level best to assist those coming to this country in need. They try to meet increasing demand under tremendous pressure and in difficult circumstances with limited resources, and provide, for example, basic tuition in English, so that the people who come to this country to claim asylum have at least a tentative foothold in the language that they must deploy to go about their everyday life. I pay tribute to those people, as they are doing a tremendous job, but they recognise that we are being exploited and taken for a ride.

Prior to Christmas, we saw the invasion of the channel tunnel centre close to Sangatte. Eurotunnel has made it plain that it believes that the presence of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte is an open invitation to asylum seekers from throughout the European Union and beyond to come, gather and try to cross the channel illegally by ferry or, more probably, through the channel tunnel. Eurotunnel owns the property that the French Government have appropriated to give to the Red Cross to use as a centre and, as I have described before, little more than a waiting room for illegal immigrants. While that is happening, the French Government are turning a blind eye because it suits them so to do. That is inexcusable, and whatever else the Minister defends this morning, I hope that she will not try to defend the appalling record of the French Government. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, I am a Francophile. I spend a great deal of time in France, where I have many friends, and I am the proud owner of a tumbledown barn. However, that does not prevent me from looking with honest eyes rather than rose-coloured glasses at the actions of the Government just across the Channel.

The asylum seekers and economic migrants coming through the port of Dover to these shores have travelled across not one but probably half a dozen safe havens within the European Union. In any one of those countries, they could and should have claimed asylum under the terms of the Geneva convention if they were genuine asylum seekers—although, as we know, most of them are not. That they have not done so is reprehensible but perhaps understandable if they are travelling, as many of them sadly are, and sometimes with fatal consequences, in sealed containers. However, when they arrive at Sangatte and Nord-Pas de Calais, they are released frequently into the open air to find their way across the channel. The French Government know precisely what they are doing and why they are there. Because they are on French soil as illegally as they later are on English soil, the French Government have the opportunity to return them whence they came, or process their cases and demand that they either return to their country of origin or claim asylum in France.

This is a very important issue, and I hope to have the chance to elaborate later. When I put that point to the French ambassador here, he made the persuasive argument that many asylum seekers will not tell officials the route by which they came through Europe or own up to the first country in which they arrived. Therefore, the French do not have a greater obligation to take them than any other country through which they travelled. When asylum seekers are asked whether they want to apply for asylum in France, the small percentage who say that they do have their applications processed, but the rest say that they want to apply elsewhere. The French cannot make them apply to stay in France.

The French ambassador is charming and persuasive, but wrong. Unless he believes in magic carpets, it must be abundantly plain to him that the people arrived in France from a third country and safe haven. When they arrive in a container lorry and its route is shown on the tachograph, as it is throughout the European Union, there is proof of the countries through which they have travelled. It is absolute nonsense to say, first, that they cannot be returned to another country in most cases—although not all—and secondly, that they cannot or should not claim asylum in France if they are illegally on French soil. If they have no documentation, visa, means or willingness to demonstrate their entry into or their right to be in the European Union, the French have the absolute right to deport them to their country of origin or insist that they claim asylum. The fact is that it suits the French Government to allow them not only to use a building at Sangatte that has been appropriated from Eurotunnel, but to use and reuse it, having tried on many and successive occasions to enter the United Kingdom illegally via the channel tunnel or one of the channel ports.

I share the hon. Gentleman's frustration, but it is not always possible to find illegal immigrants with the lorries on which they have been trafficked to the European Union when they claim asylum in-country. It is not easy to obtain proof of where they came from, the routes they used and often their nationality. That makes it difficult to send them back, in addition to which there are some countries to which we cannot send them. Most of the people at Sangatte are Iraqis and Afghanis and almost all—80 per cent. —are single young men, and they cannot be returned to those countries at the moment. I share the hon. Gentleman's frustration and wish that it was a matter of simply sending them back, but in practice it is not always that easy.

I understand what the Minister is saying, but that is a problem for the French, not us. The buck is passed smartly across the channel with the total connivance of the French Government. People live openly in the Red Cross centre at Sangatte. They are not there clandestinely; they do not hide. They walk around the town. The French Government know that they are there and they are not yet in the United Kingdom, but with the connivance of the French Government, they are effectively encouraged to move out.

The problem is even slightly worse, because although other countries in the Schengen area do not deport asylum seekers, they tell them to move on to anywhere outside that area, and of course the United Kingdom is outside it. If the Belgians, Dutch or Germans want to get rid of someone, they say, "Off to England, please. It is outside the Schengen area, so you will have left our territory and no longer be our problem." That is serious and real nonsense and we must get to grips with it.

I have not always seen eye to eye with Eurotunnel, as it well knows, but I share its anger and frustration that the French and now the British Governments are not dealing with the problem properly. It is all very well for the Home Secretary to meet a French Employment Minister and for him to try to introduce identity cards, but the root of the problem lies with the lack of bilateral agreement between this country and France. Unless and until the Foreign Secretary meets and discusses seriously with his counterparts in the French Government, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom meets, if necessary, the President and Prime Minister of France to resolve the issue, there will not be a solution.

There have been meetings, but given the hon. Gentleman's analysis of French indifference, does he believe that a bilateral agreement is possible in the circumstances in which he has painted the French approach?

If necessary, I think we must tell the French Government that unless there is a bilateral agreement we will simply send straight back to France anyone coming into the United Kingdom.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden raised the issue this morning not from malice, mischief or spite, but to put forward a serious proposition that a bilateral agreement must be renegotiated and agreed. As a precursor to that and as a Member of Parliament representing a front-line constituency in Kent, I suggest that we must prevail upon the International Red Cross and the French Government, at the very least, swiftly to close the reception centre at Sangatte and move it to a more distant place, if necessary within Nord-Pas de Calais. I know that the argument is that people must go somewhere and if there was no centre they would be milling around the streets of Sangatte. However, the fact is that that facility on the doorstep of the channel tunnel makes it possible for dozens of would-be economic migrants, literally nightly, to mount assaults on the defences—that is what they now are—of the entrance to the channel tunnel. Therefore, as a first step, if the French Government wanted to demonstrate any good will, they could immediately close that centre and return to Eurotunnel the use of its lawful property for lawful purposes.

Secondly, there is an organisation, with which I wish to have little truck, called the Euro-region, which comprises the county of Kent, Nord-Pas de Calais and Wallonia. Every now and then this rather peculiar institution holds meetings of dignitaries from Kent, Nord-Pas de Calais and Wallonia. I attended one of those meetings and I attended a workshop on the social issues affecting the Euro-region. Because we are used in the House to introducing measures and to negotiation, I persuaded the working group that I was on to put forward to the plenary session a proposal for consideration by the European Union that there should be established, within the Euro-region—which I do not recognise—a holding centre for all asylum seekers entering that region. It will not surprise the Minister to know that I suggested that that holding centre should be based somewhere in Nord-Pas de Calais.

The working group adopted that resolution, and it went to the plenary session and was adopted by the plenary session. Therefore, an agreement was reached by the elected representatives of Nord-Pas de Calais, Kent and Wallonia that, somewhere in that Euroregion, there should be a holding centre for asylum seekers—or economic migrants. They agreed that they would approach the European Union for support and funding for that purpose. It will not surprise anyone in the Chamber to know that precisely nothing has happened since, and that was about four years ago.

I believe that there are ways in which this problem can and should humanely be solved. I believe that there should be a centre to which people are sent, wherever they are found in the area, and that we should then seriously consider how the genuine claimants of asylum should be dispersed throughout those counties and beyond and how the rest should be returned. I hope that the Minister will take on board in her reply my concerns on behalf of my constituents and the people of Kent—the wider Kent—in the context of the measures raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden.

Order. Given that there are no Back-Bench speakers seeking to catch my eye, it would be equitable if, as closely as feasible, the remaining time were divided equally between the three Front-Bench speakers.

I was doing my maths as you rose to speak, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I welcome the opportunity for debate that we have been given by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). I welcome his constructive approach to this matter, as to others. From the freedom of the Back Benches one can often put forward such solutions. I come to the debate in the same way and in the same context: we are grappling here with difficult issues, and it behoves us all to try to find practical and workable ways forward.

I also want to add a couple of words of context and to preface those by saying, as I mentioned in my question to the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), that over the months I have had conversations not only with the French ambassador and his staff but with Eurotunnel and many others who are involved. Indeed, within the next two weeks I shall visit Calais, Sangatte and the Eurotunnel site to bring myself up to speed with the situation there. I make these comments in advance of that visit.

I want to rehearse some of the most recent figures that put this problem in context. Of the approximately 21 million people in the world who are refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced, 12 million are refugees. An assessment that equates the numbers found in different countries with wealth shows that some of the poorest countries in the world have much greater problems to grapple with than we do. The figures, which were produced this month, show by league table the financial implications for developing countries hosting refugees. Guinea has 130 people of concern for every $1million of gross domestic product and Tanzania has 80. In comparison, the United Kingdom has 0.2. I hope that we can start considering the issue in context.

The other measure that places the issue in context is the number of people who arrive here or in France. I have checked the statistics concerning asylum applicants in European Union countries during the past 10 years. Germany came top, with nearly 2 million, the United Kingdom second, with nearly 450,000, and France third, with about 330,000. According to last year's figures for asylum applications per head of population, Belgium was top in the European Union, followed by Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg. The UK is eighth and France is 10th. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, we received 80,315 asylum seekers: 1.37 per 1,000 inhabitants. France had 38,590: 0.65 per 1,000 inhabitants.

According to the figures compiled by the migrant helpline referred to by the hon. Member for North Thanet, the number of people arriving via the channel tunnel or illegal routes through the channel tunnel into Kent from northern France is decreasing. That is the latest information that I have, as of autumn 2001, but the Minister may have more accurate information. The figures are encouraging because no one wants people to seek illegal entry at risk to themselves and others.

The Home Office and the university of Wales have published research detailing asylum seekers' reasons for coming to the United Kingdom. I had heard that many had found that many of the asylum seekers found in northern France cited language and reputation as their reasons for coming here. Surprisingly, however, the research shows that people are less bothered about the particular country that they travel to than they are by what they have been told by those arranging their travel. Many asylum seekers in northern France can apply for asylum in France: most are asked and few have said yes. The Minister is right that over 80 per cent. of people in Sangatte are from three national groups: the Afghans, the Iranians and the Kurds. That situation has persisted for some time.

I have also talked to the refugee agencies. They have met Ministers regularly and made suggestions about how to proceed. First, I do not believe that the Dublin convention ever worked, or ever will, and it is the widespread view of others in the field that it will never succeed. For the reasons cited in my intervention on the hon. Gentleman, most people have already crossed other EU borders when they come to the attention of the authorities. Most will have no documentation evidencing the route that they have taken, or be unwilling to explain the route—if they know it. Whether undertaken by the French or British authorities, it is impractical and a waste of resources to send them back to Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, or wherever they first arrived in the EU. That is a nonsensical system. I understand why it was conceived, but it has not worked. It is understandable that the Government are seeking a new system.

Secondly, I understand the point made by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden about bilateral agreements between countries. However, such agreements do not solve the problem that many of these people come back again and again. That was evidenced by the example given by the hon. Member for North Thanet about his Romanian house guest. A bilateral agreement that simply says, "We're going to send back to France people who arrive here illegally," is not sufficient to deter people. In every interview that I have seen people give, whether they are waiting in Tangier to cross to Spain, or in Calais to cross to the United Kingdom, they make it clear that if at first they do not succeed, they will try and try again. If they are sent back from the UK to France, that does not mean that they will automatically go back whence they came.

Of course, if there is a settlement in Afghanistan that enables people to go back, they will start to do so, and we have a duty to ensure that that happens. However—with respect, because the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden makes a perfectly proper constitutional and political suggestion—I do not believe that that will significantly reduce the numbers of people returning.

Thirdly, I welcome the fact that the Government have at last recognised that there are always two categories of people in places like Sangatte. Some are genuine, honest asylum seekers who have been persecuted and left afraid for their lives. On Friday, I saw in my surgery an Afghan man who had lost his child, his wife, his mother and his whole family and was still terrified about whether it would be safe for him to go back. He was justified in being here and putting his case. Other people are economic migrants. The Government now realise that there must be a legal route for people in both queues—the asylum queue, which has never provided a legal route in to enable people to put their case, and the queue for economic migrants, who must also be able to put their case.

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman thinks that the fact that terrible things happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and during the conflict justifies anyone's remaining here, instead of a presumption that in future refugees from Afghanistan should be returnable there. In that case, what have we been fighting for? The same applies to Kosovo.

There is no disagreement between us. The same applies in Sierra Leone, where at last all the territory has been recaptured by the Government. After a settlement there comes a time, after a short but decent interval, when the Government must make an assessment to decide whether it is safe for people to return. Some places in Afghanistan are still not yet fully under control. I accept the proposition that as soon as a civil war ends and a place is again at peace and under control—as in Kosovo—people should be free and able to go back. It is never quite as daunting a prospect as is sometimes painted. It is not a one-way traffic or an unchanging situation. Places with turmoil, conflict and persecution cease, mercifully, to be like that, and it is right that we should be able to tell people that they are now free to go home to help to rebuild the country from which they came.

Fourthly, the way forward, which is endorsed by refugee agencies in Europe and elsewhere, is to seek not merely a bilateral solution that may or may not be practical, but one that brings in all the countries of the European Union. As the hon. Member for North Thanet said, in the Schengen territories, where there are no frontier controls, it is difficult to monitor where people came from and where they are going. The reason for the queue at our front door is that we are not part of Schengen; we have separate border controls. Liberal Democrats hold to the view that we should continue to keep those, and it is my personal view that that should remain one of the ways in which we regulate matters in the UK.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is considerable cynicism within Schengen? The approach tends to be, "As long as you're not in Schengen, you're not a problem."

I agree. There has been much passive, if not active, connivance at the attitude that says, "As long as you leave our territory, we're happy." That is not a satisfactory solution, because people will still be wandering around Europe, legally or illegally seeking to obtain established status.

I believe that the way forward is to seek to agree on a common process of application in the EU for people once they have come to the attention of the authorities. It should not follow that because someone, for example, came to the Austrian authorities' attention, they have to end up in Austria. The burden should be shared across the EU. If someone has a particular case for coming to the UK—because they speak English, for example, or are from a Commonwealth country with community links with the UK—provided they are within the fair quota of people for the UK, it should be possible for their application to be dealt with on behalf of the UK authorities, even if it is processed in Austria.

If they were working with the collaboration of bodies such as the Red Cross, under the auspices of the UNHCR, British officials in Sangatte, for example, could process applications there and then. There would not then be the risk to lives of people trying to cross the channel. I understand that that would require a common basis for the definition of refugee, and common systems thereafter.

Can the Minister tell us whether a final agreement has been reached on the Eurodat database, which will allow the sharing of information about whether people have applied before and had their applications dealt with? Have we come to an agreement, or are we on the way to one, on the European Commission proposal for a common definition of refugee? That picks up on the question of the different definitions of refugee used by the Germans, the French and ourselves, for example over persecution by Government or others, to which other hon. Members have referred.

Do the Government anticipate that it will be possible by bilateral agreement or, more usefully this year, by European Union-wide agreement to examine a system that will accept in principle my proposal that the processing of applications should happen when a person first comes to the authorities' attention, irrespective of where that person is eventually given asylum if their claim is granted? I believe that that would be a sensible way forward and I urge the Minister and her colleagues to consider it positively.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) on securing the debate, and on the thoughtful and constructive way in which he made his persuasive argument. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), whose expertise is well known and who has a strong constituency interest and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), who speaks with experience, care and compassion on such matters.

I have had a long interest in matters to do with asylum. In 1992, I was privileged to found the Immigration Advisory Service, which provides free legal help and advice to those with rights of appeal under immigration law. I was the first chairman of its trustees, and I pay tribute to its work throughout the country.

I begin with a proposition on which we can all agree. Any decent country—ours is a decent country—must speedily and happily grant refugee status to those entitled to it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden made that point. We must always display good sense and humanity, not only in what we do but in what we say and how we say it.

One date should be engraved on the minds of those of us with an interest in the subject: 19 June 2000. On that day, 58 Chinese people were found suffocated in a van in Dover. Those poor souls suffered a dreadful death. They may have been illegal immigrants, but never let it be forgotten that they were ordinary, decent people with families, desperate for a new life.

What has happened to our asylum system? Where do we stand in 2002? It is fair to say that after four years of Labour Government, from 1997 to 2001, the system had nearly collapsed and had descended into chaos. The number of asylum applications rose from 26,000 a year in 1990 to approximately 80,000 a year in the year 2000. By August 2001 the backlog of applications awaiting an initial decision had risen to 43,000.

My right hon. Friend made the sad point that things were so slow that many people established roots in this country. Indeed, children were born and had almost gone to school. The longer one leaves asylum seekers who will fail to gain asylum in limbo, settling into a country, the more unkind it is at the end of the day to remove them. Although there are approximately 60,000 refusals a year, in 2000 there were only 9,000 removals from this country.

The Labour Government did not know, and do not know, how many people refused asylum leave this country of their own accord, and the Home Office does not know the whereabouts of tens of thousands of failed and current asylum seekers. No wonder the Labour-dominated Select Committee on Home Affairs concluded in 2001 that the Home Office had been dilatory in enforcing the removal of people whose asylum claims had been refused and others who had gained illegal entry to the UK, and that that had attracted more people.

Dealing specifically with France, the principal means of illegal entry into this country has been lorries, 4,000 of which pass through Dover every day of the week, ferries, and trains, which, as a result of the abuse of ticketing arrangements, at one stage allowed as many as 1,000 people a month to arrive on Eurostar as illegal entrants.

The Government have done good work in the past two or three years as far as Eurostar is concerned, and many of those problems have been overcome. However, the problem remains of a customer who buys a single ticket from Brussels to Lille and remains on the train to Waterloo, unimpeded and untouched by immigration controls.

We know the principal methods by which people have got into this country from France, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden and my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet have mentioned the Red Cross centre at Sangatte, where I saw up to 1,000 people when I visited it with the Home Affairs Committee. Those people were in a safe place, they were in a safe country, and to get to Sangatte they had passed through a series of safe countries. The French authorities were well aware of their existence but they did nothing about it. Those people were poised in their jumping-off point illegally to enter this country.

It was a sorry situation, and a question occurred to me, to other members of the Home Affairs Committee and to others in this country: how can it be that those people did not claim, or were not obliged to claim, asylum either in the first safe country that they reached or in France, which is obviously a safe country? That is a blindingly obvious question, to which there seems to be no real answer. That brings me to the bilateral agreement. The Conservative party agrees with those who say that the Government should urge the French to close Sangatte. It is a mistake in principle for the French to allow a jumping-off point for illegal immigrants into this country. If such a centre is necessary, it should be moved many miles from the coast.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden forcefully pointed out that the bilateral agreement of 1995 worked well. It was negotiated by a Conservative Government and was in force for two years or more, even though the French had an opportunity to stop it at any time at two months' notice. They did not, which says a great deal for the strong relationship between the previous Conservative Government and the French. If we refused entry to anyone coming here illegally from France, the agreement enabled us to send them back to France within 24 hours. We could and we did, and it worked well.

I agree with those who say that the Minister should explain what her Government have done to try to renegotiate the bilateral agreement. It is a tragedy that that has not been done. The Dublin convention is said to have superseded the agreement, but it has not worked well. The current Foreign Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee that it was in good company if it did not understand the Dublin convention. The key point is that the readmission agreement enabled us to return illegal entrants within 24 hours. Those who say that the Dublin convention superseded the bilateral agreement miss the obvious point that the bilateral agreement between Germany and Denmark allows for the return of asylum seekers who cross the border between those two countries, even though those countries are signatories to the convention. If that bilateral agreement can work, which it does, there is no reason why our bilateral agreement with France, which proved so effective in returning asylum seekers to that country, could not have continued after September 1997, or why a similar bilateral agreement could not operate alongside the convention.

I ask the Minister specifically what the Government have done in the past four years to try to renegotiate the bilateral agreement. If they have done nothing, why have they done nothing? If they have done something, will they tell the House of Commons in detail what they have done and the French response to it? I point again to the strong relationship between the previous Conservative Government and the French that enabled that bilateral agreement to work so well.

Life seems unreal to those who work in immigration and customs in Dover. However many people they detect entering Dover, nothing can be done about it once the word "asylum" is mentioned. It does not matter if there is one dog sniffing for illegal immigrants, two carbon dioxide probes, or three X-ray machines. The best method of finding and stopping people is the single heartbeat machine, of which there is only one. On Friday, the doors of the hangar broke, and it is not working. Even if it were, what is the point of such methods? Real work must be done on the French side of the Channel to stop people using Sangatte and the French ports to jump into this country.

We need a policy that includes a streamlined process of asylum applications and which enables quick decisions and a fair, quick removal system. We need to be able to negotiate more bilateral agreements and we urgently need to renegotiate the existing agreement with France, putting back a system that worked so well. Goodness knows what can be done throughout the EU. The Laeken summit concluded with EU heads of government asking the European Commission to draw up new and strengthened proposals on asylum procedures in three or four months. Amen to that, but I may not be alone in lacking confidence in the EU's ability to come up with an understandable, workable and effective system.

I welcome the debate. We are dealing with a series of difficult and interrelated issues. It has been hinted at but not explicitly stated today that we are also dealing with sophisticated international criminal smuggling gangs who make large profits from the exploitation and misery of human beings who are trafficked across borders. They have increasingly sophisticated methods. All Governments within the EU and internationally, including this one, are increasingly aware of the huge profits made from that trade and realise that an important way to disrupt it is to bring about greater cross-border police cooperation. We must deal with some of the main smuggling routes into the European Union by strengthening the EU's outer borders, whether or not we are dealing with Schengen countries; such a policy should include the sharing at police level of information, and intelligence-based work to try to disrupt the trafficking routes. I assure hon. Members that we are working hard to put more such protections in place to disrupt that trade.

The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) made much of what he called the bilateral agreement. As I discovered when I investigated the matter, the Home Office called it a gentlemen's agreement with France, which, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, was signed at an official level in 1995. It covered arrangements for the return of refused passengers and illegal entrants arriving at the channel ports or via the channel tunnel, although it was signed before the channel tunnel operated in the way that it does today. It was understood by both parties that the section on asylum applicants, rather than refused passengers, would be superseded by the Dublin convention.

As soon as the Dublin convention came into being, therefore, the asylum part of that original gentlemen's agreement with France was superseded. The right hon. Gentleman is correct that the rest of the agreement continues in place and works well. He had figures on that. In 2000, for example, 5,831 people were refused entry and returned from Dover to France as part of that agreement. However, the plain fact is that both signatories, France and Britain, explicitly said that for asylum purposes the agreement would be superseded by the Dublin convention.

For reasons that we have debated this morning, the Dublin convention is not working as well as those who drew it up would have liked. I suspect that when it was being negotiated, no one realised the extent and the sophistication of people-smuggling that countries in the European Union would have to face. That is not a criticism but a reflection of the way in which asylum and immigration issues have developed—they are likely to continue to do so. We can guard our frontiers only by continuing to move as the threat moves. When we close off one method of entry, the focus switches to others and the immigration service and the police do all that they can to respond and react—co-operating with their French counterparts—to tackle the problems.

Other bilateral agreements, particularly the German-Danish agreement, have been mentioned. It is open to any two parties within the Dublin framework to decide on a bilateral agreement, but by definition such agreements must be agreed between two parties. The German-Danish agreement works mainly because the Germans recognise that geography makes theirs the source country, and they agreed to take back most of those who end up in Denmark who must have come through Germany. France, however, is in most cases a transit country, rather than the first source of entry for asylum seekers. Hence a bilateral agreement between France and Britain is different from one between Germany and Denmark.

In seeking to develop arrangements with the French, we have our eye on transforming the Dublin convention. Currently negotiations are in progress for Dublin II. As hon. Members know, a draft was proposed by the European Commission working party, which seeks to improve on the first Dublin arrangements, particularly provisions that stymied the convention's effectiveness —those making it necessary to prove where individuals came from before sending them back to the immediate EU country. As seen in earlier exchanges, it is often impossible to prove where individuals entered the EU because the trafficking routes are hidden, because people often possess no papers and because it is not easy to establish their nationality. Some claim to be of a nationality other than their own.

I understand the Minister, but what have the Government done in the past four years to persuade France to enter another bilateral agreement?

The hon. Gentleman should be aware that we have done considerable bilateral work with France, centring mainly on the Sangatte issue. We have focused on areas where large numbers of people gather to make an attack on our borders. Part of the Dublin II text—still only in draft form and requiring unanimous agreement—proposes a different approach to dealing with the illegal presence of individuals in different countries. At present Dublin does not recognise that but merely talks about first safe countries, which is not practically useful when we cannot prove in which first safe country individuals arrived.

On bilateral contacts with the French Government, we meet regularly to discuss immigration issues. We fully recognise the difficulties caused by illegal immigration, particularly the problem of clandestine immigrants gathering around Calais in northern France. Co-operation is important.

I congratulate the French authorities on their success last weekend in disrupting the gang of Romanians who had been interfering with signalling on the rail line to allow clandestine boarding of freight trains. Those who boarded were taken off at Frèthun, which is the freight yard, and did not get through to Britain. However, for weeks organised attempts to board by interfering with the signals put the safety of trains at risk. The work of the French in dealing with the problem is a major success story.

The juxtaposed controls at the Eurostar stations have also been extremely effective. On the point that the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Matins) raised, the Belgian authorities conduct effective entry and exit checks on passengers before they board the Eurostar at Lille and when they leave it at Waterloo. If he has been on Eurostar recently, he will know that the checks are reinforced by our immigration officers, who go through the train checking people's information, passports and identity. We put controls in place to deal with issues as they are identified, and we are in constant contact with our Belgian and French counterparts to deal with new problems as they emerge or if we have intelligence that traffickers are focusing on a new area.

We have a biannual UK-French summit. In February 2001 we established the Cross-Channel Commission, which promotes bilateral discussion of cross-channel issues, including illegal immigration. The excellent progress that has been made on a range of issues is a clear indication of the commission's usefulness. We are dealing with the problem of illegal immigration across the channel by increasing controls and law enforcement in the Calais area.

On 12 September, the Home Secretary agreed with Daniel Vaillant, his opposite number, on several practical measures to tighten controls further at the channel ports and reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into the Calais area, including sending more immigration officers to Coquelles. France agreed to toughen up legal action against those who gain unauthorised access to the Eurotunnel site at Coquelles, and we are grateful for their action in dealing with facilitators and racketeers who operate at Sangatte. They have quickly secured several prosecutions for the mass intrusions into the Eurotunnel site at Christmas; about 40 more court cases are pending. As has been pointed out, the Home Secretary had a private meeting with Mrs. Guigou, the French Social Affairs Minister, who has responsibility for funding of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte. I understand that their constructive meeting built on our excellent working relationships and was part of the continuing process of working with the French to find a solution.

We have been perfectly open with the French about the fact that we wish the Sangatte centre to be closed; they are under no illusion that we have any other view. The Government take every opportunity to discuss the situation at Calais with our French counterparts, and it is clear that that bilateral co-operation has led to a sharp overall drop in the number of people crossing illegally from northern France to the UK. According to Eurotunnel figures, there were 27 clandestine crossings in December 2000. The route was targeted and, for example, in July 2001, 808 people arrived. The number is now down to virtually zero.

Some of the controls that we have put in place have resulted in routes being closed, which is why the Sangatte camp now has more people in it than before. They are not getting through, but we are not complacent that they will not seek other routes. That is why the routes at Fréthun and the work of the SNCF and English Welsh and Scottish Railway are so important. I assure hon. Members that we are doing all that we can and will continue to do so. I am happy that we have been able to debate the matter today.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate and to join a chorus from the new towns and elsewhere calling for the radical reform of English Partnerships' remit.

I take it to be a good sign of the Government's intentions that the current, timely review, which was launched in October, was brought forward by two years. The new towns are maturing rapidly; the development corporations have done their job and the new towns are mostly well established as centres of population and economic growth. Their local authorities, including my own—Telford and Wrekin—are keenly aware of what needs to be done to secure their future but far from being helped they are more often hampered and thwarted by English Partnerships.

Telford and the other new towns of the 1960s and 1970s are at a crossroads. Economically, the momentum of their development as major sub-regional centres needs to be renewed. Socially, estates that were designed to accommodate overspill from London or, as in Telford's case, from Birmingham and the black country, were often flung up and jerry-built in the 1960s and are in urgent need of regeneration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) will make clear if he has the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

Tower blocks were not the only mistakes planners made in the 1960s and 1970s. Sprawling residential estates in the new towns are isolated from employment zones, dependent on the car, with inadequate district centres and poor public services. There is a pressing need to attend to their needs.

New towns such as Telford often lack the cultural and recreational qualities that they need if they are to mature and to generate the sense of civic identity that improves the quality of life and adds to the attraction for inward investors. Telford continues to be a new town success story, but the price we pay for our low unemployment has traditionally been a low-skilled, low-wage economy; three wards in Telford are among the 10 per cent. most deprived in the country. More than 3,000 people live on Telford Development Corporation housing estates, which were regarded in the 1960s as experimental, but 30 years on are regarded as experiments that failed. The town centre is little more than a covered shopping centre, albeit a good one, surrounded by car parks and ring roads.

We urgently need to address all those problems and we have a right to expect that English Partnerships has a key role in solving them. In a letter to Telford and Wrekin council in December last year, the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions outlined what he thinks English Partnerships is, or should be, doing for the new towns. He said:

"EP's current remit in the new towns is to use its assets to the benefit of those who live, work or carry on business in the area."

But that is not what English Partnerships is doing in Telford. It takes its cue not so much from the Government's commitment to urban regeneration and social inclusion as from the edict issued by the previous Government that it should serve as a residuary body disposing of land as efficiently as possible and with the maximum return to the Treasury. That is Telford's current experience. English Partnerships holds all the assets; Telford and Wrekin council is lumbered with the liabilities.

As of September last year, English Partnerships controlled 5,700 hectares of land nationwide, and 820 hectares—14 per cent., its largest holding—was in Telford. More to the point, English Partnerships holds 80 per cent. of all developable land in Telford. While EP has 144 hectares set aside for housing, and 148 hectares for employment purposes, Telford and Wrekin has just 6.5 hectares of developable land and even 4.5 hectares of that is subject to clawback: if it were to develop that land it would have to pay English Partnerships up to 100 per cent. of its new, developed value.

Like most local authorities, for better or worse, Telford and Wrekin council has a vision statement, which talks about building

"an inclusive, prosperous and healthy community which offers a good quality of life for all".

Unfortunately, the council is too often in conflict with English Partnerships' remit, which is to realise asset values. Too often, English Partnerships does not help to fulfil the ambitions of the Government and local authorities for economic development, urban regeneration, social inclusion and democratic accountability; it actively frustrates them.

Most local authorities have land banks, but Telford and Wrekin has almost none. Most local authorities have a degree of control over strategic and master planning, but because of English Partnerships' section 7.1 planning exemptions, Telford and Wrekin and its community have precious little influence or control over much of the development that takes place in and around the town. Most local authorities can secure important social infrastructure through the development process, but because of those exemptions, Telford and Wrekin cannot negotiate section 106 agreements and the community benefits that they often bring. As I said, it is subject to a clawback on land that it has inherited, even in providing social housing.

Most local authorities are at least compensated for the contributions that their planning departments make to the development process, but to cap it all, even though Telford and Wrekin has to dedicate resources to English Partnerships' development ambitions, it cannot claim the standard planning fees that every other local authority collects. The council estimates that, over the lifetime of the development of land left with English Partnerships in Telford, it will forgo £1.5 million in planning fees—a substantial amount. Indeed, the estimate that the council gave me just this morning is that, if it were not for the exemptions that English Partnerships enjoys on planning fees alone, it could cut the increase in its council tax by 1 per cent. a year. That may not sound like much money, but it will mean a great deal to council tax payers. In addition, that calculation does not take into account the value of land that the council can neither use for the provision of public services, nor dispose of so that the capital receipts can be invested in those services.

Ironically, despite the need for social and economic regeneration, Telford and Wrekin is a net contributor in meeting the needs of others. Assets realised in Telford are recycled through English Partnerships' other functions—not least that of the Urban Regeneration Agency, from which it took over some years ago—into regeneration activity in just about every corner of the country except Telford and the other new towns.

Telford and Wrekin council has a policy to establish 32 per cent. of housing development as social housing, but in the first two years of its existence as a unitary authority, English Partnerships' contribution was just 91 units of social housing. It has a major role to play and huge potential, given the land that it owns, but it makes a very modest contribution to the local authority's legitimate aims. On top of that, the council does not have access to the same regeneration funds—those are much needed on the estates that I mentioned—as other urban authorities.

The problem is not only what the presence of English Partnerships in Telford withholds from the council, but the additional burdens that it imposes. The population of Telford and Wrekin has grown by 8 per cent. since 1991 and is set to continue at roughly the same rate. Some 13,500 houses are being built over 10 to 15 years. The electorate in my constituency increased by 5,500 between 1997 and 2001–9 per cent. in four years. Incidentally, the considerable population growth is happening so rapidly that it is too often unrecognised by the Office for National Statistics and, consequently, in our standard spending assessments.

The new communities that are springing up on land disposed of for residential development by English Partnerships place a huge and growing strain on our social infrastructure and public services, to which English Partnerships contributes little. English Partnerships is at the heart of the problems faced by Telford and Wrekin council. However, it does not regard itself as part of the solution. The most obvious example relates to school provision. The Secretary of State's letter to the council stated that

"in formulating development plans for their sites, EP takes into account the relevant aspects of Government policy, such as socially and economically sustainable neighbourhoods, the provision of sites for schools, local centres, health facilities".

However, that has not been Telford's experience. I referred to the considerable growth of Telford's population, which has given rise to the need not only for primary schools, but for a secondary school. There is plenty of land on which to build that secondary school, but none is forthcoming from English Partnerships.

In February 2000, Christine Davies, corporate director of education and training at Telford and Wrekin council, wrote to me that despite the pressing needs of increasing residential populations, unfortunately English Partnerships'

"operational parameters require them to maximise income… This means that often they are only able to offer us the worst sites, inadequately located, unsuitable ground and difficult to build on.

If Telford were not a new town then the granting of planning permission for new housing would carry with it the option for funds to be generated from the private sector through planning gain."

As Christine Davies pointed out, the problem has not been the lack of sites. In her letter, she said:

"The remit that EP work to would require them to charge the Council residential values for the land. The DfEE do not provide funding for the purchase of school sites and at a potential £1m or more a site this makes it impossible to build schools where they were needed, if at all."

In July 2000, I took up the case with the Minister's predecessor, who is now the Chief Whip. She accepted the argument and said that the Government agreed that

"in areas such as Telford where EP authorises development under powers contained in the New Towns Act, it can provide sites for primary schools at no cost to the education authority, where the demand for schools is a direct result of its activities."

That was a welcome change of policy, but it puzzled me. I wrote to the Minister seeking clarification, as she specifically identified primary but not secondary schools. That is nonsense. Families who move to English Partnerships estates bring not only four-year-olds but 11-year-olds. Pupils at the primary schools that English Partnerships can build have a habit of becoming the secondary school students in schools that English Partnerships cannot provide. I heard in August that the Minister was awaiting advice from English Partnerships, and she may be able to cast some light on the issue today.

Our children cannot wait. Telford and Wrekin council recently announced plans for a new secondary school in my constituency that were widely welcomed. However, the funding will be a huge burden on the LEA, which looks as if it will go for a private finance initiative scheme—not from choice but because it has little option despite huge tracts of land and a cash-rich agency on its doorstep. There are other examples of English Partnerships' inability to contribute to the strategic planning of Telford's future.

I do not want to denigrate English Partnerships, which has made, and continues to make, a considerable contribution to Telford's growth. I have had good experiences in my dealings with the organisation and its officers in Telford. The problem is the constraints under which it works and which I hope will be radically reformed as a result of the current review. English Partnerships belatedly co-operated with the council in producing a master plan for the town centre, but it cannot, or will not be able to, contribute to its implementation. We have a fine plan that would immeasurably enhance the quality of life of Telford's people, improve the town's standing and image, and boost the value of English Partnerships' assets, yet there is currently little prospect of delivering it.

The council has to work around English Partnerships to achieve its strategic objectives, but when it comes to the accountability of the planning system to the community, English Partnerships too often works around the community. It is a constant source of frustration and grievance to councillors and communities alike. Any hon. Member representing a new town will know about that from their postbags.

What can be done? I am confident that other hon. Members in the debate will bear me out when I say that the status quo is no longer tenable. New towns have achieved critical mass and largely outgrown the development corporation-led push for growth. They are fully fledged communities with the same needs as other urban centres for regeneration, sustainability and economic growth, all of which demand solutions and require choices. These strategic decisions must be taken by elected local authorities with a popular mandate and accountability to the communities that they represent and serve. The narrowness of English Partnerships' remit frustrates not only local authorities and local democracy but the Government's commitment to devolved decision taking, economic regeneration and social inclusion.

Various models have been put forward for consideration during consultation. I suggest a fairly modest five-point plan. All problems demand a five-point plan, and this is mine: first, an end to section 7.1 consents and the restoration to local authorities of planning powers, the right to charge fees and to negotiate section 106 agreements; secondly, a requirement for genuine partnerships between local authorities and English Partnerships in both developing and implementing strategic local plans; thirdly, the cancellation of clawbacks and covenants that prevent local authorities from developing their own land for community benefit; fourthly, an obligation for English Partnerships to provide social and public service infrastructure to support commercial development on its own land; fifthly, the recycling of receipts—it already occurs in coalfield new towns—to support local regeneration.

Other hon. Members may have other solutions, perhaps involving regional development agencies or the passing of sites from English Partnerships to local authorities. Such counter-arguments may have their merits, but those five points could form the basis of a more constructive relationship between English Partnerships and local authorities.

New towns are unfinished business. It could be argued that old development corporations, the Commission for the New Towns and the English Partnerships' involvement was necessary in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, to make those towns come out of the ground. Now that they have, we need a new approach that acknowledges the rights and needs of the people who live there, that affords new towns the same status as other towns, that no longer discriminates against them on the basis of their age and that balances the interests of the Treasury with those of other Departments, including the Minister's.

My hon. Friend has said that new towns need the same status as other towns. Does he agree that because the infrastructure ages at approximately the same rate, new towns have additional needs over and above those of other towns?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I referred at the outset to the problems visited on local authorities by the deterioration of estates that are considered young by most standards, but because of inherent design faults, have pressing needs that cannot be solved solely through access to urban regeneration funding. That is a fair point, but my argument is that we should examine the claims of local authorities and their communities on the basis of need, irrespective of whether communities are based in new towns, old towns or in the middle of nowhere.

I am glad that that important point has been made. I am arguing for a rebalancing of the Treasury's interests with those of other Departments. I am not denying that English Partnerships represents a good income stream to the Treasury that is capable of being used wisely. I am not saying that the Treasury should be denied that income source. I am simply arguing for its duties and responsibilities to be rebalanced to represent the interests of other Departments too. That is why I look forward to hearing how the Minister will respond to the consensus that I believe will emerge among hon. Members today.

I apologise through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the Minister for the fact that I have escaped from a Select Committee meeting this morning to participate briefly in this debate, so I hope that she will forgive me if I cannot hear her remarks at the end of the debate.

This is an important issue and I am grateful to the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Bradley) for securing the debate. He has provided an opportunity to highlight a number of issues that have become apparent to me during my work with the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions and its Urban Affairs Sub-Committee over the past six months or so.

The hon. Gentleman has introduced the debate at a time of unprecedented pressure on many communities, many of which are the original new towns. I speak from direct experience. I was involved politically in Warrington during the mid-1990s when English Partnerships was still the Commission for the New Towns and there was already pressure of growth on land around Warrington, partly for the reasons highlighted by the hon. Gentleman and partly as a result of the Government's admirable desire to bring derelict land back into commercial, residential or other use. I have felt strongly since then that the role of what is now English Partnerships needs to be looked at thoughtfully and carefully, particularly in the context of the impact that the development of those towns is having and has had on nearby communities.

That became starkly clear to me when the Select Committee visited the north-west last autumn to examine the issue of empty housing. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), whom I see in the Chamber, was also on that visit. We went to Liverpool and Bootle, as well as to Burnley and parts of Manchester, but it was Liverpool and Bootle that brought home to me the need to balance the expansion of new towns with protecting much longer-standing communities.

In Liverpool we visited an area of considerable dereliction in what was once an attractive Victorian, middle-class area with substantial properties. In many parts of the north-west empty homes are in the classic terraces, with back yards and alleyways leading between two rows of houses, but that is not the case in Liverpool. If the derelict houses in that part of Liverpool were in Greater London, they would fetch many hundreds of thousands of pounds on the open market.

We also learned that there is considerable business activity in Liverpool and a significant flow of commuters into the commercial centre from places such as Warrington that have grown over the past 20 years. The growth of Warrington has been startling. At the time of the famous by-election in the early 1980s, when Lord Jenkins, as he is now, was the candidate for the Social Democratic party, Warrington had one parliamentary seat. Today it has two, and even with two, the boundaries are beginning to burst at the seams in the way that the hon. Member for The Wrekin described. It has grown and grown so much that it is unrecognisable from the town it was 20 or 30 years ago.

The consequence of that growth is only too visible in the rundown and derelict areas of Liverpool. We must realise that encouraging the continued growth of the new towns can have a significant adverse effect on older communities. We must think about that issue carefully when we address the future planning policies and role of English Partnerships. We must take dramatic steps to curtail the relentless growth of development into green spaces, open fields and the green belt. We need to focus on bringing people back into derelict inner-city areas, which should be attractive places to live. They are close to the places in which people work and better for public transport, given today's congested roads.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the issue concerns not only new development for new towns, but ensuring that existing communities in new towns are sustainable? My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) made the point that much investment in new towns is 30 or 40 years old. We must revisit large urban estates in new towns to ensure that they are sustainable. It is not only about pressure for new housing development.

I listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman's remarks. He is undoubtedly correct. Milton Keynes plans to expand dramatically in the next 20 years. Will the existing infrastructure be able to withstand such a dramatic development? We must be careful before we expand an area for the sake of disposing of land, which is often green countryside. With some new towns, sites were derelict and have been brought into use but in many cases there is pressure to continue developing on green, open-space farmland that has been acquired by English Partnerships. If such development were to proceed at a relentless pace there would be a loss to the amenity of the countryside around those towns.

The past two generations' focus on new towns involved the creation of new communities at Skelmersdale in the 1960s and at Milton Keynes, Warrington, Telford and others. English Partnerships and other agencies have built up considerable expertise in bringing land into use to secure the development of property. I should like more of that expertise to be brought into our inner cities because there are some good precedents.

The Hulme estate in Manchester, which we also visited, is a startling example of how to turn a rundown council estate into a mixed development that has genuine attractions, adequate affordable housing for those who need it and an environment that will bring professionals back into the city centre. It provides an interesting example of the steps that we must take to bring life back into inner-city areas.

East Manchester has set out a programme that it describes as an east Manchester new town. It is perfectly plausible to approach the construction of a new town in an existing city area in the same way as we approached creating places such as Milton Keynes on greenfield sites and green belt areas. Radical surgery to an inner-city area such as east Manchester that has become run down may mean taking painful decisions. Several individual housing estates were supported over 20 years but the money achieved nothing because it was poured into a sieve. We may need to take painful decisions about demolishing and reconstructing communities, creating diverse types of housing and bringing the things that take people out to Warrington new town into east Manchester.

The thrust of the hon. Gentleman's remarks may be encapsulated in the statement that we want a coherent outlook from English Partnerships. The English Partnerships that is taking over greenfield sites in Warrington is bolted on to regeneration through Liverpool Vision. We are collectively searching for a proper coherence of outlook, stretching not just to one town but across the whole region.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. He is right. My view is that English Partnerships has a wealth of expertise, built up during a good many years, but although it has a presence in some areas that need regeneration, more of its expertise could be brought to bear in places such as Liverpool, east Manchester and other parts of Manchester to try to bring life back to those urban communities.

Our society must not develop almost like a doughnut, so that it has a vacuum in the centre where our traditional cities are, and dozens and dozens of new communities, new developments and new towns further out, which creates some of the problems that the hon. Member for The Wrekin highlighted. That threatens to destroy out traditional cities. We must be careful about that.

That is my contribution to the debate and my message to the Minister. English Partnerships has done an important job over the years in bringing back into use derelict sites with potential for economic development. The hon. Member for The Wrekin has made important points about the need for English Partnerships to be more community focused. In one or two cases in Warrington, I would have liked to see the Commission for the New Towns, as it was then, do more within the local community and be more thoughtful about what it was creating. There are lessons to be learnt.

I want the expertise of English Partnerships to help to bring about a new generation of new towns in existing cities. I would like to see real radical thinking in Government, in the agencies that work with Government and in Britain as a whole about how to breathe life back into our inner cities. The lessons of our new towns and of organisations such as English Partnerships can be brought to bear to achieve that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) on securing the debate.

I would like to dwell on the context. As the Member representing Telford, I have a significant interest in the role that English Partnerships has played over the years and in the activities of its predecessors in my area, the Telford Development Corporation and the Commission for the New Towns. Telford was created in the late 1960s and designated in 1968. It drew together a range of towns on the old east Shropshire coalfield, including Oakengates, Dawley and Madeley. It also picked up, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin said, a large influx of people from the west midlands and the black country. Communities from the west midlands conurbation largely populated some of the large estates placed between old towns and communities that the Telford Development Corporation built. It has taken a long time for some of those estates to integrate with the wider framework of the Telford area.

We must accept that the rapid expansion of the town in the 1960s and 1970s created a number of serious problems. The town's main shopping centre, as my hon. Friend has already pointed out, was intended to be a short-term building to be replaced in about 10 years, but it is still there. It has very little architectural merit. One of my friends describes it as a nuclear power station in the middle of the town. Short-term decisions and rapid investment decisions were made to try to provide retail facilities for a community arriving from the west midlands.

One of the biggest problems was the design and layout of some of the estates in south Telford, such as Woodside, Sutton Hill, Stirchley, Brookside and Malinslee. They were built very quickly, often using rapid manufacturing techniques, on what is classically called a Radburn layout, in which the structure of properties is not good for the maintenance of social order. The design is such that people gain access to their properties at the front and park vehicles at the back. There are large areas of unkempt open space, which creates problems on those estates.

When we consider new towns, it is important to remember the positive legacy of organisations such as the Telford Development Corporation and the Commission for the New Towns, which did a tremendous job. Telford was one of the biggest land reclamation projects ever undertaken in western Europe. It is a fantastic and vibrant town, but it is 30 years old and no longer a new town. That is part of the problem with using that title for such communities. They are new towns that are not new any more. Because they were built in one phase of development during a 10-year period from the late 1960s onwards, a lot of the initial investment has come to the end of its useful life. Communities living in large housing estates, or using services and facilities in the town are commenting on how tired parts of the town look. People are not racing into my surgery every fortnight and raising the issue of whether English Partnerships could do more in Telford. However, many communities involved in regeneration projects are beginning to realise the role that English Partnerships should play.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin covered the issues relating to English Partnerships that we need to tackle in Telford. I would like to focus on three specific areas: first, housing regeneration, secondly, the sustainability of the wider urban environment, and thirdly, ensuring that Telford is the economic engine for the future of the west midlands. It has been in the past, and we need to ensure that it is in the future. Before doing so, I return to the issue of English Partnerships' landholdings.

Telford is not a traditional town in the sense that many other towns are. Many local authorities are able to deploy land resources and assets to facilitate regeneration activity. They assemble wide-scale partnership schemes, using land assets accumulated throughout many decades, to lever investment into local communities. That is my experience of working on housing regeneration activity in the west midlands. We do not have that luxury in Telford, because we do not have the same level of land supply available for deployment by the local authority in a strategic context. I would like to quote from the submission of Telford and Wrekin council to the part 1 EP review process:

"EP's remaining uncontracted stock of consented s7:1 land for housing development is 144ha (360ac) and 158ha (390ac) for employment development. In comparison the Council's total committed development land is 16ha (39ac) and of this 11 ha is subject to EP clawback. The above starkly illustrates the imbalance of assets held by the respective organisations and that the Council is essentially bereft of assets to reinvest in the development and regeneration of the town."

Unlike other cities, Telford is hampered by the fact that land is largely held, controlled and disposed of by English Partnerships, whose remit is not to be strategic, but to secure maximum income for the Treasury from the disposal of sites in the town.

On the issue of housing-led regeneration, many 1960s estates, often on the Radburn layout, hold communities together through strange road patterns and pedestrian networks, with large areas of unkempt open space. They have their own local centres, which were developed at the time. Housing was often poorly designed and running into disrepair, and many estates experienced housing abandonment and the decline of retail premises.

Woodside estate in the south of my constituency was developed using Radburn principles. At its centre are several walk-up flats that are experiencing severe levels of abandonment. Communities in those areas are starting to recognise, through the engagement of the council with community organisations, that English Partnerships needs to play a role in the redevelopment of their areas. The disposal processes and policies employed by Telford Development Corporation have made large parts of those estates fairly unmanageable.

In the last few years of the TDC, there was a significant push to dispose of social housing. The Shropshire Star carried advertisements saying, "Buy your house at a knock-down price before the end of the month, or the price will go up and you'll have to pay more." A very aggressive disposal strategy was pursued during the 1980s. Of course, that fitted into the ideology of the Government of the time. That strategy led to the desperate problem of dispersed land ownership. On many estates, people do not know who is responsible for their maintenance, and many small-scale private landlords do not manage and maintain their property. That problem was compounded by the transfer of the council's housing stock to a new registered social landlord. Essentially, I supported that move because it brought new investment into the town, but it has created a problem on estates such as Woodside, which has a range of property owners with little co-ordinated activity. Over the years, Government policy created many of the problems that we see on our estates in south Telford. English Partnerships does not acknowledge its role in dealing with the mistakes that were made. After all, its prime duty is to dispose of land effectively to generate receipts. If we are to sustain, redevelop and regenerate the large estates in south Telford, English Partnerships must begin to engage strategically in the process.

Because Telford is called a new town, it tends not to figure in debates about the urban renaissance, but there is a significant opportunity for us to engage in that debate and to facilitate large-scale investment in many estates in south Telford. We should be radical and use the best principles of quality design to help to alleviate some of the mistakes that were made at the end of the 1960s. That requires the promotion of genuine partnerships.

English Partnerships, its successor organisation or, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin suggested, the local authority, will need to engage with the Housing Corporation, local communities and developers to deploy assets collectively across south Telford. Part of the problem is that English Partnerships does not have a significant interest in estates such as Woodside—it divested itself of that interest through the policies of its predecessors—but it does hold some of the best sites around south Telford. Those resources must be drawn together into an approachable housing market renewal strategy across south Telford, which could be piloted with the use of English Partnerships' current assets.

As a minimum, we require the recycling of receipts from disposals by English Partnerships into local communities. That happens in coalfield communities, and I do not see why it cannot happen more generally in new town communities. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be pleased to hear that this is a spend-save principle. If we do not deal with the problem now we shall have to return to it in 10 or 20 years' time, when the bill will be much bigger and the problem much more complex. We can either decide to invest strategically now, using land resources and assets to create sustainable communities, or walk away, only to have to return to the problem later and spend more money to alleviate problems that we are encountering now and will in future.

That leads me on to sustainability, which should be at the core of any proposal to develop a new town. The principle of sustainability was not comprehensive and was perhaps too advanced for some of the planners in the late 1960s. Much of the development in Telford was short term and its urban environment is uninspiring in places. We should knit English Partnerships' landholding more closely into the strategic framework and deploy its assets more effectively. Its landholdings are dominated by 7.1 consents and its disposals tend to be project-specific and not strategic. It is time for that framework to disappear.

I used to be a member of the local authority in Telford and 7.1 consents were sometimes convenient because, when a difficult planning decision was required, we did not have to make it. That was a luxury, but did not help because we were not properly engaged in the strategy for the future of our town. We have reached the point at which 7.1 consents in a mature community of 30 years are no longer acceptable. Local communities should be given the right and the power to take control of the destiny of their towns.EP disposes of its assets on a one-off basis far too often and should integrate its approach with that of the local authority and other players.

I welcome some of the investment that EP has committed to Telford recently. I have met the staff and, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin said, they are co-operative and positive but are held back by EP's general principles and rules, which must be modified. I have met the chief executive of EP, who is committed to seeing Telford grow, but her hands are tied by the remit laid down by central Government. I should like some of the skills in the organisation to be deployed more effectively in Telford.

EP has recently funded feasibility studies into redevelopment of the shopping centre to which I referred, and it has put resources into development of a master plan for the area. That positive move was welcomed by the community, but no resources will be made available to implement the plan. We have some fantastic proposals, but no contribution from EP to implement them. They should be implemented.

I want to probe the hon. Gentleman's thinking. Does he envisage that all regeneration schemes in Telford will be entirely publicly funded, or does he anticipate new regimes levering in private sector finance to help to make the development projects more economically sustainable?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. I envisage the involvement of private sector finance through the regeneration vehicles. It is clear that public funding cannot alone deal with the issues that arise on housing estates in south Telford and the shopping centre. Private finance will be at the core of regenerating the south of the town. That is why I referred to a housing market renewal area not just focusing on social housing but deploying private sector resources to diversify and change the housing market to make it more sustainable and effective in the long term. I envisage private finance playing a major and probably leading role in terms of the percentage of resources drawn into the town for regeneration. That does not clash with the broad principles of English Partnerships, which are to lever in private sector investment. At the moment it is not doing so strategically enough for the needs of the wider community.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin said that in terms of promoting sustainability, we should consider transferring planning powers, particularly to allow the use of section 106 agreements. That is a major problem for the town in promoting sustainability. In many areas, local authorities use section 106 agreements to secure myriad advantages and opportunities for local communities through the planning process. At the moment we do not have that luxury in Telford. A large proportion of the land supply is disposed of and little community gain is drawn back through such arrangements. We could secure significant improvements for local communities on their estates if we were able to deploy those powers.

Some hon. Members mentioned that the regional development agency—in our case Advantage West Midlands—could get involved in the future of English Partnerships' assets in Telford. I would be somewhat concerned by such a development. I can the see the logic, but Advantage West Midlands is committed to drawing significant resources into regenerating the conurbation. That is important, but I do not want resources from Telford that go into the wider Exchequer pot to go into the black country conurbation. We need a different role and perspective in which local authorities take the lead.

My next point concerns Telford's role as an economic engine. It was a growth point and must be again. We must ensure that investment is made across the whole regeneration agenda, not just through site-by-site disposals or asset realisation. English Partnerships is good at devoloping industrial sites, and we should praise it for that. It provides a range of opportunities for economic growth in the town, but should fit into the wider strategic framework.

Finally, how do we move forward? I support the quality five-point plan of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin. I like such things, and it was excellent. We must examine the possibility of local strategic partnerships leading on new town regeneration using EP assets. Perhaps local authorities should not have a dominant role; perhaps the system should be more widespread. I have said already that there could be opportunities to use structures such as housing market renewal areas or company structures to deliver change. I would prefer English Partnerships' assets to be in the local authority's control. We must see the recycling of receipts into the new towns and allow Telford and other towns access to the asset base that traditional communities have for the regeneration of their areas. As a minimum, we want a stronger strategic commitment to the new towns from English Partnerships. I look forward to the Minister's response.

It may be helpful for hon. Members to know that the winding-up speeches will start not later than 12 o'clock, with a 10-minute allocation to each Front Bencher.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure both to call a fellow north-west MP Mr. Deputy Speaker and to participate in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) on securing the debate, as will every other Member who represents a new town. I agree with my hon. Friend's five-point plan—eerily, it reminds me of five-year plans. He and my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) allow me to be brief because they covered most of the major points.

I represent Skelmersdale, which was built in the 1960s and 1970s on the Radburn principle of design layout that my hon. Friend the Member for Telford described. Indeed, in describing his estates, he described mine in Skelmersdale. The town was designed largely for the Liverpool overspill population and to separate vehicles from pedestrians with a system of courtyard layouts and cul-de-sacs emerging off spine streets. That leads to hugely disproportionate costs in street cleaning, refuse collection, ground and street furniture maintenance and, particularly, policing. It was built on an old coalfield that was exhausted long before Skelmersdale new town was started, which leads to an enormous need for ground remediation and rehabilitation for any development that takes place. It was built around a series of cloughs—in Cumbria they are called gills—which are deep clefts in the moorside that go down into the middle of the town. They are a great environmental asset but are extremely costly, as they disrupt transport systems and so on.

Skelmersdale was built using every innovative and experimental building technique known to man and a few that were not. Some of them were catastrophic and need expensive remedies. For example, many houses were built with central heating outlets in the ceiling. The fact that heat rises seemed to be ignored, so the bedrooms were heated moderately well but not the downstairs rooms. Even now, hon. Members could put their hands through the wall and pick flowers from the garden because the houses' metal frames are corroded and the concrete slabs have collapsed.

Skelmersdale was handed over to West Lancashire district council in the late 1980s incomplete, especially the town centre, but already in desperate need of refurbishment. There are about 42,000 people in Skelmersdale with no cinema, hospital, town hall, or civic assembly rooms. Despite its palpable needs, the council is unable to secure access to assets to help to remedy problems and to regenerate the town and the sub-region. The assets, formerly in the hands of the Commission for the New Towns, are now in the hands of English Partnerships.

Fifteen years ago, I organised a series of all-party petitions and attacks on the Secretary of State who was then responsible for the matter, Michael Heseltine. The reply every time was that over the years Governments had spent a lot of money building the new towns and wanted as much of that money back as possible.

Our experience in West Lancashire is that English Partnerships must realise its land assets in isolation, even if that queers the pitch for strategic development. It is a major problem in my town. Much of the available land asset is subject to clawback, depriving the local authority of the use of assets from the area for necessary regeneration.

At present, the district council holds 10 hectares of land, seven of which are affected by clawback; English Partnership currently has 62 hectares of land in the town, which will give hon. Members some idea of the disparity in power in the area. Furthermore, as a good council following the Government's edicts, West Lancashire has set up a local strategic partnership, which I chair for my sins. It is limited in its capacity to regenerate Skelmersdale because of the complex circumstances relating to land holdings in the town.

Skelmersdale's problems need sorting out. First, the democratically elected council requires overall planning powers and the power to realise public assets to allow it effectively to regenerate the town and especially to put together a strategic plan for the area surrounding the town centre—I, too, recognise the description of the nuclear power station. The land is owned by several different interests, including two councils and, substantially, English Partnerships. Secondly, coherent planning is impossible when English Partnerships has a separate planning remit. A national organisation such as English Partnerships cannot sensibly be aware of, and party to, the detailed planning and regeneration needs of a community such as Skelmersdale. Such plans should be subject to democratic local scrutiny and control.

English Partnerships has not absorbed Skelmersdale's special needs or those of other new towns. It lacks focus; it has many disparate responsibilities and its expertise lies more and more in inner-city regeneration. West Lancashire council is working with the original development agency, which has a grasp of the implications of land assets in the town for the regeneration of West Lancashire and the sub-region.

English Partnerships in Skelmersdale, with the best will in the world, is out of step, undemocratic and sometimes obstructive. That is not a criticism of individual staff with whom I have had to work, who have been excellent.

Like most new towns, Skelmersdale was built in a hurry, so all its problems arose simultaneously; housing, layout and infrastructure difficulties bring many social problems in their wake. We need every possible asset and inch of planning gain to fund developments and to turn the problems around. I strongly support the recent case that was made by the new town local authorities that the land assets of English Partnerships in new towns should go to the relevant LEAs without the powers of clawback.

I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) on securing the debate. I apologise for not being able to rival his expertise in the subject, or that of other hon. Members who have spoken. The hon. Gentleman raised an important subject, to which the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions will turn soon. I largely accept his argument that new towns are peculiarly disadvantaged.

The debate is timely because the Government are reviewing the role of English Partnerships. The hon. Gentleman is right: this state of affairs has not been scheduled, as it were, or thought out. It is not part of a plan of one particular Government. The situation evolved, beginning with the Commission for the New Towns. The urban regeneration companies and authorities were then set up, followed by the regional development agencies. The template is more a patchwork than anything else.

Importantly, some of the objectives of English Partnerships coincide with those of the regional development agencies. I recently came across a copy of the old Buchanan report, which was published in 1962, priced 10s 6d, in which the notion of the regional development agency was first mooted. It was modelled on the Commission for the New Towns.

I feel sorry for any authority operating in the new towns because it is obliged by Government to implement a community plan and to work hard for service improvements of various sorts but handicapped in delivering the service improvements and changes. The hon. Member for The Wrekin and other hon. Members representing new towns have spoken about the peculiar transport problems of new towns, which were designed on the basis of Mr. Buchanan's ideas. Visitors to a new town have no difficulty getting into it but tremendous difficulty finding their way out; that is particularly true of the town represented by the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall). In new towns, much of the industry is itinerant. It moves away rapidly, leading to high unemployment.

No one has argued that the new towns are assisted in the discharge of their duties by having on the scene a powerful player with sizeable assets that is able to impose sizeable burdens on the local authority, and that has appreciable and rather strange planning powers—the Government described them in their own review document as increasingly anachronistic. A natural conclusion may be that English Partnerships should relinquish its current role in the new towns and concentrate on other areas, as the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said, such as regenerating the core of inner cities. One could argue that new towns have reached maturity, but do not forget that new towns and English Partnerships began as an aspect of Government, or national, planning policy. New towns are not organic creations. They are a planned entity and the policy imperatives that led to them still operate. English Partnerships conducts an appreciable amount of research and provides resources for regeneration. The regional development agencies appear to be set on the same mission.

On the review, we must bear it in mind that regional development agencies are precisely that: they are regional in scope. There will still be a residual role for an organisation that ensures that local regeneration aligns with national policy, and can act as a catalyst, partner and funder of forward-looking initiatives that dovetail happily with national imperatives. I draw attention to the good role that English Partnerships plays with Liverpool Vision. It adds extra impetus to that initiative, which is pan-regional in scope.

To agree with all that is not to conclude that new towns are in any way assisted by having a massive landowner with enormous planning authority on their doorstep. I sympathise with all hon. Members who represent new towns because, fundamentally, such communities are disempowered and disadvantaged. The hon. Member for West Lancashire referred to local strategic partnerships, but I do not understand how they can perform the same function for new towns as they do elsewhere. English Partnerships is left with all its power in place.

Eventually, new towns must become towns. There must be disengagement, and the Minister's thoughts would be best addressed to how that may take place. There is a fear, unmerited or merited, that there will be a land bonanza for new town local authorities and misuse of precious resources that could be used for development. The Government are on the horns of a dilemma. The discussion document states:

"at present receipts from CNT disposals can only be used to support other CNT activities and not wider regeneration. A recent internal review found no easy solution to this issue."

The big problems have been highlighted today: a degree of planning anarchy in new towns that does not exist elsewhere; a serious democratic deficit, in which locally elected representatives cannot guarantee results for their community; and—this applies across the country, not just to new towns—a lack of joined-up government on regeneration while the role of English Partnerships is not defined. I support the thrust of what hon. Members have said.

I am grateful to you for allowing me to catch your eye, Mrs. Adams. Before I go any further, I should declare my registered interest as a chartered surveyor, although I do not think that I stand to gain any pecuniary advantage from the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) on securing the debate. So far, there has been a lot of consensus. However, we may begin to differ when I propose some solutions.

The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) outlined the genesis of English Partnerships. It is probably time that we reviewed its role to determine whether we can return to local authorities some of the control that it exercises. Regeneration schemes work best if local people are involved in the decision making, because they have a sense of ownership of such schemes. The 7.1 planning exemptions that have been mentioned so often seem like the dead hand of the state imposing control over new town corporations. That is an outdated concept that we should begin to dismantle. Therefore, I warmly welcome what has been said and agree that we should consider the future role of English Partnerships.

Having said that, we must consider the Government's role in urban regeneration. We should examine the recently published White Paper entitled "Our Towns and Cities: The Future—Delivering an Urban Renaissance", which was trumpeted by the Deputy Prime Minister recently. On the whole, it was a damp squib. For example, on 17 November 2000, The Independent said:

"After a delay of three years, John Prescott published his Urban White Paper to a disappointing response. Most of Lord Rogers' Urban Task Force recommendations were barely addressed. Indeed, as Lord Rogers himself remarked, 'this… White Paper falls short of what is going to be required to engender a real urban renaissance."

We all agree that there are significant problems, but the question is how to solve them.

In preparation for today's debate, I examined the number of quangos set up to deal with the problem of urban regeneration. It is worth reading their names out. I shall then invite the Minister to reflect on whether we might simplify the process. The more quangos are in operation, the less people understand what they do. The more bureaucracy is created, the less effective they are. Here is the list of quangos: regional development agencies, a neighbourhood renewal unit, the European regional development fund, the single regeneration budget, the neighbourhood renewal fund encompassing a national strategy action plan, local strategic partnerships, the new deal for communities, urban regeneration companies, the English cities fund and a host of tax incentives for regeneration. Since the present Government came to power, new quangos have further fragmented the process.

That list is a mix of organisations delivering funding initiatives on the ground. They are not quangos in the context of the Housing Corporation, for example.

Some are initiatives on the ground and some are quangos. Reading out the list illustrates how the entire system is too complicated and too bureaucratic.

Having to bid for public funding is another serious problem. Bidding raises the standard of preparation of individual projects. It is fine for the urban corporation or borough council whose bid is successful; it obtains the public money. For those bodies whose bids are not successful, however, considerable time is wasted by officialdom.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way—it is the hon. Gentleman's debate—but will he allow me to finish?

Failed bids involve much wasted time. If the Government want to move closer to a bidding system, they need a much more streamlined process. Those who are unlikely to succeed should be told earlier and given a chance to improve their bid and to reach a standard that may succeed. People's time should not be wasted preparing bids that will never succeed, which breeds a culture of disappointment and stops people bothering in future. We should encourage imaginative, well-designed schemes, not replicate the mistakes of the 1960s when both Governments vied with each other to produce the maximum number of houses without being sufficiently concerned about design and durability.

The hon. Gentleman has suggested how active the Government are in urban regeneration, but I am unsure what that has to do with the title of the debate. Is not his objection to competition an indictment of his own Government's activities during the 1980s and 1990s? Competition was the cornerstone of their efforts to introduce regeneration, and it was one of the key reasons why it failed.

I am not going to be tempted down the path of history: I am interested in the future and how the present Government are operating. The planning system is a key part of urban regeneration, and we welcome a number of proposals, particularly on streamlining the system and on moving much more quickly.

Section 106 agreements have been mentioned several times. Hon. Members will be aware that the Government propose to move towards a tariff system, so that many larger developments are not delayed excessively by having to negotiate a 106 agreement. Now, a project receives planning permission but is often delayed for a year or more while that agreement is negotiated. In principle, we welcome the tariff proposals to simplify and streamline the planning system, but they must be defined more carefully.

We called for responsibility for regeneration to be brought under a single Minister. Currently, several Departments play a role, notably the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, but also the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury. One Minister should be responsible. I thought that that was to be the Deputy Prime Minister, but sadly he seems to have relinquished the role.

We called for the establishment of local regeneration companies across England and Wales as flagships for urban renewal. Those powerful new bodies would lever in private finance and would be headed by people with significant private sector expertise. The local authority and the community would be involved.

In a Westminster Hall debate last week, I mentioned the concept of town centre management schemes. I wish the Government would seriously consider those schemes, which could be composed of local authorities, English Partnerships, the voluntary sector and, above all, businesses. All sectors need to be involved in urban regeneration if they want it to be a success.

We should like to see research based on enterprise zones, urban development corporations and the city challenge schemes of the 1980s and 1990s, which showed that local regeneration schemes create new investment and business growth in the long term and do not just divert resources from neighbouring areas. My former right hon. Friend Michael Heseltine was criticised, but he introduced development corporations that managed to cut much of the red tape that stifled regeneration in our cities for generations.

I caution the Minister that, if we relinquish the assets of English Partnerships to local authorities, we may return to the monolithic control of the 1960s. Indeed, many local authorities throughout the country are sitting on billions of pounds worth of assets that they are not using.

. Finally, I shall suggest a source of money that I suspect the Government will now take up with alacrity. Some hon. Members have mentioned the transfer of local authority housing stock to housing associations through large-scale voluntary transfer schemes, which were initiated by the last Conservative Government. We welcome such schemes, although they could be improved, as could tenant participation in housing associations.

A substantial amount of new money could be levered in if the remaining council houses were transferred in that way. Between 1988 and 1999, 400,000 council houses were transferred, which resulted in proceeds of £5.9 billion of private investment being levered in—the equivalent in 1999 prices of £6.5 billion. If the remaining 3.3 million council houses in England received the same level of private investment as existing LSVT schemes have levered in—let us say £16,400 per dwelling in 1999 prices—in theory up to £54 billion of private new investment could be generated. There is a substantial pot out there, and if the Labour party is looking for a new way of levering funds into urban regeneration, that would be a major way of doing so.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way, because I am in the last minute of my speech.

Suffice it to say that urban regeneration is a continuing problem. However, there have been some imaginative schemes, especially those proposed by Michael Heseltine. One has only to consider the imaginative schemes in Leeds and Glasgow city centres and in docklands to see what can be done when red tape is cut. I urge the Government to consider not only how much money they are investing in the schemes but what they are getting for that money and how effective it is in the regeneration of older and newer town centres.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) on securing the debate, and I assure him that I will address the issues of new towns and English Partnerships.

Many important matters were raised. I may not be able to deal with all the constituency issues, as I want to address issues that relate to the review, but I will respond to my hon. Friend's five points. I ask hon. Members to be tolerant if any constituency issues remain. I will deal with them in writing after the debate.

We must recognise that the creation of the new towns was one of the great achievements of the post-war Labour Government. They provided new residential areas and areas of economic growth for people to live and work in, and transformed the lives of people who made the journey from overcrowded inner cities. We should also recognise the pressures on housing, infrastructure and communities in the new towns, which all hon. Members considered in one way or another. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) raised some issues relating to the community and the wider service. What was a great vision of the Attlee Government is starting to show its age, and it is time to look at what is going on.

The Commission for the New Towns' role as a residuary body was not always helpful. Historically, the commission's principal objective was to liquidate its portfolio as quickly as possible, consistent with achieving value for money. Over 50 years, mistakes were made; that was bound to happen. There were mistakes in the handover, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) referred, and in engaging with the community. Issues remain, and feelings are strong. However, English Partnerships has tried to change the approach by becoming an investor in, rather than a liquidator of, new towns, using its portfolio to underpin the economic development aspirations of local authorities, regional development agencies and local communities. At the same time, it aims to create value and achieve wider community benefits over the medium term, and to demonstrate the practical application of the Government's urban renaissance agenda. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Telford that it is important that the new towns are part of the Government's agenda for urban renaissance.

I could list the many ways in which English Partnerships has changed its methods of operation, but I will select only a few. In a previous debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett) raised the issue of town centre renewal, which is an essential component of the Government's approach to urban renaissance. English Partnerships recognises that many central areas of new towns require substantial reinvestment to create vibrant, mixed-use and competitive town centres. It is working with several local authorities on potential schemes in towns such as Bracknell, Harlow and Crawley. I will give my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire some more information about Skelmersdale, which has also been discussed.

English Partnerships and Milton Keynes have some ambitious proposals to transform the centre of Milton Keynes from a familiar low-density, car-dominated environment into a high-density, mixed-use city centre of regional significance. That clearly shows the shift in EP's approach.

I want to deal briefly with housing issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Telford spoke eloquently about some of the problems in his constituency. As he said, about 70 per cent. of the deck-access blocks in the central area of Telford are empty. Some difficulties have been created by the diversity of ownership; small-scale private speculators bought some of the housing at an early stage and they have not managed it well. English Partnerships and the local authority are considering how to deal with the problems, especially on the Woodside estate. There will have to be a development package to put the programme into place. The Bournville Trust is also considering providing a new type of housing in Lightmoor urban village, and is asking the local authority to look at planning consents. Sensitive matters have been raised.

Hon. Members asked whether English Partnerships could apply its expertise elsewhere; the hon. Member for Southport mentioned Liverpool. I flag up the involvement of English Partnerships in the millennium communities in Greenwich, for example, and its work in considering how to regenerate some of the appalling, rundown areas in the coalfield communities.

English Partnerships has changed the way it works. The review, which has been brought forward, will consider EP's role and functions in that context. The terms of reference are to consider its role in delivering the Government's policies and the future ownership of the Commission for the New Towns' assets and liabilities, to recommend any changes that may be necessary in the light of the review, and to examine EP's structure and processes to ensure effective delivery of its wide-ranging remit. We hoped to complete the first part of the review before Christmas, but that was not possible, partly because of the strong interest in it. However, we hope to be able to publish the review shortly.

I cannot prejudge the outcome of the review, but I can say that a number of the five points mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin will be dealt with. We are sympathetic to the restoration of planning rights. I hope that I have shown that English Partnerships is involved in genuine partnerships. The review will deal with substantial issues, including the cancellation of clawbacks and the recycling of receipts. There is already the obligation to provide public service infrastructure. I completely agree with my hon. Friend's points in that respect.

In the past two years, substantial progress has been made in shifting English Partnerships' agenda, taking account of some of the points made by hon. Members in the debate. I do not doubt the validity of the original vision of creating new towns to provide good homes and jobs for people from overcrowded inner cities. However, it is equally clear that mistakes have been made and that we must find a way forward. I believe that the review will enable us to consider those issues carefully, take the matter forward and provide a clear way of realising the Attlee Government's vision of decent homes and jobs for all.

Thank you, Mrs. Adams, for calling me to put the case for an additional computed tomography scanner at the three-star Blackpool Victoria hospital. May I say at the outset how delighted I am to see the hon. Members for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) and for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble)? I thank them for their support for this initiative.

The hospital was recently praised in the local newspaper, The Blackpool Gazette, which said:

"The Vic hailed as a 'super hospital'."

However, in spite of Herculean efforts by the clinical staff, there is tremendous pressure on the existing scanner facilities. I hope that the debate will make a case on their behalf to ensure that the current capacity is increased.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in his contribution to this important debate. Is he aware that the Department of Health has not yet determined the criteria for allocating new scanners through the renewal programme? Does he agree that the Blackpool Victoria trust must develop the case-of-need document that it has to submit to the Government and outline how vital additional scanning facilities are for my constituents, his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South?

The hon. Lady makes a valid and relevant point. I shall develop that theme later in my remarks. The purpose of the debate is to accelerate the process that she has carefully described, because the pressures exist now and must be addressed.

The hospital has one CT scanner and one magnetic resonance imaging scanner, both bought as a result of public subscription. There is strong feeling in the area that the time has come for capacity to be expanded, but not by public subscription out of public funds.

I want to put on record my appreciation of the help given to me in preparing for this debate by Dr. Neil Flanagan, the senior radiologist at the hospital, who first drew my attention to this matter, as well as to Mark Lambert, one of the consultant surgeons, Dr. Graham Hoadly, the clinical director for radiology, David Gill, the chief executive, and to my own researcher, Caroline Evans. All of them have managed to put together what I believe is a very good case for the development of scanning facilities at the Blackpool Victoria hospital. The hospital, local Members of Parliament and patient groups are at one in arguing for this case.

How have we reached the point of having to raise this matter in Parliament? In the national cancer plan, the Government have rightly reduced the time between the initial request by a patient to see his or her general practitioner and the granting of an out-patient appointment to a minimum of two weeks. As the consultant radiologist told me, one problem that has arisen, as people come forward more quickly for their out-patient appointment, is that the demands on them to go for urgent scanning treatment have also increased. The result, as I shall demonstrate statistically in a moment, is that urgent cases form an ever-increasing queue, but for those who need routine use of the CT and MRI scanners the wait has become longer as they have been bumped down the list.

Urgent action is needed on this matter because an implication of the national cancer plan is, as I understand it, that by 2005 there should be a two-week time frame for urgent CT scans. Other developments, such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the national service framework for older people, require all patients admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke to receive a CT brain scan within 48 hours by April 2004. That illustrates the pressures building up on scanning facilities at the Victoria hospital. To return to the intervention of the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood, if action is not taken now, we will not have sufficient scanning capacity to meet those very important new requirements and criteria.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and for securing the debate. Although it concerns the hospital in my constituency, it affects all on the Fylde. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood referred to the criteria allocation. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, in deciding the database for allocation in the region, sufficient attention should be given to the peculiar and specific circumstances of the Blackpool Victoria hospital? It treats a large number of visitors and tourists, and the Department of Health is not sufficiently addressing those criteria.

The hon. Gentleman raises an important dimension of the work of the Blackpool Victoria hospital, which is not always recognised in formulas for funding and resource allocation. He makes a valid point about the pressure on the hospital, which I am sure the Minister will want to acknowledge when she winds up the debate.

Looking at the matter from the patients' standpoint, I was struck by a letter from the Lymphoma Association. The regional co-ordinator of that association and a patient, Mr. Philip McIntyre, wrote that he was diagnosed four years ago with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He said:

"Within 16 days I had undergone X-rays, ultrasound, and biopsy, including a CT scan and started on my first session of chemotherapy.

As you already are aware, the cancer workload at Preston and Chorley hospitals is similar to Blackpool. They have three scanners and Blackpool Victoria hospital has only one, this being provided from charitable donations… To be told you have cancer can be devastating both to the patient and the whole family, to have to wait upwards of 8 weeks for a scan is totally unacceptable.

Four years have gone by, if I was being diagnosed today and having to wait 8 weeks for a CT scan due to only one scanner being available, my outcome does not bear thinking about."

That emphasises the human dimension. It is not something for the cheap headline, nor is it simply about resources; it is about people who are extremely worried and want quick answers to the searching questions, "What's wrong with me and what can be done to deal with it?"

The hospital has not taken the current pressures lying down. On 31 March 2001, the health authority agreed to provide £150,000, and a further £300,000 will be available from 1 April 2002 to increase scanning capacity. I want to put on record my appreciation of the efforts of Dr. Rodger Berry at the hospital. Despite personal injury and illness, he came in to try to help with the work being done to increase the existing system's throughput. Extra scanning sessions have been arranged, some of the work has been moved from the CT scanner to the MRI scanner and work has been undertaken at weekends.

The additional permanent scanning hours have funded much additional work, but have put tremendous pressure on the clinicians and their support staff. There are two vacancies for radiography posts in Blackpool. As the hospital put it to me, there is little chance of bringing more people in despite the fact that those currently there are being worked to the limit.

On that point, I too pay tribute to the diligence of the hospital staff in extending those hours. I raised the issue at the end of last year in correspondence with my noble Friend Lord Hunt and received the response that weekend that extra hours were being worked. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that that inevitably puts pressure on those facilities and that if, God forbid, there were to be problems regarding the overuse of that scanner, it would make the situation at Blackpool Victoria even more urgent and perilous?

The hon. Gentleman makes a succinct and relevant point, which I shall not embroider.

While we are looking at the question of patients, I received a copy of a letter from a constituent of the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood—although, looking at the address on the letter, he may be a constituent of the hon. Member for Blackpool, South—who commented on the pressure on patients. He has an orthopaedic problem, but because an X-ray failed to show damage he was told that he must wait 15 to 16 months for a scan. Officially, there is a four-week wait for urgent CT and MRI scans, but more tellingly there is a 10-month wait for routine CT scans and a 15 to 16-month wait for MRI scans.

A local primary care group attempted to introduce direct GP referrals to a hospital in Liverpool to get round those roadblocks. Unfortunately, that did not work out as the GPs had hoped, but the Blackpool Victoria trust took up some of that capacity by moving 500 cases to Liverpool. We have not seen the benefit of the extra hours that are being worked because the more difficult cases reside in Blackpool. That has affected the productivity of the scanning facilities and illustrated the pressures on capacity. The Chorley and South Ribble and Preston Acute Hospitals NHS trust have one scanner per 300 acute beds; Southport, a place similar to Blackpool, has one scanner per 456 acute beds; Blackpool has one scanner per 658 acute beds, which makes it the 11th worst acute hospital trust in the United Kingdom for scanner capacity. That figure is telling.

I acknowledge that the Government are minded to increase national scanning capacity, and their programme to replace the 100 oldest scanners, which are more than 10 years old, is laudable. Their programme to put 15 new MRI and CT scanners in place is also welcome, but the timetable is worrying. If we examine the effect of the extra scanners on CT scans, once the new capacity is introduced, there will be one scanner per 151,500 members of the population. The current situation in the north-west region is one scanner per 153,800 people. If we consider the sub-region of Lancashire and South Cumbria, which includes the excellent Rosemere unit in the Chorley and South Ribble and Preston Acute Hospital NHS trust that has five scanners doing remarkable work in the treatment of cancer, we have one scanner per 181,800 people. Blackpool has one scanner per 347,000 people, which illustrates why we need greater capacity straight away.

There is a good business case for why we should have a new scanner. The question of upgrading the existing scanner was looked at, but there were significant disadvantages, especially from the radiographers' point of view because they feel that this would provide insufficient throughput to meet the forward demands of the new national cancer plan, and the NICE and national service framework recommendations. A second CT scanner would double patient throughput, reduce patient waiting times, provide a better response to in-patient requests, facilitate better training opportunities for staff, allow the department to acquire a modern scanner capable of enhanced functions that are currently not available, provide extra cover in the event of the other machine breaking down, allow additional capacity to be phased in on a sessional basis and, most importantly, anticipate future demand.

The Minister may, rightly, mention the question of resources. I am advised that what is required is capital investment of between £0.5 million and £0.75 million, with additional investment for new radiographers and the associated team. That is a relatively small price to pay in relation to overall expenditure on the health service, bearing in mind that the good people of the Fylde coast have already made their contribution by purchasing the existing CT and MRI scanners by public subscription.

On that point, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government have made an entirely laudable commitment to replacing scanners and to upgrading generally, and that it is important that the case for an additional scanner at Blackpool Victoria hospital is not downplayed purely and simply because we have had the good fortune to raise the funding for the initial scanner by public subscription, so that it is not one of the older scanners that might be automatically replaced?

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. My purpose in initiating the debate was not to bash the Government, because in fairness they recognise the problem. The case that all three Members for the Fylde coast want to underscore is that, if we go by the timetable given to me by the Minister's Department in parliamentary questions, then before we can even look at the criteria for the allocation of a new scanner we will have to wait for the programme to replace scanners that are more than 10 years old, and with every day that goes by we shall fall behind in our ability to meet the demands on scanning capacity.

The hon. Member for Blackpool, South is right to draw attention to the worry that the criteria that will be used to determine the allocation of the extra 50 CT scanners are not yet in the public domain. Some people inside the NHS say quietly and privately that there is a nasty smell suggesting that this might be a done deal; that words may have been exchanged behind closed doors about where in general the new scanners are supposed to go, and that any public consultation exercise to determine the criteria will be a sham. As the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood said in her telling intervention, that would deny us the opportunity fully to air the arguments for Blackpool to be a beneficiary of one of the new machines.

I want to close with a paragraph from the consultant haematologist, Dr. Flanagan, whom I earlier accused of being a radiologist. He made some telling comments in a letter to me dated 23 February last year:

"I am determined to ensure that my patients and others in the Fylde with cancer have an equal availability of diagnostic facilities and that a definite date for the provision of these facilities is published. After all, what is the point of a Governmental edict that all cancer patients should see a Specialist within two weeks if their subsequent diagnostic procedures are delayed for up to three to four months before treatment can start? I would love to find that commonsense prevailed here so that I could quietly fade into the background again. However, if I have to continue to make waves until these patients get their deserved service then so be it."

Blackpool was battered by storms yesterday. I hope that calm will descend on the hospital after the Minister responds to the well-reasoned, moderate, sensible and widely-supported argument that we should press the fast forward button to allow one of the new scanner facilities to be granted to us at the earliest possible opportunity.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) on his success in securing this Adjournment debate on scanning facilities at the Blackpool Victoria hospital and I welcome the comments and support of my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) and for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble).

The scanning facilities at Blackpool Victoria hospital are a matter of strong feeling on the part of the local Members and their constituents. I welcome the strong support that they have shown for local health services and their improvement. I will try to respond to their points.

Blackpool Victoria hospital is a large acute hospital serving around 350,000 people on the Lancashire coast. That includes those in urban and rural communities, affluent neighbourhoods and areas of social deprivation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South pointed out, the hospital must serve the resident population and millions of holidaymakers every year, placing additional demands on health services. The trust was awarded three stars in September's performance tables, achieving all but one of the nine key targets. Such quality indicators matter to patients and their relatives. Blackpool's star rating is a tribute to everyone who works in the hospital and they deserve our congratulations.

My hon. Friend the Minister of State for Health has been invited to Blackpool on Friday to open formally phase 5 of the Victoria hospital. That is a major new development, consisting of expanded accident and emergency and critical care facilities, a medical admissions unit, coronary care unit, seven acute medical wards and a cardiology ward.

The right hon. Member for Fylde focused on the need for additional scanning capacity. At present, the hospital has two scanners: one computed tomography, or CT, scanner and one magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine. Both were installed comparatively recently, so neither is due for replacement in the near future. By 2004, we are committed to phasing out all machines used in the diagnosis of cancer that are more than ten years old.

The difficulty at Blackpool has not been old and unreliable equipment, but escalating demand. The signs are that activity will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

A year ago, waiting times for urgent and routine CT and MRI scans at Blackpool Victoria hospital had risen to what were considered to be unacceptable levels. Consequently, the trust submitted a business case to North West Lancashire health authority, suggesting three alternative strategies to increase capacity. After negotiations with trust management and radiology staff, the health authority agreed to release additional funding for 2001–02 and 2002–03 to pay for additional scanning sessions. That enabled the trust to arrange extra scanning time at weekends, which it hopes will add about 700 scans to the annual total by the end of 2001–02.

Last month, the trust introduced another 10 hours scanning time each week on each machine. That is a permanent arrangement, but its full implementation is conditional on the hospital's successfully recruiting more radiologists. Over a 12-month period, extra operating hours should deliver more than 2,000 CT and MRI scans.

The trust will address staffing in a number of ways. It is reviewing staffing roles and responsibilities, so that radiographers can be trained to carry out certain tasks in place of radiologists. It will recruit a specialist registrar to the radiology team, and promote Blackpool as an attractive location for consultants. The introduction of a booked admissions approach should deliver service planning advantages.

The chief executive, Mr. David Gill, wrote to hon. Members in November, detailing the current position and the actions that had already been taken to alleviate long waits. He outlined the measures proposed for the future, and I am pleased to say that the situation has improved since then.

The latest figures that I have seen are for 10 January, when urgent waiting times stood at three weeks for both types of scan. As that is a week less than in mid-November, some progress is being made. Routine waiting times are 10 months for CT, 16 months for MRI, and five months for brain scans. Provided the necessary staff can be identified, more sessions are planned from 1 April when the 2002–03 money becomes available.

What does the Minister's Department think is an acceptable time for a routine scan? If I had been told that I needed such an investigation, it would worry me enormously to wait longer than 10 months. What can be done about that?

Clearly, the right hon. Gentleman is right. There are concerns about long waits for routine scans and we must speed up access to those scans across the board. The evidence of progress is welcome, but hon. Members are right to say that there is still some distance to go before a breakthrough can be achieved. The projected levels calculated by the trust suggest that although the improvements will restrict the rate of increase, they do not amount to a long-term solution.

From April 2004, we expect all patients who are admitted to hospital with suspected strokes to receive a CT brain scan within 48 hours. Hospitals such as the Blackpool Victoria should have plans in place by April this year to meet the new standard.

From David Gill's letter, it is clear that the trust has researched the subject carefully. He correctly says that the north-west as a whole has above average access rates to scanners on a per capita basis, but it is equally correct that overall distribution is patchy with some localities undeniably served better than others. In recognition of that situation, which we inherited, not just in the northwest but throughout the country, we have introduced a series of initiatives aimed at levelling up provision throughout the country to reduce access times and to ensure that patients are not faced with long journeys from home to add to their anxiety. Hon. Members will understand that years of under-investment cannot be put right overnight. It takes time to manufacture and install equipment.

Additional replacement scanners have been or are being delivered through the new opportunities fund, the cancer capital modernisation fund and the NHS and cancer plans, but demand still exceeds supply. The Department's cancer services team, in conjunction with cancer networks throughout England, is drawing up criteria for allocating new machines as equitably as possible, taking account of relevant factors such as existing provision. Any bids presented by the Blackpool Victoria will be evaluated with those from elsewhere in the country against a common set of criteria. That is the fairest way of determining where top priorities lie. Since April 2000, 27 new MRI scanners and 63 CT scanners have been installed and by the end of 2004, a further 123 CT scanners will be delivered as well as additional equipment.

Hon. Members are right to say that discussions are still taking place about allocation of the 50 additional CT scanners and the 50 additional MRI scanners identified in the cancer plan. The cancer networks and regional cancer co-ordinators are, rightly, at the centre of discussions to decide where the additional machines should be located. They are aware of the depth of feeling in Blackpool about lengthening queues, and I shall ensure that they are made aware of the comments made by hon. Members today on behalf of their constituents and the concerns that they have raised.

We are seeing a gradual increase in the number and quality of scanners as old equipment is replaced and new machines are delivered. Geographical coverage is also improving. Hon. Members will understand that I cannot make commitments about individual bids at this stage and the case will need to be considered against the cases made by other areas that also face need.

When will the criteria be published, so that we may make representations?

I cannot answer that now, but I shall write to hon. Members.

We must ensure that available scanners and equipment are used in the best possible way. I know that the local trust has done a lot in that context, but we need to do more throughout the country. I note that two out of 10 local consultant radiologist posts are vacant when candidates are in short supply nationwide. The supply of skilled radiographers is also an issue if we are to ensure that we are using existing scanners and equipment to full capacity. Nationally, we are working with the Society of Radiographers and bodies such as the Royal College of Radiologists to improve the radiography work force, including an increase in the number of radiography training places, which have increased by 20 per cent. in the past year and will increase by 55 per cent. by April 2002, extending the careers of radiotherapy staff who are currently working in the NHS and developing new ways of working in radiotherapy to allow staff to develop and extend their roles in the profession.

There is scope for innovative solutions and the right hon. Member for Fylde said that some patients have had knee scans in Merseyside under a pilot scheme agreed between the health authority and the Royal Liverpool university hospital. More innovative solutions will need to be considered throughout the country to deal with capacity problems.

In Blackpool, as in other parts of the country, the conclusion is clear. Yes, we need more scanners. Yes, we need more investment in the NHS. That is already happening, but it must continue fairly throughout the country. We also need reform and modernisation to ensure that we make the best use of facilities in the fairest possible way to improve access and care for local patients.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue, which has aroused widespread concern. An early-day motion calling for a ban on the use of cat and dog fur in Britain was signed by 223 hon. Members from all parties. That number is one of the largest for any issue in this and the previous Parliament. A recent public opinion survey showed that a massive majority supports an outright ban on the use of cat and dog fur and those findings are not necessarily based on widespread recognition of the extent and severity of the fur farms involved.

I acknowledge the input of the leading campaign in this matter—the Nottingham-based Respect for Animals. I shall quote from its research and from work done by undercover investigators employed by the Humane Society of the United States, which is the American equivalent of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I am also grateful for input from Charles Tannock, Member of the European Parliament for London for the initiative that he and others have taken in the European Parliament.

It is estimated that 2 million cats and dogs are slaughtered annually as part of the trade. Typically, around 50 cat or dog skins are used to make one full-length fur coat, although skins are also used for trimming and on coats made of fur from other animals.

Animals are generally kept in a long row of wire cages, like battery chickens, in an open-sided shed. The environmental impact is significant even in well-regulated countries such as Denmark and Finland and even more so in the generally less regulated developing world. Under the World Bank's industrial pollution protection system—IPPS—fur dressing and dyeing rank among the worst five industries for toxic metal pollution. Some products used in the process are banned in the European Union—for example, arsenic, which is a multiple carcinogen. In practice, furs are not biodegradable despite being natural products because the chemicals, including the carcinogens, needed to preserve the coat are not degradable and so add to the issues surrounding landfill sites when coats are discarded.

Fur farms in China and the Philippines were filmed by undercover investigators and showed cats and dogs being treated in ways that the United States Congress report on the subject recently described as gruesome. I shall not go into detail, but animals were filmed in appallingly cramped conditions and being beaten and skinned alive.

With that background, there is no reasonable doubt that very few British consumers would knowingly wear cat or dog fur. However, the fur is often disguised with fraudulent labelling and there is often no description of fur trimming on cloth coats or it is described as "other fur". Furs are bleached and dyed to make them resemble more expensive fur, and that process also uses carcinogens such as benzene.

The trend for using cat and dog fur is increasing for two reasons. First, the intense trapping of wildlife has greatly reduced the supply of other fur. Secondly, the pressure of cost has pushed more and more of the trade to the far east where wages are lower and there is less regulation. The Hong Kong trade and development council noted that most firms in Hong Kong have moved production to the mainland because of its less stringent environmental regulations.

There is a tradition in China of eating cat and, in particular, dog meat and people there are more desensitised to the issues involved than those in other countries. The trend to move fur production to China, the Philippines and other east Asian countries increases the likelihood that low-cost cat and dog furs will be used. The current estimate is that around 2 million cats and dogs are being used.

I have several concrete questions. First, does that affect Britain? In 2000, more than 21 metric tonnes of "other fur", which is the category that includes cat and dog fur, was imported into the UK from China and Hong Kong. As the figure is not broken down further, and as we know that there is substantial evasion of labelling, it is difficult to be more precise than that, but we are discussing a substantial block.

Secondly, is this an issue for the European Union or for us? We have had a ruling on that from Pascal Lamy, the relevant Commissioner, who says that it is a matter for subsidiarity—in other words, that each country should decide for itself. That has been borne out by the Italian Parliament's recent decision to ban fur imports.

It is important to consider whether a ban would be legal. Britain, as a major trading nation, has an interest in ensuring that we do not set a bad example by violating international trade agreements and that we support the need for sensible and responsible free trade. World Trade Organisation rules specify that we may not interfere in the way in which a product is produced, but we may ban a particular product. The classic example of that is battery hens: we could ban eggs, but we cannot ban battery hen eggs. In this case we are, however, discussing a specific product that we do not produce in Britain, and there is no question of attempting surreptitiously to protect our home industry in cat and dog fur because we would be banning an entire product range. In addition, no countries openly admit to the trade. The likelihood of someone bringing an action under the WTO rules is small because they would first have to admit that they conducted the trade.

The United States, which is as sensitive to the issue as we are, has implemented a full ban with stringent regulations covering what happens if one attempts to evade it. We can reasonably ask whether there is a need for a ban given that the British Fur Trade Association has promised not to deal in cat and dog fur. As Baroness Symons noted in another place, some traders are outside the BFTA and are not bound by its rules.

A "Newsnight" investigation showed a reputable member of the fur trade who was prepared systematically to mislabel dog fur imports. We must be careful about accepting the word of a trade association on behalf of its members and all non-members. With the best will in the world, such an association is unable to back up such statements in practice.

I welcome Baroness Symons's comments in another place on 11 December in which she described the trade in domestic dog and cat fur as "abhorrent", and said:

"It is not illegal per se to import cat and dog fur…we are exploring what proportionate and enforceable steps we might take to ban any such imports."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 December 2001; Vol. 629, c. 1234.]

That is what people who are concerned were anxious to hear. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to the widespread feelings on this matter and to tell us more.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) for securing this Adjournment debate and for his interest in the trade in domestic cat and dog fur. I am of course aware that he is the primary sponsor of early-day motion 11 on the subject.

My noble Friend the Minister for Trade and Investment recently answered an oral question and subsequently wrote to all hon. Members explaining how the Government propose to proceed. As she said, the Government share people's concerns about cruelty to animals overseas and practices in those countries that do not observe the same high standards of animal welfare that we have in the United Kingdom. We shall continue to raise animal welfare standards wherever possible.

Let me be clear that the Government believe that the import and export of and trade in domestic cat and dog fur is abhorrent, and we are exploring whether proportionate and enforceable steps can be taken to discourage such trade, both to and from this country and domestically.

If we are to consider a ban on imports we must satisfy ourselves as to the extent of any imports that are taking place, so our starting point must be the import trade statistics. As I explained to the House last November, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), our trade statistics do not separately identify cat and dog fur. Any imports of such fur would be classified under the catchall heading of "other fur"—that is, furs that are not separately classified elsewhere. More recent figures for 2001 suggest a slight upwards trend towards cheaper fur imports. However, that may be as much to do with fashion trends as with anything else. Certainly, at this stage there is not enough evidence to identify the animal composition of such imports.

Over coming months we will examine the trade statistics in more detail to try to determine how much, if any, domestic cat and dog fur is being imported into and exported from the UK. For the classification reasons that I mentioned, that will necessarily take some time as we will need to ascertain the facts behind the trade statistics.

An additional related problem is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Customs and Excise officers to identify by sight at the point of entry any imports of cat and dog fur separately from other unidentified fur, especially if it is mixed with fur from other animals. As my hon. Friend pointed out, furs can be bleached or dyed to disguise their origins and to simulate more expensive furs. Ultimately, forensic examination of all consignments containing fur would be required to identify any cat and dog fur that may be included in them. That would be disproportionate. given that we are not aware of the scale of any problem, and would be ultra vires where the importation is not illegal per se.

In addition to a closer study of the trade figures, we will pursue other sources of information and consult more widely among interested parties. We have already spoken to the British Fur Trade Association and to several non-governmental organisations. The BFTA told the Government that none of its members deals in domestic cat or dog fur.

The second problem of identification is that no fur is required to be labelled as cat or dog fur in this country. The only fur for which there is such a legal requirement in the UK is sealskin. Some fur is labelled simply as fur or exotic fur. It is not illegal to do that.

Hon. Members will note that the UK import statistics that I gave to my hon. Friend identify made-up garments containing fur separately from sealskins and those of sheep or lambskin or other such garments containing fur. It is illegal to misrepresent fur as coming from rabbit or wolf, for example, when it is not from those animals. Should that happen, legislation already exists to prevent consumers from being misled. Under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, it is a criminal offence to apply false or misleading statements to goods by any means.

The United States ban on the import, production and use of cat and dog fur was referred to in the early-day motion. It is clear to the United States authorities that large quantities of cat and dog fur were being imported and mislabelled, which was misleading consumers. We understand that the United States Government took into account a video by the Humane Society of the United States when considering whether to ban the trade in domestic cat and dog fur. The video was made two years ago and focused on trade in the United States. In November 2000, the United States passed legislation banning the import, export, marketing, sale, and use of domestic dog and cat fur. The ban cites mislabelling of imports from China, which could mislead consumers, as the primary reason, and a further justification was that trade in cat and dog fur products is aesthetically abhorrent to United States citizens. That is the first time that aesthetics have been introduced in aid of an import ban.

The Act in the United States takes a blanket approach, requiring any product that contains even the smallest amount of fur to be DNA checked. That is an expensive exercise that requires enforcement personnel to be trained and equipped with state of the art technology, and the accreditation of special laboratories.

Does my hon. Friend agree that British consumers probably feel similarly to American consumers, regardless of the quantities involved? The permission to import cat and dog fur is in itself abhorrent. Would he agree that the fur trade is damaged by the suspicion that legitimate furs are being sold that might yet be cat or dog fur?

Everyone knows that the practice is abhorrent. What we are getting to the heart of is the principled reason underlying the United States' ban, which concerned a volume of imports designed to mislead consumers and reflected a terrible scale of animal cruelty in countries from which the animals originated. That contrasts with the difficulty that we have had in securing evidence of such practices in the United Kingdom. There is no evidence of anything on the scale of what has been experienced in the United States. Nevertheless, I have undertaken to pursue such evidence and collect it where possible. I realise that my hon. Friend has heightened awareness of the practice, and for that we are grateful. However, I am concerned—I know that he will share my concern—that legislation applicable to the United States could be difficult to transfer here, for a number of reasons

The situation in the United Kingdom is different. First, in the United States there was, as I have said, clear evidence of an import trade in this type of fur. So far, we have found no similar evidence in imports into the UK. Second, the aim of the United States measure was primarily to control the mislabelling problem. That raises the question whether, if applied to the UK, it would constitute a proportionate response in relation to the amount of trade involved and the availability of other remedies. In the UK we normally consider the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 as sufficient. Clearly the United States has no comparable legislation.

Third, as I am sure we are all aware, the United Kingdom cannot, unlike the United States, act unilaterally in regard to imports and exports with third countries, as this is a matter of exclusive community competence. Any measures that we may consider would therefore have to be discussed first with our European partners, and, for that discussion to be credible, we would first need clear evidence of a problem in this country, which we do not have at present. I know from bilateral meetings with colleagues in Europe and Ministers in each of the European countries that, in advancing any change or improvement in legislation, they look for the evidence. That is why we have undertaken to evaluate any evidence that emerges. Without such evidence, we are not likely to have fruitful dialogue with our colleagues in the European member states.

Can my hon. Friend the Minister clarify the application of subsidiarity? I understand that Pascal Lamy has said that the EU would not wish to deal with the matter at a European level but that it was a matter for individual countries. Is that not my hon. Friend's understanding?

My hon. Friend will find that Pascal Lamy did not address imports and exports but internal production and marketing.

As I have said, we need to investigate further the present situation in the United Kingdom when we consider whether to introduce a similar import ban. Furthermore, any regime introduced in this country as a result of our current investigations must have a strong possibility of working in practice and must be proportionate: we must ensure that the resources that we commit to tackling it are in proportion to evidence of abuse. As I said, the United States has clearer evidence than has been supplied to us of widespread abuse and the perpetration of consumer fraud. Thirdly, any regime must be enforceable, an issue that I shall touch on in a minute. Those are reasonable parameters—I see my hon. Friend nodding assent—which my noble Friend has outlined, and we shall consider the issue on that basis.

We have noted a newspaper article published just before Christmas stating that the Government will ban the trade in cat and dog fur in the coming months. The House will realise from my comments that we are not yet at a stage when we can make that decision. Our investigations continue, and we must consider action that is enforceable and proportionate. We shall report further in due course.

The newspaper article stated that a fur collar obtained from a large London store was found to contain DNA traces of Canidae. However, that is not conclusive proof that domestic dog fur is being imported into the UK, because Canidae is the Latin term for the canine family, which covers no fewer than 14 genera and 34 species. About half those species are on the lists of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora and therefore need CITES documentation to enter the country. The domestic dog, otherwise known as canis lupus familiaris, is only one of those 34 species. Others are the coyote, the dingo, the jackal, the wolf, the fox and the dhole. Some of those species are even culled as pests in other parts of the world.

Having begun our investigations into the trade in domestic cat and dog fur in the UK, we must proceed with the further work being urged on us by my hon. Friend. The Government view it as an emotive matter. I hope that what I have said will reassure him that we take the issue seriously through our investigations. We have looked in some detail at the position in the United States, so we do not lag behind it in the ability to carry out any necessary detection. However, the scale of the problem in the United States appeared, from my hon. Friend's and other comments, to be so horrendous that action was needed, and not just to protect consumers, although I understand that that was the primary reason for introducing the ban in the United States.

I hope that I have also demonstrated that we are aware of the issues surrounding Pascal Lamy's powers and desires and are more than willing, if pan-European action is needed on the basis of evidence that we do not yet have, to enter into a dialogue with the Commission and other countries. Before we consider introducing legislation, it is essential that we have the evidence that does not at present exist. If we or the groups with whom my hon. Friend is in touch can do anything to help to collect that evidence, that would be especially welcome.

I understand that our officials have viewed the video from the United States, which, as I said earlier, applies only to that country, and are in dialogue with colleagues there about the issue. However, as the problem is not as large in the UK or the European Union, that sort of evidence will be necessary to change minds. Without it, we shall not succeed. I realise that, for consumers, this is an ethical and not an economic issue and that in other cases, such as cosmetics, the Government have left the moral decision to consumers but have ensured that they are fully informed.

The Government hope to make suggestions towards the end of this year on advancing the issue. I assure my hon. Friend that they will write to all hon. Members on the outcome of the investigations.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to all Members of Parliament about early-day motion 11 setting out succinctly some issues on which I have touched in this Adjournment debate. I hope that hon. Members found that information useful, and that what I have said today has reassured them that we take the issue seriously.

I was pleased to secure this debate, which was motivated by an urgent case involving one of my constituents.

I shall begin by making a couple of remarks about the spirit in which I am raising the matter. I shall refer to a particular constituency case, but I do not intend to use it as a stick with which to beat the Government. Following last week's events, I have a clear understanding of how we should raise constituency matters, which is to seek a constructive dialogue with the relevant Minister about the way in which improvements can be made. I shall listen to the Minister in a positive frame of mind and look for signs that things are being improved.

The fact that debate should be conducted in that manner was brought home to me on Sunday when I visited a Jewish hospital service on holocaust memorial day to raise money for Sheffield's hospitals. The curate from Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire hospital pointed to the way in which we currently conduct political debate, and there was some resonance from the audience at the idea that politicians should always seek to improve matters rather than raising cases in a way that is destructive rather than constructive. I shall raise a particular case, but I expect general comments from the Minister because it is difficult to comment on a case that is in progress. I shall look for helpful and hopeful signs about preventing such situations from occurring again.

The other reason why I want to raise a particular case is that my constituent's father, who has been heavily involved with it—he first came to me in 1997, soon after my election to Parliament—has analysed the system and passed his conclusions on to me, and I have found his comments about the difficulties of working with the system to be informative. Rather than concentrating on his specific case, he sees a wider public function in raising the matter, trying to learn some lessons and seeking improvements for the future. I have spoken to him, and he has spoken to my constituent who is currently in secure accommodation. They are happy that I should raise the matter in the spirit of seeking to improve matters for the future.

The case involves a constituent called Claire who turned 18 at the end of last year. She was convicted in 2000 at the age of 16 of threatening someone with a knife. It is clear that the event took place, and she was properly sentenced to secure accommodation through the criminal justice system. Her background of problems goes back to when she was 13, when she was off school for a period with clear behavioural problems that meant that no school in the local authority would take her. There was a long delay as the LEA sorted things out, during which she became involved with the kind of people who, sadly, seek to take advantage of young women in our society.

In spite of the best efforts of her parents—anyone who has sought to control a difficult 13 or 14-year-old will know that no parent can maintain 24-hour supervision—she had time on her hands and became involved with people against whom there was evidence of sexual abuse. She began self-harming, and a lot of her subsequent behaviour has a psychiatric component, which is clearly a large element in the way in which she has approached life. She has a lot of frustration and anger, much of which she has taken out on herself.

Claire went through two years of seeking to find appropriate accommodation, which takes us to the point at which I became involved. Her father tried to get various agencies to find the right accommodation for her, and other cases have since been referred to me that also fall on the borderline of not yet being a criminal justice problem: the individuals concerned have not yet committed the kind of offences that mean that they can go through the courts and be sentenced, yet they are clearly at risk and could put others at risk by some of their behaviour.

The difficulty is that that problem sits in the border between social services and education and health providers. In my constituency case, wherever my constituent's father turned, the matter seemed to be somebody else's responsibility. If the youngster was deemed to be at risk, the issue fell largely within the domain of social services; if the problem was that the youngster was deemed to require something to occupy them educationally, the focus fell on the LEA and whether it could find a suitable placement; if the problem was deemed psychiatric, it fell to health. A great deal of debate took place about trying to find a suitable placement. What the parents and the young lady needed was a secure environment in which a difficult youngster could develop and perhaps avoid some of what occurred later.

For a couple of years, when she was between 14 and 16, the young lady was held in various forms of accommodation—some psychiatric, some in the Sheffield area, some outside—but the difficulties continued. Her behaviour was tough, there were further suggestions of sexual abuse, and she returned to Sheffield in 1999, still clearly disturbed, and with none of the fundamental problems addressed. A few months later in 2000, having again become involved with inappropriate people and having acquired a heroin habit in the meantime—there were also suggestions of informal prostitution—she went over the top and threatened somebody with a knife. While no physical assault occurred, the attempt had clearly taken place and was properly prosecuted.

The young lady, then 16, was sentenced to secure accommodation. The judge had difficulty in finding a suitable placement for her and felt, he said, that there was nowhere he could send her. Indeed, he delayed sentencing and held her on remand in New Hall prison. While there, unfortunately, she attempted suicide, and the difficulties clearly continued. Eventually, a place became available, and she was transferred to Medway secure training centre. I was pleased to find from the Youth Justice Board proposals, to which I shall refer later, that the expansion of secure training centre places for young women is part of its agenda for the coming year. After the difficulties in finding appropriate accommodation in the non-criminal justice system—I recognise that that is not the Minister's responsibility, although the borderlines are often blurred—there were further difficulties in finding appropriate placement in secure accommodation once that became necessary.

The young lady spent some time in Medway. She committed violent offences while she was there, and there is no doubt that it was a difficult time. She has been transferred again to New Hall prison, awaiting the end of her sentence, which is approaching. That is another reason for my raising the matter now. The catalogue of events is disturbing, but we need to think through some of the difficult cases and see how people, particularly young women, arrive in such circumstances.

The case brought to mind another, which again was raised with me soon after I had first been elected to Parliament. A Sheffield woman called Irene Ivison campaigned for a long time after the death of her daughter, and wrote a book, "Fiona's Story". Fiona Ivison was 16 when she was murdered while working as a prostitute in Doncaster. In a sense she had followed a similar trajectory to Claire's—her home environment had been such that her parents were keen to keep her and were doing all they could, but she rebelled comprehensively, became engaged with the wrong people, and turned her back on home. At a vulnerable and difficult age, she took the path towards drugs—heroin addiction—and casual prostitution, and she ended up murdered in a car park in Doncaster. Irene Ivison, who has since passed away, properly spent some years asking how a civilised society can prevent our youngsters from being drawn down that path. From her account to me, I know that the difficulty lay in finding someone with the authority to intervene and who could find the appropriate placement for that youngster. That is not a universal problem, but cases are occurring and have occurred for many years. As a civilised society, we should deal with such difficult cases and find appropriate placements in the system.

In terms of the Government's response, I was pleased to see that the Youth Justice Board issued a statement last March about its four-year plan. One of the three main priorities was the provision of more appropriate accommodation for young women outside the prison service so that they were not placed with adult offenders. It is important to draw a clear distinction in that respect. The new deal for young women includes several welcome proposals about placing people appropriately, especially girls, including phasing in new units in the secure training centre. What progress has been made on that? Some individuals who are going through the system cannot wait any longer. My constituent is reaching a different stage, but other Claires and Fionas will come into the system, and I hope that we can offer them more hope for the future through the kind of care that could put them back into society as individuals who have broken the cycle of self-destructive behaviour.

My constituent raised several key points about the way in which the system works. First, progress must be made on appropriate placements. The transfer from Medway back to Newhall was unwelcome, and some time was spent struggling against it. There is a lack of flexibility in the system, especially in relation to difficult youngsters who also have psychiatric problems. That is a risk in the Medway environment as it is currently configured.

Secondly, it is important to facilitate joined-up working. Many agencies, including social services, education, housing authorities and criminal justice authorities, are already involved in such cases, and now we have the Youth Justice Board and the youth offending teams. I understand that the underlying logic of the latter two agencies is to bring everything together. However, there still is not the necessary authority to deal with a situation in which, for example, an educational placement is required. As teenagers get older, such placements may be in local colleges of further education, which are now outside local education authority control. From a youth justice point of view, someone should have the authority to say, "It is vital that this individual has a placement at college and therefore we will secure it", or, "It is essential that we get a certain form of housing so we will secure it." That is left to the parent of the youngster or to the professionals involved.

My constituent said that all the professionals involved in the case have been utterly committed to trying to resolve it; they have been excellent, and no problems have arisen in that respect. However, although they are trying to do their best, they do not have the necessary authority. Joined-up working can fall apart if there is no authority to tell agencies that a service must be provided and agencies have no reciprocal commitment to do so. That one element can endanger the whole situation. A youngster who has been placed in the right housing with the right probation support may fall apart because they do not have the college place that they need. If one brick is taken out, the wall is not stable.

Thirdly, we must try to remove delays in the system. Delays of several months may be relatively insignificant in cases involving older people, but very significant in rapidly evolving situations involving 13 to 16-year-olds. I have heard about two such delays. One concerned the provision of education at the crucial time when Claire first started having major difficulties at around 13 or 14. The second was an inappropriate delay in the provision of psychiatric assessments, which were essential at the time that they were requested. She has now had the assessments, but there was a long wait, which affected the decisions that were taken about her future placement. We want to remove delays in the system in all Government services, but in dealing with vulnerable youngsters, those delays can be the difference between a constructive and a difficult future.

The final element was the involvement of psychiatric care in the criminal justice system. If one digs under the surface of such cases, one finds that many young women who end up in secure accommodation have psychiatric problems related to drug abuse, self-harm and other forms of abuse, particularly sexual. There is concern that such care has been slow to develop. The criminal justice system has reacted, but the necessary psychiatric involvement has been slower than is helpful.

I recognise that the Minister, quite properly, will not comment on a specific case that is still going through the system, but I would like to discuss the case in private, if there are difficulties. We are dealing with a situation that is critical for the youngster involved. One of the options is long-term detention in a secure hospital such as Rampton, but there are not sufficient facilities to safeguard both the individual and others. Once someone has undergone formal sentencing and comes out, how do we progress? Do we need placements in society where help can be provided? An 18-year-old coming out of custody would have to choose between a long-term secure non-therapeutic hospital and a social placement with inadequate support. Both options would cause fear.

As well as addressing the teenager's case, I hope that the Minister will consider individuals who have come through the system. They may settle down, but they need a soft landing, which will require more intensive work than is currently offered. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response, and I hope that we can offer a future that will ensure that my constituents' problems will not arise again, although I accept that there is no easy solution.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) for enabling us to draw conclusions about a disturbing case. I am also grateful for the way in which he has dealt with it. I feel more constrained than he did because he has permission to give the details that he has given us today. We must be careful when referring to individual cases, but I want to deal thoroughly with his points, and the issues that arise from the case.

I assure the hon. Gentleman, the young person concerned and her parents that I have read all their recent letters, including the detailed history that outlines the difficult circumstances with which they have had to contend and the difficult experiences that the young person has had, which undoubtedly have had a bearing on her current difficulty. I have also had reports from the Youth Justice Board, the probation service, the Prison Service, and the Home Office. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, in dealing with the problems presented by the child, the parents have felt badly let down by a fractured system. They felt that no one was prepared to take responsibility for the issue, and they were grappling with some serious issues, largely on their own. They are very well-meaning people, as I remember from the father's most recent letter. The hon. Gentleman said that, and praised the father's recent efforts in the current situation on behalf of his daughter, but, as he says, what counts is results. I understand that he is looking for those.

There will be a case conference in the next week, and the Home Secretary and I have asked to be kept fully informed. We shall closely monitor the situation. The hon. Gentleman is welcome to speak to me at any time on the specifics of the case on behalf of the parents.

The hon. Gentleman raised general issues from the case, with which I would like to deal. He asked what progress had been made towards a variety of different kinds of placement to meet the needs of different young people and towards the provision of appropriate placements. I shall deal with that later, if I can. Other issues that he raised include: whether lack of coordination, such as that which the family experienced early on, is improving; the fact that no one appeared to have authority to take the lead and make sure that things happened; delays in the system, especially in relation to psychiatric assessment; and the involvement of psychiatric care in the prison and criminal justice system.

On the core of the hon. Gentleman's argument, the Government's position is that the use of custody for juveniles under 18 should be a last resort. We have done a lot—I am glad that the hon. Gentleman referred to this—through our youth justice reforms to try to strengthen, and widen the variety of, effective non-custodial options for the courts. That is continuing, and is very important. However, as he outlined, a small number of young people are serious risks to themselves and to others, and they present a variety of difficult and complex problems. We are dealing with such a situation in this case.

At the moment, about 170 girls are in custody. The hon. Gentleman may know that there is a ministerial commitment to remove all 15 and 16-year-old girls from Prison Service custody by the summer. I am glad that he referred to the Youth Justice Board's commitment to create 64 new places for girls in secure training centres during this year. That will help us to achieve our objective.

Obviously, the provision of secure psychiatric health sector accommodation for young people is especially relevant to this case. I share, as does the Home Secretary, the hon. Gentleman's concern about the need for sufficient secure psychiatric facilities for young people with mental health problems in custody. In any given area, as he will know from the details of the case, securing those resources for young people needing psychiatric treatment in secure facilities is the local authority's role. However, the Government clearly have a responsibility to see that the level and quality of that provision is sufficient, and I would not pretend otherwise. The Home Office, the Youth Justice Board and the Department of Health are trying hard to address that.

There is a scarcity of such provision. Although we are trying to address the problem, it arises largely because we started from a very low base in 1997. Sufficient attention had not been given to children and adolescent mental health services in general nor to the specialist services that the young people who end up in custody need in particular.

The Youth Justice Board is making great inroads into the general quality of the secure estate. As the hon. Gentleman will know, it now commissions secure places for young people in custody. General standards and provision in custody, including access to mental health services, are beginning to change significantly. I hope that that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that.

Through the Department of Health, the Government have also put in an extra £85 million between 1999 and 2002 to develop a national approach to those services. I know that we must do more, but we had to start somewhere. The Department of Health is considering whether a national commissioning route for adolescent forensic mental health services is the best way forward. Although the cases are serious, they are relatively few in number. Does it make sense for individual local areas to have to go all over the country to find something suitable? Should there not instead be a national system? As well as looking at the case for such a system, the Department of Health is commissioning an extra 28 beds in 2002, 24 beds in 2003 and a further unit for London after that.

There is progress. Resources have been allocated, the problem is being carefully considered and there are plans to increase the number of beds for adolescent forensic services. As a result of my visits to youth offender institutions and skill training centres, I am aware of the need. There is still unmet need in the system, and I accept that we must make more progress. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no lack of political will or attention; the problem is the size of the gap that we are trying to fill and the fact that it cannot be filled in a short time. However, we are resolved, jointly, to do it.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned lack of coordination, authority and so on. We have tried to address that through the Youth Justice Board, which is beginning to work for people now in the system. I accept that the system was entirely different during the late 80s and early 90s for the young woman to whom the hon. Gentleman referred. That is why we changed it. The youth justice reforms were instituted to introduce effective multidisciplinary working. We have some way to go in making sure that the connections between custodial and non-custodial routes exist, because that is the route that an offender will take—from the community into custody and back into the community. We focus on the need to ensure that the connections between the agencies, which in a sense are artificial boundaries, do not allow young people to fall through the gaps. The hon. Gentleman will know that the inspectors of probation and prisons have produced a report called "Through the Prison Gate". We are working on a report being done by the social exclusion unit, which again points to the need for effective case management, because we need to strengthen those links.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's points, which raise general issues that we need to address and are addressing, but this is such a difficult case that it would be hard even in a perfect system to deal with some of the issues. For instance, there was a delay in the psychiatric assessment. There were also a number of points at which different psychiatrists could not agree on the root of the young person's problems. That had knock-on effects in relation to where she could appropriately be placed and within the law. Was the problem fundamentally one of mental health? Was it a treatable mental health illness? We need psychiatrists to help us to answer those questions, but until we have a view we cannot legally decide on the most appropriate placement. Since the hon. Gentleman is nodding, I appreciate that he is aware of those problems without my going into further detail.

In conclusion, I shall do what I can on this case and the hon. Gentleman will keep me informed. In general, by transforming the approach to youth justice, focusing on multi-agency working, developing custodial provision in all sectors and developing child and adolescent psychiatric services—in particular forensic secure psychiatric services—in the way that I have outlined, we are trying to make progress. I agree that we would like progress to be faster, but we are going in the right direction. I am sorry that this family has had a very difficult experience. I hope that families will not have the same experience in the future. That is my intention.