When I applied for the debate, I wrote on the paper "antisocial behaviour" without the "orders". I do not know whether those in your office, Mr. Deputy Speaker, decided that it was too close to the bone for a member of the Opposition Whips Office to speak about antisocial behaviour, but they decided to qualify the title by adding "orders", which is probably what I should have done in the first place. I am grateful to those who ensured that my debate was in order.

Every day, constituents telephone us in a desperate state to tell us about the antisocial behaviour that they, their neighbours or friends are experiencing. Antisocial behaviour affects us all in many ways. The term "antisocial behaviour" covers a multitude of sins, from underage drinking to quite serious offences—not that underage drinking is not a serious offence: I shall show how serious it is later. We do not always come across typical antisocial behaviour.

I cite two different examples from West Drayton, a small area of my constituency. One is a more typical example, to which we are more used. There is a park in an area called "The Closes", which various residential areas surround. Youths who frequent that park have caused a lot of misery by committing a variety of offences, including driving cars on to the park and setting fire to them, sniffing lighter fuel, being abusive to people walking past and generally creating an unpleasant atmosphere for all concerned. Those offences are associated with problem families, which is an issue to which I shall return.

The other example concerns something that occurs only a mile and half away and is caused by a slightly older age group. Bikers have discovered a good piece of road on which to race—the Stockley bypass. They are not local, but come from far and wide. They are not from a deprived background, as they have expensive machines. The season is about to start as the evenings are getting longer and the weather is becoming more clement. Throughout the week, but especially at weekends, they make the neighbours' lives hell by racing and revving up their engines through the night. That has led to another problem. Local kids come out to watch and decide to do their own thing later, with cars that they have probably taken without the owners' consent. It has become such a spectator sport that a burger van attends. Although the police and the local authority have tried to deal with all these offences, they have not had as much success as local residents would like, and demand.

I mentioned that second example because, if we are not careful, we may fabricate a stereotype of antisocial behaviour being committed in certain areas. Deprivation certainly has an effect, but antisocial behaviour is also a result of problems in families, which is an important factor.

The male age group that is most likely to commit crime is 18 to 20, followed by 15 to 17 and 12 to 14. The statistics are slightly different for females. The female age group most likely to commit crime is 15 to 17, followed by 18 to 20 and 12 to 14. It is generally agreed that once a child has committed his first offence, the barrier against crime is breached, the behaviour seems to become more acceptable to the child, and he is more likely to slip into a pattern of reoffending. That is frightening. It is most disturbing for us to find children as young as eight, or even younger, committing minor offences. We all have a suspicion, based on our everyday experience, that if the offending is not dealt with appropriately it will simply continue. The cost of juvenile delinquency to society and our communities is huge. It is also having a severe effect on us financially.

As a result of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Government introduced antisocial behaviour orders on 1 April 1999, with good intentions. I have a range of statistics to hand, but I fight shy of presenting them, as we are probably well enough aware of them. The orders have been criticised as being too bureaucratic and complex. They require the police to hold case conferences and consultations, and to collect a huge body of evidence before applying for an order.

Although the antisocial behaviour orders were intended to be cheap, quick and easy to obtain, the reality has become the reverse. That is why so few orders have been issued. There is also the issue of cost. I have seen estimates of more than £100,000 for obtaining just one order. The orders appear to have been ineffective and not what the Government had hoped.

On 2 July 2001, my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) said:

"Three years ago, when considering the proposals in Committee, I warned the Government that antisocial behaviour orders would be unworkable and over-bureaucratic. Ministers responded that more than 5,000 would probably be made every year."—[Official Report, 2 July 2001; Vol. 371, c. 8.]

The truth is a long way off that number.

I have picked up several suggestions from residents and the police, and it is fair to point out that eviction orders are not always seen as the answer. In July 2000, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that serving eviction orders against families for antisocial behaviour was failing to address the real issue and the underlying causes of problems such as mental illness, or drug or alcohol addiction. Many families that are evicted from council housing often end up in the private sector, perhaps only streets away. People who are suffering from that antisocial behaviour would say, "I don't care where they go as long as they are not round here," and I understand their sentiments, but we in Parliament must consider where those people can go and how we can rectify their behaviour. In my limited experience of four or five years in the House but also as a lifelong resident in that area, it seems to me that the problem is increasing. It gives rise too much worry and anger among the public.

In December 2001 a White Paper dealing with the issue was published, to which I am sure that the Minister will refer; I welcome some of its proposals. It acknowledged that take-up of the orders in many areas was limited because they were perceived as expensive, labour-intensive, slow, ineffective and litigious. The Home Office plans to streamline the procedures. The proposed interim order to enable immediate action to be taken prior to the full process would help. It would also help to have an order that travels with the person on whom it is served so that, if he moves, the order goes with him. There is certainly a case for extending the scope of the orders by allowing registered social landlords and the British Transport police to apply. Some people criticise the idea of social landlords' having that power but, because antisocial behaviour covers such a wide variety of crime, it is difficult to resolve in all cases.

As we would all agree, prevention is better than cure. There are two angles to the issue of prevention. The first is to try to sort out the causes of the problem in terms of the social issues—dysfunctional families, mental illnesses and so on—about which we have heard. However, I hear constantly about the other side: that many people would probably be deterred by a stronger police presence on the streets. I mean by that community police officers, perhaps still on bicycles—I do not know whether the police would back me on that, but there is a demand for it. Policing works well where police officers are local and know the area.

We await the results of the trial of acceptable behaviour contracts, which I mentioned earlier. If it is successful, I hope that it will be taken up. When I have been out and about with the police on patrol, looking at how to curb underage antisocial behaviour, I have been struck by the lack of respect shown by youngsters to the police and authority. I am deeply concerned about the proposal in the new Police Reform Bill about auxiliaries because if those young people have no respect for the police, they will have even less for auxiliaries. Believing that it will be effective merely to issue tickets, as it were, is living in cloud cuckoo land. However, we must tackle the issue and I will support anything that will be a genuine aid in doing so because it causes so much misery to so many people.

I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise an issue that is important throughout my constituency. I know from the letters and telephone calls that I receive, from the people who come to my surgery and from my visits to residents associations that the issues of whether people feel safe in their communities and of what can be done to deal with crime and the fear of crime are virtually top of the list of issues that people want to raise. Surveys conducted by Stoke-on-Trent city council confirm those concerns. I wish to participate briefly in the debate to convey the fact that much is being done and those we are determined to tackle antisocial behaviour. We look to the Government for greater resources and more backing to ensure that, where there is resolute determination to deal with antisocial behaviour, the means exist to do so.

I wish to outline some of the problems that we have had with antisocial behaviour orders. We are fortunate in Stoke-on-Trent city council in having an antisocial behaviour officer who links closely with the community safety partnership and local housing departments across the city. Concerns about antisocial behaviour are fed quickly into the city council and action is taken. However, there is a feeling that antisocial behaviour orders are bureaucratic, too slow and take up resources. As the Government has said, now is the time to consider how they can be modified so that people can have confidence that the issues that they raise will be dealt with speedily.

In a case in my constituency involving a prostitute, it took one police officer and one police sergeant six weeks each to gather the information to take the case to court; 27 written statements were needed. As a result of those delays, the police officers gathering the evidence eventually had to go back to each of the 27 witnesses. The process is very time-consuming and bureaucratic. We must be aware of human rights, but we also need to streamline and fast-track the procedure. It is vital for those who complain about antisocial behaviour to have faith in the authorities to deliver. Such delays in getting results through the court can undermine people's faith in the authorities and their belief in civil society, at a time when we should be fostering that. I should be interested to hear what the Minister says in her winding-up speech about how we can modify the procedure.

A further example from my constituency involved a case that reached the courts. The courts awarded an antisocial behaviour order, which was then breached. When the case returned to the courts they did not, in the view of many people involved in gathering evidence in the first instance, take that breach seriously enough. I ask the Minister to consider the ways in which guidance given to courts is reviewed so that where a great deal of effort, time, trouble and raised expectations is involved in securing an antisocial behaviour order, the courts do not then destroy that order. The issue is important.

I also stress the importance of antisocial behaviour orders in the wider context. They are just one piece of the jigsaw of ways in which we tackle antisocial behaviour. Young people who stand around on street corners may not create problems but they may be perceived to do so by local people. Far more time and effort should be directed to providing youth and community services that are acceptable to young people in those areas, so that the wider community can nurture future generations in civil society, instead of believing that they are a problem. That will have huge implications for the Connexions services and for youth and adult education and community services and we must consider the money going to finance and fund those resources. In my constituency, established groups and organisations do not always want to make buildings and premises available for young people because they perceive them to be a problem; they do not understand that making facilities available will empower them to be the first citizens of the next generation.

People often do not know where to go to find a solution to antisocial behaviour. It is very easy for a "pass the parcel" syndrome to develop in which a complaint passes from housing officers, to youth workers, to the police and so on, round the houses and there is a sense that no one has the responsibility for dealing with the issue. That is why I welcome the Government's new initiative on neighbourhood renewal and the use of neighbourhood support funds to bring all the agencies together in a one-stop shop to deal in a concerted, resolute way with antisocial behaviour, however it is manifested.

The current spending round is high on everyone's agenda, and I urge the Minr to ensure that sufficient money will be available to do everything necessary to reduce crime and the fear of crime. When the Chancellor makes his announcement there should be no cuts that would further undermine the ability to deal with these issues.

Housing was mentioned briefly. Much antisocial behaviour, especially in my constituency, occurs when people move out of certain streets and drug addicts and prostitutes move in. That is an enormous problem for the remaining residents of those streets, which are being destroyed. People have to put up with noisy neighbours, with taxis and young people coming and going at all times of the day and night. People who suffer from that type of antisocial behaviour find it difficult to get up to go to work, especially if they work shifts, and it has a huge effect on their life.

The time has come for the Government to encourage Departments, including the Home Office, to work in conjunction to consider matters such as social registered landlords and housing benefit, and the way in which private landlords are able to rent out properties and allow antisocial behaviour to undermine the whole community. It is important to cut across different Departments, and encourage private landlords and socially responsible landlords to get together with the local police to see what can be done.

Does the hon. Lady accept that in my constituency it is not just private landlords who are involved? The local authority has a statutory requirement to house people. If those people then cause problems it takes a long time for them to be moved out.

I recognise that problem; that is the dilemma and the challenge at the heart of the debate. It is a matter for council housing authorities, for private landlords and for social landlords, many of whom have taken over council housing stock, although fortunately not in my constituency. The most important thing would be to make it absolutely clear as a condition of a tenancy that failure to comply with the tenancy agreement would result in eviction. It is simply not fair that residents of certain streets and communities should have to tolerate antisocial behaviour.

However, people have rights to housing; therefore, we must implement measures firmly to ensure that people comply with housing and rental conditions and we must do what we can to ensure that people understand that some behaviour will not be tolerated, and prevent such behaviour in the first place. It is a vicious circle, but life is intolerable for those who live next door to the neighbours from hell.

We must go beyond considering landlords, whether of council or other housing, and look at the system of social security and housing benefit; the Government must send a firm message that we expect people to comply with basic tenancy agreements. It is a matter of redefining the problem and re-educating people, which is not easily done; there are no short-cut answers but there should be a process of education.

I want to flag up one final issue for the Minister to consider: I am pleased that there are two pilot areas for antisocial behaviour contracts in my constituency. When the extra resources of police and local organisations work with active residents associations in areas such as the Norton ward, where local councillors are doing a wonderful job, there is an excellent opportunity for all the authorities involved to link up and work in partnership. Any hint of antisocial behaviour may thus be prevented early on, to make it unnecessary to use complicated procedures to obtain antisocial behaviour orders.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about my concerns. I have received many letters begging the Government to consider these issues; I ask for speedier antisocial behaviour orders and for the Government to think about people's tenancy and housing rights when considering measures to tackle wrong behaviour as quickly as possible.

I shall follow what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) said and pick up a point that she raised about prostitution.

There has been a problem with prostitution in central Swindon for a long time, but in the past few years the antisocial behaviour associated with the problem has become noticeably worse. I pay tribute to the residents of the area, who have had to put up with so much; they have rightly spoken up for their community and brought pressure to bear on the council, the police and the courts to take further action. It is extremely unpleasant to find that local residents have been faced with threats from prostitutes and pimps that used condoms are disposed of in their gardens and in back alleyways, and that telephones are ripped out when people report those complaints. The community is obviously keen for more action to be taken.

Local groups are working together to tackle the problem and I have met the police and the council together to discuss how to pursue the matter further. We are pleased that the Government has introduced antisocial behaviour orders, and now that kerb crawling has become an arrestable offence, the police have many more powers to tackle the problem. I appreciate that Ministers and the Home Secretary are committed to tackling the matter.

Does my hon. Friend agree that magistrates who choose to give a fine of only £50 in a successful prosecution of kerb crawling do not do justice to the level of local concern about the issue? They could fine up to £1,000, as it is a level 3 offence.

I agree with my hon. Friend. Such fines serve only to send the prostitutes back on the street to earn the money. More important, members of the community rightly respond with steam coming out of their ears, because they do so much to raise the issue but feel that they re being laughed at. We must find a different way of tackling the problem.

I wish to thank the police for their action. They have diverted resources to the area and kept them there to allay fears and tackle the problem. However, we have had particular problems in Swindon with the use of antisocial behaviour orders. A great deal of work was done to take some prostitutes to magistrate's court using such orders; unfortunately, the cases failed. It would be difficult for us to determine the exact causes of the failure, but we in Swindon feel strongly that the cases would have been successful if they had gone to the county court. The magistrates decided that detailed cases against individual prostitutes had to be made and proven. The proof that the prostitutes had caused or were likely to cause antisocial behaviour was not strong enough.

We believe that the experience of county court judges tends to be different from that of magistrates; it is more relevant, and antisocial behaviour orders fit more appropriately into the areas that they cover. We would like the Government to consider and address the issue, because effective action must be taken. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North described the huge amount of work that goes into producing antisocial behaviour orders, particularly against prostitutes. We must ensure that such work gets results for the community.

A system could be set up whereby the cases went to the county court but magistrates continued to deal with cases in which antisocial behaviour orders were broken. In that way, we could bring some balance to the system. If the Government do not transfer such cases to the county court, we must seriously consider the training of magistrates, to ensure that they acquire relevant experience and are able to make antisocial behaviour orders effective.

The hon. Lady advanced the idea that part of the process could be transferred to the county court. Has she considered the delays in the civil court process, as a result of which she might simply introduce an extra complication that would not help her constituents or those of other hon. Members?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I was about to address delays, which lead to extra frustration. As legislators, we must always be aware of the bubble of feeling in the community and the danger that people will take the law into their own hands. We must ensure that the courts can take action quickly enough. The Government is considering the creation of a fast-track system for antisocial behaviour orders. That must happen. We need a system whereby interim orders take effect to stop offending behaviour before the full court case comes up. I urge the Government to support that.

The results of a recent survey in the area were frightening. There was a huge response: most of the women had been propositioned, and most of the men and women felt threatened by activities in the area. It is not only individuals' social life that is affected, but also businesses, people who work from home, and child minders, who have to deal with people at the door. Such levels of antisocial behaviour are not acceptable.

Ministers are aware of the problem, and I hope that the powers to deal with it can be strengthened, particularly by taking cases to judges in the county courts. Antisocial behaviour associated with prostitution in the neighbourhood is a real concern. It stops people going about their daily lives in peace, and it stops businesses working as effectively as they might. I urge the Government to take further action to support the community, the police, the council and the courts so that, together, we may effectively tackle a problem that has existed for too long.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing the debate and thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me an opportunity to speak. Without a doubt, antisocial behaviour is increasing, if not at an exponential rate, to such an extent that it threatens virtually every home at some time during the year, so this is an important debate for each of us.

I have been closely involved with the police, the social services and the local authority in my community in reviewing the way in which antisocial behaviour and, particularly, antisocial behaviour orders are handled. In Stockton, three ASBOs are in place and seven are waiting for a court hearing. There is a clear and determined approach by a multi-agency group to establish effective measures for correcting the behaviour of many of our youngsters on the street.

Before I discuss suggestions for dealing with the problems and ways to secure improvements to the way in which ASBOs are handled, it is important that I mention the general belief within the police service and the local authority that this is an innovative approach. It has serious teething problems, but it is a multi-agency approach that is of value because parents are involved in a crucial and central way in achieving contracts of behaviour that should effectively control young people's behaviour. As I said, there is a sense that the scheme is innovative.

I acknowledge that there are difficulties; collecting evidence is certainly one of them. Serious caution inevitably influences the way in which people take evidence. They want to be sure that the evidence is in order and correct, and that when it is presented it will not be challenged. Thus there is a concern—a sweat—about collecting appropriate evidence. I will deal further with that shortly.

However, there is a belief that ASBOs will give people in the community an opportunity, for the first time, to give private evidence. They provide anonymity for those who previously would back off and say, "No, I won't come forward. I don't wish to make a statement about the youngsters, because they will throw bricks at my windows or intimidate me in other ways." People are now starting to see the positive side of ASBOs. A benefit is that they are no longer afraid of giving evidence to the court; a policeman can show the magistrates a signed statement from individuals in the community of the evidence that they wish to be included.

ASBOs clearly define when young people are out of control. I stress that we are often talking about a small percentage of a large group of people who get incensed when we generalise about them. I therefore resist the temptation to generalise, but that small group of people is inevitably the victims of peer pressure. Many of them find themselves acting up "having a bit of fun." However, that bit of fun is at someone else's expense. Too many letters and visits to constituents have shown us what that bit of fun has achieved.

During the run up to 5 November, I heard of many episodes of youngsters throwing explosive fireworks into people's homes, or putting them on window-sills or through letter-boxes. In their terms, they were having a bit of fun. That was not a bit of fun but a nightmare for the people who live in those homes. The elderly reacted by blocking up their letter-boxes, turning off their lights, drawing their curtains and hoping that no one would think that they were at home. I do not underestimate for a minute what that behaviour is all about and how destructive it is. However, a child of eight or 10 does not have a sophisticated or well-rounded ability to make effective judgments about what their actions mean. Peer pressure has an inordinate influence on them. Through ASBOs, police officers or social services can become involved with such a family and talk to those youngsters, and may achieve an understanding of what is going on. That could be an effective early warning system; I hope that it will be.

If I say anything positive about ASBOs this morning, it is not because that is my direct experience. Frankly, it cannot be. However, the multi-agency group regards the behaviour contract of ASBOs as an effective system in which the behaviour that was being perpetuated is scrutinised by parents, social services and the police and is treated clinically and carefully. The contract may involve a curfew or preventing that young person from going to various parts of the locality. Whatever its form, the multi-agency group sees it as an effective mechanism for stopping offending behaviour and persuading youngsters that there is no end in sight other than an ASBO or, at an appropriate age, a custodial sentence. The police have told me that an ASBO is a frightening experience and has a salutary effect. An ASBO, in all its various stages, is one of the most effective measures when, and if, it can be brought together in an appropriate way. It is valuable for us all to see.

Most of us find it astounding when parents say that they did not know what their child was getting up to, or where they were. I had such a serious control over my own family—before I entered this place as a Member of Parliament, at least—that I always knew where they were and what they were doing. I had a sure understanding.

I acknowledge that there are many single-parent families, but in several cases the trouble started after the death of one of the parents. It is almost as if the remaining parent cannot cope with the children, and they need help at that early stage.

I agree with that important point. It is not just death that brings on the problem, but divorce, or the choice to be a single parent. The strain is monumental. I am part of a marriage partnership that is stable and supportive, but even in that situation it is difficult and can be problematic. Increasingly often, the police are becoming the other parent. The social services are providing the type of support that a parent would give. Perhaps we should not be relying on that, but if they are giving parents the support that is required and that stops antisocial behaviour, it is valuable.

We all know of far too many examples of antisocial behaviour. Although it is still early days and there are serious teething problems, it is worth while to persist with solutions. What is the alternative if it is not an ASBO or a behaviour contract? We want to make the orders part of a legalistic structure and we want others to see the efficacy of such action. What else would we put in their place that would give us the same support? From my experience of working in a remand home and a detention centre, I know that they are not places in which the behaviour of youths can be rebuilt. They are often places to which children are sent who have gone off the rails for a short time, but once in a detention centre, it is extraordinarily difficult to get them back into society because they have learned too much about being off the rails. The sheer impossibility of their returning to social behaviour becomes a fact.

There must be serious requirements within the mechanism of ASBOs and behaviour contracts if they are to become the valued instruments that I should like to see. Will the Minister reassure us that the way in which evidence is collected will be examined? The matter must be approached cautiously. The method by which evidence is collected is seriously bureaucratic and takes a long time, which inhibits the speedy reaction that we had hoped would be achieved from ASBOs. I want effective guidance to be given to the police force, social services and social housing bodies to persuade them to provide evidence more speedily.

I reiterate that gaining court time is seriously undermined. People are waiting for months before they can present their case to the magistrate. That situation must be examined if we are to have an appropriate rapid reaction. A crucial adjunct to that is what happens when a breach of order has taken place and the ASBO returns to the magistrate's court to be re-examined. The order is often considered by different magistrates, who do not have a full understanding of the original case. Those proceedings inevitably result in a supervision order, at which the police just throw up their hands. They feel distraught because, after they have put so much work and time into the case, the magistrates merely grant a supervision order. The Minister has two options: either she must require the magistrates who considered the first case to consider the breach of order, or she must allow a comprehensive, detailed report of the first case to be given to the second set of magistrates, so that they have a full understanding of why the order was made in the first place.

We are witnessing more proactive local authority involvement in some of our communities. Community strategy plans and neighbourhood renewal plans have been set up. Is the Minister persuaded that councils should involve ASBOs in those plans? If we are to use renewal and strategy plans, whereby communities will have a future, those will be achieved only in a stable and safe environment in which ASBOs are included.

I do not think that good practice is being networked throughout the country. Such action is long overdue. We need people to know why West Mercia police manages to get ASBOs put in place in a month. How does it manage to do so when my police force takes much longer? Good practice gives people courage; it gives them the support and knowledge that they require to use ASBOs more effectively.

Will the Minister consider an offshoot? Parts of Stockton have an on-street warden scheme. It is a support to the police services. The wardens walk about. They are well known. They are uniformed and are recognised as a valuable source of security support to the neighbourhood. I accept that the White Paper suggested extending the involvement of different groups such as providers of social housing to ASBOs, but has the inclusion of warden schemes been considered?

Antisocial behaviour inevitably requires a seriously challenging, robust approach to be taken by us all. Our mailbags are full of letters. The chief constable of Cleveland has walked with me around my patch and has seen the intimidating behaviour and the threats posed by youngsters. It is a colossal problem. We are seeking resolutions. A more flexibly handled ASBO, with the appropriate finances, that includes others in a multi-agency approach will give a more speedy delivery. Will the Minister consider such a valuable add-on, which will reduce young people's antisocial behaviour, certainly in my constituency?

Order. It is appropriate to offer an admonishment to the Chamber. It is common practice in a 90-minute debate for the two Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople and the Minister to start their winding-up speeches 30 minutes before the debate is to conclude and that the timing is equitably disposed of in three 10-minute speeches. As we have a little more time than that before 11 o'clock, I appeal to the three hon. Members who wish to speak to bear in mind such practice.

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing the debate. I agree that it is most timely. As a new Member of Parliament, I have to concur with more experienced hon. Members that antisocial behaviour is the main issue that faces us. That is despite the fact that I represent a constituency in the south, which, according to some stereotypes, does not have a high deprivation factor. It straddles urban and rural areas. In fact, one third of it is rural. There are just as many antisocial behaviour problems in the villages as there are in the built-up areas. The diversity in antisocial behaviour is striking; that is important to bear in mind when considering how to deal with it.

I preface my comments by saying that I am absolutely determined to tackle antisocial behaviour. I sympathise greatly with elderly people and others who are frightened and suffer enormous stress because of what is happening around them. We must get to grips with the problem. It is diverse and it is difficult to assess its severity; what one person might describe as outrageous behaviour, another might regard as high spirits. Perceptions vary among areas. Those huge variations in perception, locality and manifestation highlight the importance of the Government's initiative for crime and disorder strategies and partnerships, which are important because of their local focus.

Today's focus is on antisocial behaviour orders nationally. I agree with the principle of antisocial behaviour orders, but I find it difficult to make sweeping statements about them that apply to the entire country. Are they a measure of last resort? How early should they be introduced? Parliamentary questions sometimes seem to contain a presumption that an increased use of ASBOs is good. Is that true statistically? Last year, the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs cited Wrexham, where only one order had been made, but the real success was the 1,500 incidents that had been resolved through partnership working, before the red card was used. The threat of the sanction was probably an effective deterrent. In a moment I shall discuss Islington and acceptable behaviour contracts—another example where good practice is taking place and few orders are being made. Equally, an increase in ASBOs may mean simply that there is more antisocial behaviour, not that we are tackling it more effectively. I urge caution in taking an approach that results in a record number of such orders.

I am aware from my local experience of the bureaucracy and expense involved and of the fact that we need a weapon in our armoury. I welcome examination of how such orders are implemented. An excellent suggestion was to examine good practice and whether orders might be secured more quickly under existing provision.

The Liberal Democrats would like to examine the proposals carefully, using evidence on the effectiveness of ASBOs. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us on the full study that I believe was due to be published. I am slightly worried about our extending something if no robust evaluation is available. Perhaps there is such an evaluation. If so, I should be pleased to hear about it.

I do not know the breakdown of the number of ASBOs as regards those that applied to young people and those that applied to adults. Different circumstances have been described today, and I am worried that a single instrument is not the best approach. I would welcome a review, which the Liberal Democrats would consider extremely carefully.

We are impressed with acceptable behaviour contracts, which are flexible, cheaper than ASBOs and can be used earlier. The practice in Islington seems to have been excellent and is now spreading, including, indeed, to the authority in my constituency. Both the council and the police find them helpful because, if nothing else, they help gather the evidence for ASBOs, and thus have an interim use, if not a final one. I like the fact that the approach is incremental and that the contracts make children and families take responsibility. A strong link has been made with housing. Fear of losing a house has, I believe, made the contracts work and has made parents wake up. Young people should take responsibility for and ownership of their actions. The use of such contracts has been extended.

The approach is not so much like the armoury that I mentioned earlier; I view it as a toolkit. We have several tools, all of which need to be used in the right sequence. Hon. Members have discussed the importance of community and individual initiatives. I confess that I have bombarded my local police with issues relating to antisocial behaviour to such an extent that they have looked around the country, which is good.

I had passed to me details of a junior referral scheme that operates in Lancashire. We now have the Poole Operation Guardian. The scheme has incremental stages, which involve, first, going out and talking to young people; secondly, taking their name and address; thirdly, sending parents a letter, and so on. That incremental approach is important, but it needs to be resourced.

Auditing, trailing and monitoring antisocial behaviour are equally important.

I am very interested in what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree that one problem seems to be lack of knowledge on the part of the various agencies involved about what avenues are available to them? Guidelines on increments, especially in the case of, for example, housing associations, whose staff are not trained to deal with such problems, would be useful.

That is absolutely right. We are dealing with multi-agency shared practice. Many of the jigsaw pieces are available. I congratulate the Government on those pieces, but they are not all clicking in to make an entire picture.

We must not limit our discussions to antisocial behaviour orders, which are a single instrument. I accept that that instrument may have to be used, but we must take more positive action, too. Although ASBOs tackle behaviour, we should consider lower levels of intervention before we reach that stage.

I agree that we need neighbourhood renewal. Along with all positive measures, I am interested in neighbourhood warden schemes, a trial of which is being introduced in my constituency. The package involves school, integrated pastoral care, exclusion policies, family support and community facilities. The range is enormous. I hate to say it, but the approach ultimately relates to resources, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) said. One of our police superintendents told us what a difference small sums would make in implementing a crime and disorder strategy, such as £250 handed to a local group that raises money itself for its own purposes. People do not feel that they have those small sums. Will the Minister consider that point?

I recently spoke to representatives of the youth offending team, and some brilliant work has been initiated in providing parenting courses, of which there are many in my constituency. The Youth Justice Board has provided additional funds for a pilot scheme involving the introduction of parenting schemes at the point of changing schools—age 11 in that area. Such early intervention makes a lot of sense. Strains on local councils have resulted in their cutting back the amount that they put into parenting courses, so instead of additionality we have had replacement. I am sure that there are many such stories. That is a big issue, which needs to be resourced. We must consider all such issues and bring them together.

I mentioned making the jigsaw whole. I am excited about the principles behind Connexions, but much more needs to be done to pull the scheme together. Some of the schemes cover different age bands, and I am worried that there may be gaps. The age band for Connexions is, I believe, 13 to 19, and for YOT, 10 to 18. We need to pull that together.

As we have seen, an awful lot can be done for the community and families. However, we must not forget the individual, and sadly the issue is one of resources. We hear much about attention deficit disorder. That may be a small part of the cause of antisocial behaviour by individuals, but we need resources to follow through the research.

The hon. Member for Uxbridge mentioned mental illness. There is a tremendous shortage of resources to help deal with mental illness in young people. The Liberal Democrats believe that all the issues that I have mentioned are important. We see the matter as a whole toolkit and would like to emphasise that exciting and important initiatives should be resourced properly. I would like my toolkit to follow a positive intervention model, not one of blaming and enforcement. I am realistic and accept that we need this measure, but we must proceed with caution and get it right.

I have had the opportunity to speak about antisocial behaviour orders on several occasions. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing this debate, which has been similar to many others in that it has contained interesting contributions based on personal constituency experience and the individual ideas of both Back and Front Benchers—as was the case with the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats on home affairs.

Today's debate is different in one way. The Government's most severe critic from their own Back Benches, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), is absent—no doubt he has other duties. In every other debate on the subject, he made it clear that the Government had got the scheme wrong and that it was far too complex.

We said—more in sorrow than in anger—from the first moment that the Government announced the scheme that it would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It is not that we do not share the Government's ambition to deal with antisocial behaviour, as we agree with all those who have spoken that it is the scourge of our law-abiding constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge spoke of the problems in parts of his constituency such as West Drayton and we are all aware of similar areas that have difficulties with such behaviour.

My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge rightly referred to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) who is, like me, an Opposition spokesman for home affairs. In a previous debate, he pointed out some of the things that had gone wrong. However, it has taken a long time—a comment from not only Government Back Benchers but hon. Members of all parties—for the Government to concede that all the warnings that we issued at the start have turned out to be right.

I do not blame the Minister. The hon. Lady brings to her responsibilities professional expertise that she gained prior to entering Parliament. I know that she takes her responsibilities seriously from my experience of dealing with the case of one of my constituents, with which she assisted me and other hon. Members recently. She inherited both a problem and an opportunity. The problem is that her predecessors in office got it spectacularly wrong by erecting a bureaucratic nightmare. Everyone who has spoken has mentioned the problems that the police and local authorities face and I will touch on some of the most appalling experiences that senior police officers and local authority officers have recently found in my constituency.

The opportunity is that the Minister has joined the Home Office at a time when the penny has finally dropped that the Government can get rid of a lot of the bureaucracy. I hope that this time they will get it right. I wish 1 had confidence that they would cut through all of the nonsenses, but I fear that we shall see tinkering rather than genuine action. I am sure that the Minister will tell us that she has every confidence that the Government will get it right. As always, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

I want to talk briefly about what is happening at the sharp end, as other hon. Members have done. I have huge respect for the views held on a range of subjects by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley). She spoke powerfully about the difficulties in her constituency, as did the hon. Members for South Swindon (Ms Drown) and for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor).

In my constituency, I have obtained detailed briefing from two people that I know extremely well—Mick Day, the chief inspector of North West Surrey police and Barry Catchpole, the chief executive of Surrey Heath borough council, one of the two councils in my constituency. In all our regular meetings, they have told me about their frustration in efforts to deal with antisocial behaviour. When I heard that this issue had been selected for debate, I asked them to give me detailed briefing on a recent case about which, only 10 days ago, I was receiving calls from national media and having discussions with other police officers.

Chief Inspector Day says:

"I refer to your request for an opinion from the police perspective on the ASBO process.

Recent experience at Surrey Heath in relation to two young men aged 15 & 16 years was a frustrating encounter with the ASBO process. In brief the two young men were committing acts of nuisance and terrorising their local community as well as causing problems in Camberley Town Centre as part of a larger group. Normal policing methods and the justice system had not been effective so a multi agency group decided in February 2001"—

the Minister and hon. Members should note the date—

"to gather evidence for an ASBO application. It took two months to collate the evidence and the complaint was laid in April 2001. The case was listed for hearing in August 2001",

which was already six months later. It was then

"adjourned on two occasions at the request of the"

defendants. The case was

"finally heard in late January 2002",

which is effectively a year later—I know exactly when it was because I started fielding calls from the media a week last Friday, the day after the case was heard.

Chief Inspector Day says:

"It was therefore almost a full 12 months to get this application through the judicial process. There are a number of points I would wish to make on this…The collation of evidence was an extremely bureaucratic process involving applications to other agencies for little return…Once the complaint had been laid the length of time to hearing was unbelievably long and frustrated the desire to provide relief to the local community who were the victims of these young men…It is worthy of note that in the interim one of the young men received a custodial sentence, perhaps this could have been avoided had the ASBO process been slicker and more effective…Partner agencies are reluctant to support the process because of the bureaucracy and time involved."

Who can blame them?

"What is needed is a process which is responsive to address anti social behaviour quickly and effectively. ASBO in the current climate do not provide that response and the public feel that agencies are not being responsive to local problems…In summary the whole process is a frustrating bureaucratic nightmare."

Those strong words are used by one of the most effective senior police officers that it has been my pleasure to work with and I have been working with senior police officers all my professional life—I qualified as a barrister in the late 1970s and have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 10 years. I have worked with police officers in all parts of the country. I have been a shadow Minister with responsibility for home affairs for nearly three years.

Chief Inspector Day is not someone whose words can be dismissed. He does not use them lightly. He is respected throughout north-west Surrey, not only in my constituency, as an old-style traditional police officer who is nevertheless receptive to new ideas and thinking. He was born and brought up in my constituency and is a real, seat-of-the-pants police officer, respected in all the jobs that he has done from ordinary police constable to chief inspector. I have regular meetings with him and know that his strong words should be taken seriously.

The chief executive of my local authority states that there is a

"disproportionate need for huge resources from many different public bodies over several months during which time the offender is still disruptive.

Ordinary members of the community often decline to provide evidence as their identity cannot be kept confidential and they are fearful of reprisals. Such fears are well-founded given the nature of the people against whom the Orders are sought.

As always the offenders are very informed as to the processes and abuse this knowledge to the detriment of the community."

That sentence is relevant to the correct comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge about lack of respect for police officers.

The chief executive continues:

"At Surrey Heath Borough Council our first case was due for hearing in September but was deferred for two months as one of the "defendants" had been arrested the day before the hearing. During the two month delay the offenders continued to terrorise their communities and no quicker option was available. Later hearings were deferred as the offender was in Feltham Young Offenders Institute."

The chief executive also refers to the cost of the process:

"This hardly matches the aim of a quick simple system and is very costly to the taxpayer. This is seen as excessive by the communities against whom the anti-social behaviour is aimed."

The chief executive also draws attention to how long the process took and expresses concern that the court did not allow the names of the defendants to be publicised. One is always concerned about publicity with regard to juveniles, but that issue should be debated and I ask the Minister to comment on it.

Representatives of the media applied for reporting restrictions to be lifted. Although the police inspector who dealt with the case supported the application, it was not granted. I am not challenging the principle that the courts should decide such matters but, as the Government are reconsidering these provisions, the publicity issue should be addressed.

Finally, on the important issue of the involvement, or lack of it, of parents, which my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge also raised, the chief executive of my local authority, Barry Catchpole, states:

"Throughout the 4 day hearing neither parents attended court in support of their children, and the court did not act on that position."

He also rightly comments that

"parental responsibilities are paramount in making this process effective and where not voluntary the court should be looking to issue Parenting Orders to assist in keeping young people to the ASBO conditions.

Local courts are not comfortable with the process, make life unnecessarily difficult for the agencies to even get to court and then the judges are reluctant to make Orders and are overtly critical of the agencies."

That is the case even in the extreme circumstances that we are discussing.

I wish the Minister to respond to what happened in the example that I have described. I state, more in sorrow than in anger, that we warned the Government when they set up this process that that would happen and it has. The system is not working properly and we want the Government to ensure that their replacement for it is a huge improvement.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) for securing the debate, and to all hon. Members who have spoken for their constructive contributions. They have described their experiences, and it is clear that they have been motivated to speak by a desire to make the system work, because they recognise that antisocial behaviour orders are an important part of what the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) referred to as a toolkit of measures. I was going to describe it as a package of measures, but toolkit is a good word, because it conveys what we have tried to achieve, which is to offer a menu of options to tackle antisocial behaviour, of which antisocial behaviour orders are one.

There are many types of antisocial behaviour, such as graffiti, intimidation, verbal abuse and prostitution. As hon. Friends have mentioned, there is also antisocial behaviour that is related to drug abuse. All hon. Members deal with such behaviour in their constituencies, so they are aware that it reduces people's quality of life and creates fear and intimidation. The Home Office is heavily engaged in the battle against serious crime, but I assure hon. Members that the Government are equally committed to tackling antisocial behaviour and the problems that it causes for communities.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced antisocial behaviour orders, as well as child curfews and a range of other changes, to the youth justice system. It also established the crime and disorder partnerships, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole for mentioning that initiative because, although it is important that the Government should provide the tools that enable such partnerships to tackle the problems in their areas, it is also important that the partnerships should be allowed to identify the issues to be prioritised in their areas, and to apply the measures to tackle them in the most effective way.

Partnerships must focus on antisocial behaviour. They are now required to audit that as well as crime, and to develop a strategy to deal with it. It is important that partnerships focus on antisocial behaviour not only because of the quality of life issues to which I and many hon. Members have referred, but because such behaviour is a potential risk factor with regard to crime. Recent research confirms that there is frequently a link between antisocial behaviour in childhood and more serious criminal offending at an older age.

The antisocial behaviour order is a civil order made by a court. It is designed to address persistent antisocial behaviour. Individual incidents of such behaviour might not reach the required threshold of seriousness, but they will if they are taken together over a period. Such persistent behaviour has a corrosive effect on victims and communities. However, although antisocial behaviour orders are civil proceedings that require a civil standard to be met with regard to proof and rules of evidence, breach of an antisocial behaviour order is a criminal offence that must, therefore, be proved to that standard of evidence.

Between April 1999 and September 2001, 466 antisocial behaviour orders were granted. However, as several hon. Members have mentioned, we should not address the issue as if it were simply a numbers game. Although we want antisocial behaviour orders to be used—and to be used more often where they are applicable—the fact that they are available, and that they have been used, has had a deterrent effect. Important points have been raised about the use of measures such as acceptable behaviour contracts to prevent young people—and some adults—from reaching the threshold where they could be given an antisocial behaviour order.

Of those 466 orders, 84 per cent. were given to men, 74 per cent. to people under the age of 21, and 58 per cent. to juveniles. About 36 per cent. of antisocial behaviour orders have been breached, and 46 per cent. of breaches have resulted in custodial sentences. Only 4 per cent of applications have been refused, and the fact that so few refusals of applications reach court is of relevance to the case that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown).

I am aware of the breach case that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), because the leader of her local council raised it with me.

I turn to cost. Although the hon. Member for Uxbridge mentioned a figure, these are early days, and I do not wish to be held to any of the sums that I will mention. The results of the review that we have been undertaking suggest that the typical cost of an antisocial behaviour order is £4,800. That includes the cost of the internal solicitor's time, legal work and so on. If breaches and appeals are involved, the average cost of an order is about £5,350. Those figures are based on the experience of authorities.

Agencies that have used antisocial behaviour orders—and some agencies have really got to grips with them—report to us that they are very cost-effective. That is particularly the case when one considers the cost of not dealing with antisocial behaviour.

What about the costs of having to go out and buy in professional witness statements, where people are afraid and do not want to make statements? It is costly to purchase such professional statements. Will the Minister comment on that?

I take my hon. Friend's point. Several of the costs that I cited would be incurred in such cases, although, clearly, not in all of them. The question of witnesses is an important ingredient in ensuring that we make greater use of ASBOs.

Several hon. Members referred to legislative changes that the Home Secretary announced recently. Those include extending the power of those who may apply for ASBOs to the British Transport police and registered social landlords, which are important developments. The British Transport police want to be able to deal with ticket touting and similar problems more effectively.

Interim ASBOs will help to overcome some of the problems of delay that were mentioned, especially for witnesses. If an interim ASBO is awarded quickly, that will give protection to witnesses.

County courts will be empowered to make an ASBO when dealing with cases such as evictions or injunctions in which the reason for the application was antisocial behaviour. The court will be able to link the eviction or injunction to the simultaneous award of an ASBO, rather than having to apply again for an ASBO

We want to encourage the use of travelling ASBOs that will cover a wider area so that a person who moves will continue to be covered by the order.

I am pleased to hear that the Government are considering using the county court when there is a link between benefit and eviction. Will the Government consider using the county court for cases such as prostitution? I do not know whether such cases experience a higher failure rate than other types of ASBO, but if that is the case, will the Government examine that route?

That is outside the scope that the Secretary of State has announced so far. However, I shall take my hon. Friend's comments back to the Department and feed them into the review process.

Hon. Members mentioned the review. We want to see whether we can help bodies to overcome problems by examining the experience of local authorities and police services. I hope that we will produce the review very soon. Issues that should be addressed include guidance and the dissemination of good practice, which were mentioned by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) gave a detailed account of a case that he said was at the sharp end of what is happening. However, I tell him that there are other versions of what is occurring at the sharp end, and there are examples of excellent practice in which agencies—especially the local authorities and the police—have put in resources and worked together.

Manchester established a nuisance strategy group to allow the maximum use of ASBOs. It demonstrated that several factors contributed to the success of ASBOs. The publicising of ASBOs was important. Media coverage and leaflets produced by the local authority helped local people to understand an ASBO. Such communication helps to enforce the order because the community understands the behaviour that constitutes a breach.

The support of witnesses is also important to the success of ASBOs—a point that was touched on several times. Successful partnership working is a further important factor, as is cost-effectiveness, which the authority achieves by ensuring that front-line officers play a central role, rather than always bringing in outside assistance. That ensures that a knowledge base and the ability to work efficiently are bred inside the local authority.

I accept that many areas have found the process bureaucratic, but I do not think that that was inevitable. Agencies that use good practice and cut through bureaucracy have taken a more realistic view of the evidence that is required. Agencies that work quickly together to make a case have shown that bureaucracy need not occur. None the less, the Government want to ensure that when lessons have been learned in one area, they can be learned elsewhere. Hon. Members asked about delay at the court stage, and made suggestions. I will take those points to the Department.

We are planning to help local partnerships to use ASBOs more effectively. Acceptable behaviour contracts, which were mentioned by several hon. Members, are a further important part of the toolkit, and they have been implemented successfully in Islington.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions, which I shall feed into the review. We are determined to make ASBOs work, and to help agencies with responsibilities for ASBOs to cut through the problems that were identified today and allow them to use the orders more effectively—

Order. We move on to the next topic for consideration this morning.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss issues around the welfare-to-work programme and the Government's agenda for tackling poverty, with particular reference to London.

Before I discuss London, I shall set the debate in context. I support and admire the Government's approach in the past five years to tackling poverty and unemployment. They set themselves the ambitious target of halving child poverty within a decade and abolishing it within a generation, which, as independent organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group have recognised, is unprecedented. The group said, slightly tongue in cheek, that it had been given a stick with which to beat the Government. The strategy is risky but completely right.

The Government correctly identified that poverty is rooted in several factors, rather than being dependent only on a household's individual financial income. They have adopted a bundle of indicators to establish the efficacy of the measures to tackle poverty. That is the context in which investment in public services has been proposed, in addition to area-based regeneration schemes such as sure start, the new deal for communities and the neighbourhood renewal fund. The Government have also introduced the Tax Credits Bill, on which I shall comment in more detail later. They have given extra help to families who are on benefit through a significant increase in the children's element of income support. Additionally, the child tax credit, which is in the next wave of tax credits, will be introduced next year.

Such measures have had a dramatic impact on poverty throughout the country. Independent experts have confirmed that 1.2 million children have been lifted out of poverty. The communities on which the area-based initiatives have impacted have warmly welcomed them.

London, however, has not benefited as much as it should have from the national strategy. Over recent years, London has enjoyed significant economic success; it has been a booming city, an exciting place in which to live. Both employment and earnings growth has been very strong, and people who have done well in London have experienced some very happy years. The events of 11 September caused a dip in economic confidence but we seem to be bouncing back from that.

However, alongside the success story is a story of poverty, deprivation and unemployment. Progress has been made but not to the extent of other regions. London continues to have the highest percentage of children in poverty in England. Forty-three per cent. of children are in households with incomes below half the national average. The decline in the number of children in poverty has been smaller than in other regions.

After housing costs are taken into account, a much higher proportion of London's population is in the lowest income band: income below £150 a week. Twenty-nine per cent. of Londoners live in households in that band; 24 per cent. of people are in that band in the rest of the United Kingdom.

Of course, London has a disproportionate percentage of its population in the higher income bands, and that is part of the problem when examining the distribution of resources. The polarisation of incomes in London is part of the problem of economic inequality. During the debate in the House on Friday, I described the problem as the tyranny of the average, because it leads to a misleading indicator of the state of London's population.

Median average income—that is, the point in income below which half the population fall—is only 1.5 per cent. above the national average. Not including housing, prices are 5.7 per cent. above average, so the evidence suggests that average living standards are lower in London than in the rest of the United Kingdom. I am grateful for that new analysis of the figures, which was produced for the Department for Work and Pensions by the Greater London Authority and the Mayor's Office.

London has a higher proportion of children in workless households than any other region: in some 26 per cent. of households in London there is no adult in employment. Inner London has double the national average of children from lone-parent families, who, as we know, are at the greatest risk of poverty. Since the early 1990s, unemployment in London has consistently been above the British average. Our unemployment rate is the second highest regionally, and is especially severe among black and ethnic minority communities, half of which live in London. The unemployment rate for white Londoners is close to the national average, but the rate for black and ethnic minority Londoners is almost three times the national average.

Some 40 per cent. of the 25 Parliamentary constituencies with the highest unemployment rates in the UK are in London. London's rates of job entry through the new deal are below the national average. Take-up of the working families tax credit, the foundation stone of the Government's welfare-to-work strategy, is lower in London than poverty indicators suggest that it should be. Some 10.2 per cent. of families receive the working families tax credit in London compared with 16.3 per cent. nationally. The disparity is even starker among lone parents: those in London are half as likely to receive the tax credit as those elsewhere in the country. I am grateful to the Association of London Government, the GLA, the Mayor's Office and the House of Commons Library for those statistics.

There is no doubt that we have a serious problem with poverty, deprivation and joblessness in London. I have two purposes in securing the debate, apart from that of putting those facts on the record. The first is to highlight that Londoners need more help to tackle poverty effectively through the employment path and other strategies. The second—I believe that other hon. Members will talk on the subject—is to highlight the fact that aspects of the welfare system are penalising Londoners and must be removed if we are to reduce poverty.

Why is it that, alongside London's vacancies, economic strength and success, there is such a serious problem of poverty and joblessness? Why, with our underlying economic strength, does the take-up of the welfare-to-work programme appear to be less effective in London? I do not fully understand why that is so, although I have some theories. It is time for the Government to carry out serious research to establish the reasons. I ask the Minister to give an assurance on that subject. Whenever we have discussed those issues— for example, when considering the Tax Credits Bill—I have been told that the problem is rooted in take-up, and that there is an awareness issue about measures such as the children's tax credit and the working families tax credit.

I do not doubt that take-up is part of the problem. Constituencies such as mine have a high level of social mobility and high population turnover. For many people in houses of multiple occupations, getting the post is a nightmare. Readership of local newspapers is low compared to that in other regions. The multiplicity of media outlets may be exciting but it means that it is difficult to get a message through to people. Also, 130 languages are spoken, so it is especially difficult to reach minority communities, which are among the poorest.

Take-up is undoubtedly an issue, but it is not the only one. The poorer populations of London face structural problems, which means that however much money we pump into take-up campaigns, we will not completely reverse the disparity in the take-up of working families tax credit and in levels of unemployment. It is my assumption that the problem is rooted in joblessness. If we are to cut child and adult poverty—pensioner poverty falls largely under a different category that I am not talking about today—we must get to the heart of the problem of joblessness in London.

I support the hon. Lady's request to the Government for a special review and study of the issue. Who would she like to be involved, not just from the Government but from the many other players in London, in order to ensure that the study is effective and is undertaken urgently?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is right. Communities have different experiences, and an understanding of the barriers to take-up and participation must be rooted in community experiences. A multiplicity of organisations, including local councils, the London development agency and women's and child care organisations, have an important role to play and should be part of the process. We should listen to them to find out what they regard as problems.

Joblessness in London is at the heart of the problem. It is the reason why Londoners cannot break free from poverty and use the working families tax credit as a stepping stone out of poverty. The welfare-to-work strategy, in all its forms, is not working as well in London as it is elsewhere. That is not a criticism of the programme or its policies, which I back 100 per cent. It is an argument for a more focused look at why the strategy is not as effective in London.

Let us take the example of the new deal. Figures provided by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion show that the job-entry rate through the new deal in London is below the national average, with central London districts such as mine and, I am sad to say, that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) performing particularly badly. That is partly because London handles a high proportion of unemployed people with multiple disadvantages, including those who have experienced homelessness, the prison system, mental health or drug problems and those with literacy or language problems. The Government could do more to address that important issue.

The agencies of delivery, particularly the Employment Service, have a disproportionate difficulty in recruiting and retaining the staff necessary to guide those with multiple disadvantages through support programmes and into work. If the new deal and Jobcentre Plus are to deliver to Londoners and contribute to cutting poverty through work, extra resources will be needed to pay personal advisers better in order to retain them longer.

I regularly go to my local Employment Service and sit in on interviews. I am saddened by the fact that good people do not stay. They move in order to earn more, and I do not blame them; they are not paid terribly well. We need to keep people of especially high quality in London, so that we can use their skills to develop properly tailored packages for the people who need them, especially lone parents.

We need to overcome the barrier of child care. The proportion of lone parents in the capital is much higher than in the rest of the country. I am grateful to the Library for its excellent research on the subject. Lone parents are much less likely to have family support networks that provide informal child care. Only 18 per cent. of pre-school children in inner London are looked after by grandparents compared with 34 per cent. across the country. The need for child care is greater, particularly for lone parents, yet the provision of affordable child care is significantly lower.

Although there have been improvements in recent years—the national child care strategy is a welcome development—the Daycare Trust said last Friday that the imbalance between quality child care places and need was particularly severe, with a place for fewer than one child in seven. Last summer, the Daycare Trust carried out an analysis of day care costs and found a shortfall between the cost of child care in London and the subsidy from the working families tax credit: it is £40 a week for a nursery place and £33 a week for a child minder, which is £6 or £7 more than in the rest of the country. We must accept that the cost of providing nurseries in London is far greater, especially in respect of capital costs and recruitment and retention of child care staff. Unfortunately, the flat-rate child care component in the working families tax credit, which will be carried through in the new tax credits legislation, will not be enough to allow parents, particularly lone parents who want to enter the workplace, to access child care.

Some evidence—it is mostly anecdotal but it is supported by the Daycare Trust—shows that the child care component of the working families tax credit is leading to some perverse incentives in London and elsewhere, whereby the costs of child care are ratcheted up to the level of the working families tax credit supplement. In my constituency some people in need have lost places as an unintended and perverse consequence of working families tax credit. Welcome as the child care component is there is no substitute for a dramatic extension of child care places, which will have to be funded by capital. Otherwise, there will be child care inflation and we will never catch up with it. Access to child care places remains inadequate and needs further development.

Housing costs have been endlessly debated in this Chamber and elsewhere by others and by me. London is engulfed in a housing crisis with three times the level of overcrowding than in any other part of the country. A significant increase in the number of families in temporary accommodation is another factor relevant to the poverty and welfare-to-work debate. Families in severe housing need are in poverty. For 60,000 households, the cost of private rented and temporary accommodation makes working impossible. Rents are about £300 a week. It is virtually impossible for people to find work that will pay while they face that housing difficulty. While we continue to try to unlock the housing crisis through supply, it is essential to provide special new deal-type provision for families in temporary accommodation, who are expected, through no fault of their own, to pay prohibitive rents and are unlikely to take up work opportunities.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the ceilings on housing benefit, which restrict the rents that attract it, need to be raised?

I am coming to that matter, which I feel passionately about.

Families in London on income support mortgage interest relief generally face higher mortgage costs than those in the rest of the country, so they face a higher risk of getting into debt if they get a job. The Government have extended the linking rule to mortgage interest relief, which is a positive step. I doubt whether the Minister can answer immediately, but I would like to know whether the extension of the linking rule has helped low-income homeowners to move into work. We must do more to help such people to return to work.

Considerable evidence suggests that good area-based partnerships between local authorities, the private sector, the Employment Service and community organisations have been effective in underpinning welfare-to-work strategies. Employment zones in London have been particularly successful, but there are too few of them. The level of deprivation and poverty in London strongly justifies a further extension of area-based initiatives, including employment zones. It is unfortunate that the Government's index of deprivation—a formula for distributing resources for area-based regeneration initiatives—has recently disadvantaged London. The Association of London Government calculated that under the old formula, we would have been £140 million better off. My hon. Friends and I will continue to press the Government to redress the inadequacies of the index of multiple deprivation.

I am aware that other colleagues want to speak, but I want to finish by emphasising two policy issues that hurt Londoners disproportionately, rather than focusing on the failure to make full use of the welfare-to-work programme. First, council tax benefit restrictions are impacting on households in high-value areas. People did not move there through choice, so they are suffering an unfair penalty. I hope that the Minister will deal with that in more detail later.

Secondly, housing benefit restrictions in London are particularly difficult for families on low incomes. They have to find £15, £20 or £25 a week out of their own pockets to sustain a tenancy on which a housing benefit restriction has been placed, as has been demonstrated by research in Brent. Housing benefit restrictions are also fuelling the flow into temporary accommodation and homelessness. It is false economics to impose housing benefit restrictions to prevent people in high-value accommodation from being funded by the public purse. Some such provision needs to be made—we cannot afford to subsidise people in penthouses in Marble Arch—but the principle has gone too far, particularly as the supply of private rented accommodation for families on low income has halved in the past five years, causing hardship and fuelling the housing crisis. It is time for action on both those fronts to relieve poverty.

I love London, its buzz and its dynamism. It has been an exciting place to live recently. Population growth and an exciting young multi-ethnic population have driven its success, but we cannot continue to tolerate the scale and intensity of poverty and deprivation in London. It causes hardship, and there is a danger that it will act as a drag on economic success. Getting more people into work is the best means of tackling poverty. There must be targeting of welfare-to-work strategies to ensure that they deliver in the capital.

I am grateful to be called to speak in this short debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing it and on her magnificent speech, which deserves a wider audience. She spoke up magnificently for London.

I shall add a few statistics of my own to the range that the hon. Lady provided, but I shall keep my contribution short because of her comprehensive speech. She is right about the existence of great areas of deprivation in our capital city, which may be concealed by overall statistics. Every London borough has poverty and deprivation. Even wards in my borough include deprived areas sitting cheek by jowl with prosperous areas in the leafy suburbs. An integrated approach is necessary to tackle poverty in London and, indeed, throughout the country.

The hon. Lady properly focused on poverty and people but I am convinced that the problem is accentuated if the environment in which people reside is in a disgraceful condition. I do not exaggerate but parts of our inner cities are an environmental disgrace to any nation that calls itself civilised.

Let me begin with the prosperous borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a royal borough. I understand that two of its wards are among the 10 per cent. most deprived in England and they are next to seven wards that are among the least deprived. That underlines how poverty can be found around the corner from prosperous areas.

I want to draw attention to data collected recently by the King's Fund, which created a sick list by finding out where the most unhealthy areas of the country were and by putting together the first ever league of the nation's 120 health authorities. In that league, Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham health authority is 111th and East London and the City health authority is 118th, which means that two of the 10 sickest health authorities can be found in our capital city.

I am always interested to receive correspondence from our Mayor, Ken Livingstone. He sends me a lot, as I expect he does to every Member of Parliament who represents London. Like the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, he drew attention to the Department for Work and Pensions survey. It is from 1998 and there may be new figures, but these are the most recent that I have. The context is that in any list of regions and household disposable income, London comes top, just ahead of the south-east and the east. The survey shows that, once account is taken of housing costs and household composition, average incomes in London are no higher than those in the rest of the United Kingdom, and incomes at the lower end of the distribution are significantly lower. One frightening statistic that it behoves us all to address is that in our capital city, 5.1 per cent. of the white population is unemployed but no less than 13.5 per cent. of the minority ethnic group population is unemployed.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that black and Asian young unemployed people are less likely to register at an unemployment agency and that those figures underestimate the level of disparity between white and black unemployment in London?

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I would not presume to say categorically that she is right but I suspect that she is.

Mr. Cook—[Interruption.] Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do apologise. I took advice and was told to call you by name but that must have changed. My final point is that we must all tackle poverty in a comprehensive and integrated way. That is not a criticism but there is a possible weakness in the Government's strategy for tackling poverty. Much greater interdepartmental cooperation is necessary. I understand that the Government have to divide governance into different Departments but I am slightly concerned that in tackling poverty, interdepartmental co-ordination is not as good as it should be.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate to highlight the problems of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion in London. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate. Her record in promoting the cause of our capital city and its residents is second to none in the current Parliament and one of which she can be rightly proud.

My hon. Friend has already referred to the issue that I want to raise. It is relatively small in terms of the number of people that it affects, although that does not mean that it is not important. The issue is the effect that the council tax benefit restriction scheme has on many of my constituents.

Highly regressive, mean-spirited and vindictive legislation was introduced in 1998 by, I regret to say, Labour Government. Anyone who is entitled to council tax benefit has his or her benefit capped at band E. The Government made a welcome concession: anyone in receipt of full council tax benefit when the measure was introduced was given transitional relief. Many of us heralded that protection, and we were assured that the measure's effects would be carefully monitored and open to constant review.

The consultation paper that proposed the introduction of the measure assumed that claimants who owned their properties could release some capital value and make up the difference between council tax benefit and their liability above band E. That assumption begs the question why long-term residents in high capital value areas should be forced against their will to move from home, away from families and friends, while residents in other parts of the country are not so penalised. Research carried out by, among others, the Association of London Government has demonstrated beyond question that the majority of those caught by the measure live in London and rent their accommodation.

The practical effect is that many families on means-tested benefits are forced to suffer because of the geographical location of their accommodation. Current council tax rates in my borough are £1,128 for band E, £1,333 for band F, £1,538 for band G and £1,846 for band H. That means that families living in band F properties in Hammersmith and Fulham who are not protected by transitional relief—those who were not in receipt of full council tax benefit as of 1 April 1998—need to find from their already meagre benefits an extra £205 a year or £4 a week. For a band G household, the costs are £410 a year or nearly £8 a week, and for a family living in a band H property—there are quite a few—the costs are £718 a year or a staggering £14 a week.

That inevitably places families who are already trapped by poverty into a spiral of even greater financial difficulties. In practice, they must choose whether to heat their home, pay their rent or eat and clothe themselves and their families adequately. When I first raised the matter in 1998, we were able to prove beyond doubt that the measure disproportionately affected households in London.

For my local authority, strict criteria govern the allocation of social housing. Applicants on the housing register are entitled to only one reasonable offer of accommodation, and those that refuse that offer are deemed to be intentionally homeless. Nearly all the new affordable housing developments in my borough will be caught by the legislation.

Lord Falconer, the Minister for Housing and Planning, recently visited a relatively new housing development created by Shepherds Bush housing association in my constituency. Every one of the two-bedroom houses in that development is banded at band F, and larger accommodation at band G. Applicants who may have waited many years for their offer of permanent accommodation are faced with the choice of turning down their only chance of a new home or meeting an extra tax burden that applicants living outside London would almost certainly not face. Similar developments in Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle or almost any other major town and city in this country would not be so adversely affected. The measure is also a major deterrent to anyone who has received transitional relief from 1 April 1998 and wants to return to work. It is contrary to the Government's aim of combating social exclusion and promoting welfare for work, and cannot be justified.

From 2 July 2001, arrangements were put in place for local authorities to provide additional assistance to anyone whose housing and council tax benefit is restricted, if they are satisfied that the person in need requires such financial assistance with their housing costs. According to answers to recent parliamentary questions, the Government seem to believe that the new discretion means that they no longer need to monitor the effects of the council tax benefit restriction scheme, which they promised to do when it was introduced in 1998.

That assumption is entirely specious. First, the majority of the financial discretion awarded to local authorities from July to April in this financial year would have to come from already hard-pressed local authority budgets, which are in no position to take on extra burdens. Secondly, only £15 million of the £37.5 million is Government funded. Thirdly, the new hardship fund is entirely at local authorities' discretion, and it does not represent a fair or strategic approach to dealing with poverty. My local authority is considering using it, although—I do not know what my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North thinks—her two local authorities are unlikely to use it.

The saving to the Treasury as a consequence of the measure is £7 million a year, which is a pathetically small amount of money in terms of the misery that it causes to people who are already struggling in difficult financial circumstances. It adds a further layer of complication to an already complicated system that is beyond the comprehension of many claimants and constituents. It is a Tory measure written by a Tory Government, and it should be consigned to the dustbin by this Labour Government without further delay.

rose—

Order. I alert hon. Members to the fact that it is common practice during a 90-minute debate to give the two Opposition spokespeople and the Minister 30 minutes to conclude the debate. The 30 minutes is distributed equitably: in three blocks of 10 minutes. Three hon. Members are currently seeking to catch my eye, and little time is left. I therefore appeal to hon. Members to bear that practice in mind when making their speeches.

I too congratulate the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate. I have the privilege of serving with her on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, and I know that she takes a serious interest in these matters.

I shall begin by saluting the Government's commitment to tackling poverty and disadvantage both in London and elsewhere; their intention is admirable. Significant factors that affect our society mean that those are difficult matters to change in a short time. We know from Department for Work and Pensions figures that between 1994 and 1999 there has not been consistent change in the number of children living in poverty. We also know that the number of working-age people in poverty in London and elsewhere has remained broadly constant. One reason why that has happened is because the world of work has changed. The opportunity to earn significant sums of money in the capital is available to some sectors of the population but not to all. The advent of two-earner households has also had a significant impact on income distribution.

I shall be brief because I know that time is short. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North discussed the decline in the supply of private rented accommodation, which is worrying. Private rented accommodation often provides the flexibility that people need in different stages of their lives as they progress in their careers and need to move around, and the Government must take its decline seriously. I urge them to consider schemes by which they can increase the supply of private rented accommodation. Whether that can be done through tax breaks to encourage more private landlords to rent part or all of their houses is for them to consider, but they must consider the issue given the decline in social housing provided by the local authority sector.

As the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North rightly said, it is important that we take an integrated approach to poverty in London. There is an important role, about which we have a heard a great deal this morning, for the Government, there is an extremely important role for local authorities, and there are important roles for community organisations and personal initiatives. She and I visited a deprived area of south-east Amsterdam last week. I was struck by the way in which different community organisations, churches and faith groups were working with local authorities and regeneration project managers. I commend the integrated approach because it provides a personal, one-to-one element that perhaps only community organisations and churches can provide. Such an approach can change lives by turning problems around.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North mentioned ethnicity, which is an important subject given that 130 languages are spoken in London. Like her, I am concerned that the regional call centres advocated by the Department for Work and Pensions to deal with London residents' problems will be situated outside London. We must ensure that their staff have the languages required. I am unsure how we will get speakers of the many languages in London to work in regional call centres outside London. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on that.

The roots of poverty in London, as elsewhere, often start to grow in the early years of a child's life, during which they may have been neglected or abused. The shadow Home Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), recently made a speech in which he discussed a conveyor belt that goes through a sequence of events that often ends in hardened criminality. Shockingly, more than 25 per cent. of children are currently living in single-parent families. As a nation we pay £15 billion a year picking up the costs of family break-up. I suggest that we do more in the capital, and elsewhere, to support families in their early years, which would include both measures such as the working families tax credit and practical help.

Organisations such as Homestart offer practical advice and help to families on a weekly basis. A couple of hours a week of help that is a phone call away cannot be provided by the state or local authority, but I know from my constituency that such help can change the lives of stressed families with young children. We must see what we can do to help families to stay together because we have the highest level of divorce in Europe, and it is higher in London than in other parts of the country. Anything that we can do to help families stay together is important.

We have discussed getting unemployed people back into work. Work is key because it is the major escalator to get people out of poverty. Having been to the Netherlands with me last week, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North will, like me, have been struck by the massive range of organisations that helps unemployed people to get back into work. The Netherlands is a laboratory. Help is delivered on a local basis. Many organisations work alongside the state sector, and I commend that approach to the Government.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate, and join the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) in sincerely congratulating her on a remarkable speech. She produced statistical evidence that shows that poverty in London is severe. It is unnecessary for the rest of us to go through those numbers again.

I endorse the two points that were made by my hon. Friend on the take-up of the working families tax credit. I must place on the record that my constituency is not exclusively inhabited by millionaires. It contains two of the most deprived wards in the United Kingdom, and my borough contains many similar wards. As the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet said, pockets of severe deprivation sometimes exist within individual wards. Poverty lives cheek by jowl with wealth. There is a gap in people's understanding of the working families tax credit, how they can apply for it and the benefits that it can bring.

I turn to joblessness. Much of the available work in London is perceived to be seasonal, temporary or part time, so people are reluctant to move from what they regard as a secure benefits system, not least because of the rents that they must pay. They believe that a job will not give them a permanent income and could lose them housing benefit. I admit that my evidence for that is anecdotal but I have heard it several times. The Government should consider that matter.

We heard of the worries that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet has about the poverty of the environment, and I strongly agree with him. The particular issue that I would like to discuss is the poverty of aspiration. It is linked to the statistics on unemployment, particularly those relating to ethnic minority groups. However, it is not found exclusively among those groups. In many parts of my constituency, the aspiration not only of young people but of their parents is almost nil. Their experience of life, and the facilities that have been offered to them—or, at least, the facilities that they believe that they can access—have been limited for so long that we need to create a targeted programme to begin to break down the barrier of aspiration. To reinforce the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, if we do not tackle poverty in London, it will act as a brake on the whole city. That could have far more desperate consequences than a loss of economic vibrancy; it could lead to severe social breakdown.

There needs to be a co-ordinated programme, and I strongly agree with those who have said that the excellent programmes that the Government have set up are not sufficiently interlinked. Only last week, a sure start programme was launched in one of my wards, Gospel Oak. Crèche and nursery facilities are offered there, and mothers were asked what they wanted to know. Representatives from social services, health, and education and from those who tackle crime were present.

Such initiatives are intrinsic to developing a sense of aspiration. We want the best for all our children, the best opportunities for all young people and we want those who have been unemployed to have the opportunity to return to employment to make the best use of their particular and individual abilities. However, there are still too many difficulties for people in patching into Government schemes, which have been set up under a range of titles.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) spoke of Holland as a laboratory, and mentioned the coming together of many organisations to tackle issues. It is extremely difficult for organisations that are in most desperate need of money, including that outside the Government's direct remit—say, lottery funding or the millennium fund—to begin to rekindle a sense of social aspiration. It should be made easier and simpler for organisations from a variety of areas to work together to patch into such funding sources.

Although we have made giant strides in creating a linked-up approach for all Government Departments, there is still too much separation between Departments in tackling these issues. It would not be difficult to link them, and it is essential to do so if we are to tackle poverty of aspiration; it is certainly important if we are to tackle the poverty of the environment. There are situations in my constituency, and, I imagine, in that of every hon. Member in the Chamber, that would not be tolerated in the environment of this building. If we would not accept something, we should expect no one in London to.

The Government will undoubtedly have to look again at the funding that they afford to local authorities in London. A peaceful environment, not besmirched by graffiti and faeces, and in which underpasses are not used as outdoor lavatories, will require funding. Those are not frills or mere externals. Far too many people in the capital have a sense that they are surrounded by an appalling environment because they are worth nothing. That is a root cause for the poverty of aspiration.

I too support the Government for tackling poverty in innovative ways but a great deal more must be done. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will pass on our wish for a greater link-up between Departments, which could bring a successful outcome in London.

I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing this debate.

On the monitors that are scattered about the House of Commons, the debate is entitled, "Poverty (London)". However, that notion would seem tautologous to many hon. Members. Fourteen years after becoming a Member of Parliament, colleagues from other parts of the country are still under the illusion that London has all the jobs and prosperity, and could not know of the poverty of other regions. If this debate places on record that London has as much absolute poverty as anywhere else, and more than some areas, it will have been worth while.

I am not as lost in admiration for the Government's anti-poverty strategies as some of my colleagues. That may be because I am from the more disreputable end of the London Labour party. Hon. Members have spoken about rich areas being next to poor ones in their constituencies; in Hackney, we have poor areas next to poor areas. We have been the recipients of every variety of anti-poverty scheme and regeneration programme: neighbourhood renewal, sure start, the new deal, the new deal for communities—an alphabet soup of initiatives. In my office, I have files in which I put the Government press release each time a new allocation of money for a new initiative in Hackney is announced.

I agree that each initiative is wonderful, both in its aims and how it is fashioned. However, we have reached a point where it is time to assess this blizzard of initiatives. In Hackney, I have found that those who obtain funding for such initiatives are often those who are good at obtaining funding, rather than good at delivering programmes on the ground.

When I get a press release about a new initiative that has been given money by the Government, I make a point of going to see what is being done. When the staff in my office phone those involved to say, "Diane Abbott wants to see what you are doing with your new deal for communities money," there is a great deal of nervousness at the other end. When I visit, I may find a brand new computer, a new office and consultants who have been taken on using Government money but there is often a paucity of clients.

Without wanting to take anything away from the voluntary sector or from those running the schemes, there is a paucity of human capital for schemes in areas such as Hackney. We need fewer schemes, more co-ordination between them and more attention to be paid to the basic infrastructure that will deliver clients. In Hackney, we have witnessed the almost total collapse of our youth service. We can spend as much money as we like on schemes to deal with issues relating to young people, education and social exclusion, but if there is no youth service to deliver the clientele, such heavily funded schemes will deal with relatively small groups of young people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North spoke at length about tax credits. As the Member of Parliament for the constituency with the highest number of single parents in the country, I want to emphasise what she said about the working families tax credit and its low take-up in London. The Government are justly proud of that tax credit's effect nationally but, as an inner-London MP, I have found that it has not had the impact on my constituents that I would have liked it to have. I draw attention to my hon. Friend's comment that the take-up rate for single parents in London is half that for single parents nationally.

During the general election, I had cause to contemplate the disparity between what the Government correctly said about the new schemes and the experience of my poorest constituents. There was a mismatch between the bulging files of press releases announcing new Government initiatives in my office and people's perception of what was being delivered. The failure of the tax credit scheme to engage fully with poverty in London accounts for that mismatch.

I would like to raise the impact of asylum seekers, economic migrants and illegal immigrants on the London economy and poverty. Economic migrants have helped to make London a great world city. I use the term advisedly; it is regarded as a dirty word in political debate. My parents were economic migrants. Generations of Irish, Jewish and West Indian economic migrants helped to make London the city that it is. Sadly, the number of asylum seekers has increased because of the closing of avenues to legitimate economic migration. The Government are now examining that.

London boroughs are partially compensated for the services that they have to provide for asylum seekers. However, Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark and other London boroughs with a large number of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are not properly compensated for the effects on delivery of service and on poverty. In the medium and long term, those people have a great deal to contribute to London's economy.

My son goes to school just across the border between Hackney and Islington. He is in year five, in a class of about 30. Only a dozen children in that class were there when he started reception. The turnover is such in many inner-London schools that teachers are teaching a different class by the end of the year. Boroughs and education authorities are not compensated for the strain that that causes the education department. Asylum seekers cannot be considered separately in the fight against poverty in London.

The Government pursued a policy of social inclusion for the population as a whole during their first term, but they pursued a policy of social exclusion for asylum seekers through the vouchers scheme. I am glad that they have abolished that.

There is a link between poverty and education and between poverty and crime. The long-term answer to poverty in London lies partly in raising educational achievement. If one examines educational achievement in London, a disturbing pattern emerges. Every year, certain ethnic minority groups fail to raise their achievement. Many ethnic minority groups in London are narrowing the gap between themselves and white Londoners. Some groups do better than white Londoners, but Afro-Caribbean children figure at the bottom of the league table every year, particularly boys. That is not a new problem; there have been Government reports about Afro-Caribbean educational underachievement since the 1980s.

Does the hon. Lady agree that more male role models, particularly in primary schools, would be useful for young boys if there is no such role model in their family?

I agree. I do not want to expand on that point because the debate is about poverty reduction. Whenever a picture of a failing school is shown on television or in a newspaper, it will feature a group of black or multi-ethnic children. Strategies for raising educational achievement have not focused sufficiently on black underachievement, particularly that of black boys. I urge the Minister to tell her colleagues that educational achievement in the inner cities cannot be raised without focusing on the underachievement of black boys.

J. K. Galbraith, the American economist, referred to private affluence and public squalor. Nowhere is that paradigm more obvious than in London. Where private affluence and public squalor exist, so does crime. Poverty is not an excuse for crime but some estates in London—a terrible nexus of poverty, deprivation and low aspiration—are a breeding ground for crime. If we want to avoid a proliferation of street crime and an increase in gun-related crime on the streets of London, we must deal with the issues that have been raised this morning.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) deserves our thanks for the way in which she has raised the subject. I thought it was one of the most well researched and thoughtful speeches that I have heard in the House. I hope that she will send it to some members of the Cabinet, who should read it. A study of the special issues concerning London is important if the Government want to achieve their targets of halving child poverty by 2010, and abolishing it by 2019.

If the Government are to meet their targets they cannot simply adopt the policies used in the rest of the country. They must urgently get a grip on the special problems in London. That would deal with one of the problems identified by the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). People do not believe that poverty is a problem in London, unless they are London MPs or have a focus on London issues. The perception outside London—even in London sometimes—is that it is not a poor city. The success of London masks its major failure. We must hammer away repeatedly at that false perception.

In the first year of the previous Parliament, the Deputy Prime Minister said that Kingston was a leafy borough. That did not go down well in the Cambridge estate in Norbiton, which is one of the poorest wards in the whole of outer London. We have pockets of severe deprivation, even in the royal borough of Kingston. I am sure that that is the case in many other London boroughs.

When I pointed out to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that 43 per cent. of children live in households below the official poverty line—one of the most startling figures on London poverty—the Daily Mail published a sketch that lampooned me. Quentin Letts asked:

"Is it just another of those political 'facts' that go unqueried?"

Of course, when I wrote to the Daily Mail to put the record straight, it did not publish my rejoinder. That sketch shows that many people, in the media and elsewhere, have a false perception of London. Even though the figures are official and well researched, many do not believe them.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North was right to call for the debate because London is different. The Government have an impressive antipoverty strategy. I do not agree with every tax and benefit change, but the major thrust of the policy is right. Employment measures such as the sure start programme and many other anti-poverty measures are welcome and deserve praise. However, they are not quite up to the task in London. The hon. Lady gave a clear analysis of the problems with the working families tax credit, which is in many ways the flagship of the Government's strategy to tackle poverty. It fails to deal with poverty in the capital, which is so much greater than elsewhere.

The hon. Lady suggested the direction that the Government should take. She rightly talked about employment; several hon. Members touched on the high levels of unemployment in our black and Asian communities in London. That point has come up time and again in my discussions with Ministers and their advisers about the failure of the new deal to have an impact on high unemployment areas throughout the country, not just in London. The new deal has yet to grasp that problem. Studies and pilots are being undertaken to examine the complexity of the problem but they have not produced a solution.

Some of the points made by the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington should be taken into account but we need to go further than that in dealing with the issue. When I visited the Employment Service in Kingston during the early stages of the new deal, I was shocked by its lack of drive to get the right people for the right jobs, particularly at the gateway stage. The staff, which had been re-trained to prepare for the scheme, did not have the skills to deal with or knowledge about the problems of some of the people coming to them. They were good people and I do not criticise them but I question whether they were right for the job. As the hon. Lady said, we must tackle unemployment among those groups in the capital. We must ensure that we have the people with the right qualities for the job. If that means paying people more, let us pay more.

As the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said, the Government claim that awareness is a vital issue in terms of tax credits. She gave ground to the Government by saying that it is difficult to run take-up campaigns because so many languages are spoken in the capital. However, the issue goes much wider than that. It is about not just awareness but the structure of the tax credit, as the Government like to call the benefit. The Government should look seriously not just at working families tax credits but also at other benefits such as regional premiums. That would be a major change in Government policy on social security and I would not advocate embarking on such a change without serious research.

The cost of living in London is higher than elsewhere, yet we have national rates of benefits. We have argued in Parliament for higher housing allowances and a specific London allowance for key public sector workers in London. That is surely relevant to people who are struggling, whether on in-work or out-of-work benefits. If the Government believe that benefit increases across the board is too wide a river to cross, I suggest that they consider the analysis by the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North of the costs of child care and consider trials on regional premiums and child care tax credits, which would target some of the capital's problems. The hon. Lady was right to identify the need to look at supply as well as demand.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) made a powerful speech on the problems of the current council tax benefit system and I support all that he said. Many of the examples that he gave also occur in my constituency but my constituents are particularly hit by the shortfall in housing benefits. In advice session after advice session, I see constituents who would like to go into the private rental sector—indeed, I have met private sector landlords who would like to have them as tenants—but who cannot meet the difference between the housing benefit and the actual rent. Their income is not sufficient. It is totally unrealistic to expect them to be able to pay such rents. If we do not overcome that problem, the private sector will not play its part. It is madness to prevent the private rental sector from making a major contribution to the problem. The reform called for by the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North has come of age.

The sure start scheme is welcome but is targeted on very small areas. Some of its lessons need to be spread more widely, no more so than in London where some of the problems at which the sure start scheme is aimed exist in spades.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) has rightly won praise from hon. Members of all parties for introducing this fascinating debate and for the range and authority of the statistics that she adduced in a powerful speech. I am pleased to add to that praise. In a previous debate on work and pensions, she cogently talked about the poor take-up of working families tax credit, a point on which she elaborated today. That is an example of the puzzling nature of this subject, which has come out so well in the debate.

If Ministers do nothing else, I hope that they will take seriously our plea for a cool and proper look at what is happening in London and where that differs from other parts of the country. I hope that they will continue to pursue their research into the effectiveness of the various policies. For all the good will that hon. Members of all parties expressed, there was an undertone that some of the policies are not working as well as they might. That applies to other parts of the country, as well as to London.

The debate has been a wonderful way of exploding cynicism about this place. The contributions have been positive, but not always uncritical, including those made by Government Members such as the hon. Members for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman), for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson), and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). My hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) and for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) also made constructive and generous contributions. We should also remember those hon. Members who silently sat in the Chamber, including my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field). The debate deserves wider study.

The growing debate about poverty, which has been well exemplified today, has thrown up several general comments. The subject is still inadequately discussed, for which there is a political and structural reason. In the battle for votes, people tend to concentrate on socioeconomic classes B and C, as those are seen as the core battleground. Insufficient attention is given to people in classes D and E. That may be because they do not vote as often. In London in particular, there is a high level of social and physical mobility and those people are often not around to vote. The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington mentioned the change in pupil rolls. The change in electoral rolls is equally kaleidoscopic in London.

I hope that hon. Members will accept that the subject of poverty should not be the prerogative of any one party. I am proud to represent the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli. The Conservative voice has a part to play in the discussion, and we should have such discussions more often.

Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have acknowledged that the problem is multi-faceted, so it is logical that the policies to tackle it must be multiple and must work together. Several hon. Members have expressed unease that there are so many initiatives that they may trip each other up without achieving much. Ministers have a difficult balance to strike between evaluating their flagship and subsidiary policies, the policies of other Departments, local authorities and the voluntary sector, and ensuring that the orchestra is properly tuned and conducted.

Colleagues have touched on some further outstanding issues. Poverty is a relational as well as a purely functional matter. What has come across strongly in our debate—hon. Members who spend time living or working in London as well as those representing constituencies outside London may not be aware of it—is the sharp differences in economic and social status. Such differences co-exist side by side—not just in north and south Kensington or the City and Tower Hamlets, but also often in individual wards. Some signs of prosperity trickling down into other communities can be seen, but we must ensure that the poorer communities become more self-standing and self-sufficient economically. An effective community voice is also important. Poor communities will not be colonised by areas of affluence.

On the wider economic front, several hon. Members have already referred to the hugely changing economic profile of the capital, particularly following the decline of manufacturing industry. Great joblessness coexisting with a huge shortage of labour is a classic mismatch in the labour market; it is a paradox. As the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate said, access to education and skills is a problem. Hon. Members will know that I have a longstanding interest in adult literacy. Low self-esteem and lack of basic skills are a huge blight on the prospects of individuals.

The cost of housing was rightly mentioned. It is a major worry for many people struggling to work in key service sector jobs. One subject not mentioned so far is transport across the metropolis—the daily worry about access to work. We read today that the Government's latest proposals for partnership on the tube are likely to lead to few tangible results for several years. These are not just economic factors: they interact with the environment and can actively inhibit regeneration.

Disabled people and pensioners form part of my responsibilities as a Front Bencher. Although not the centre of today's debate, they are relevant. The tube is notoriously unfriendly to disabled people and dial-a-ride schemes often stop at sectoral or borough boundaries. Crime blights everyone. The disadvantaged and socially excluded are probably as blighted, if not more so, than others—for example, when hard-earned family transport goes up in smoke. Young families and older people can feel trapped in poor surroundings with a diminished quality of life and little chance to join the economic world.

All those factors feed into problems with the benefit system. It is partly a problem of take-up, which requires further research. Older people's take-up of the minimum income guarantee has been disappointing. Preserving incentives is another problem when the Government find themselves on the treadmill of ever greater means-testing, which inevitably leads to ever higher and unsustainable marginal withdrawal rates for benefit.

The moral of our debate is that we are at the start of the process of discovery. No easy solutions exist off the shelf. Before the debate, many people were probably indisposed to say that London had a problem. We do not want to over-emphasise it or suggest that everything is wrong in the capital. As the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said, many positive aspects of London life should be celebrated. Diversity and vibrancy are part of the equation and we should not view them as problems. We should not, however, sweep away the problems that exist. If we do nothing else, we should all use this debate and its aftermath to reflect seriously on the practical measures that we can take to help. We must remember that the needs must be met and the motivation must come from both inside and outside. We must all feel uneasy about a situation in which those needs co-exist so closely with the signs of success and affluence that are all around us.

This has been a superb debate. I join in the chorus of praise for my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) for initiating it. It is a shame that it has been restricted to an hour and a half, as we could have talked for much longer.

I should make it clear that as someone who lived in London many moons ago, I am not one of those deluded people who think that there is no poverty in London. I have seen it, as has anyone who has lived in London, and it is a simple mistake to think that the bright lights and high incomes extend to every member of the population. They certainly do not, and the Government realise that. London Members will have often come across that mistaken attitude, and they are right to keep saying that poverty affects people who live in London as greatly as anywhere else in the country. They are right also to expect us to address poverty in London as we address it in other parts of the country.

The extent of the poverty that existed in Britain when we came to office in 1997 was one of our biggest challenges. The problem was exacerbated by the policies of the previous Government. During their time in office child poverty doubled and unemployment trebled. Poverty must be a priority. The last Conservative Government did too little to alleviate it. There were problems for pensioners, with widening gaps between the richest and poorest pensioners, unemployment hit 3 million and child poverty was particularly worrying.

Will the Minister give way?

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have so many points to respond to and so few minutes to do that. I am perfectly happy to discuss the matter with him on another occasion.

We believe in equality and opportunity for all, so we could not be satisfied with that appalling situation and would not allow it to continue. We have set out to tackle it and are determined to continue to do so. As many hon. Members said, it is a complex and multidimensional problem. We must tackle causes, not just symptoms. Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have acknowledged the ambition of our aim, which is to halve child poverty in 10 years and eradicate it in 20. We have taken steps to combat joblessness, which is the main cause of poverty among those of working age, and begun to deal with pensioner poverty. Many hon. Members acknowledged in part the success and good progress that we have made so far. It is important to recognise that we are moving in the right direction, and this is where the value of such a debate is shown. Hon. Members have pointed out issues that it is important for the Government to take into account as we develop policies to bear down on poverty.

I want to deal with some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North and by others. It will be impossible for me to deal with them all in the time that I have left. If I do not get around to responding to specific points raised by hon. Members, I will of course write to them.

My hon. Friend made a point about the take-up of working families tax credit, which has been echoed by others in the Chamber. People have been puzzled about the disparity between the take-up in London and the take-up elsewhere. Hon. Members asked whether I could promise that serious research would be undertaken into that. Our policies are evaluated rigorously. They are evidence based. We take seriously our commitment to ensure that we make policy on the basis of what works, rather than what we think might work.

We are looking at take-up and the position of various stakeholders in London. We are carrying out a wide-ranging evaluation programme. Last week, my officials met officials from the Greater London Authority to discuss the problem and they will continue their dialogue with stakeholders throughout London. Such work will continue so that we can learn from the results. We want to know the basis of the problem and how to tackle the important matter of take-up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North referred to aspects of the welfare system that penalise Londoners and that need to be removed. She said that the problem occurred because of joblessness and mentioned some statistics that showed job-entry rates to be below the average. She asked whether problems of recruitment and retention compromised our ability to deliver. We are committed to building on the success of the new deal. Offices in the Benefits Agency and in job centres concentrate on London's recruitment and retention difficulties, but there is no evidence that that compromises our ability to deliver the programmes. That is not the problem but one of the biggest issues is to assist the many people in London who face multiple deprivation.

My hon. Friends the Members for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) have referred to issues in respect of their constituents. Helping the hardest-to-help groups is more difficult. We are developing policies, particularly the new deal, to tackle the many difficulties faced by groups that are harder to help because they suffer multiple deprivation, whether they are disabled people or people from ethnic minorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said, not all ethnic minorities suffer such problems. Therefore, we cannot say that the problem is one of discrimination or of ethnic minorities finding it harder to access the jobs market. It is not that simple.

We are continuing to develop our programmes and to target those who are hardest to help. However, the programmes are difficult to design and to evaluate. That is why, for example, the new deal for disabled people and the initiatives to help ethnic minorities and partners are behind the new deals for young people and for the long-term unemployed, which are successful. We know what works. We apply that and see the results. It is more difficult with harder-to-help groups, but to tackle the issue successfully and to get people back into work—the main way out of poverty—we must ensure that we get the more defined programmes right. Clearly, that will have an impact in London.

My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said that, in London, there is a much higher number of lone parents and less informal child care. She referred to perverse incentives and said that child care credit perhaps led to increases in fees that soak up the extra money that is available. We have no substantive evidence that the child care credit is forcing up the price of child care, although all of us have come across anecdotal evidence of that.

We need to keep a close eye on what is happening. We are examining the costs of formal child care. The working families tax credit limits are not set in stone. We continue to listen to representations in that respect. Indeed, we responded to representations in the previous Budget by raising the limit. We want people to keep talking to us about the matter, although I am not sure about the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) about regional premiums, which would be a nightmare from an administrative point of view. Of course, we must continue to listen to what works.

I am afraid that I am about to run out of time, and I have not managed to get through half the points that were made by hon. Members. I shall write to hon. Members whose points I have not addressed and no doubt we will continue the discussion in the Tea Room.

I thank the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs for attending the debate, in which I proposed to draw his attention to funding for police in Surrey, the increasingly overstretched nature of the local force and the growing worries of many of my constituents.

I shall start with a positive point. Surrey has the good fortune of being an area that enjoys one of the lowest levels of recorded crime per head of population in Britain. My constituency of Epsom and Ewell is a low-crime area in a low-crime county, as I am sure that the Minister will tell me. However, it is easy to look at headlines and spot an area that is not a problem and put it at the bottom of the priority list when considering next year's budget and resourcing. That is happening to Surrey and I ask the Minister to think more carefully about Surrey's future police resourcing. That attention is needed not only because of the internal issues within Surrey that I will describe, but the international practicalities of having the two largest airports in the United Kingdom on our doorstep. If there is a major incident at Heathrow or Gatwick, Surrey police inevitably form a major part of the response. The Minister's decisions on funding in Surrey have a direct impact on the ability of the emergency services to deal with major events quickly and effectively, should the unthinkable happen.

Surrey is at the bottom of the pile when it comes to funding. In a recent written answer, the Minister kindly provided me with details of the grant per capita provided by the Government to forces throughout the country. Surrey's per capita grant in the current financial year is £77.04. The force area that receives the next lowest amount is Dorset, which receives £85.83. By comparison, Northumbria receives almost twice as much—over £140 per head—despite lower living costs for officers in that area. Surrey has one of the few forces in the country in which the number of officers is falling.

The relative support that the Home Office provides to Surrey has worsened considerably in recent years. Since 1997–98, Essex police have received a 20 per cent. increase in grant funding, Thames Valley police a 22 per cent. increase, and Hampshire police a 23 per cent. increase. Surrey has had a 1 per cent. cut in grant funding.

This year, the Government have announced a small increase of 2.3 per cent. for Surrey in the coming financial year. However, there has been a 4.9 per cent. increase in Surrey's cost base, which was largely made up of an extra 3 per cent. for police pay and additional costs for police pensions. All that means that the funding squeeze on police in Surrey has become tighter.

What are the consequences on the county of the funding squeeze? To start with, they are structural. From January, the force has had to streamline its operations from seven divisional headquarters to four. That means that fewer senior officers have operational roles. An example from my constituency is that Epsom always had its own local superintendent, but it no longer does. Our local police must now report to the divisional headquarters of a superintendent in Staines, which is a considerable distance from the town. However, the previous report by the inspectorate cited that one of the Surrey force's few weaknesses—the report was otherwise glowing, which does great credit to senior officers and those on the ground—was that local knowledge in control centres was rated as "poor" by operational staff. A financial process that creates a tighter structure with fewer operational centres can only make that worse.

In my constituency, Epsom police station's custody suite will now be open for only part of the week, rather than the entire week, to save money. Officers will have to transfer prisoners to Reigate, which is perhaps 10 miles away. That development is especially worrying in view of the changed nature of Epsom town centre, which is one of those centres on the fringes of London that are increasingly becoming dominated by pubs, clubs and restaurants. Unruly behaviour on Friday and Saturday nights is becoming worse and there are signs of violence that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. Only a few weeks ago, there was a serious stabbing outside a club in the town. Considering such developments, my guess is that in the years ahead Epsom town centre will become more rather than less difficult to police.

The Surrey police are scaling down their responsiveness to 999 calls, as they very publicly announced a few weeks ago. From now on, only calls that meet clear criteria will receive a response. For example, police will refuse to attend burglar alarms in the absence of clear signs of activity on a property. In fact, the problem is much worse than that. Already the pressures on front-line officers in dealing with 999 calls are manifesting themselves. Several of my constituents contacted me to express anxiety about how difficult it is to receive a 999 response to all but the most significant incidents. In one case a few weeks ago, a gentleman in my constituency had his car vandalised by a gang of local youths. He knew who they were. He contacted the police and asked for an officer to come round immediately, but he did not receive a response for a couple of days. That is an operational issue for Surrey police, but it reflects the day-to-day pressures on officers, which manifest themselves in the first signs of a service that is poorer than my constituents would choose to receive.

Officers' pay is an issue not only for the police in Surrey but throughout the south-east. Officers in Surrey are paid perhaps £6,000 a year less than their counterparts just over the border in London, who have the advantage of London weighting. There are signs that Surrey is losing officers to the Met, which is aggressively expanding its rolls. Such officers go because they can earn a bit more money for travelling not very far. The Minister needs to be mindful of that trend in the next few months, as there is a danger that force levels outside London will suffer as a result of the drive to recruit in the Met.

The crime figures for Surrey do not sufficiently reflect the increase in antisocial behaviour in the county and the social upheaval that it creates. We already know about the impact of such behaviour in inner-city areas. We must not allow it to take hold in suburban and country areas as well.

Against that background, I cannot praise Surrey officers on the ground highly enough for the commitment that they bring to the job and for their work in keeping crime figures down. They do an excellent job. However, in dealing with the growing menace of antisocial behaviour, there simply are not enough of them to provide adequate protection for my constituents and people throughout mid-Surrey.

I shall describe some of the incidents that take place every week in my constituency and with which the police simply do not have the numbers to cope. One case involved a woman who ran a small upholstery business in a building adjoining Banstead station. Her premises were probably originally the offices for an old coal yard—a detached building in the middle of the station forecourt. She has been there for nearly 30 years, but she is now leaving, having been terrified by a group of teenagers who, day after day, week after week, would vandalise her building and harass her in her place of work, banging on the side of the building and smashing windows while she cowered inside. Inevitably, before the police could come, they had melted away into the surrounding area. When one night they forced their way into her building, through strong iron bars, smashed up the inside and wrecked her business, she decided that enough was enough. She is on her way. None of that ever showed up in the crime figures. It might have showed up as a one-off, but the figures did not reflect the harassment that that woman faced week after week.

A second case involves a gang that has systematically vandalised Ashtead station in the past year. They hung around on a Saturday night, covered the walls with graffiti, jumped on trains, wrecked carriages and stopped off to commit acts of vandalism at various stations along the way. My local beat constable has done sterling work in trying to tackle the problem.

All credit to Surrey police. On a couple of occasions they have mounted operations to remove the ringleaders, but that has not solved the problem of that gang and others from all over the county going up and down the railway line on a Friday and Saturday night causing damage near the stations. The resources do not exist in Surrey to mount a systematic campaign to deal with the problem. The reality is that one or two local officers are confronted by a gang of 30 young people, who basically say, "Up yours!" Those officers cannot deal on an operational basis with such problems.

Very little of what the gang does will show up in official crime figures, but the fear that it causes is real. The bulk of our law-abiding teenagers, who live in one of the safest areas in Britain, as the Minister would tell us, are afraid to walk around Ashtead after 6 pm because of the gang. Gang members cause damage and harass commuters and young people in the area.

A similar problem occurred in Stoneleigh broadway, where another gang has harassed shopkeepers and committed acts of vandalism for months. In the past couple of weeks, the gang's activities have stepped up a gear and it committed an unpleasant assault on a local shopkeeper—an example of antisocial behaviour turning into criminality. Other incidents in my constituency involve shopkeepers on Tattenham corner and some of the smaller parades.

There are now widespread reports that the gang culture that has grown up in suburban areas is beginning to attract youngsters from the cities and other parts of the south-east who are looking for a Friday night session of vandalism and violence. That is especially true of the areas along the railway line in my area—as it is for others, I suspect. It is easy to jump on a train, cause trouble and get away quickly.

To some degree, the problem is showing through in crime figures. If the Minister studies the incidence of recorded crime in Surrey, he will see that criminal damage rates are now much higher than in other counties, especially in rural areas. The same is true of drug offences and, more worryingly, violent crime. For example, in Surrey there are three times as many acts of violence against the person as in Warwickshire. Therein lies the rub for the Minister. Surrey is a low-crime area that lies alongside the high-crime area of London. I understand that it has not been a priority for the Home Office. However, if the financial squeeze on Surrey police makes it impossible for them to deal with the rising problem of antisocial behaviour, we risk the tougher battle fought in the inner cities being brought out to the suburbs and a broader area of society, which cannot be desirable.

I have two requests for the Minister. First, although I do not expect him to get out his cheque book for long-term funding here and now, when his Department reviews future funding requirements for forces, will he reconsider Surrey's case and ask whether we merit such a low settlement in comparison with other counties? My second request concerns antisocial behaviour and vandalism on the railways. I have already discussed with the chief constable the possibility of mounting a systematic campaign this spring and summer to try to stamp it out once and for all. Inevitably, on a tight budget the chief constable does not easily have the resources to do that. Does the Home Office have discretionary funds? Can Surrey police, together with British Transport police and the railway companies seek the resources to mount such a campaign from the Home Office?

In the past couple of generations, we have seen a steady erosion of standards of behaviour throughout too much of our society. Too often, it has led to criminal activity. Crime rates today are much higher than when our parents were children. In Surrey and similar parts of the country, the trend is not the massive social problem that we face in many of our inner cities, but we cannot afford to ignore it. I do not want to return in five or 10 years to try to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Police in Surrey need sufficient resources to stamp on the unwelcome trend in antisocial behaviour. I fear that they are far too thinly stretched at present because the overall crime figures give a veneer that all is well. Surrey police deserve the credit that they get for their work from the police inspectorate and the public, but the pressure on resources is already making the service that they offer a little ragged around the edges. The Minister can help to change that, and I urge him to do so

First, 1 congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on securing this debate on policing in mid-Surrey. It gives us a good opportunity to air local concerns and allows me to outline what the Government and the police are doing to reduce crime further and make Surrey a safer place in which to live.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I chide him a little. He spoke about declining standards of respect and behaviour in society. He is a member of the Conservative party, which told us not so long ago that there was no such thing as society. If we had not gone through such a long period of dismantling the things that make our society cohesive, we might not face some of the problems that we do. Let us not forget that, according to the British crime survey, which is generally regarded as the most authoritative measure of crime—a better measure than reported crime—in the year up to April 2001 the chance of being the victim of crime in England and Wales was at its lowest since the survey began in 1981.

I do not dismiss the seriousness of the incidents that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, nor do I deny that there are significant problems still to be faced and overcome. However, the surveys do not reflect his description of everything falling apart around our ears. I shall consider some of his arguments before I cover financial and staffing issues.

It is true that Surrey has relatively little crime and has experienced falls in crime. Even recorded crime fell by just less than 1 per cent. in the 12 months to last March, and it has fallen by more than 10 per cent. since 1995. Both those statistics exclude the effects of the boundary changes. The detection rate for crime in Surrey for the past year was 28 per cent., compared with 25 per cent. in the south-east region, which suggests that the police are doing a good job.

The hon. Gentleman asked me about antisocial behaviour. Of course it is important to have more police on the beat to respond to crimes and I shall talk about the Government's reform program in that regard. Most antisocial behaviour and vandalism of the sort that he describes requires—and the police deserve—a partnership between the police and local authorities and other agencies. His local authority should have an antisocial behaviour co-ordinator, who should work with the police to ensure that full use is made of the antisocial behaviour orders, curfews and legislation that the Government have introduced to tackle the problems.

The Police Reform Bill will both simplify and extend the scope of antisocial behaviour orders to make them more flexible. One of the changes will enable the British Transport police to seek antisocial behaviour orders. That will be of significant use against those who are behaving on trains or at stations in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. I hope that he will welcome those moves.

The hon. Gentleman asked about resources. There is no central pool of funds for antisocial behaviour work, but just as we have had a crime reduction program this year, next year we will have a safer communities initiative, which will fund priority crime reduction activities in local areas. For some of the problems that he describes, money from the communities against drugs initiative can be used, which crime reduction partnerships and local authorities will have received. That can be used to fund policing activities or deal with the consequences of drug misuse, or for closed circuit television. A range of funds that did not previously exist is being made available to communities to help to tackle those problems.

Let us consider the wider issues. We recently debated next year's police settlement in the House. There was a 6.1 per cent. overall increase in provision for police spending through Government grants in England and Wales, which builds on a 10.1 per cent. increase in the current financial year. That is good news. Surrey police were allocated a Government grant of £82.9 million—an increase of 2.4 per cent. on the current financial year. On one of the more discretionary matters, I decided to continue to pay the costs incurred by the Metropolitan police boundary changes in April 2000 for another year. Therefore, Surrey police will receive an additional £800,000 to meet those costs in 2002–03.

Aside from discretionary decisions of that sort, the distribution of grant is intended to reflect the relative needs of forces. The formula is weighted so that forces that serve larger populations receive more money. It also takes into account the socio-demographic nature of the population. Surrey is fortunate because it has experienced a large decrease in young male unemployment, which is a significant indicator in the formula that establishes the likelihood of crime taking place. It has also had a lower than average increase in resident and daytime population. That is reflected in the grant distribution for the current year.

The 2.4 per cent. increase in grant is not the only additional money that Surrey will receive this year. It will receive a further £3.3 million from the crime fighting fund to meet the costs of recruiting extra police officers, as well as the costs of those it recruited last year. It will also receive £11,000 from the rural policing fund and it is expected to benefit from additional funding to help meet the cost of the Airwave communications system.

It is for police authorities to set the final budget and they must determine the precepts. Government grant is just one indicator of police performance. The Audit Commission's figures on spend per capita for 1997–98 to 1999–2000 show that Surrey police spent more than the other forces in the south-east, although I accept the hon. Gentleman's figures with regard to grant per capita under the police grant.

The hon. Gentleman raised several questions about the police funding formula. Although it has many strengths and the policing community retains a high degree of confidence in it, we are working on updating it in line with the needs of policing for the next five years. I also want to ensure that the formula supports the reform and modernisation processes upon which we have embarked.

A working group has been established to examine the formula. Its members include representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities and other interested bodies. The group is considering a range of options to update the police funding formula, particularly with regard to the police activity data that underlie the formula and the additional costs that might arise from policing especially sparsely or densely populated areas.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the proximity of Gatwick and Heathrow airports. I cannot give any guarantees about the outcome, until the exercise has been completed. However, as such questions are raised every year throughout the country in consultations about the police grant, I hope that we will be able to answer them and show people that at least we have examined them, even if we have decided that they should not influence the formula.

Will the Minister also ask the people who are engaged in that work to examine the potential impact of cross-border movements? Some young people board a train and travel a few stops down the line to Surrey to commit antisocial acts because policing is tougher in the Metropolitan police area. Such cross-border flows of trouble could become a problem

I am unsure whether it would prove possible for a formula to reflect such movements without it becoming incredibly complex. The Metropolitan police might point to criminal activity that is committed by people who come into the city from places such as Surrey. However, the type of one-way traffic activity that the hon. Gentleman mentioned might be addressed, if there was an evidence base to show that it was taking place. Some formulas are so complex that nobody understands how they operate. The new formula must avoid that pitfall if it is to command respect.

On police numbers, the public rightly feel reassured by the sight of police officers on our streets—it helps to reduce the fear of crime. The police reform process that we embarked on is designed to achieve record numbers of police officers in England and Wales by this spring and 130,000 officers by spring next year, and to make better use of their time. Our own research shows that just fewer than 50 per cent. of a typical police constable's time is spent in the police station rather than out on patrol, for a variety of reasons.

On a recent visit to the police headquarters in Surrey, I was interested to see the new call centre that had been established with the specific intention of enabling officers to report directly the details of crimes, such as burglaries, that they had dealt with. They no longer have to travel back to a police station to enter the details before setting out on the next visit. I was impressed by that change when I visited the force with the chief constable. It is just one example of the ways in which new investment can free up officer time and, in part, it is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question about response times for particular types of incident. The public can also use the call centre. As public confidence in that way of contacting the police grows, police time will be freed up.

In general, investment in information technology, reduced bureaucracy, better liaison with the courts and more effective use of civilian staff—the chief constable of Surrey is keen on that—will all help to deliver more police officers in the community, not just wandering the streets but devoting their energy to getting underneath and behind the underlying problems that the hon. Gentleman described and solving them. That is the wish of the public and the Government.

The overall number of police officers in Surrey on 30 September 2001 was 2,018. That is just under 400 more officers than in March 1997, although about half of the increase resulted from boundary changes with the Metropolitan police on 1 April 2000—none the less, it is a significant increase. I referred to the support that the chief constable gives to civilian staff. Their numbers have increased since March 1997 by 230 to 957 in September 2001. Many of the extra civilian support staff are used to free police officers from paperwork and from jobs that can be as effectively undertaken by civilians.

Surrey recognised that it would be affected by the boundary changes around London in April 2000. It had Met secondees, but recognised the need to recruit early. The force recruited strongly in 1999–2000 and in 2000–01 and expects to be at its target strength of 2,043 by 31 March 2002, which reflects a slight decline over the past 12 months. The force and chief constable deliberately decided to get ahead of the game and recruit extra officers so that they were not overly affected by the return of the secondees; I certainly would not criticise that judgment.

Under the crime fighting fund, Surrey police were allocated an additional 134 recruits over and above their previous recruitment plans for the three years to March 2003. In the first year, the force appointed 240 recruits, including 94 funded by the CFF. Last year, in addition to the force's allocation of 46 CFF recruits for 2000–01, the Government allowed it to recruit this year's allocation of 48. Similarly, we have allowed the force to recruit several CFF officers this year that should have been recruited next year. The Government have given significant support to the recruitment of extra police officers in Surrey. Overall, we expect the Surrey force to recruit more than 200 new recruits in the current financial year and, through the CFF, it will be able to recruit another 32 officers next year, over and above any planned recruitment of its own.

The hon. Gentleman talked about pay. I do not have time to set out details of the extra allowances, but as he knows a significant number of officers in Surrey received for the first time an extra payment of £2,000. Surrey also benefited from help with low-cost housing.

We are aware of concern about recruitment and retention issues; we are working with Surrey and other forces to get to grips with the matter and to find the best way of tackling it.

Last month, the Government announced an expansion in day surgery in the national health service, a welcome decision given the lengthy waiting times for most elective operations.

In 2000–01, according to the Audit Commission, the average wait for day-case patients needing cataract operations was 163 days, for hernia operations 84 days and for varicose vein operations, 154 days. Furthermore, critics of the NHS often do not recognise that the demand for operations continues to increase. The United Kingdom has an ageing population, which is reflected in the increasing amount of resources that the NHS must set aside each year for treating and managing chronic conditions and performing elective surgery.

More operations than ever before are being performed; for example, in 1994 there were 145,000 cataract operations, in 1999 there were 200,000 and about 250,000 are expected to be performed next year. However, unless we are prepared to carry out a far-reaching overhaul of the way in which surgery is carried, demand will continue greatly to outstrip supply.

A report by consultants from Moorfields eye hospital, published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology in the year 2000, warned of the escalating problem of visual impairment in the UK. The report concluded that by the beginning of this year the number of people with impaired vision needing some form of surgical intervention would reach 2.5 million and many of them would die before they had the operation. That is especially regrettable given the reduction in the quality of life caused by impaired vision, especially in elderly people.

Unfortunately, the UK is not the only country facing this problem; hundreds of thousands of patients in France and Germany are in a similar position, and even their much-vaunted health systems leave thousands of patients untreated each year. Indeed, no health system, however generously resourced or efficient it is, will ever eliminate the problem of unmet need. A constituent who came to see me recently mentioned the German system, which we hear is well resourced and has no waiting list, yet her sister had waited eight months for a hip replacement in the private sector. It is not only a problem in the UK; other countries have similar problems.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the way that elective surgery is managed in this country can and should be improved, as the Government have said. Too many patients wait too long for treatment. For example, last year a quarter of patients in north-west Kent waiting for an ophthalmology appointment had to wait in excess of six months to be seen. Several patients, having eventually been given a date for cataract surgery, had their operations cancelled at the last moment because their bed or theatre space was needed for an emergency.

For an elderly and often vulnerable patient, such a scenario is stressful and confusing. It is also extremely frustrating for the patient's family, who have to prepare their mother or father once again to face an operation, having already had to deal with the problems caused by their impaired vision, perhaps for many months.

Patients and their families ask why they should have to wait so long for what is in most cases a routine and relatively straightforward procedure. They also ask why there are such glaring local variations in the way that elective surgery is managed. Why do some trusts have measures to ensure that day surgery cases and planned operations are not cancelled for emergency cases and others not?

? Plans by Darent Valley hospital in my constituency to begin 24-hour surgery, with six beds specifically ring-fenced for patients requiring routine operations such as hernias, varicose veins and urological procedures, are an example of innovative thinking, which needs to be more widely replicated in the NHS. The new service, which is being supported by a dedicated nursing team, is being funded for 12 months by the winter emergency services team, and will allow 30 extra patients each week to receive treatment. Darent Valley hospital is the first hospital in Kent to provide a dedicated, stand-alone unit for intermediate and elective surgery. That is welcome and essential. I have been in touch with the hospital over the past few months, and I have recent figures about its latest situation.

The Minister will know that Darent Valley hospital was zero-rated and has faced significant problems. However, I am pleased to tell those in the Chamber that there have already been noticeable improvements. The number of patients waiting more than 26 weeks for an out-patient appointment has reduced from 501 to 117 in the past four months. The total number of patients waiting for more than 13 weeks for an out-patient appointment dropped dramatically from 2,160 in March 2001 to 654. That is a huge and welcome improvement in waiting times for out-patient appointments.

The worst problem faced by the hospital is the waiting list for in-patient procedures. The total number of patients waiting for an in-patient appointment is still 3,500 and has not dropped significantly over the past year, despite the trust's best efforts. The hospital has successfully reduced the wait for an out-patient appointment, but there are still huge backlogs on inpatient appointments, which is causing it great difficulties.

The new unit will allow the hospital to fast-track elective surgery cases and to ensure that all patients are seen within the year. Some 5 per cent. of patients have to wait more than 12 months. The new unit will also ensure that more patients are treated within the Government's target period of six months, which the hospital is finding challenging. The scheme is welcome and will significantly improve the situation. The drawback of the scheme is that it is only a temporary measure. The trust does not yet have funding to keep the unit open beyond next year, and has no resources permanently to operate its theatres around the clock. Although the winter and emergency services team funding is valuable, it underlines this country's ad hoc and inconsistent approach to elective surgery.

Occasional batches of funding for individual trusts are not the answer. Every trust in the country must look closely at the way in which it conducts elective and intermediate surgery, and must work hard to identify new ways of ensuring that patients do not wait as long, and get a better overall quality of service. Just as important, the Department of Health and the NHS Modernisation Agency must ensure that trusts are given the necessary resources and support. After all, what bothers patients who are waiting for elective operations is that under the current system they are made to feel like third-class patients. The quality of care that they get may be good, but naturally they feel aggrieved because it is made clear to them that their condition is of low priority, and that their treatment will be fitted in as and when circumstances permit. Their condition may not be life threatening, but it precludes them from enjoying quality of life, so why should they always be sent to the back of the queue?

There is no question of blame, and I am not attacking anyone. My point is simply that patients who are on routine waiting lists are often made to feel that their case must wait for the more urgent ones. They ask, quite reasonably, why that must always be so. This is why dedicated, stand-alone elective surgery units are a way forward. They ensure that patients awaiting elective operations enjoy the same access to health care as any other NHS patient does.

Dedicated units have operated effectively in the United States of America for many years. According to one US surgeon writing in the British Medical Journal, they have become such a fixture of the US health care system that in some cases they are threatening the viability of neighbouring general hospital units. One surgeon said that the dedicated unit was remarkably efficient. Its four theatres and fluoroscopy room performed 250 surgical and 200 interventional pain management procedures each month without operating at weekends or evenings, and without running at maximum capacity. The range of its care included orthopaedics, such as joint arthroscopy, cruciate ligament, shoulder reconstructions and extensive arm surgery. It also included general surgery, such as "lumps and bumps" and hernia repair, cosmetic surgery and invasive pain management. A neighbouring facility catered for common ear, nose and throat conditions and for ophthalmologic surgery.

Of course, specialist fast-track units are not suited to the needs of every patient. Patients with multiple health problems who need treatment from a range of services and specialisms will still need to be treated under the current system. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that for most patients, dedicated fast-track units are a viable option. Specialist units can operate throughout the week, at weekends as well as nights, provided they have proper support and are well integrated with other hospital facilities so that all the relevant services can be accessed easily and quickly at all times. They would cut swathes through our waiting lists in a short time.

The Royal College of Surgeons is backing the idea. The ex-president of the college—Sir Barry Jackson—said that the idea of ring-fencing elective beds and adopting more flexible working patterns should be embraced by the profession and promoted, providing there is an adequate number of surgeons and support staff to make it possible.

The British Medical Association also said that the concept of dedicated fast-track units was a welcome contribution to the debate about reducing time spent by patients waiting for elective surgery. I am therefore pleased that the Government announced last year their intention to build 26 fast-track units by 2006 as part of their latest hospital building programme. Will 26 units be enough to make a difference, given the rapidly increasing demand for elective surgery? There is a good case to be made for a dedicated unit of that sort to be built in north-west Kent, which is a fast-growing area where there is already a high demand for elective procedures. What will we do while we wait for the programme of elective units to come on stream, supposedly in 2006?

Plans by Dartford and Gravesham NHS trust to ring-fence beds for elective surgery and to explore the viability of 24-hour surgery is one way of ensuring that patients awaiting elective procedures are seen more quickly. Another possible approach would be to employ surgical teams from abroad on short-term NHS contracts. I know that it is extremely controversial but only last week I received a letter from a German health association that said it could provide the NHS with a complete surgical team able to carry out a wide range of elective and intermediate procedures. Clearly there would be all sorts of issues but they would be working in NHS hospitals, with NHS staff and NHS equipment, on NHS patients. It is worthy of consideration. Currently there are not enough surgeons and nurses to cut through the backlog of waiting lists as fast as we would like. It might be a way of reducing some of the problems.

As many of our operating theatres are not capable of operating round the clock because of manpower and resource restrictions, it would seem sensible to examine such ideas as a means of clearing our surgical backlog at regular intervals. After all, most patients would much prefer to be treated in an NHS hospital, which is close to home and a familiar environment, than to have to fly abroad for treatment. While I am pleased to see real and tangible efforts being made to cut elective surgery waiting lists, we can and need to go further. With the demand for elective procedures likely only to increase in the next few years, we have to ensure now that we have the right sort of surgical regime in place so that the NHS has the capacity to deal with the problems effectively.

I have worked in the NHS for a long time. I believe that I am the only MP who currently carries on any medical practice. I therefore have a lot of experience with the way that patients deal with the NHS and the way that they handle their care. Patients, generally speaking, do not complain about the care once they receive it. People who have heart attacks or get pneumonia go to hospital and are treated very quickly and generally are extremely appreciative. Patients complain not about emergency care, but about the length of time that they have to wait for non-emergency care. That is the biggest problem that the NHS faces.

There are currently three problems. One is increasing demand. We call it a problem but I am not sure that it is. People are living longer and the population is ageing. It has been shown that men in particular will spend the last 15 years of their life with a chronic or disabling illness. That is a long time. Many of those chronic and disabling illnesses are amenable to surgical intervention. If we could reduce the number of people waiting, we could improve the quality of life for millions of people by operating on them when they need it. I see it not as a problem, but as an opportunity. People are living longer: they are coming forward with more illnesses and they have more treatable conditions. It is up to us to ensure that they get that treatment.

The second problem that the NHS faces is its inability to predict accurately how long people must wait. They are told that they will have to wait six or nine months for their operation but cannot be given an accurate figure. The hospital cannot predict how many operations it will carry out in a given week because it cannot predict how many emergencies it might have to deal with that would eat into that list.

The third problem is the low priority given to routine cases. Hospitals have to make emergencies their priority, but the corollary is that people who are not emergencies see themselves as a nuisance and insufficiently ill to merit the treatment that they want. That is unnecessary and unhelpful. Operations are postponed for very good reasons but it causes huge disruption for families. The Government should look at the overall picture of the disruption not only to the family, but also to the staff and the patient and the overall costs. Someone needing a hip replacement will be virtually incapacitated. If they had a hip replacement they could become productive members of society. If we examined the overall cost to society of a patient on a waiting list, we might discover some interesting figures.

In conclusion, we have to change the culture and move towards an NHS that is seen to view people as a high priority, seen to provide the right treatment and seen to predict when an operation should take place. If we can produce a culture in which people no longer view themselves as a nuisance, but as part of a system to provide treatment in response to their needs in a timely fashion, everyone will be more satisfied. I urge the Minister to reflect carefully on the plans that I outlined and assess whether any mileage can be gained in progressing them further. I look forward to hearing her response.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) on securing this debate and on his thoughtful speech about the direction of reform for the NHS. Much is happening, but more progress remains to be made. My hon. Friend clearly speaks with great authority and commitment. He is right that this subject does not always secure the most attention from the public or the media, yet it is a vital issue for many thousands of people every day.

Last year, more than 6.5 million elective operations in NUS trusts took place in England and nearly half were day case operations. As my hon. Friend said, these operations matter immensely to people's quality of life and the effective delivery of elective surgery is crucial to delivering the in-patient waiting time target set out in the NHS plan and rightly so. We all want top quality emergency care when we need it, but we also want to know that routine treatment for quality of life and our ability to carry on living our lives to the full is delivered as speedily as possible.

My hon. Friend is right to raise issues about the separation of elective and emergency care as part of the modernisation of services. Equally important is the role of the Modernisation Agency in improving the delivery of care at trust level and spreading good practice throughout the NHS. The success of the national booked admissions programme is also important. By 2005, it will allow GPs to book hospital appointments at times convenient to the patient. It is not just about better management of elective surgery and patient treatment throughout the NHS, but about addressing the frustration of patients who do not know when their appointment for needed surgery will take place. Shaping the services around the needs of patients as well as more efficient care is necessary.

In north-west Kent, some measures are already under way to increase the optimum use of bed capacity and ease the pressures placed on elective surgery by emergency care. The new Darent Valley hospital, opened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in December 2000, was linked closely to the development and implementation of new models of care around a "closer to home" strategy, which supports additional capacity in the non-acute setting.

In the past year, the trust and primary care trust rolled out initiatives to support these new ways of working with an increasing emphasis on that strategy. For example, the stroke rehabilitation team reduced the length of stay of rehabilitative patients from an average of 21 days to an average of seven. The intermediate care team worked to prevent the need for hospital admission by working directly with the medical assessment unit and accident and emergency departments. Additional intermediate care capacity was freed up at the Livingstone hospital and the orthopaedic bridging team in the acute trust allowed the team to treat around 10 per cent. of total orthopaedic admissions, thus reducing the average length of stay of patients in the acute setting. Of course more remains to be done, but it is important to recognise progress.

My hon. Friend spoke about elective centres, but I want to speak about the national position on diagnostic and treatment centres before I deal with his points about north-west Kent. Diagnostic and treatment centres are a new, more appropriate way of delivering elective care. They can carry out a wide range of elective work and, by moving elective patients out of acute centres and into dedicated units, they free valuable emergency and critical care beds. They are separate units, not disrupted by other parts of the hospital, so patients can be treated quickly and efficiently and in an appropriate environment. Often, the centres are on the hospital site and so appropriate treatment in emergency or critical care units is available. However, as my hon. Friend said, there are a variety of DTCs in other countries and we need to learn from their experience, too.

A diagnostic and treatment centre is defined as a dedicated unit providing safe, high-volume, elective diagnostic and treatment services, with its work separated and protected from emergency pressures. DTCs are capable of delivering a wide range of services. How they develop in an individual hospital trust will be influenced by a variety of factors, including the potential impact and reliance on other hospital services. Careful consideration must be given to those factors in each individual instance, but there are some core elements that we expect all DTCs to provide.

First, elective or scheduled care must be separated from emergency care, with both diagnosis and treatment usually provided. Secondly, the centres must focus on effective work processes for maximum efficiency to make possible the speedy treatment of as many patients as possible. Care must be co-ordinated among medical and surgical specialities, and across all disciplines. Fourthly, they must provide a service focused around the patient, with prompt and convenient access and reliable booked appointments. As my hon. Friend made clear, patients' concerns and experiences must be addressed when considering the routine surgery that they need.

The booked admissions programme is a crucial part of the DTCs. It should mean the abolition of waiting lists for hospital appointments and admissions. Patients should receive a choice of convenient times within a guaranteed maximum waiting time. If the current trend in the growth of GP referrals continues, it will halve the maximum waiting time for a routine appointment, with the average waiting time for out-patient appointments also falling in line with the targets in the NHS plan.

The DTCs and the booked admissions programme will have a major impact on elective surgery throughout the NHS. The DTCs also have an important part to play in achieving the targets in the NHS plan. As my hon. Friend said, we have already announced a series of diagnostic and treatment centres. A target of 20 was set out in the NHS plan, with eight fully operational and treating 200,000 patients a year by 2004. The plan states: "

We will develop a new generation of Diagnostic and Treatment Centres to increase the number of elective operations that can be treated in a single day or with a short stay."

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced plans for 26 DTCs in February 2001. That announcement put us well on course to exceed the target that I mentioned a moment ago. Work is progressing to ensure that those deliver, through tight project management and, where necessary, intense and early process redesign. They will work with the NHS Modernisation Agency as part of its programme.

My hon. Friend asked us to go further and I agree that we need to do so. The Government are considering ways to extend the DTC programme to areas including the south-east and, if possible, bring it forward. We have an ambitious programme for centres throughout London and the south-east and we will consider any suitable proposals to benefit even more patients.

We are already working with the London and southeast regional offices to identify additional diagnostic and treatment centre sites. We aim to have at least four schemes up and running in London and the south-east by the end of this year. We will encourage all proposals if they offer an appropriate response to local needs and quality and value for money. We will look to the new strategic health authorities to oversee the strategy and development of diagnostic and treatment centre proposals. They will work with local project teams to establish when the proposals should move forward.

We are also developing a process for further proposals to receive approval. We shall consider future proposals, including those from the new Kent and Medway health authority, which will no doubt need to take a strategic view of the delivery of services for Kent and Medway as a whole. At the launch of the diagnostic and treatment centre programme on 6 February this year, further expressions of interest were sought from trusts that wish to participate in the second wave of diagnostic and treatment centre expansion. We expect more interest and we shall look to the Modernisation Agency to support applications.

It is only appropriate, of course that the first decision about where DTC sites are located should come from the future strategic health authorities. Obviously, the Kent and Medway health authority will need to explore with all the acute trusts and the nine PCTs the current capacity constraints within the area. Strategic decisions will need to be taken about the future delivery of services, but I understand that a provision of a diagnostic and treatment centre to serve the population of Kent and Medway to increase elective capacity is one of the options that is being considered.

Discussions will need to take place on an area-wide basis to determine the most appropriate site and the most appropriate way forward. If developed, a diagnostic and treatment centre could relieve pressure on not only the Darent Valley hospital, but other providers. My hon. Friend asked what should happen while the development of diagnostic and treatment centres takes place. He mentioned the present work in his local hospital. He is right that, due to constraints on capacity as a result of an increase in emergency admissions and delayed discharges, the trust has reduced the number of cancelled operations by protecting six beds for intermediate dependency elective surgery. Those beds are being used for patients on the in-patient waiting list, whose operations require them to stay overnight.

Non-recurrent funding from WEST—the winter and emergency services team—will maintain that service for 10 months from the end of February this year and will allow 30 patients a week to access surgery. That amounts to 1,380 a year from a current waiting list of 3,500 patients. By targeting the patients with the greatest clinical need whose operations make them most suitable for such care, it will enable the trust to make considerable progress.

The trust is negotiating with the PCT to ensure that funding is provided on a recurrent basis for the remainder of the year and beyond. Clearly, it is for the local economy to decide how best its local targets should be met and the best way in which to provide the service. My hon. Friend is also right that we shall need to look at other innovative ways of improving elective surgery and reducing waiting times in the meantime, such as introducing the booked admissions programme and recruiting staff from different places, including abroad.

We are only too aware of the pressures on the NHS system. Perhaps too often, the media focuses on the accident and emergency programmes and emergency care. We have taken steps to deal with those pressures and to improve emergency care by making more money available and introducing reforms to improve the patient experience, whenever we can. We need also to keep high in our minds the work that is being done to improve the support for those who need routine treatment. We must look to how we use new methods of working and how to make the best use of modern, more sophisticated technology. That is clearly about expanding capacity and investing the additional resources, where needed, and also most crucially about reforming the way in which we provide services and ensuring that the additional resources are put to best use. We must use that work to make the greatest possible impact on people's lives and, especially, patients' lives.

I hope that my hon. Friend will feel that considerable progress is being made in diagnostic and treatment centres throughout the country and that there is the potential for a big difference for his constituents and those who use the specialist elective surgical services throughout north-west Kent

I am grateful for securing the debate to allow me to talk about regional development agencies, and especially the South West of England development agency.

There is no doubt that regional development agencies have burst on the scene. However, I want to know why they are here and what they hope to achieve. If I were asked what the South West RDA stood for, I would say a "really dreadful agency that removes democracy absolutely", which is "RDA" twice.

Why must we have a regional development agency in the south-west of that size? It includes Gloucester, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. If one turned the RDA on its head from Gloucester and stuck it upwards, it would stretch to the Scottish borders, which gives some idea of the amount of land that is covered.

The RDA's brief is to help with economic development, efficiencies, employment, development and sustained development. It has not hit any of those criteria since its inception. It is meant to work for the benefit of people in the south-west, not for the benefit of a few.

Why do we have a quango that has been formed to be subservient to an un-elected regional assembly? I do not understand why the assembly has the say over the RDA. During a similar debate on 12 December, my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) asked about the Government's plans for the regional assemblies, what they would be used for and when they would be made legitimate. Our problem is that the RDA goes to the regional assembly every time that a decision must be made and the assembly okays it. What legitimacy does that have in the south-west? Absolutely none.

Let us examine the figures that show the growth of the RDA. In 1999, its budget was £44 million, in 2000, it was £63 million and, in 2001, £84 million. Up to 20 per cent. of its assets can be transferred to any one project and I shall return to that subject because of last year's foot and mouth crisis.

I am intrigued by the RDA's annual accounts. It spent nearly £10 million on administration out of a budget of £84 million. The accounts show that it spent £41 million safeguarding 602 jobs and creating a further 1,000. That money has been spent badly on behalf of the people in the south-west to create a sustained infrastructure.

Let us consider examples of where the money goes. The constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) contains the Morlands site in Glastonbury, which the RDA has bought. What is the RDA doing about that? It has not approached my right hon. Friend to tell him what it will do to the site. Why will the RDA not say what will happen to it?

In my constituency, a bypass is not being built for Ashcott and Walton because of Somerset county council's inability to get it together. The RDA did nothing to help. Nobody disputes that the bypass is a necessity. If the RDA exists to help and to create sustained development, why was it silent even after my colleagues and I made repeated pleas?

I discovered that the RDA spent £123,000 on advertising last year. When I asked why, I received no answer. Perhaps I can help to answer that question. The latest advertisement in stations in the south-west is a nice picture of the Clifton suspension bridge with giraffes on it. We do not have many giraffes in Somerset—or anywhere else in England that I am aware. Why spend money on promoting south-west tourism with a photograph of the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol featuring giraffes? The serious side is that the advertisement is promoting the zoo in Bristol, but it does not look good for the south-west. Why can we not have an integrated policy, rather than a fragmented idea of unitary authorities? I suspect that the RDAs were originally designed to look after the unitary authorities.

Moving down the M5, our arterial motorway, it is evident that the RDA's main development, as it itself admits, is in Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and, because of objective 1 funding, Cornwall. Most revealingly, the areas in between have been forgotten. The coastal and market town initiative would put money into such places—Minehead, in my constituency, is an example—although they do not know what they are supposed to do with it. I asked whether we might have some for Watchet, which features in the deprivation index and needs the money, as it has high unemployment, but we were told that that was not possible. I have tried twice to set up a meeting with an RDA representative, but I have been let down both times.

Given that welcome initiative, would my hon. Friend say, on reflection, that the RDA could have been more proactive in coming to terms with some of the severe deprivation caused as a result of foot and mouth, or does he consider that it has done everything possible?

My hon. Friend and I both represent rural constituencies, in his case East Devon, where foot and mouth has been devastating, and I agree. The RDA put aside £14 million to deal with the foot and mouth crisis. The crisis has cost the country more than £l0 billion, but our RDA has provided only £14 million to help us.

My constituency covers part of Exmoor. The other part is covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook). If people want to find out what it is like to feel the cold chill of foot and mouth, they should go to see the businesses on Exmoor. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon is absolutely right—the package was too little, too late and, unfortunately, put together in a difficult way.

Let us consider the company itself. I believe that changes have been made and I am sure that the Minister will bring me up to date. Why does the board contain only three business people, one of whom—the managing director of Clarks shoes—has just resigned? The rest are all from county councils or they are union representatives. There is nothing wrong with them, but what experience have they of business? Surely the RDA is a business-orientated organisation designed to introduce infrastructure and business. If we do not have that, we do not have a viable organisation.

The most damning aspect is the role of Sir Michael Lickiss, chairman of the RDA. He is an accountant. What experience has he of business? The buck stops there and nothing has given me any comfort that the RDA is working. I call on the Minister to make Sir Michael resign and have a business man take over. As long as Sir Michael is there, no real progress will be made. It is not that he has done a bad job; he has done the job that, as an accountant, he was trained to do. Why can we not have the head of Clarks, or the head of Cellophane from my constituency, for instance? Why must we have an accountant? Sir Michael should realise the limitations he faces, say, "I've done my bit, thank you very much", and ride off into the sunset. The longer he is there, the less that will happen. We are now witnessing the proof of the pudding.

The Government should examine RDAs carefully. If they want credibility for a structure that I believe to be entirely wrong, because of its size and because they broke something that was working perfectly well, and if they want legitimacy for the RDAs, they will have to convince a sceptical south-west—a huge area—to accept that the RDA works. On the evidence of the report and the board and all the other information that I have given, I do not see how the organisation can be sustained. The longer it goes on as it is, the more it will damage the south-west. Give us the chance to show that the south-west does not need the RDA. It needs the proper funding that councils and other organisations had before.

rose—

Order. I have not been given notice, but if the Minister does not mind—

indicated assent.

Thank you, Mr. Cummings. I am sorry if I was a little quick off the mark.

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) said. I fear that his comments about RDAs are historical, as I believe that they are shortly to be replaced; they certainly would be if the Conservatives were back in power. RDAs do not represent a homogenous geographical area, particularly not in the south-west, as my hon. Friend said.

The costs worry me. They have been increasing dramatically, while our councils have been starved of central Government funding. The results are all too clear, particularly in Devon. Interestingly enough, when I put a written question to the Minister for Employment and the Regions a few months ago as to how many people in my part of the world had asked or made written inquiries about wanting to have a regional assembly, the answer was none. I suggest that that is probably the answer that most of my hon. Friends would get if they asked the same question.

RDAs duplicate a lot of work that is already done by the Government office for the south west and the county council. They are shortly to be replaced, not by reinvigorating the existing tiers of local government, as we would do and as my hon. Friend has suggested, but by another body of unelected officials at the regional assemblies. I fear that the structure of regional government will be altered beyond recognition, as that is the last project that the Deputy Prime Minister wishes to see through. I understand that he has already been forced to redraft the White Paper that is due on regional government to make it clear that a tier of regional government will have to go to make way for the regional assemblies. We all know that that will be at shire county or county council level.

I was at a meeting of the Confederation of British Industry in Plymouth the other day and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), made his feelings about county councils clear. He said that they wasted money and were an unnecessary level of local government. We disagree fundamentally; we think that they are a good level of local government and they should be beefed up. We do not believe that the RDA should accrue power, or that the son of RDA, the regional assembly, should come in its wake.

There is confusion and it would be helpful if the Minister would clarify the position as the White Paper has not come out yet. The other day, when I was investigating improvements to the roads in my constituency, I was told that the south-west area's multi-modal report was coming out and was going first to the regional assembly. Why is it going to the regional assembly? Does the assembly have the authority to investigate such a report? We need clarification.

I hope that the Government are not moving too quickly to replace RDAs with regional assemblies. I hope that the replacement is nothing to do with the fact that the Tories won 17 counties while Labour emerged with only seven at the last county council elections. We in the south-west believe that we have particular needs, and I am sure that other areas could argue that equally well. In the light of foot and mouth disease, we need clear help and we want money to go to the end user. We do not want it diverted to quasi-autonomous national government organisations. Will the Minister clarify his plans?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) for the opportunity to talk about regional development agencies. They are a key element of our economic strategy and, when single-pot funding arrangements are introduced in April, they will increasingly have the flexibility to decide on their own priorities. With regard to that, they will be guided by the regional economic strategies that they are developing, and by a close understanding of the needs of stakeholders in their regions. They will work best where stakeholders engage fully with them and ensure that their views and perspectives are clearly expressed. I also thank the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in letting my office have notice of some of the contents of his speech.

There is a genuine difference of opinion between the Government and the official Opposition on RDAs. The comments of the hon. Members for Bridgwater and for East Devon (Mr. Swire) have made that clear. The Conservative party is opposed to the RDAs. It was opposed to them in 1997, when they were part of our general election manifesto, and it was opposed to them in 2001, when we said that we would build on the foundation that the RDAs have provided by continuing to decentralise.

Conservative Members continually get confused about the difference between devolution and decentralisation. The hon. Member for East Devon asked me to clarify what will happen when the RDAs are replaced. The RDAs are not going to be replaced. A White Paper will be published shortly that will describe detailed proposals for English regional devolution, but it will not suggest that the RDAs should be replaced. However, I will not refer to its contents at length, because they do not address the issue under discussion.

The Conservative party does not have much experience of Scotland and Wales. In 1997 it truly became a one-nation party: none of its Members of Parliament represented Scottish or Welsh constituencies; they represented constituencies in only one nation—England

We have one Member of Parliament who represents a Scottish constituency

I was referring to the 1997 election. The 2001 election resulted in a 100 per cent. increase in the number of Conservative Members of Parliament from Scotland; there is now one, instead of none.

The decentralisation programme is founded upon an analysis of what happened in Scotland and Wales. Scottish Enterprise and the Welsh Development Agency have been around for a long while, and they still play an integral part in promoting economic development in those countries, despite devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The principle of one nation and one Principality has been upheld in those countries, and that will also be the case in England. None of the White Paper's proposals will involve the replacement of the RDAs. We are talking about regional assemblies or the subject of democratic accountability, which featured in the contribution of the hon. Member for Bridgwater.

It is worth reflecting on why we established the RDAs. In 1996, Bruce Millan, the former European Commissioner, examined the successes and failures of regional policy. He found a piecemeal and fragmented picture. There was much useful activity in all the regions, including the south-west, but different elements were unconnected to each other, and individual regions lacked ownership of their various activities. Disparities between regions had widened, and no region's performance was as good as it could have been.

A White Paper entitled "Building Partnerships for Prosperity" was published in December 1997. It built on the Milan report by clarifying the roles and functions of the RDAs. It also separated out the RDA for London—which would form part of the structure beneath the newly elected Mayor and Assembly—from the RDAs in the eight remaining English regions. The RDAs outside London were given legal status by the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998, and became fully operational in April 1999. In the ensuing period, the RDAs have, by necessity, merely been the channel through which funding streams that were previously set in place have been distributed. Over 90 per cent. of their funding comes from land and properties and the single regeneration budget. Therefore, in those early years, the RDAs' roles were to establish their economic strategy and to work with the stakeholders, and, as the CBI report before Christmas recognised, when we move to the single pot in April, the RDAs will have the flexibility that they need.

We have followed a consistent policy in relation to the RDAs. They are intended to be powerful bodies, which understand and have real roots in their regions. With regional partners, they have drawn up regional economic strategies, which will guide their activities. Their close engagement with local partners means that they are able to direct resources to the real priorities in their regions. If hon. Members believe that an RDA has not identified those needs correctly—which was the gist of much of what Opposition Members said—they need to engage with them closely as they revise and refine their strategies.

Irrespective of the position of the Conservative party, which may or may not change, it is important that all MPs engage fully with the RDAs. They have an important role to play. It is worth reflecting for a moment on the impressive successes that the South West RDA has already achieved. Regeneration plans that the RDA is supporting will protect over 400 jobs at the Lister Petter site in Dursley and enable that long-established company to continue operating. Investment of £15 million in the Eden project, which funded much of the infrastructural work to kick the project off, is already seeing excellent returns. Recent research shows that Eden generated £111 million extra spending in the south-west in its first eight months of operation. The RDA has also invested £1.5 million in the combined universities in Cornwall project, and has committed a further £10.5 million. That crucial project for Cornwall will owe much to the RDA's support.

I was interested to hear the concerns of the hon. Member for Bridgwater that RDAs concentrate excessively on urban areas at the expense of the countryside. I have heard that criticism in reverse: that urban areas get a raw deal. I assure both tendencies that we expect RDAs to address difficulties in both town and country. We have set them urban targets to reduce social exclusion in the most deprived wards in towns and cities, and rural targets to regenerate market towns, and come up with their own targets Car action it rural priority areas in the light of last year's rural White Paper. We have asked them to address both aspects in their corporate plans.

The hon. Gentleman expressed the view that the South West RDA should have done more in response to the foot and mouth crisis. I know how difficult conditions have been in the south-west. However, the South West RDA has done a great deal to help firms suffering as a result of foot and mouth. The RDA was instrumental in setting up the regional taskforce formed after the crisis broke. Through the business recovery fund, the RDA has committed £14 million to assist business recovery in the region. Phase 1 of the fund involved the allocation of business support of up to £15,000 for affected businesses. In all, 1,200 businesses in the south-west region received grant support totalling more than £8.5 million, of which more than £5.5 million has been claimed already.

We made further business recovery funds available in November and a further £3 million was allocated to the south-west. Following discussions involving partners in the region, it was decided that the funds should support the regional priority sectors most affected by the outbreak, and most closely associated with rural areas. On 28 January, the RDA announced that more than £2.3 million of funding would be earmarked to support sub-regional and regional initiatives in the food and drink, and leisure and tourism priority sectors. Initiatives that are being supported include an extension of the successful tourism promotion run by the RDA and South West Trains last summer to run until late spring, and the setting up of a dedicated south-west food and drink promotional organisation.

One would always want to do more in such circumstances. I hope that the real achievements will satisfy the hon. Gentleman that the South West RDA is taking the need to support the rural economy seriously and is acting effectively to do so. In that context, I think that the hon. Gentleman's call for Sir Michael Lickiss to resign is unfair and unwarranted. Accountancy is a noble profession, and I would not condemn someone because he happens to be an accountant.

Without having the statistics, I believe that RDAs are business led and, as far as I know, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is no more than one trade unionist on every RDA board. The latest refreshment of those boards has emphasised and underlined the need for them to be business led, which means that a majority of people on the RDA boards should be business men or business women, but it is obviously important for other stakeholders also to be represented. I agree with him that in the main business people should sit on RDA boards. Sir Michael Lickiss has done an excellent job with his board and staff in launching the RDAs and establishing their priorities, and a call for his resignation is unwarranted.

I understand that the South West RDA has actively supported economic development projects in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. It has contributed £2 million towards the £5 million cost of the Watchet marina development to which he referred. Minehead is part of the coastal and market towns initiative, and the RDA is working up plans with the local community to assist in regeneration. In Bridgwater town, the RDA contributed £3.4 million to a successful multi-stranded single regeneration budget project at Sydenham, and will be supporting another project in Hamp ward. It is also involved in discussions regarding the possible relocation of the cattle market in Taunton to a motorway junction location, which would benefit the town and the farming community. The RDA has also given outline agreement to help fund the Foyer project aimed at homeless young people, Significant funding has been provided to Bridgwater college for its heavy goods vehicle school.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the Moorlands site in Glastonbury, and he asked what the RDA is doing. The RDA purchased the site in March last year, health and safety work has been carried out to make it safe and secure and a steering group has been formed with 14 interested organisations to monitor and advise the consultants who have been engaged. I am advised that a public consultation on the use of the site will be undertaken shortly.

Those are all examples of valuable activities carried out by the RDA, and they are the kind of activities that RDAs throughout England are carrying out for the benefit of the communities that they serve. The hon. Gentleman was concerned that the regional assembly has too much influence over the South West RDA. There will be a legitimate argument about that when the White Paper is published, because the question of democratic accountability is fundamental to that debate, We have strongly encouraged assemblies to take a leading role in scrutinising RDA activities, and I congratulate the South West regional assembly on its initiative in setting up "select committees" to inquire into the RDA's corporate plan. Assemblies can play a key role in scrutinising the plans and work of the RDA in their region. Although they are not directly elected, they contain a significant majority of local authority members, who are, of course, elected, with the rest of the membership made up from social and economic partners in the region.

The fundamental aim of the RDAs is socially inclusive sustainable wealth creation. That is the role with which nothing should interfere. We set their targets centrally because they are using taxpayers' money, and it is clear that even under the single-pot regime central Government should set output targets and ensure that taxpayers' money is well spent. It is, however, a matter for the RDAs in each region to work with their strategic partners to develop their own strategies.

RDAs are increasingly effective, and are supported by the Confederation of British Industry, the Trades Union Congress and most people who are interested in balanced and effective regional development in England. Their role is increasingly well understood by regional stakeholders who have inputted effectively in the regional economic strategies that guide their activities.

I would be the last person to say that there are no problems. RDAs are less than three years old and, as I explained, they have been working in difficult circumstances in this early period. Abolishing them would mean that the work that they have done, which has led to an impressive strategic focus, would be lost. I hope that even Opposition Members who are sceptical about the matter will come to appreciate the benefits of regional decentralisation as we move into the brave new world of the single-pot regime later this year.