I appreciate the opportunity of speaking first in this debate. The wide representation here from different political parties shows the tremendous interest in the subject of alcohol abuse. I realise that the ten-minute rule Bill introduced yesterday by the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) focuses on England and Wales, but with my background in Northern Ireland, I share the concerns of English and Welsh Members about the problems faced by their constituents and in the country at large as a result of alcohol abuse.

An early-day motion also expresses our concern about the difficulties that alcohol brings to so many; it affects young people, hospital provision, social care and criminal activities, as well as the multitude of accidents on the roads. I shall draw attention to some of the important issues and others will follow.

Our debate arises out of a growing concern about the impact of alcohol abuse from its health aspects right through to the public order consequences, as illustrated by the role of alcohol in the increasing number of attacks on hospital workers and health professionals. This subject is equally relevant to Northern Ireland as to England and Wales. My own constituency houses the Golden Mile, the centre of entertainment. I know how much extra law and order activity is necessary in that area with its large number of bars and clubs; it has drink-related problems every weekend.

Some say that alcohol is not really a problem, but I wonder if they live in the real world. Statistics show that at every level of health care, an increasing number of deaths are directly and indirectly associated with alcohol abuse. Historically, we have tended to blur the impact of alcohol abuse. We used to say that the problem was epitomised in the well-known Glasgow song, "But what's the matter wi' Glasgow/ For it's goin' roun' and roun'!". Nothing is the matter with the drunk in that song; Glasgow is the problem. That is the difficulty with alcohol.

I recall a statistic from years back that suggested that one in 12 people who drank alcohol could end up as alcoholics. To illustrate that level of doubt, I was once asked whether I would go on a plane if one in 10 of the seats were likely to fall out. That is an apt illustration of the concern arising out of recent tragic accidents.

The English statistics quite closely match those reported by the chief medical officer in Northern Ireland, Dr. Campbell, in March this year, according to which 800 people a year die either directly or indirectly through alcohol abuse. Dr. Campbell showed that 150 people die directly from alcohol misuse while another 650 die through disease or injuries related to drink.

According to figures released in August 2001 concerning 15 to 16-year-olds from 71 secondary schools, two thirds of the boys and girls said that they had consumed alcohol in the previous 30 days. Approximately half said that they had been drunk in that period. That tallies with the statistics and information from England and Wales, where children aged 11 to 15 were consuming twice as much alcohol in 2000 as in 1990. More than a quarter of 11 to 16-year-olds—27 per cent.—drink alcohol at least once a month, compared to 23 per cent. in 2000. Drinking is more common in older adolescents, with almost a third of 15 to 16-year-olds drinking at least once a week.

As people develop the habit of drinking, so they tend to imbibe more as they get older. That has a growing impact on industry, our social structure and homes. Those involved with social care reckon that 920,000 children live in homes that are affected by alcohol abuse. We are concerned about the welfare of children, who are our most precious heritage as a nation. There is a demand that, within our structures of care—in health and in society at large—something more positive be done for that group.

When we speak of under-age drinking, which can be characterised by binge drinking rather than the odd glass, it must be said that some of our finest talent has failed to reach its maximum potential because of alcohol abuse. That is particularly evident in Northern Ireland with those sports personalities whom we have exported to Great Britain. I am sure that we can think of other people who began well, but because of alcohol abuse did not finish so well. That is a tragic example to give people. I appeal to those personalities in our society to set a better standard and example, so that young people who look on them as role models will have better models to follow and will not suffer from alcohol abuse as others have.

I remember a young friend, who tragically was murdered by the IRA, saying that he liked to take a glass of wine before he spoke because it helped to relax him. I understood what he was saying and do not criticise that at all. However, many young folk who have begun on that road have found alcohol to be a cruel and demanding master rather than a help.

We must provide assistance early to prevent young people from becoming trapped in a spiral of alcohol abuse. Everyone in society must play their part in fighting the problem, starting with under-age drinking. From personalities and leaders to those who serve alcohol, everyone must be aware that they are setting an example that young people follow.

When we examine this situation, people ask, "What can we do about it?" I welcome the helpful work that has been done in our hospitals, but at times we might need other institutes or alcohol or drug clinics to take a greater lead. An example in my constituency was the Shaftesbury Square hospital, an old hospital that became a unit for the treatment of those with alcohol problems. With the financial entrenchment in our health service, some argued that it should be brought into the mainstream in Belfast City hospital, which has a fine unit—the Windsor unit—dealing with people with other problems, too.

There was great resistance to that, for an interesting reason. We have discovered that in an attempt to save money and to provide the acute health care that is required, there is a tendency to close many beds and wards in some of our hospitals at the weekend. That affected the Windsor unit. Anyone who knows the problem of weekend drinking knows that that is the time when facilities are needed.

I am delighted that we are having this debate this morning because, as vice-chairman of the all-party group on alcohol misuse, I have raised the matter in the Chamber myself. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many voluntary organisations are also involved in trying to deal with the problems of alcohol misuse, such as that in Hertfordshire where an alcohol advisory group, manned by volunteers, does a fantastic job? Does he also agree that the funding that is available for these groups is always uncertain? Is it not important that these people are given some sort of security to carry out their work at a very reasonable cost, rather than being a burden on government funding. Their work is much appreciated, not just in Hertfordshire, but in a wider area, as they provide examples for others.

I appreciate the hon. Lady's intervention. I was about to say that the Shaftesbury Square unit was kept open because it was so needed. I share her position completely. I am aware of the voluntary bodies, which do a lot of work. The tragedy is that even the Government admit in their statistics that it is difficult to say how much money is being used in health care to deal with alcohol misuse. Through funding voluntary groups at the moment, we do far more project funding than core funding, and core funding is vital for consistent work. On the other hand, I should have thought that any Government aware of what was happening in society would realise that projects need to be funded to give continuity of care to those who need it.

There is a need for greater co-operation within society between the various agencies. I speak not only of the voluntary bodies, but of the police, health workers and social services. An interesting experiment has developed in my constituency and is going on in other parts of north Belfast the "get home safe" campaign. It is a perfect example of the police, council, university and licensees working in partnership. I do not know how far the situation has developed here but some publicans in Northern Ireland have been ahead of the Government. I have long argued for the introduction of an ID card for 16-year-olds, which would be available right across society. Civil libertarians are not too happy, although the Americans do not seem to have problems with it.

Publicans in Northern Ireland have begun to issue their own cards so that they are not caught out by someone looking much older than they are. That is an old excuse. There is a place for such co-operation to develop. We can then provide the services from the beginning, backing up families and especially women who may be involved in secret drinking because of pressures at home. We must get a clearer message across that the law dealt with the serving, not the selling, of alcohol to under-age people. That has been glossed over time and time again.

The time has come for the Government to give a stronger lead, and not only in funding. Tragically, that may start with taking money away from front-line services to provide greater security to health professionals in the accident and emergency departments of our hospitals, where staff are attacked regularly by people who have been drinking. The Government can also stretch across society to help the young and old. I often wonder whether there could be more dramatic advertisements to penetrate the conscience of men and women, young and old, to warn them that their own stupidity is grieving them, harming industry and costing the nation billions of pounds. The tax that the Chancellor draws from the alcohol industry hardly meets the costs of caring for those who abuse themselves and others through the misuse of alcohol.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on starting the debate. I also thank those present, and all those who were not able to attend the debate, for their support for my ten-minute Bill, which I introduced yesterday. I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins), the chairman of the all-party alcohol misuse group, who could not be here this morning. He has a pressing constituency engagement. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) wanted to attend the debate, but also had a pressing engagement. I also want to highlight the work done by the charity Alcohol Concern, which has been a trailblazer in drawing attention to the problem of alcohol abuse, and has produced several practical solutions to the problem.

I apologise to my hon. and learned Friend for intervening so early. I endorse his praise for Alcohol Concern, as I was lucky enough to have a two-day secondment with the organisation through the voluntary sector's equivalent of the Industry and Parliament Trust. In advocating a national strategy to tackle alcohol misuse, Alcohol Concern has consistently referred to the high incidence—more than 80 per cent. at times—of people admitted to accident and emergency departments with alcohol in their bloodstreams.

That is certainly the case. My hon. Friend has drawn attention to the impact of alcohol abuse on health. I want to draw attention to the impact on the criminal justice system. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary recently highlighted the involvement of alcohol in youth offending. I want to expand on that. The victims of alcohol-related crime are most noticeable in three categories: first, violent crimes in public places; secondly, individuals killed or injured through drink-driving offences; and, thirdly, family members who are subjected to violence or abuse in the home. I came across the first category when sitting as a recorder. At my level, I tend to get cases of Friday or Saturday night fights. Sometimes, they are simply affrays, but often the cases are much more serious; I have tried cases involving serious glassings, in which the victims were scarred as a result of fights fuelled by alcohol. I shall return to the link between alcohol-induced aggression and violent crime in a moment. In Dudley, in my constituency, the figures show that violence against the person is highest over the weekend and this year's community safety audit suggests a definite relationship between the higher alcohol intake on those days and violence.

I mentioned three categories, but there are other aspects of criminal behaviour associated with alcohol. Recently, Stephen Wooler, the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, published an excellent joint thematic report with Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary on rape, which validates the work of the chief inspector—I was associated with the establishment of the office—and Stephen Wooler and his team are to be congratulated on their work.

The report addressed the issue of drug-assisted rape, about which there is much publicity. Despite that publicity, paragraph 6.11 states:

"There was a much higher finding that alcohol was present … when the question asked was 'is there evidence of alcohol being used by either suspect or victim?' 51 per cent. of cases reported alcohol was present either in the victim, the offender or both. The use of alcohol may clearly increase a victim's vulnerability to sexual assault and may influence the actions of the offender. It may also shape the initial police response to a victim."

That may mean that cases are not properly investigated, as they should be given the seriousness of the offence.

Ann Deehan published a report for the Home Office in 1999 entitled "Alcohol and Crime: Taking Stock". She collected statistics that suggested that alcohol misuse contributes to an estimated 40 per cent. of violent crime, 78 per cent. of assaults and 88 per cent. of criminal damage cases. Other studies underline the association between alcohol and criminality.

It is important, however, not to think that there is a direct causal link; researchers caution against the assumption that because there is a correlation, there is direct causation. Other factors must be considered, for example, personality traits. Alcohol consumption by stressed individuals can predispose them to violence and individuals' defence mechanism for dealing with anxiety and so on may be lowered by alcohol. There is not necessarily a direct, causative link. Ann Deehan's study states:

"The fact that situational cultural variables can affect the relationship between alcohol and aggression suggests that there is not a direct pharmacological link between alcohol and violent behaviour. Instead, it is more likely that alcohol increases aggression by influencing the social and cognitive processes."

The centre for health economics in York advanced another aspect of measuring the impact of alcohol misuse on the criminal justice system. It tried to measure the cost involved and came up with an estimate, in 1994, that the social cost of criminal activities was approximately £55 million. The House of Commons Library gave me useful figures that build on that estimate. Although it is a guesstimate, it suggests that we are dealing with a serious problem.

Alcohol Concern, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) and I referred, suggested several ways in which we can address the problem, one of which it calls "designing out drink disorder". The strategy includes national standards on managing the environment in and around drinking locations, toughened glass requirements—as I mentioned, one often comes across tragic incidents of glassing—enhancing the role of public transport in preventing alcohol-related disorder, and diversionary options.

There are therefore several practical ways of addressing the violent offending in the first category, and the drink driving in the second category. I am disappointed that we still have the 80 mg limit in this country. I am sure that we could do more to promote responsible drinking by conducting national public health campaigns. The campaign against driving when one is tired has had an impact, and I am sure that a similar campaign to promote responsible drinking would do the same.

Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the local crime partnership in my constituency of Dudley has included alcohol in its strategy. The Home Office does not require that, but the partnership has made alcohol misuse and its reduction one of its four key aims. I hope that other community safety partnerships can do the same. I pay tribute to the dedication of what was the Dudley Priority Health NHS trust for putting alcohol at the centre of its agenda, and I pay special tribute to the work of Richard Rogerson.

As a result of the strategy, there are several innovative programmes in Dudley, including a pilot for an arrest referral scheme. Under the scheme, arrest referral workers based in the custody suites of the main police stations have access to cells, and the custody sergeant informs the arrested person of the scheme. If that person volunteers to go on a limited programme, they are confronted with the results of alcohol abuse. It is too early for an evaluative study of the programme, but it appears that people are referring themselves to it and to other longer programmes.

In the long run, including alcohol abuse in the strategy will have a beneficial effect. However, this is not universal; it is not a requirement that a crime and disorder partnership includes alcohol in its auditing and planning process. I hope that as a result of my ten-minute Bill, all local crime partnerships will take alcohol seriously.

I hope that as a result of this debate, the messages will go out that the problems associated with excessive alcohol consumption are as great as or even greater than those associated with illegal drugs and that much more needs to be done.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on giving us the opportunity to debate such an important issue. Cynics might say, "Fancy having a debate on alcohol abuse in the House of Commons." All I would say to that is that I think we are greatly maligned.

I pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston), who did the House a great service yesterday by introducing his ten-minute Bill. I hope that, when the Minister responds to the debate, we shall hear that that Bill is to become law in some sense. We would be well advised to listen carefully to what the hon. and learned Gentleman says. As a recorder, he sees what happens in the courts as a result of alcohol abuse. If the public regard Members of Parliament increasingly cynically as not being responsible legislators, we would be foolish not to take action.

Unlike the hon. Member for Belfast, South and the Speaker of the House of Commons, I enjoy a drink. Thinking about my past, I believe that I might have knowingly had too much to drink on two occasions. The first was when I went abroad for the first time, and had too much sangria. I was going one way round the room and the bed was going the other. That taught me a lesson. The second occasion was on my stag night. I do not know whether people still have stag nights, but my crowd of supporters thought that it would be a laugh to spike the glasses of champagne. I was very ill as a result and my bride-to-be was not at all amused. I learned two very hard lessons as a result of alcohol abuse.

Why do people drink? I suppose that they drink to relax, to drown their sorrows because they have some private problem or as a result of habit. In my experience, drinking too much has two effects: first, it makes people very happy and ultimately very silly—my goodness, what a bore it is to be in the company of someone who is very silly and a little too happy; and, secondly, it makes people violent, which is a very serious matter. All Members of Parliament can see the results of such violence, especially among young people, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North can testify to that. We have all seen at football matches the result of youngsters drinking too much. Thank goodness, that is now being dealt with.

I went to the House of Commons Library, which I regard as the purveyor of truth so far as statistics are concerned. Its statistics on drinking are truly shocking. On hazardous drinking, men are more likely than women to have scores in the hazardous range—the score is 35 per cent. of men and 15.5 per cent. of women. Hazardous drinking patterns tend to decline with age. Nearly 42 per cent. of 16 to 24-year-olds scored more than eight, but only 12 per cent. of those aged 65 to 74 were in the same category. However, I am ashamed to say that a greater proportion of men than women drink at a dangerous level, even with advancing years.

My second set of figures is for dependence. Again, dependence is more marked in men. Some 11 per cent. of men were in higher categories, whereas fewer than 3 per cent. of women met higher dependency criteria. High dependence levels, too, are associated with younger people.

The third set of statistics that I got from the Library concern alcohol consumption among pupils, to which the hon. Member for Belfast, South referred. Overall, mean alcohol consumption for pupils aged 11 to 15 doubled from 0.8 units in 1990 to 1.6 units in 1998. That is a huge increase and, frankly, we are barking mad to free up the licensing laws in this country. For those aged 15, consumption rose from 2.1 units to 4.4 units in the same period. Historically, consumption by boys has led, by a considerable margin, that by girls.

The final statistics relate to deaths. There is a clear increase in deaths from alcohol-dependent syndrome. Some 144 deaths were recorded in 1998, but by 1999 the figure had more than doubled to 325. Again, male deaths were much higher than those for ladies. The number of deaths from chronic liver disease or cirrhosis is considerably higher, registering at 4,718 in 1999.

Is it not tragic that more young men are dying of cirrhosis of the liver than ever before, and that the number is growing?

How right the hon. Gentleman is.

Those figures are shocking, and Members of Parliament should be able to do something. I have a briefing from Alcohol Concern, to which I am grateful. It does magnificent work, and worries that services are shrinking in number, that most services have static or declining funding and that they face rising levels of client need. It advised me that the present funding sources are not secure, alcohol care services are patchy, and that there is a postcode lottery of availability and a huge range in quality.

There is a haemorrhage of skilled staff for drug agencies. It is wonderful that people help such agencies, but it is worrying that they are leaving the area of alcohol abuse. The Government have given greater funding priority to expansion in the drugs services sector, and the area of alcohol is losing out as a result because other organisations offer better paid training, accreditation and qualifications. Alcohol Concern has advised me that there are high levels of unmet need, especially for early intervention and preventive services. That is shown by the high number of alcohol-related admissions to accident and emergency units. I spent some time in an A and E unit and saw the nonsense from drunks that staff must put up with.

The Government have not published their long-awaited alcohol strategy, which was promised four years ago. Nor have they suggested that alcohol health care and alcohol public health targets are priorities. I believe that primary care trusts are unwilling to invest heavily until they receive a firm steer from Government. Primary care trusts can shift from block to spot purchasing on a case-by-case basis, and buy services for shorter periods—that will not help the overall situation. Local authorities are not prioritising alcohol issues in their community strategies, local public service agreements or crime reduction strategies again, due to the lack of pressure from Government.

Four years ago, the Government announced that they would publish a strategy; two years ago, they said that they would implement the strategy in 2004. There is still no strategy, and if the Government do not act now, more services will close and the remaining ones will be of a preventive nature, which is not the whole answer. The lack of availability in rural areas will worsen, as will the fragile position of specialist services for people from black and Asian communities. Finally, the bills for the taxpayer will show up elsewhere in public services, such as in acute and chronic health care.

Much must be done. Given that the House has approved the extra £6 billion that the Government announced they are investing in the health service—the Minister had the pleasure of listening to my rant on the Budget yesterday—I hope that the comments of the hon. Member for Belfast, South and the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North will not only be heard but acted on.

Order. Before I call the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I say to hon. Members who hope to catch my eye that we anticipate starting the winding-up speeches at 10.30, and the three Members who wish to contribute should bear in mind that that will give them about seven minutes each.

Thank you, Mr. Atkinson. I have taken careful note of what you have said and I shall try to keep my remarks to about five minutes.

I welcome the debate secured by the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth). It comes on the back of the ten-minute Bill of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston). Both of those are important matters in their own right. The House of Commons is at its best when it addresses an issue such as alcohol. People might say that that has little to do with real politics, but one has only to be on the streets on a Friday to see that, for many people, that is what life is about. They are involved with alcohol, fearful of it or trying to control it, and we must do something about that.

My plea to my hon. Friend the Minister is nothing new because a number of us involved with the all-party group, which is excellent, have been calling for some time for the publication of a strategy. It is time for the Government to put their money where their mouth is. Now they have got the money, perhaps they should try to solidify their policies and come up with a degree of consistency, which seems to be the biggest problem across the board with the provision of alcohol services.

Given that nobody else has done this, I shall start with a little anecdote, because Members of Parliament all have anecdotes about people who have been to see them in their surgeries. About two years ago, a lady came to see me to talk about watching her partner die as a result of alcohol-related illness. She has written a play, which is in the public domain, about that, but for obvious reasons I shall not mention her or him by name. He was a musical performer, and alcohol became part of his performance. The sad thing was that his very close friends accepted the fact that, more often than not, he was really drunk on stage, and they bought him drinks to get him going. That was seen to be part of his lifestyle, and his friends responded to it. With the benefit of hindsight, many of them will think sadly about their roles. I do not seek to ascribe blame, but people should think about the fun person, the one who drinks too much, because it may not he as harmless as it first appears.

The second problem was the oblivious nature of the medical services to what was a cry for help. Although some help was available, the medical services appeared to believe that, because the problem was alcohol related, it could be coped with and was not as serious as it appeared—the man eventually died from something related to cirrhosis. Nevertheless, he lost his life and I am sure that there are other such cases to which hon. Members can refer.

I know that some hon. Members would passionately disagree—hopefully not violently—with this, but alcohol can tell us something about the problems of either decriminalising or legalising drugs. People claim that that is one way to overcome the problems of crime and hiding addiction. They think that by waving a magic wand, things will become dramatically better. Alcohol teaches us that when a legal substance is abused, one has just the same problems of criminal behaviour and medical incapability as when an illegal substance is abused. I urge caution on those who see simple solutions as being the way forward on drugs.

We know that alcohol is a growing problem, and we all worry about young people drinking alcopops and strong alcohol. Producers must take a degree of responsibility, whether or not that is through the Portland Group, to make sure that we really grapple with the problem. My main argument is that we must take the matter seriously. We need a strategy in place. A lot of good work is taking place on the ground; in Gloucestershire, we have a very good drug action team, under Colin Hassall. The Gloucestershire drugs and alcohol service does a lot of commissioning, and those organisations work closely together. We also have some rehabilitation centres, such as Nelson house in my constituency. It is an abstinence-based centre run by a Christian organisation, which I have visited on several occasions, and it takes in people who need to end their addiction to drugs and alcohol.

One problem that I would ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind, which is not his responsibility but is linked to the issue, is that when people move away for rehabilitation it is often a signal that they need to start a new life. The last thing that they want is to be forced back whence they came. That puts pressure on places that have such centres to house and support individuals. That is where we need joined-up policy. It should not be just a medical model; it should be associated with a social model, which includes housing of individuals. If a single man in his 50s is trying to rebuild his life, we should not put him through expensive rehabilitation provision and then tell him that there is no housing for him because he is not a priority. Although the new homelessness legislation can make such people priorities, that was not the case until comparatively recently. They have no family, are not elderly, and if they are to be pushed back to where they came from, the whole process is a waste of time financially, let alone for the individual. However, that also means that such people could end up in the streets in the area that they have come to, which is totally unacceptable.

There are social as well as medical arguments, and there is an individual aspect to responsibility. One of the problems with alcohol is that everyone can handle it until they cannot. I hope that, through education—partly because we have now begun to improve drugs education—we can show people directly the effects that drugs have and what they do to people's lives. We must do the same with alcohol, which affects many young people more—they probably already drink. That needs to be done in our schools.

All these things must come together. I hope that the strategy will achieve that, and I look forward to hearing some good news from the Minister.

I too would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on initiating the debate. May I give my apologies in advance, Mr. Atkinson, if I am not here for the wind-ups as my Select Committee starts shortly? I apologise to my hon. Friend and the Minister for that.

It is important to put on record that we are not killjoys. We recognise that sensible consumption of alcohol is enjoyed by many people without harmful effects. If we read the articles of the medical correspondent for The Times, Dr. Stuttaford, we find that he would have us living on red wine, aspirin and very little else as far as I can see. I think that it is important to put the matter in context.

However, alcohol abuse, as we have heard graphically this morning, costs our nation dear in many ways. It causes ill-health, such as cirrhosis of the liver, and we heard that about 4,700 deaths are recorded annually due to that. It can also contribute to cancers and heart disease. Injuries are caused through alcohol abuse. Alcohol-related crime is of great concern to the wider community. Road accidents are caused, as is economic loss. Most significantly, alcohol abuse can lead to domestic violence, unemployment, homelessness—often people lose their homes because they cannot maintain their jobs—and family breakdown. How many wives have lost husbands through alcohol abuse? How many children are cheated of a parent because alcohol has driven them out of the family home?

We also heard this morning that there are about 920,000 children in homes where alcohol abuse is a feature as far as their parents are concerned. Alcohol Concern has estimated that adding all those costs together, the total cost to our nation is about £10 billion. I hope that the Minister might factor in some sort of cost-benefit analysis detailing what the Government spend on the problem so that we can examine the benefits as we reduce the cost of alcohol abuse.

Alcohol is an addictive drug. We know from "The Health of the Nation" report produced by the previous Government in 1992 that targets were set to decrease alcohol abuse. Sadly, they not being achieved. Indeed, the figures are going in the wrong direction in respect of those targets. There has been an increase in the number of women and young men drinking over sensible alcohol limits. In addition to those with a heavy alcohol dependency, about 20 per cent. of the population regularly drink more than sensible amounts. Most worryingly, there has been an increase in the frequency of children drinking and the amount that they drink. We have heard statistics on that.

Some 10 Government Departments are involved in an alcohol strategy. There is a real case for one senior Minister to give a lead co-ordination to the Government's efforts and be the focal point for action in that area. The good news on alcohol abuse is that we know that social attitudes can be changed. Attitudes to drink driving are a prime example. It used to be more or less socially acceptable to drink and drive but, thank goodness, it no longer is. That should give us hope.

We must have a more balanced approach to the advertising of alcohol in the media. We see lifestyle advertising on our television screens that portrays association with certain drinks as very attractive, bringing friends and entry to a golden lifestyle. We need much more balance there. It seems curious that there are such severe restrictions on tobacco advertising but very limited ones on the advertising of alcohol. That needs to be examined.

On public education, we must redouble our efforts in schools. We need more role models who are advocates of a low-alcohol or no-alcohol lifestyle, or who can tell young people about the effects of alcohol abuse and what it has done to their lives. Younger people could then have a more balanced picture and be encouraged to drink sensibly.

On licensing, Alcohol Concern has proposed that there should be a licence related to both the premises and the individual licensee—a dual-licensing mandate. That should be heeded. A study on the sale of alcohol to young persons commissioned by psychologists from the universities of Wales, Leeds and Reading in conjunction with Thames Valley police, which is on the website of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, found that in September 2000 there was very easy availability of alcohol to young people. The figures are deeply worrying. At the age of 16, 88 per cent. of girls and 77 per cent. of boys were able to purchase alcohol. Even at the age of 13, 41.6 per cent. of girls were able to purchase alcohol, although the figure was somewhat lower for boys.

We must redouble our efforts in terms of the penalties that licensees face for selling alcohol to underage people in off-licenses and licensed premises. The current penalties seem not to be viewed as a disincentive to do that. In only 12 per cent. of cases was a demand made for an identity card from those young people. I want to emphasise the success of the voluntary citizen's card scheme, which has had an effect in some cases. In counties where there is a partnership agreement with secondary schools, there is good take-up. In Surrey, about 4,133 young people have that card, whereas in my county, Bedfordshire, which does not have that partnership agreement with schools, there are only 730 cardholders. There are strong arguments for encouraging such partnership schemes. We need much tougher action to ensure that licensees of premises do not get away with selling alcohol to underage drinkers.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on securing the debate and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on introducing his private Member's Bill yesterday. In introducing that, he made the point that alcohol care services throughout the country are under severe pressure, as we heard again this morning. Regrettably, that service provision is shrinking, and the unfortunate position of a lottery of availability and the range and quality of the services provided in many areas are matters of deep concern.

The issue of drugs and illegal substances is at the forefront of the minds of communities throughout the UK. We heard this morning and yesterday about that. Alcohol Concern has described the haemorrhage of skilled staff, who are moving away from working with people with alcohol problems to work for drug agencies, which are being given greater priority.

We must ask how serious the problem is, how seriously we as politicians take it and how seriously it is taken in our communities and by GPs. The frightening statistics from Alcohol Concern show that about one in four adults drinks to excess. Those are the figures for England, but I believe that they are mirrored throughout the UK. If those figures are correct, I am sure that we all know of a household that contains someone who drinks to excess.

Regrettably, such people are a danger to others. We heard again this morning about people drinking and driving, and they are a danger on the road. They are a danger in the workplace, too. I sometimes worry about employers who see an employee with an alcohol problem and merely brush it aside and tell them to get their act together when what is needed is a helping hand to get them out of it. We are all aware of the number of days lost to industry and of what has been known for many years as the missing Monday syndrome. Some people never manage to turn up to their work on a Monday. That can last only so long.

Some time ago, I read about how people were paid. Weekly pay for industrial workers was an important issue. Several years ago, there was a step change from people being paid on a Friday to their being paid on a Thursday. The figures suddenly began to stack up to show that people were beginning to miss work on a Friday, too. When people have money, they do what is regarded as socially acceptable, and go out to drink.

Problems are created in the home, including physical violence. Those of us who have had contact with women's aid projects find the figures frightening. It is also upsetting for children. We sometimes witness the terrible cycle whereby children trapped in such circumstances themselves turn to alcohol. We all know of stories about children as young as eight, nine or 10 drinking. As time progresses, they move to secondary school and do not attend it because they themselves have ended up in the downward spiral.

There are also law and order problems and the associated extreme violence, on Friday and Saturday evenings in particular. People have been scarred for life when someone has used a bottle or a glass. Some responsibility lies at the door of licensees. Almost 10 years ago, I was on holiday and witnessed a young man in a bar to which my wife and I had gone for a meal. He could barely stand, but the licensee was still prepared to sell him alcohol. I asked, "Don't you think that this young man has had too much?" He brushed it aside and had nothing to do with me. Half an hour later, that young man collapsed across a table and spoiled the evening for a family that had been sitting there. I remember the look that I got from the barman, but it was too late.

The hon. Member for Belfast, South made a point about sportsmen wasting their lives. There is no greater example of a life and talent wasted than the Belfast boy himself, George Best. I have taken part in sport over the years, although perhaps hon. Members would not think so to see me now. I played amateur football. I have seen youngsters in their early teens being taken on board by local clubs, but, again, talent and potential were wasted, because they were mixing with older teenagers and those in their 20s, and drinking was the thing to do after a game. They were influenced so easily. They were wasting their talent and ending up on the scrapheap.

I should like to give an example of the roles of general practitioners and their attitudes. Two years ago, a lady came to me desperately worried. Her husband was a professional gentleman seeking help. I encouraged her to go to her GP with her husband to talk the issue through. Assistance was given. However, I was horrified some four or five months later to find that the same GP had turned away a woman and her son when they were seeking assistance. GPs may help professionals, but there is a belief that those who come from less well-off households do not have a medical problem; they have a social problem. GPs need to stop differentiating between the two.

I tabled a question for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health on the use of laser treatment. There is a business in my area that offers laser therapy for smoking cessation. The figures stack up to show that laser therapy has a 46 per cent. success rate, whereas nicotine patches have only a 20 per cent. success rate. We need to consider treatments available for smoking cessation. The laser treatment also works for alcohol, and for those like me who have a craving for chocolate on occasion. No study on such therapy has been carried out in my area. The lady who runs the centre told me that she took on board four professional people who desperately wanted to stop drinking. She had a 100 per cent. success rate with the treatment and back-up service that she was able to offer them. However, four people do not make a widespread study. The therapy can work, and we must consider that.

We need a multi-agency approach involving police, educational and social services, licensing authorities and the health service. Resources have dwindled in recent years, as has been pointed out by Alcohol Concern. That must be reversed. After last week's announcement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer of additional funding for the health service, I hope that some of that money will go back to assisting people and families who desperately need help.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) for securing the debate, just as we have in the past owed debts to the hon. Members for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) and for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman), and my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). They have all raised the matter in recent years in Adjournment debates, presumably in order to get some response—not just words but action—from the Government. Most recently, a commendable ten-minute Bill was introduced yesterday by the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston).

The Government have failed to produce the strategy that was promised four years ago. It is hard to run away from that fact, because when it is recognised that a strategy is required but it is not produced on time, there is a suspension of action. It allows people to say, "Well, there's a strategy coming. We'd better not make plans and provisions because they may all be overturned by the publication of the strategy."

Effectively therefore, there is a blight not only in financial terms—which may finally have been addressed by the recent Budget—but in a willingness to think strategically.

The Government must do better on public health issues. Exactly the same problem occurred with the sexual health strategy, which was promised and postponed four times. After three years, it finally emerged and even then was not complete in terms of the public education campaign.

The problem is major. Public health issues affect entire populations. They are not always visible, because one sees only the tip of the iceberg in the accident and emergency departments and police cells. The problem of alcohol abuse needs a national strategy. The term joined-up government is overused, but there is clearly a need for links between the Home Office, which deals with crime resulting from alcohol problems, the Department of Trade and Industry to deal with the drinks industry and the Department of Health. The problem is urgent. Indeed, it was urgent when Labour gained power in 1997—a year before they promised a strategy.

Multiple problems are associated with drinking. A culture of binge drinking is emerging, especially among young women. Antisocial behaviour is often the result, which causes fear among local residents who are exposed to such behaviour as well as damage to property. Older people often live in fear of younger people who are drunk and rowdy.

The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) mentioned the numbers of people suffering cirrhosis and the severe illness suffered by those with chronic alcohol addiction. The end-stage liver failure that results requires a liver transplant, and not enough livers are available. Patients under treatment for liver failure continue to drink because of their addiction and make multiple admissions to hospital, as I remember when I worked on a liver ward a few years ago.

Emotional as well as physical violence is associated with alcohol. The result is family arguments and sometimes rape, as the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North mentioned, especially in cases when the attacker is known to the victim.

Clearly, there are opportunities to make widespread savings through investment, although they may not be immediately obvious within the budget in which the investment is taking place. Greater investment in services would obviously improve matters, socially and financially, and the Government should be making calculations across budgets.

The lack of youth provision is another factor. Young people gather together, often grabbing cheap bottles of strong cider or lager to drink in shopping centres and on street corners because of a lack of youth provision. There is insufficient time to talk about the problems facing the youth service, but as everything else is prioritised and local authorities have inadequate resources, it is often non-statutory or discretionary provision—those things that people are not forced to do even though they see a need for them—that suffers.

The Government have, in a sense, accepted the problem of priorities as a reason for why their strategy has not emerged. In an Adjournment debate on 31 October last year, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears), said:

"It is particularly valuable for Members to bring to these debates not just a sense of overarching strategy but"—

I thought that she would go on to say "an actual strategy", but she continued—

"personal experience of services on the ground."

Rather than talking about the Government's failure to produce a strategy, she said that the hon. Member for Broxbourne

"rightly highlighted the Government's commitment to formulate and produce a national alcohol strategy. The original timescale was ambitious, and I acknowledge that the strategy has been slow to emerge. However, we must examine that in the context of the Government's specific clinical priorities for early action relating to coronary heart disease, mental health and cancer. Obviously, those matters compete for Government time and development by the Department of Health, and resources must be available in order to make a real impact."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 31 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 315–16WH.]

That is the problem: over-prioritisation in some sectors without recognition—except in that paragraph—that that necessarily means deprioritising others. When certain issues are chosen for political reasons, the less glamorous Cinderella services are often deprioritised.

The Government's view of alcohol differs from their view of drugs. We know that alcohol causes far more problems than cannabis. It is not a simple matter, but opposing outright any decriminalisation of cannabis while failing to tackle alcohol problems is bizarre. We recognise the lack of an evidence base for assessing the best strategies for prevention. The Government should have invested in that by now.

We have heard helpful contributions from all hon. Members who have spoken and I am sorry that I do not have time to respond to them all in detail. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) argued that people who are far too young are still buying alcohol. We license premises to sell alcohol, so why can we not improve enforcement? I am not opposed to more sting operations; the fear of being caught will affect the attitude and approach of licensees.

I agree with the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) that serious questions remain about whether GPs have the time or interest to deal with alcohol as a health issue, particularly among non-professionals. Individual cases must be brought to the attention of the authorities. We return to the problem of the absence of a proper strategy and the resulting blight. A lack of priority will mean defunding the Cinderella services, as people leave for the glory areas that are well funded. That is sad for those who work and face such pressure in those services, as well as for the victims.

I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) for sharing with us his experiences in Northern Ireland, which are similar to those of Members in other constituencies throughout the UK. I also pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) for presenting a timely ten-minute Bill yesterday. I add my thanks to Alcohol Concern for its work and the material that it contributed to many Members' speeches today.

Alcohol abuse is a bigger problem than many other health-related issues that we regularly debate in this Chamber. It seems, however, to merit rather less attention and urgency from the Government. Problems are not limited to health. As hon. Members have explained, alcohol has implications for crime, the yob culture, road traffic accidents, family break-ups, domestic violence and the environment. It affects the quality of life of many people whose peace is disturbed late at night by drunks coming out of pubs. It has public order consequences, effects on employment and business through absenteeism, and its impact on impressionable young people is particularly harmful. For today's debate, however, it is viewed as a health problem.

I saw many of the consequences of drinking problems as a member of the Wandsworth alcohol group when I was a representative on the Wandsworth community health council. I saw the health impact on heavy drinkers and their families. I would not like anyone to have to go through those experiences. As constituency MPs, we have all seen them at first hand. As the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) rightly said, all the problems that I have listed are the stuff of real politics and it is up to politicians to address them head-on.

We have heard many statistics today. According to Alcohol Concern, alcohol misuse costs the NHS at least £3 billion a year, and a further £3 billion cost to society arises from sickness and absenteeism at work, premature deaths, accidents and alcohol-related crime. One in six people attending A and E departments does so for alcohol-related injuries or problems, and that rises to eight out of 10 at peak times. I witnessed it at first hand when I spent a night in an A and E department in Whitechapel. Fortunately, it was a relatively quiet night. A young woman came into A and E and within minutes collapsed in the waiting room. She was rushed to "resus" and within a matter of seconds, 15 health professionals were around her bed: the consultant, the registrars and the nurses. She had a series of X-rays in a deeply comatose state, and a magnetic resonance imaging scan. Everything that could possibly be done for her was done.

Intensive health care was given to that woman. Fortunately, no one else required attention at the time. It turned out, when the blood sample came back half an hour later, that her blood alcohol level was in excess of 360 mg per 100 ml of blood, compared with the safe-to-drive level of 80 mg. She was highly intoxicated, unnecessarily. The cost to the NHS in that A and E department was enormous, but the potential cost of the lack of treatment that would have been available for other emergencies was unforgivable.

Those are the consequences of irresponsible drinking that we see night in night out in casualty departments around the country. The effects on the family are considerable. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, an estimated 920,000 children live in a home where one or both parents misuse alcohol, and 23 per cent of child neglect cases identified by telephone calls involve parental alcohol misuse. As the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North pointed out, the implications for crime are enormous too.

What have the Government done about it? In their paper "A Healthier Nation" published in 1998, just one paragraph was devoted to alcohol problems. It identified the urgency of the problem and stated:

"It has been estimated that up to 40,000 deaths could be alcohol related and in 1996 15 per cent. of fatal road accidents involved alcohol."

That paragraph revealed other disturbing statistics, yet four years on there has still been no action.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears), admitted that the Government's targets for the original timescale had been ambitious. The Government are talking about implementing a national strategy for tackling alcohol misuse, but not until 2004. The consultation for that strategy, we are told, will draw in contributions from the Government, local organisations, the voluntary sector and the drinks industry; review progress to date; and outline a programme for the future. That is great, but when on earth will we get it? People are suffering the effects of a lack of a co-ordinated alcohol strategy now. A criticism of the Government that has been shown in recent MORI polls is that there are no official targets for reducing young people's alcohol consumption as there are for drugs and smoking. Over 80 per cent. of the public agree that the Government do not do enough to highlight the risks of drinking alcohol.

The absence of the long-awaited Government strategy on alcohol is causing planning blight locally, too. A hot issue in my constituency is the proliferation of wine bars that are open until late at night. One wine bar in Worthing recently won permission to stay open until midnight every night of the week, against the wishes of local people, the council and the police. Fortunately, Worthing council has set aside £40,000 to fight that decision and to give people who live in the centre of Worthing some peace and quiet late at night, because their lives are being ruined by people coming out of wine bars drunk and unruly. That is unfair to all concerned.

The Government do not even know how much money goes on tackling alcohol abuse now. When the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) asked how much central Government funding was specifically allocated for preventive and curative work in relation to drug, alcohol and tobacco dependency, the former Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), replied:

"It is not always possible to distinguish between preventive and curative work in relation to substance misuse. Interventions may be undertaken with people who have some substance misuse problems but have not, or would not, necessarily develop dependency."

She went on to give details of all the money being spent on drug misuse, such as £59 million on a special allocation to health authorities, £25 million additional funding in relation to drug misuse, and £7.5 million for preventive activity. A lot of money was allocated to smoking, yet there was only

"£0.6 million for preventive health promotion in relation to alcohol"

and a

"£0.5 million local grants scheme promoting development of primary care led alcohol services."—[Official Report, 6 April 2001; Vol. 366, c. 354W.]

I do not say that drugs and tobacco problems do not need the attention, but alcohol abuse does not receive a fair slice of the cake, although it is a deeply important and increasingly worrying problem.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) has highlighted in Adjournment debates that she has initiated, another problem is that existing funding arrangements are coming to an end as health and welfare services move towards the new primary care trust arrangements that are designed to meet central targets and priorities. The lack of priority given to alcohol services and the dominance of the drugs agenda are destabilising services. Indeed, we have heard about the haemorrhaging of skilled staff as they move to deal with drugs rather than alcohol cases.

The effect on young people is getting worse all the time. Among 16 to 24-year-olds, 37 per cent. of men and 23 per cent. of women regularly drink twice the recommended safe levels of alcohol. Cirrhosis of the liver now kills 1,600 women a year, compared with 1,200 seven years ago. It kills more women than cervical cancer, yet how much do we hear, quite rightly, about cervical smears and all the attention and resources that go into that problem? We could also talk about teenage binge drinking.

Much more needs to be said, but we also need much more Government action. What progress is being made with the alcohol strategy and exactly how high a priority is it for the Government? In the proposals for a national alcohol strategy in a 1999 paper, we were told about a high-profile ministerial lead. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned, it is still fragmented across 10 Departments. What work have local authorities done and what progress has been made with the voluntary citizen card and other schemes?

It is about time that the Government put their money where their mouth has been for too long and we saw serious action in many sectors of society to ensure that proper attention is given to a problem that is getting worse. The Government appear not to treat it as a priority.

I congratulate all hon. Members who have spoken on the quality and succinctness of their comments. We are all concerned about the issues that have been raised. Whether we draw on experiences in our own families or our constituency work, there cannot be one hon. Member who is not aware of the seriousness of alcohol misuse. I congratulate in particular the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on giving us an opportunity to discuss these issues.

We heard a great deal about the statistics associated with alcohol misuse. Indeed, I think that all hon. Members who spoke used them. However, I hope that they will forgive me if I do not parade another list of statistics before them, because the danger with that form of presentation is that we lose sight of what is happening.

We are talking about people rather than numbers, and by any calculation the statistics paint a particularly grim picture. It is not only of wasted life opportunities, although I guess that that is our principal concern; the effect of alcohol misuse on society as a whole and on crime in particular goes much wider and deeper than that. Many hon. Members spoke about the wider connotations and the wider background to today's discussion. Alcohol misuse has a profound effect, not only in terms of wrecked lives, but on the quality of family life and on crime.

In particular, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) spoke about the effect on the national health service. He has been fortunate in seeing some of the excellent work that is done in our accident and emergency departments day in, day out. I do not want to slip into partisan mode, because we should avoid that on these occasions, but that was the first time that I had heard a Conservative Front-Bench health spokesman talk about the good quality of work in A and E departments.

Rubbish.

It was the first time, but I think that most of us benefited from hearing the hon. Gentleman praise the NHS staff in A and E departments.

There is a clear effect on the NHS. I am sure that we have all seen drunk people attending A and E departments in our constituencies who are violent and abuse not only the staff—public servants who are there to help patients—but other patients. That is completely unacceptable.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government have taken a number of measures to try to improve the safety and security of patients and staff in those departments. That will continue to be an important issue for us. I think that the hon. Gentleman ended his remarks by calling on the Government to set new national targets and to devote more resources to alcohol services. I was struck by the inconsistency of his approach. In the Chamber, he and his hon. Friends spent most of their time saying that we had too many national targets, but yesterday they voted against extra resources for the NHS. The hon. Gentleman needs a new script if his arguments are to carry more weight.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) is not present, as he made several very good points; two, especially, struck a chord with me. He expressed his concerns about the licensing laws, although he may have misunderstood some of the proposals that were floated. I shall draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The hon. Gentleman and the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham made a good point about the need for consistency throughout government in considering the structures in place to deal with these issues. At least 10 Government Departments are involved in tackling alcohol misuse. It is not only an issue for the NHS, although it brings an expertise to bear on the problem. My Department will reflect on the suggestions made by the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members about how better to co-ordinate our work on those issues throughout government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) made a good speech, as he always does on these issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) rightly drew attention to resources, which I accept is the most important matter, and to consistency. My hon. Friend and others referred to the post-code lottery in respect of alcohol services, which is unacceptable. The national strategy will have to address that matter, and the issue of consistency, and I shall say something about it in a moment. About £95 million is spent in the NHS on issues related to alcohol treatment and services, which is a substantial investment. We have been asked to devote more resources to it, and that will be considered when allocations to health services are made later this year and beyond, as we move to a longer-term financial planning framework for the NHS. When we can predict the future requirements with some certainty at local level, some of the funding difficulties can be tackled.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) made a good speech drawing upon his experience as a recorder, which was of great benefit to the debate. I pay tribute to him for his impressive record of service and for his excellent work on these issues when he was Solicitor-General.

Several hon. Members mentioned the Government's commitment to a strategy. "Where is it?" was their question. I reconfirm what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said: we remain committed to implementing the national strategy on alcohol misuse by 2004. We need a wide-ranging partnership to build that effective strategy, and that is what we have been working to achieve. I understand that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham fell into temptation in asking where was the strategy and why we do not have one; a little bit of humility might be in order for Conservative Members. We all have painful memories of the experience, but the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends were running the country for 18 years. Unless I missed it, I do not remember a Conservative health Minister making a commitment to a national strategy. Now they want the strategy, and we are committed to it.

As many hon. Members have said, it is not only an issue for the Department of Health; other Departments are involved and there are wide-ranging and more general issues to be considered. The strategy must be based on two key pillars: prevention and effective treatment. We have been doing, and will continue to do, various work, including focusing on education and ensuring that young people in particular are properly educated about the risks of alcohol misuse. I hope that the hon. Member for Belfast, South will at least be pleased to know that, over the past three years in England, we have put another £29.5 million into education on substance misuse, which includes alcohol. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman that I do not have the figures for Northern Ireland.

I thank you for granting the debate on the funding and management of the London Underground, Mr. Stevenson. This is my third debate in six months on this important matter.

The London Underground is important not only to Londoners, but to the national economy. The current proposals still contain many unsatisfactory or unresolved aspects. I welcome the Government's commitment to £16 billion funding for the tube over the next 15 years, although I suspect that that is not enough. However, we should compare that with the lack of a similar commitment from the Opposition parties. The Tories presided over the serious decline of the network, and although they say that they could support the Mayor's solution or full privatisation, there is no doubt that if they were in power they would support the latter.

rose—

Let me finish my point. The Liberal Democrats are swept along by the prevailing winds. The London Underground would be disregarded while they committed themselves to other priorities, and their policy on it would not be coherent or consistent.

I am not here to defend the Liberal Democrats. However, it must be said that with devolved government and the Mayor of London and Bob Kiley—his expertise brought over at great expense from the United States—in place, the Opposition made it clear that they are firmly in favour of ensuring that local government in London means something and, more importantly, that we allow local decisions to be made for the good of all Londoners. That should unite us all across the political divide who are London politicians.

The hon. Gentleman has made his point, but Londoners know that the Conservatives are wedded to privatisation, and that is likely to be the order of the day.

It is clear that the hon. Gentleman has been got at by the Labour Whips. Far from being swept along with the wind, the Liberal Democrats have been advocating the bond issue, which Bob Kiley supports, for the past five years. The wind has therefore been blowing in the same direction for the past five years.

The hon. Gentleman makes his point, and will have other opportunities to do that. As I said, I welcome the Government's financial commitment, and I asked the Library what was in the Budget and the Red Book about the London Underground so that I could add praise. I was disturbed that there appeared to be nothing specific. It may be incorporated in other Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions totals, but it implies that the public-private partnership is a done deal. There is no clear indication of what the Government are contributing over the next period, which gives a bad impression. The London Underground does as much as the rest of the rail network, and is as important to the national economy, yet it is considered too small to be included in the Budget or the Red Book. Does that also mean that transport Ministers did not fight their corner for the London Underground? I look forward to the Minister's comments.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of the public-private partnership. However, the partnership for the London Underground is potentially disastrous. It does not seem to give value for money, and the delivery from it is far less than was originally envisaged, or is needed. Four stations in my constituency are on the Central line: Leyton, Leytonstone, Wanstead and Snaresbrook. Transport for London's analysis of the public-private partnership shows that there will be no new or refurbished trains on the central line until 2016. The line's upgrade is due in 2005, but nothing is promised for the rest of the 30-year period. I do not know the details of the upgrade, but if it is not thorough, it will be inadequate for the following 30 to 40 years.

The PPP allows for a worsening of train frequency by three minutes compared with what is envisaged in the invitation to tender. In that invitation, Leyton station was to be modernised in 2003, Leytonstone and Snaresbrook in 2004, and Wanstead in 2003. By February this year, however, no modernisation date was offered for the first three stations, and the new date for Wanstead was 2012. That is deeply unsatisfactory for my constituents. All four stations require early modernisation, easier access and better arrangements to minimise opportunities for crime.

My hon. Friend and I represent the same borough of Redbridge. We have 10 stations between us, including eight for my residents and another that might be used extensively if a racecourse is built nearby. Is my hon. Friend aware of the press release by Transport for London, in which plans for upgrading and modernising those stations are shown to have been shelved under the PPP? Does he agree that our residents need these services improved as soon as possible?

That is a very good point—the same as I am making—and I hope that the Minister will respond and give a commitment to put the improvement of those stations back up high on the agenda.

I told the hon. Gentleman that 217 modernisations were originally envisaged under PPP between now and 2009. That figure has now been reduced to 61; and 129 modernisations have been eliminated entirely for the whole 30-year period.

I am aware of that and shall return to it later.

The PPP consultation process is over, but the contracts have not yet been finalised. They have been altered dramatically in the contractor's favour since the invitation to tender. Will the Minister tell us whether they are being altered even now? The consultation was inevitably generalised. Will the Minister give us an early indication of the responses? I suspect that few independent transport experts are in favour. I have submitted my representations, which concentrated on the poor value for money, low performance and fractured management that PPP is likely to produce.

Transport for London's response is important because it is the institution to be responsible for the system in due course. It has statutory responsibility for this key public sector asset and for paying PPP bills. TfL is scathing. It calls PPP "fundamentally and fatally flawed" for five reasons, which I am using as the framework for my speech.

The first is safety. There is a "wheel from steel" split of operation—of the trains from the maintenance of the track—which is a key failing of the national rail network. The existence and involvement of four separate organisations creates more safety boundaries, which increases the risk of things going wrong at the interfaces that affect safety. Specific responsibility for tube assets has not been clearly assigned. Not even an inventory has been produced. Instead, we have a policy of "minimum ambiguity" on who is responsible for what. That is just not good enough in a safety context. As the Parsons Brinkerhoff report indicated, endless haggling over secondary safety standards is likely. Procrastination over, rather than fulfilling, those standards will be the order of the day.

Where are the published reports of the health and safety inspectorate and the railway inspectorate? The consultation process proceeded without them. Earlier, the Health and Safety Executive had pointed out 52 safety issues of outstanding concern, including inadequate technical standards to govern the work done by the private sector infrastructure companies and unclear lines of responsibility relating to many of the tube's assets. However, the Health and Safety Executive has yet to confirm whether it has matched what is claimed by the PPP safety case to what is said in the PPP contracts. When will that happen?

As a unified system under central command and control, the London underground system has a fine safety record for a mass transit system. An untested, fragmented management model puts that at risk.

In respect of value for money, Ernst & Young called that subjective, which is not much of an endorsement. The costs assigned to the public sector in the comparator, which compared the public sector to PPP, were, without explanation, increased by 33 per cent. over the past two years, while the amount of notional work to be paid for materially decreased over the same period. The public sector was also penalised by a social costs adjuster of £1.4 billion, although even Ernst & Young said that it had never seen such an adjuster used in value-for-money analyses.

Public Finance magazine reports that the method of analysis benefited PPP by 5 per cent. Mr. Martin Blaiklock, a project finance consultant, told the Transport Sub-Committee that using the social costs adjuster was highly unusual. He said:

"I cannot recall seeing an occasion when it has been used to assess a bid, and I have worked in this field for 25 years."

The infracos are likely to be in a near monopoly position at the seven-and-a-half-year contract intervals. At that time, the public sector will be over a barrel, having to pay huge sums to renew its contracts, or still higher sums to buy them out. The Government have failed to clarify the options at those seven-and-a-half-year renegotiation periods. No financial guarantees from government have been given. Will the Government guarantee to put right the infracos' debt or future charges? If they do not, the impact on fare payers and London council taxpayers could be severe.

Last month, Capital Transport Bulletin stated:

"Early versions of the PPP relied on there being a substantial surplus of revenue from fares which would provide a revenue stream to pay for making improvements to the infrastructure. The fare box surplus has turned into a fare box shortfall".

It went on to quote the Transport Sub-Committee:

"The Government must commit to funding any resultant financial shortfall and by so doing ensure that it neither compromises the investment plan nor creates pressure for above inflationary fare increases".

I have seen a TfL document that is part of the consultation process. It states:

"The Lenders to the private sector will have the right to 'put' the £4.3 billion in debt to LUL, i.e. apparently to require that LUL pay off this £4.3 billion in full. This 'put' right is nothing less than a guarantee by LUL of private sector debt, a guarantee which the Government is approving and standing behind by virtue of the Comfort Letter, the latest version of which expressly refers to this 'put agreement'. Should the Government not honour the implied commitments of the Comfort Letters, then it is TfL that must foot the bill, by raising fares or depriving other modes of transport of much needed resources, or by looking to the Greater London Authority to raise London council taxes."

Will the Minister, on behalf of the Government, show good faith and give a commitment that all significant debt arising from PPP will be covered by the Government?

There is also the matter of the rate of return for infracos. The excellent magazine, Socialist Campaign Group News—I advise hon. Members to read it—reports:

"The eight construction and maintenance companies that make up Metronet and Tubelines consortia are expected to receive over £4 billion on their £500 million investments"

over the 30 years. I ask the Minister whether that is true. TfL says:

"If the Infracos were to successfully exploit all the financial avenues open to them and convert the £1 billion contingency fund into profit, they could make annual rates of return on their equity of anywhere between 37 per cent. and 58 per cent."

Again, I ask the Minister whether that is true because it impacts on the value-for-money issue.

The third matter is risk transfer. Tube service availability can deteriorate by up to 5 per cent. below current availability levels, and the infracos will still be paid bonuses from public funds. With the concessions made to the private sector, TfL maintains that

"no real risk is being assumed by the private sector".

For the seven-and-a-half-year period, the private sector could incur up to £50 million of cost overruns, but only after it has used up the £1 billion contingency fund for the same period. There are several other wheezes to get out of liability for cost overruns too. For example, the liability for the new signalling that is being put in will remain with London Underground Ltd.

Fourthly, the scope of the work to he undertaken has been markedly reduced since the invitation to tender only two years ago. The invitation to tender promised capacity improvements of 15 to 20 per cent. in the first seven-and-a-half-year period. That seems unlikely to be achieved. Apparently, only one tube line is now required for modernisation within that time scale.

TfL says that total station modernisations between now and 2009 have been reduced from 217 to 61. That point was also made by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) in an intervention. Train information, security monitoring and emergency help facilities have all been deferred from the first period to 2012 and well beyond. The outside date to have all assets in a reasonable state of repair has been deferred from 2017 to 2025, and 135 station modernisation programmes have been dropped completely—including three in my constituency—over the course of the PPP, and will not now happen in the next 30 years.

TfL also makes the point that the difference in years between what was previously promised and what is in the contracts now reveals that 318 years have been added to the much-reduced station modernisation programme. Very few capital improvements seem likely to be implemented in the first seven-and-a-half-year period. The performance that has been promised is unsatisfactory, and it is not what was previously promised.

The fifth point concerns stable and long-term funding. The concern is that no firm Treasury commitment is in place. London Transport's vice-chair, Brian Appleton, admitted to the Transport Sub-Committee on 27 February that government funding proposals presently extend only to 2010. TfL's concern is that London Underground Ltd. could be left owing a lot of money to existing PFI contractors due to the activities of the infracos, and it will not have a right to reimbursement from them. That could result in a lot of money being paid out by the public sector. There is also the risk that should the infracos exercise their right to unwind the PPP contracts at the first seven-and-a-halfyear review point, TfL could be left with a financial burden in excess of £5 billion.

On the PPP, transport commissioner Bob Kiley states that

"it is potentially unsafe and incapable of delivering the renewed and rehabilitated Tube that London needs. Worst of all, it could easily leave TfL and London with a bill for over £5.4 billion—that's nearly £1,700 for every London household—which the bidders and their lenders will pocket even when the contracts have failed … If the Government pushes ahead with the Tube PPP, London's farepayers and taxpayers could end up financing billions of pounds of private sector profit without seeing even a fraction of the improvements to the Underground the Government is promising. To proceed with the PPP would be both premature and irresponsible."

The private part of the PPP will not generate any more money for the tube than the public sector is inserting, and it will not deliver the high levels of performance, improvement and modernisation that such a large investment should deliver. There is a huge level of dissatisfaction with it and a lack of confidence in it. We should not commit to it but abandon it. A better policy would be to hand the whole investment over to the Mayor and TfL but say to them that they must set up a PPP, in a form of their choosing, and that the Government will closely monitor and audit how the public money is utilised.

Otherwise, when the PPP is handed over to the Mayor and TfL—I ask the Minister when that will happen; perhaps we could have some information about it—it will be a fait accompli. When it unravels, no one will take responsibility but everyone will blame someone else. The Government have had many warnings about that in the consultation and in the Chamber so, if chaos ensues, the blame will actually be theirs.

I do not want that. I know that the intentions are well-meaning. I want the Government to get credit for significant improvement to the London Underground. To do that, it would be best to say goodbye to the existing PPP and require the Mayor to introduce one that will work.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) on securing the debate and—unusually for me, a Conservative Member—on a very thoughtful and insightful speech. I wholeheartedly agreed with the vast majority of his speech, but differ with him on a matter of history. He looked back to the time of the previous Conservative Government and implied that they had given no support to London Underground. I simply remind him that the Conservative Government built the Jubilee line extension and introduced new trains on the Northern and Central lines. By contrast, not a single new carriage has been introduced to the underground in the past five years. Five years after the Government first started the PPP process, nothing has happened. I wait with bated breath for something to happen, but the weeks and months fly by.

Three months have passed since the Secretary of State made a statement to the House of Commons about the way forward for the underground, but nothing has happened. There is no sign of a hand over to Transport for London. There is no sign that work is starting. Indeed, we are still waiting for several of the key pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to be slotted into place before the scheme can start. I wonder how long the travelling public in London will have to wait. Will it be another six months, a year, two years? We are five years into a Labour Government, and nothing has happened.

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the weaknesses in the scheme—it has fundamental weaknesses. For a variety of reasons, it is the wrong project to meet the needs of London. We heard extensive evidence about capacity during the Select Committee inquiry. I am a member of the Transport Sub-Committee that produced the report to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The Government now admit the reality in written answers and London Underground certainly acknowledged it in evidence. The PPP proposals will just about keep pace with the capacity increases necessary for the projected growth in passenger numbers during the next 20 years. That means that people who travel to work today on a crowded tube train will carry on doing that for the next decade or more. That is very bad news for the travelling public in London.

However, if one looks at the small print in the background document for the Government's 10-year transport plan, one sees that it is worse than that. The document clearly says that, without a major congestion-relieving scheme such as the crossrail project—which, as we know, is not included in the plans for the next 10 years of the Government or the Strategic Rail Authority—congestion and overcrowding on the east-west underground lines will get worse, not better, during the period of the 10-year plan. There are problems not just for today; they will be much worse for future passengers.

It is clear that the PPP scheme has set out the wrong priorities. The evidence that Bob Kiley gave the Committee on that was compelling. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead referred to the fact that a station modernisation programme is at the heart of the PPP project. I have every desire to see spanking new modern stations across the London underground, but Bob Kiley's evidence—that the real priority in turning round the underground is replacing the rolling stock, not tarting up the stations—is inescapable. That is what he did in New York and in Boston. The Kiley plan involves the total replacement or refurbishment of the entire London underground stock in the first seven years of the contract. The reality is that the PPP scheme will deliver a handful of new carriages in that period. Is it right to focus on giving stations a new coat of paint rather than replacing the elderly trains that so often break down and develop technical difficulties, congesting the service all the way down the line? It is not scruffy stations that make trains run late, but trains that are not working up to scratch.

The scheme is over-engineered. It cannot be compared to the principles involved in creating Railtrack. When Railtrack was created, there was an expectation that several operators would provide a service for passengers travelling from point A to point B on one route. That is seen, for example, on the Gatwick Express route. However, different operators will not be running alternative trains on the Bakerloo line. In this case, the separation of track and train makes no sense whatever. All it will do is create contractual and managerial complexity.

I received a letter last week from a London Underground employee, saying that the company is already operating the new managerial systems that will exist in the future on the underground. He said that the systems are a nightmare, with more time being spent dealing with process and complexity than actually working on the lines, trying to sort out the problems that passengers and train drivers face. The scheme is far too complex, contractual and detailed. It makes no sense to try to over-engineer a solution to the problems of London's transport and our underground.

The scheme is not just the wrong project; it is the wrong structure. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead made several important points on the scheme's weaknesses, and I shall pick up on some. One is risk transfer. It is extremely unclear exactly who will bear the risks for the project. If there is one lesson that we have all learned from experiences on the mainline railway in the past few years, it is that a lack of knowledge of the condition of assets leads to huge cost uncertainties when major projects are embarked on. There is no question but that there is uncertainty about the actual condition of London Underground's assets. London Underground says that it knows its assets very well, but the Select Committee took evidence that that was far from the case.

London Underground might think that it knows its assets well, but in such a major project there are bound to be hidden nasties, problems that emerge during the course of the project. I cannot think of a project of that kind that has taken place without cost overruns. Who will take the risks? Are we saying to the private companies, "Go in there, do it, and if you find something unpleasant that none of us knew about, it's your fault?" I doubt very much that they will sign up to that. The real issues about who is carrying the risk are exacerbated by the Government's desire to get their pet scheme off the shelf and into action very hurriedly, and by their willingness to issue to the bidders letters of comfort that effectively significantly reduce the risk that they will carry, as the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said.

Another issue is the Treasury's involvement in the scheme and the way in which it has required the scheme's financial structure to be set out. Evidence taken in the Select Committee clearly showed that many of the improvements that are needed sooner rather than later will happen later rather than sooner because of the Treasury. The Treasury has been instrumental in encouraging London Underground to push projects out beyond the first 15 years of the contract. We took evidence from the board of London Underground to the effect that those projects will be started after 15 years, not before. We heard clear evidence from people who have been involved with several bidders that that is taking place at the Treasury's instigation.

It is reprehensible that the Treasury has consistently failed to provide proper answers about its involvement in the project. It refused to appear before the Select Committee and refuses to answer questions, batting them off to other Departments. It wants its fingers in every pie, but is not willing to be accountable for its decision making, ideas and influence on such projects. That is simply unacceptable.

On Treasury involvement and responsibility, does my hon. Friend agree that a particular part of the London underground has been let down badly—the Epping to Ongar line? The Minister's predecessor but one, the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson), promised that the land on which that line used to run would be preserved as railway land in perpetuity. Yet the contract entered into, presumably with Treasury backing—the point that my hon. Friend makes—failed to protect that land, and we are now on the verge of losing it for ever and thus being unable to resurrect a railway there. The Government say that they are committed to expanding public transport, yet in this case they have diminished it.

My hon. Friend's comments speak for themselves. Given the current expansion of demand for transport, it is foolhardy to give up existing corridors that may need to be reopened for passenger traffic. It is beholden on the Government to consider the assets that they hold and to protect them, given the enormous pressures on our transport infrastructure.

The last issue, which relates to financial structure, lies in the Ernst & Young report on the comparison between the public and private sector options available to the Government. The report is simply a whitewash for the Government's approach. That is no fault of Ernst & Young, which did the job that it was asked to do. It was asked to check that the sums added up; it was not asked to check whether the figures originally used were accurate. It is rather like my saying, "I have three sweets in this pocket, and three sweets in that pocket. I think that I've got six. Can you tell me whether I am right?" Someone could use a calculator, find that three plus three equals six, and say, "Yes, congratulations. You are right." However, they would have no idea whether I know how to count. I might have four in one pocket, and two in the other. They do not know. They would be giving me a bill of health on figures that are my assumptions and about which they know nothing. The executive summary in the Ernst & Young report makes it clear that that is what happened. There is, therefore, no certainty as a result of the Ernst & Young work that the scheme is value for money.

The value-for-money question is even more doubtful when we consider the use of the social cost adjustment, to which the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead referred, which effectively means that the difference in value for money between the two schemes is an accounting illusion. The private sector option presents no cash difference or saving to the Government. The cash saving is an accounting illusion based on an assessment that London Underground has chosen to use of the social cost benefit of its approach, rather than the alternative. As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, when we took evidence in the Select Committee, we did not hear one person from outside of London Underground say, "This is a valid accounting approach, which is used sensibly elsewhere and creates a real sense of the benefits of one option versus another." In an issue as fundamentally important as this, that is not acceptable.

As always, the Government exaggerate the financial side of their approach. We hear regularly from the Secretary of State that the Government are investing £15 billion in the biggest modernisation programme that the underground has ever seen. That is not so. They have taken the annual maintenance budget for the underground, which has always existed and which is spent to replace minor equipment each year, upgrade track or put new track bed in place regularly. They have accounted for that over 15 years, added it up and come up with a big, impressive figure. In addition, they have added a rather smaller sum—the new investment going into the underground.

The figure is an accounting illusion. It reflects another of the Government's habits of exaggerating hugely the sum being invested. Broadly speaking, the cash being invested in London Underground is comparable to what was spent in the early 1990s, when the Jubilee line was built. It is not some radical departure that will transform the tube. It is welcome cash—there is no doubt about that—but the Government exaggerate the contribution that it makes to the tube.

We heard in the Select Committee that there is a tangible alternative. Bob Kiley set out in considerable detail how he would take the underground forward and how he would finance that. He set out the improvements that we could expect within the first seven years. Under the PPP scheme, it is far from clear what improvements we will get in the first seven years. As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead says, the goalposts hop around all the time. The scheme is over-engineered and, by the admission of the Secretary of State and London Underground, it will not deliver an improvement to the congestion that we experience on today's underground.

PPP is the wrong project. It ignores the fact that London should be given the right to take responsibility for its transport system according to the principle of devolution that the Labour Government set in place. We have brought in from the United States one of the world's leading experts on modernisation of underground systems, and we are ignoring his advice. I do not understand why the Government are still doing that. It is not too late for them to change their mind, although much time has been wasted shilly-shallying. I hope that the Minister will tell his Department, "Let's change our mind and just crack on with it. Let's take the Kiley option and get the tube modernised properly."

I am here because I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee, and we were involved in some of the negotiations on the letters of comfort. I wish to speak on the issue of whether they are appropriate in this case. I do not pretend to speak on behalf of the PAC; I am simply a member of it who has been involved in the subject.

The issue first came to our attention when the Secretary of State wrote a letter to the Chairman of our Committee to explain that he was putting a minute before Parliament, announcing that letters of comfort would be issued to the contractors if they took up the bid. He had to do that because of the Government accounting rules, which are pretty explicit on how letters of comfort should be handled.

First, the rules say that a letter of comfort may be issued only if it is acknowledged that it may impose a moral obligation on the Government. The regulations say that a public sector body is unlikely to be able to issue a letter of comfort without effectively committing the Government to meet any obligation that arises. Secondly, they state that the total liability should be restricted by carefully specifying the amount and the length of time during which the Government are at risk of having to pay out that amount. Clearly, that was not done in the minute.

Thirdly, the rules note that Departments should approach any request for a letter of comfort with a strong predisposition to reject it. Proposals to issue a letter of comfort should therefore be exceptional. That alone should have been enough to show that the letters of comfort should never have been issued, and that the project should have been brought to a halt as soon as it became clear to the Secretary of State that he would need to issue a letter of comfort in order to get the lenders to go ahead with their lending. There was an alternative, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) made clear, has been on the table for a long time. Many people have been talking about it, not least my party, the Liberal Democrats. That alternative is to issue some sort of bond.

Fourthly, the accounting rules say that the potential liability mentioned in the minute must be accurately quantified; if that is not possible, an estimate should be given. The minute to Parliament did not give any estimate of the amount, nor was a quantified estimate given in further letters. The Government have merely said what sort of figure might be expected for the total sum involved, but they have not said how long that sum will last, and how quickly the amount at risk is expected to reduce.

Fifthly, the rules specify that 14 days' notice, excluding weekends, must be given when the minute is laid before the House of Commons before letters of comfort can be issued. The minute was laid on Wednesday 20 March, four days before the Easter recess. The letters of comfort were due to be issued two days after we returned. The regulations say that every effort should be made to ensure that the full waiting period elapses when Parliament is in session, but there was a 13-day Easter recess four days after the minute was laid.

In cases of special urgency, the reasons for less notice being given should be explained in the minute. However, the reasons were insufficient and badly explained in the minute, especially as the minute could have been laid at any time after 7 February, when the decision to go ahead was originally announced. There is no reason for the short notice. I am delighted that, as a result of pressure by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington, the Government were forced to back down on the notice period and allow a longer one after the Easter recess had finished.

The Secretary of State has ridden a coach and horses through his own financial regulations; they were agreed in 2000, so he cannot blame the previous Conservative Government for setting impossible accounting regulations.

My hon. Friend has made telling points about how the Government have behaved exceedingly shabbily over their accounting rules. Does he agree that such behaviour is especially inappropriate given the length of the contract, and the size of the investment and liabilities that we are considering? The financial regulations and the letters of comfort regime were designed for completely different projects. The magnitude of the project means that the device and its shabby use are especially inappropriate.

My hon. Friend's interest in London Underground is probably even greater than my own, although I use it a great deal. He makes a powerful case. He is right to say that the letters of comfort were used entirely inappropriately.

The Secretary of State's treatment of his own regulations brings to mind another organisation that treated its accounting rules in a similar way, putting lots of funds at risk and, sadly, ended up in a real mess; Enron. When good accounting rules are established, it is very dangerous to ignore them, as the Secretary of State has done. I would have thought that, having seen what happened to Enron, he would take more notice of the dangers involved.

When the Public Accounts Committee examined procedural points, was an opinion formed about the letters of comfort and whether they fell within the European Union rules on state aid?

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but the only discussion that took place about that matter in Committee was in private, and I am not able to reveal the details. I apologise if that is a difficulty. His basic point is a good one.

The contents of the letters of comfort are interesting, and include the information that if London Underground cannot meet its financial obligations under the PPP contracts, the Secretary of State regards as untenable the proposition that he would not consider either adjusting the transport grant or paying a special grant to the Greater London Assembly, that he would not take into account the sums owed to the providers of finance, and that he would stand by and do nothing. In other words, if the project goes wrong, in the end the taxpayer will bail out the company.

The whole point of the private finance initiative is to pass the risk of things going wrong across to the private sector. If one borrows money from the private sector, a higher rate of interest is inevitably charged than if the public sector was doing the borrowing. In return for that higher rate of interest, paid by the taxpayer, one expects the risk of the project going wrong to be passed across to the private sector, so that the public sector—the taxpayer—does not have to bail out the company. By offering the letters of comfort, the Secretary of State effectively admits that the Government would bail out the lenders should the scheme fail. The risk remains with taxpayers, who must pay the higher rate of interest on the project as well as retaining the risk. We lose out both ways.

A huge hole has been blown in the Secretary of State's justification for the PPP. Frankly, it is no surprise that he tried to sneak through the letters of comfort without the normal 14-day consultation period, and it is good news that he was, in the end, stopped from doing so. The Secretary of Sate has shown himself, once again, to be unfit to run a bus, let alone a transport company.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) on securing a repeat performance for this debate. He does the House a service by drawing attention to the subject, because it is the most important issue of the day for many Londoners. The current state of the London underground system causes great annoyance and discomfort. The Government seem to want to keep the matter underground. However, as I know from my own constituency, the underground sometimes comes out from the dark to be brought into the light. The hon. Gentleman does us all a service by raising the issue.

I have used the underground all my life and I rather like it. It is not always bad and, on a good day, offers a good service. I congratulate the staff. They increasingly have to endure complaints from the public about the poor service that results from more frequent cancellations and so forth. Speaking as someone who has served on the front line behind a counter—if there is such a thing—taking the rap for other people's decisions is not the easiest thing to do. The public, rightly, are angry about what is happening to their underground.

It would be unfair to say that the underground is all bad. Although we are sometimes disappointed about cancellations, the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines that serve my constituency can often offer a service that is all we would hope it to be. However, it is deteriorating; there is no doubt about that. Public dissatisfaction is increasing to a large degree.

The PPP put forward by the Government is immensely disappointing and there is consensus that something must be done about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and the hon. Members for Leyton and Wanstead and for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) put forward powerful arguments about why the flaws are there and why the project should be re-examined. However, from my previous existence as a salesman, I know that, no matter what they try to do, if the product is not right, the Government will not be able to sell it to the London public. They may feel that the project is the best option available; most would disagree. It is impossible to sell, and will be a millstone around the Government's neck in perpetuity if they persist with it.

The absence of Labour Members from these debates is not a reflection of their lack of interest; they are interested, but what they want to say is not necessarily what the Government want them to say. Discretion being the better part of valour, they leave the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead isolated.

However, as the Minister is present, I shall make a few points, including some about the underground system in my constituency. Safety has already been mentioned, and it will always be our prime worry. However, other issues must be considered, such as access for disabled people. Two years ago, a new station was built at Hillingdon. It won all sorts of awards, which worried me. There is a lift for disabled people, although it does not always work. But what is the point of a lift to get disabled people into an underground system in which there are very few stations at which they can get out the other end? It might work on the Circle line, as someone could get on and go round in a circle and come up from the same station into which he went down. That must be considered.

I am worried about the upkeep of not only the lines but some of the property that London Transport and London Underground own. A constituent who rents arches for a business on the District line is having great problems trying to find out who will do repairs. He has constant arguments. The management of London Underground does not seem to want to take responsibility for its tenants.

The constituency of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead is at one end of the Central line. The other is at West Ruislip, which just about squeaks into my constituency. A subject that is dear to my heart and which I have discussed with Ministers—indeed, one of the first things that I did when I entered the House was to plead for it—is an extension of the Central line to Uxbridge. Anyone who knows the area well will know that the sidings that come out of Ruislip Gardens, on the Central line, stop a few feet away from the Piccadilly line to Uxbridge. I have always been disappointed in that.

When I entered the House, I raised the matter with the Deputy Prime Minister, who had responsibility for such matters. He told me flatly that when they came to office in 1997, the Government had considered the plan and decided that it was not an option. Further questioning eventually led to a letter from the hon. Member for Streatham (Keith Hill), who was then in charge of such matters, to say that they had not actually considered the matter, but, had they done so, they would have rejected it. That possibly sums up how such matters are sometimes considered. Such an extension would be of great import to not only Uxbridge but all those who live along the Central line in west London, who would have an opportunity to access the job market in Uxbridge.

Another bone of contention—I am sure that London Underground will read the debate—is that, with the introduction of congestion charging in London, parking in suburban London for the underground will become even more acute. Charges in London Underground car parks are way above those for other local parking. If London Underground were to put its car park charges in line with those of the local authority, more people would be encouraged to use the underground. I ask London Underground to take note of that.

We return to the problem of what will happen if we get more people on the underground. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell discussed capacity. I cannot envisage how it is possible to run more trains into London at peak times. Trains come regularly. There is the odd cancellation, which makes life hugely difficult, but on a good day, Metropolitan line trains leaving Uxbridge and coming from Watford, and Jubilee line trains, which I pick up at Finchley Road to come here, come every minute or so. It is a good service. However, the trains are crowded, and we shall have to consider other methods. The Government must proceed with the Crossrail project.

With regard to capacity, I feel that we should be a little more imaginative about charges. We all know that there are off-peak tickets after 9.30 am. There is scope to introduce a cheaper early-bird fare before a certain time in the morning. That is not an entirely new idea; there used to be a workers' fare. My predecessor, the first Member of Parliament for Uxbridge, was working on a Bill on that subject in the early 1900s. Governments sometimes move slowly, but it is about time those issues were considered.

I want to allow the Front Benchers time to respond, but first I make a plea to the Government; do not stick to the dogma. They must understand that there is real opposition from both sides, and that it is not opposition for opposition's sake, but is based on sound facts. The Government will have an impossible job selling the idea to the public. There is very little support for the idea. I hope that they realise that having a good underground in London is important not just for Londoners, but for the whole country. It is a good advertisement for all those who come to visit our capital city.

I shall be brief, partly because I have spoken on the subject so many times in the past three or four years and have used the arguments in so many ways that it is difficult to find new ways of doing that. Hon. Members of all parties have joined the campaign to persuade the Government to think again. The Government are trying to tough it out, but I think that they will come to regret their decision. There will be many London Labour Members of Parliament who in a few years will wish that the Government had never gone down that track.

Among the arguments that have been rehearsed many times, there is a fundamental one to which we keep coming back, and to which Ministers, in their weaker moments, actually allude. The sole reason for the scheme is that the Government do not trust London Underground management—public sector management—to make the investments in the next few years. They believe that only private sector management has the know-how, the incentive and the ability to drive forward the investment programme to modernise the tube. One would think that they had learned their lesson from the railways.

That attitude is a real insult to London Underground, because its management have performed very well when they have been given the tools to do the job. Another option is to improve that management and bring in outsiders such as Bob Kiley to enhance its capacity and competence. However, the Government have shut their mind to that. They have simply said, "We don't trust London Underground management to do the job properly, so we're going to make sure that a private contractor does it." One of the serious flaws in the argument is that the Government have trusted London Underground management to negotiate the contract. Although they have no trust in the management, they have entrusted them to negotiate a contract lasting many years.

The logic of the Government's position is impossible. It just does not make sense. I ask them to consider the core reasoning behind their approach, and to think again about whether they could find a way of building up London Underground management, which has been enhanced by the Mayor of London. The Government should allow them to do the job, and save the London taxpayer billions of pounds in the process.

These debates are rather like the Circle line: we go round and round and keep going through the same stations, with hold-ups and unexplained delays along the way. I was going to start by congratulating the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) on securing a 100 per cent. increase in the attendance of Labour Back Benchers here, but unfortunately, his hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Linda Perham) left shortly after the beginning of the debate.

I want to focus on the issue of comfort letters, because it highlights the fact that the main purpose of PPP has been demolished. The risk transfer has simply not happened. There was much uncertainty about whether the comfort letters were going to be issued. They are called comfort letters because they provide a guaranteed protection from the Government. There was uncertainty because it is unusual for them to be issued for any amount over £100,000.

Following a parliamentary question asked by a Liberal Democrat peer, the draft letter was finally flushed out—it had to be dragged out of the Secretary of State, kicking and screaming. The letter was placed in the House of Lords Library on 20 March. In his covering letter, the Secretary of State wrote:

"I cannot and must not fetter my discretion, and so the comfort letters do not create binding obligations."

That is very strange because everyone in the business world thinks that they do. The Secretary of State went on to say—my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) has referred to some of these points—that he has made it clear that he would intervene

"in the event that London Underground was unable to meet its financial obligations".

He would think it untenable to not consider whether it was appropriate to give more grant money. He would think it untenable to stand by and do nothing. That directly contradicts his statement that binding obligations are not created.

The Minister will be aware that it is customary to provide a statutory period of consultation in respect of the comfort letters, under Government accounting rules. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury has said, the period started immediately before the Easter recess, and it looked as if the Government were going to railroad the process through, leaving that recess as the only considerable chunk of time that Members would have to consider it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury has said that an explanation is required if there is a real reason why the 14-day period has to be truncated. I understand that the explanation given to the National Audit Office for rushing things through was that there were delays that could cause problems because European officials would be on holiday at an inappropriate time. That does not sound like a valid excuse or explanation to me. It was also argued that the signing of the share purchase agreements much later than 10 April would risk losing momentum on the PPP competitions—but those had been going on for years. We are talking about a delay of several days in a process that had been going on for four years, yet the Government were seeking to truncate the period of parliamentary scrutiny.

The Government could give more grant as a follow-up to those comfort letters, were debt incurred, but could they not also say that the public sector should pick it up, which would mean Transport for London? It may not be the Treasury that picks up debt from the comfort letters, but fare payers and council tax payers.

That was a very useful intervention. I hope that the Minister has listened very carefully, and will give some guarantees that the fare-paying passenger will not end up picking up the tab.

We have heard about the exchange of correspondence between the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and the Secretary of State. I do not want to requote what was said in the letter, apart from the following:

"a public sector body is unlikely to be able to issue such a document without effectively committing Government credit and having to meet the obligation should it materialise".

That does away with the main justification for PPP. In his letter of 11 April, the Secretary of State said that the

"customary notification period will be provided".

That was extended to 23 April—yesterday. Will the Minister tell us whether the comfort letters are now available—not in draft but in final form—for us to see?

I am disappointed that creating an environment in which the matter can be debated has been left to the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). That seems a cursory way of allowing consideration of such an important matter.

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who tried hard to get the Secretary of State to allow a debate in Government time on the issue. He also helped to draw up an early-day motion. What response did he have from the Government to his perfectly reasonable request?

My hon. Friend will know that the Government's scrutiny of and responses on PPP have lacked content. None the less, we hope that the Minister will explain why so little time has been made available to discuss this important matter. Perhaps he will use the opportunity to say that the Secretary of State will come to the House and allow a full and open debate with a free vote at the end, so that all Members of Parliament can express their views in an open and unwhipped way. We could flush out the views of the absent Labour Back Benchers and give them an opportunity to express themselves openly in a situation in which they feel safe.

We have had a considerable amount of debate about comfort letters, so I shall move on to accountability. The way in which Members of Parliament and Transport for London have been treated over the comfort letters is symptomatic of the way in which the PPP has been handled. Unfortunately, MPs have been treated with a degree of contempt. Before Christmas the Secretary of State told the Transport Committee that he would hold a full consultation with all interested parties—I would suggest that MPs are interested parties—but that came to nothing. His initial statement to Parliament that he intended to go ahead with PPP did not give MPs time to examine the relevant report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton said, hon. Members, including me, have subsequently called for an open debate, but again, those calls have been ignored. It has been left to individual MPs to facilitate the debate on this important subject—but now a proper statement must be made to Parliament.

We have heard about the delays that TfL experienced in obtaining the necessary documents. Unfortunately, it had to contact me to obtain a copy of the draft comfort letter. I am pleased that it did, but it seems strange that it should be down to Opposition Members to provide information to TfL, an organisation that is clearly engaged and interested in the issue. The information should have been made available to TfL—if not before, at least at the same time as it was made available to MPs.

TfL raised strenuous objections to the scheme, and many serious points that require detailed scrutiny, which has not been available. It argues that PPP will fail to deliver value for money and will fail to transfer risk from the public sector. Many hon. Members have clearly demonstrated that that will be the case. PPP will separate maintenance from operations. The Government argue that it is not privatisation, but because of the way in which assets will be handed over using various long-term lease arrangements, one could argue that it is partial privatisation. Those are serious accusations that deserve scrutiny, but they will not be getting any. They cannot be addressed through Westminster Hall debates with a Minister who may be well practised in responding to Adjournment debates, but who is not at the heart of the matter.

If I had time, I would focus on the management of London Underground, which was the subject of the second half of today's debate. There is no time to go into my worries in detail, but I can tell the Minister that from discussion with those who work for London Underground, I know that they are alarmed about the fact that breaking up the infrastructure has meant that four people do a job that one used to do: one person does it at London Underground, and three do it in the different infracos. The number of people who work in different posts is mushrooming, which is not a cost-effective way to manage limited resources. I wonder whether the Minister has considered that. Something else that I do not have enough time to consider today is the lack of ambition in the Government's plans—with regard to the extension from Morden to Sutton, for example, which has long been campaigned for, or the Hackney to Chelsea line, for which I actively campaigned in 1984.

If the Government genuinely believe that their case for PPP is watertight, they have nothing to fear from a full debate and vote, and the Secretary of State has nothing to fear from questions in the House. If the Minister answers only one question from today's debate, I hope that it will be to tell us when the full debate will happen.

I hope that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) forgives me for not mentioning his speech, but as he overran, I have no time to say all the nice things that I had planned. However, I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen).

Many hon. Members have had their own monuments. Mr. Belisha has his beacons and Mr. Kenneth Baker has his days. Now we have the Harry days for the London underground. He is to be congratulated on his persistence, although he spoilt it slightly by being unpleasant about the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats. He then moved on to the real enemy: the Minister. I shall long remember him asking the Minister to show good faith, as though it were exceptional behaviour.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) rightly said that to bring Bob Kiley all this way and ignore him is ridiculous. He is a noted expert who has forgotten more things about running an underground than the rest of us know.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) referred to the Epping to Ongar railway, in which I have an interest because the Ongar railway lands in my patch. Were she still in the Chamber, she would press the Minister for a meeting, along with the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell), to discuss the problem.

We have the largest single PPP, and the largest single letter of comfort issued in the history of this fine nation. So, what do we know about the situation? We know that in the lifetime of the contract for an initial investment by the infracos of £530 million, Metronet and Tubelines will make a cool £2.7 billion in profit. We know that banks are demanding huge margins because of Railtrack, and that the Government are about to sign a guarantee of £4 billion. It is therefore reasonable for us to ask, what will the contract deliver? There will be little or no capital works before 31 March 2009, which, as the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, is the only period in which private finance is agreed and assured. We know that projects such as station modernisation, tracks, tunnels and bridges have all been pushed back, and many such projects have been abandoned. Under the PPP, changes to the rolling stock were originally going to be modest, but they have been further cut back.

The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead read out several examples. He talked about the number of cancellations of station modernisation and the fact that the trains to replace the ageing fleet will not be ready before 2011. Perhaps the worst thing is that of the 13 capability upgrades projected by the PPP over the next 18 years, only four are due before 2011. There is no agreed pricing or firm commitment of finance for any of the other nine upgrades due to be completed in the 30-year period.

It is little wonder that Mr. Kiley is unhappy. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead quoted extensively from Mr. Kiley's recent speech, but I shall quote the paragraph that he left out:

"The Government has long argued that one of the reasons for pushing ahead with a PPP for the Tube was to transfer the risk of expenditure cost overruns, such as happened on the Jubilee Line Extension, to the private sector. But now, it will be TfL and London that will carry the can if completely unproven signalling technology fails. It is clear that the foundations on which this PPP was built have collapsed, and that alone should mean the end for this entirely discredited scheme."

A number of my hon. Friends, notably my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell, talked about the transfer of risk. The entire purpose of the venture was a risk transfer, but that is non-existent. The Government have set down a guarantee of £5 billion, but, as the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) said, that looks increasingly like an Enron deal. Mike Warburton, the senior tax partner at accountants Grant Thornton, said that the issue raises serious questions and that

"in the current post-Enron climate people have got to be a lot more careful about how they are accounting for their debt obligations … a company would no longer be allowed to get away with it."

The Government seek a financial practice that they have outlawed in this country and which is illegal in other countries of the European Union.

The PPP final assessment report prepared for London Underground and London Transport told the Government that the

"Infracos will genuinely suffer the consequences for failing to deliver".

Since those words were put down in the final assessment report, many things have happened. We now know that a number of concessions were made to the infracos since the report was published, and that there is no more risk than that in a standard construction contract. It is fair comment to say that the PPP is little more than a glorified cost plus maintenance contract. Either the Government or London Underground will pick up the risk. There is no commitment from the Treasury for state funding beyond 2010, which is, of course, when the majority of the problems are to be dealt with.

In the minute that remains, let me outline a couple of problems that we need the Minister to address. I raised with the hon. Member for Newbury the question of whether the PPP is covered in the EU treaty. Articles 87 and 88 clearly prohibit the state lending state money to a business where there has been no transparent contract, and articles 81 and 82 prohibit unfair competition. I am worried that we do not know whether the services provided by the infracos will be open to transparent competition. We already know that they have decided to sell off several of their maintenance contracts to some of their junior companies within the consortium. That seems to fall foul of the European rules. When the Minister replies to the debate, the fundamental question that we want answered is, where does the risk lie and has it been transferred? Moreover, does the letter of comfort comply with our obligations under the European Union treaty?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) on securing the debate. Perhaps in later life he will help and instruct other Members on how one secures debates so regularly. He must have a good line of contact with the Speaker. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) talked about Mr. Belisha's beacon. Hore-Belisha was a very distinguished predecessor of mine in my constituency of Plymouth, Devonport, although he was a National Liberal. Perhaps at some point in the future we shall call the debates "the Cohen memorial debates". I congratulate him on the way in which he has approached the debate today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead approached the debate in his usual forensic manner. I like the fact that he always speaks sincerely on behalf of his constituents. I am pleased to say that there are two matters on which he and I would be in total agreement. First, we want good value for money for taxpayers and passengers. Secondly, in his early remarks, he said that the tube is important to the country and the economy. I reinforce that most strongly.

To follow a point made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who took a measured approach to the debate, there is a lot that is good about our tube. I say that as someone who travels regularly on the tube. It is not perfect, but much is good about it. When I have used it frequently, I have found the service good and the people on it helpful and friendly. That needs to be said because sometimes people who work for the underground must think that we in this House have nothing but criticism for the work that they do. I think that the contrary is the case.

Let me pick up a couple of points mentioned by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead about trains and station improvements. Transport for London has criticised plans for station improvement schemes, despite the fact that it argued that less priority should be given to stations. It is true that fewer stations will be modernised in the early years, but the fact remains that the PPP offers greater improvements than any previous alternative. All stations would benefit from a number of considerable improvements during the seven-year period of the contract.

The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) spoke about improvements to stations, which are important. He seemed to think that the issue was all about rolling stock. It is not; the quality of the stations and the line is very important in running a successful rail system. I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead on that point.

The Central line already has good, modern trains and there will be no need to replace those in the immediate future. The PPP is designed to ensure that better maintenance of track, trains and signals will reduce delays. I know that the people travelling from my hon. Friend's area want that reduction. The Socialist Campaign Group News is not on my regular reading list, although it seemed at one stage to be bedside reading for some Conservative Members. I can, however, assure my hon. Friend that the figures mentioned for the return for shareholders are hugely exaggerated. The whole point of the contract is that if the infracos meet the terms of their contract, there will be a return for shareholders, but if they do not, the returns will diminish substantially.

The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who I am delighted to see back in this Chamber, sounded like the authentic voice of Ken Livingstone at one stage in the debate.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

No, because my hon. Friend has only just come into the debate and I want to pick up on some of the points that have already been made.

The hon. Gentleman said that one great success of the Conservative Government was the Jubilee line extension. I think that I understood that correctly. Was he talking about the same Jubilee line extension that went 67 per cent. over budget and was not months but years overdue? If the hon. Gentleman is holding that up as a shining example of the way in which the Tories would run the tube system, Conservative Members need to have a rethink; it is hardly a good prospectus for the tube. He went on to say that there should be no separation of track and train. That will not happen under our proposals, so the hon. Gentleman only made a swathing criticism of the Tory privatisation of the railways.

I shall outline the progress that we have made since the last debate on this matter and then respond to some of the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead. As some hon. Members will be aware, the board of London Transport announced on 7 February that, following a thorough reevaluation, it was minded to proceed with the modernisation plans. There has since been extensive consultation between London Transport, the Mayor and Transport for London. A considerable amount of noise has surrounded that process, with suggestions that TfL was denied access to documents that it had the right to see. Indeed, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell made similar comments last time. However, although that noise was loud, it did not ring true.

My hon. Friend talked about value for money. I think that everyone agrees that achieving value for money should be the Government's key objective, whether in relation to the tens of billions of pounds that we are providing for the national health service or the billions of pounds for the tube. The modernisation plans represent the most extensively examined public-private partnership ever. The London Underground analysis and the independent review by Ernst & Young are available for everyone to examine the evidence. On the basis of that evidence and analysis, the Government are satisfied that the plans will provide value for money.

A number of hon. Members spoke about fragmentation and privatisation, and now we come to some of the wildest allegations about the modernisation plans: claims that the tube will be privatised and that the plans will create the sort of fragmentation that took place when the Conservatives privatised the national rail system. [Interruption.] I do not know whether renationalisation is Conservative policy, but perhaps the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar can tell us on another occasion.

I simply do not understand how anyone can claim that a structure in which there will be a single body, publicly owned and publicly run, operating all the trains, signals and stations in a unified network amounts to privatisation or fragmentation. Manifestly, it does not. There is no comparison between our plans for the tube, and the privatisation of the rail system.

What is my hon. Friend's latest information about the time of the complete handover to the Mayor and Transport for London?

That will be a matter for London Underground, Transport for London and the others involved. I hope that it will not be much longer before the decision is made, but my hon. Friend will appreciate that other issues have to be addressed in the meantime.

In the brief time remaining let me turn to the comfort letters. If I do not cover all the points that were made, I shall write to my hon. Friend about this. The Government propose to support the PPP through a long-term commitment of grant funding for Transport for London. That is set out in the so-called "comfort letter", which also describes the Secretary of State's intended approach if London Underground were confronted by large liabilities under the PPP contracts—

Order. Time is up.

Norfolk and, indeed, the whole country was shaken by the Tony Martin case, which brought into sharp focus the issue of policing in remote rural areas. Tony Martin had been the victim of a number of burglaries and thefts. By the time of the burglary that resulted in the tragic death of one of the intruders, he had virtually lost confidence in the local police. Time and again he had reported crimes to the local constabulary, yet he did not feel that due note was being taken of his reports and concerns. Most people in Norfolk were dismayed when he was charged with murder and even more dismayed when he was convicted. I am pleased that the Court of Appeal reduced his conviction to one of manslaughter and I hope that he will be out of prison soon and can return a free man to his farm, Bleak House, at Emneth Hungate.

I want to examine how Norfolk constabulary has reacted to the challenges thrown up not just by the Martin case, but as a result of ongoing appraisals by our excellent chief constable, Kenneth Williams. I shall then look at what still needs to be done and try to put some of those changes into the national context.

I have nothing but praise for our local police. They are excellent, incredibly hard-working and conscientious. I should like to praise in particular chief superintendent Alan Hayes, who is in charge of the division in King's Lynn, and his operations superintendent Tony Charrington. They have always been extremely professional and responsive whenever I have contacted them, and they are held in high regard by their officers throughout that part of Norfolk.

Norfolk has had a pattern of under-investment in policing, and police officer strength is well below the national average. Norfolk is bottom but one of the 43 forces in terms of the officer-population ratio. That is completely unacceptable in a county that is geographically one of the largest in England, has a rapidly growing population and is visited by 4 million tourists a year. Although Norfolk may appear to be quite prosperous, it has pockets of social deprivation and many isolated villages and rural areas that increase the difficulties of providing the reassurance and police visibility that the public rightly demand.

The current settlement, as the Minister knows, allows for a welcome increase of 100 officers for Norfolk's constabulary, up to a target figure of 1,500 by March next year. However, numbers will only return to where they were in 1997. There are currently 1,470. Across the country, there are 600 fewer police officers than there were in 1997, so we have a significant way to go. I am concerned about the number of officers leaving the police forces up and down the country and the number of officers leaving Norfolk's constabulary in particular. Indeed, in some parts of the country, the numbers leaving are outstripping new recruits, which is creating a problem for police morale.

The Norfolk constabulary has proposed several initiatives that have directly benefited my constituents. A beat station was established in Terrington St. John, which is a small village in the west of my constituency in the middle of an area known as Marshland. The area is remotely populated, and people have a sense of distance from Norwich, the county capital. Parts of Marshland are 45, 50 or 60 miles from Norwich. The establishment of the beat station has done a great deal to convince local people that the constabulary is taking seriously their concerns about visible policing and the need to have more police officers on the ground.

I am also pleased that Chief Constable Ken Williams recently launched several mobile police stations in Norfolk: one is in west Norfolk, another is part of the Fenland initiative, which I shall discuss later. Each vehicle will be staffed by a police officer and, in some cases, support staff. The vehicles have been designed specially for the Norfolk constabulary. They will all have telephones, radios, fax connections to police force networks, disabled access, and a folding pedal cycle for the police officer to use on patrol while the vehicle is parked visibly in a rural community. Each will follow a published route and timetable for visiting villages. From now on, two vehicles will operate in my constituency, which is welcome.

I also want to praise the community contact vehicles initiative, which is another of Ken Williams's initiatives. As the Minister probably knows, Norfolk has been split into three areas and 16 inspector-led sectors for policing purposes. I praise the Government for the rural policing fund, which enabled the purchase of 15 Ford Galaxy people carriers—the sort that the Prime Minister and his family use. Each sector will have one of the people carriers, which have been modified to permit use as a mobile office and include a folding table at the rear.

The idea behind the community contact vehicles is that police officers will be able to carry out a substantial amount of paperwork in them. All too often in the past, police officers went out to a small hamlet or a community in their patrol car, and had to return to the police station to complete the paperwork. We all know that the weight of paperwork on police officers is increasing all the time. The vehicles will be parked prominently in the community.

I also praise the chief constable for the excellent Fenland project, which is a policing initiative that the Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire constabularies set up. The idea is to try to co-ordinate police operations and intelligence sharing between those forces. As the Minister knows only too well, criminals do not respect county boundaries. One of Norfolk's biggest problems was that the western part of the county is close to Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Burglary, theft and vehicle crime are, of course, serious to the individual, but unless the crime was murder or involved grievous bodily harm, the Norfolk constabulary would send someone to the scene, which could take up to half an hour. If a patrol car belonged to Cambridgeshire or Lincolnshire, it could not cross the county boundary. Under the initiative, however, a pooling of resources and a more common-sense approach to policing across county boundaries will develop, which I welcome. Undoubtedly, the project has been a significant success. It covers 500 square miles and encompasses 72 parishes in the three counties, and it went live in August 2001.

As the chief constable pointed out to Norfolk MPs in a recent memorandum, the aims are to reduce the disproportionate fear of crime and to provide high-profile policing to reassure the public and restore confidence. The initiative will focus on three key areas: repeat victimisation, an increased rate of scene attendance and greater attention to cross-border crime and intelligence.

I am worried that the Fens project does not have guaranteed Government funding beyond 31 December this year. It is vital to renew the funding commitment. The project has been a significant success, but without renewed funding it could well fold. Crime has increased in other parts of the country: press reports today show that people are more likely to be attacked, mugged or murdered in some parts of London than in Harlem. That is an appalling indictment of what is happening in this country and the Opposition are right to draw the public's attention to such problems.

Norfolk, however, compares well with other parts of the country. In west Norfolk, violent crime, burglaries and robberies are down. The only category that has increased slightly from last year is vehicle crime. Norfolk is doing well in the battle against crime. We cannot be complacent, but we are making good progress. I submit to the Minister that the Fenland project has played a key role in getting on top of crime in this part of the county. It is vital that she reinforces success by ensuring the continuation of funding.

As to the future, there are no grounds for complacency, as I said. We still need more officers on the ground. About a year ago, the Minister announced 100 extra police officers—the aim was to build up to 1,500 officers by March next year—but they are spread across a large county. Of course they are welcome, but there is a long way to go. Norfolk is second bottom in the league of police officers per head of population, so we still need many more officers.

More closed-circuit television is vital for my constituency. This debate is about policing, not CCTV, but I want to flag up its success in the battle against crime. The Minister is pro-CCTV and she will know that King's Lynn was one of the pioneer local authorities to install it about 12 years ago. We now need the CCTV scheme rolled out in Hunstanton, in other parts of King's Lynn, and particularly on the Saddlebow travellers' site on the edge of King's Lynn. It will play a significant part in the battle against crime.

We need to retain police officers and ensure that police morale is as high as possible. Police officers presently feel under valued and uncertain about their future. Now is not the time for the Home Secretary to proceed with his comprehensive review of pay and conditions. The Minister will know that on 6 February a police ballot showed a 91 per cent. vote—84,205 officers—in favour of rejecting the proposals. Their main concern was the Home Secretary's plan to reduce overtime payments from time and a third to time and a fifth. If it goes through, thousands of police officers will be worse off. There will be times in the future when it is correct and well judged to introduce reforms to pay and conditions—perhaps when police morale is high and there is progress in the fight against crime.

Order. I assume that the hon. Gentleman is referring to morale in the police service in East Anglia?

I certainly am, Mr. Stevenson.

Unless there is high morale and police officers feel that they are being properly rewarded for the job done, their morale will suffer. The police in East Anglia cannot function without overtime because of historic under-resourcing and the nature of the job. My clear message is that the Government cannot manage overtime by making it cheaper, as it will lead to demoralisation and to retention problems. Furthermore, last week's Budget announcements will mean many officers in my constituency and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) paying more tax. They will be £25 or £30 a month worse off. If they lose their overtime on top of that, there will be serious problems with retention and morale.

Many officers came to lobby Parliament on 13 March. They were not hotheads who wanted to cause a disturbance or to riot in the streets; thoroughly decent officers from Norfolk came here quietly to put their point of view. They want a constructive dialogue and a positive partnership with the Government. If the police in Norfolk do not have that positive partnership, they will be unable to make headway in the battle against crime.

I hope that the Minister will take note of what I have said. I look forward to her reply and hope that she can give us some comfort that our success in the battle against crime will be able to continue.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) and to the Minister for the opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate.

Crime is a big issue in my constituency, too. Twelve months ago, our survey on the issue found that 29 per cent. of people rated it the most significant issue, followed by education at 22 per cent. Last Saturday, we did another survey on crime in South Norfolk and had the tremendous response of some 600 replies on the day in the four market towns of Wymondham, Diss, Loddon and Harleston. My agent told me this morning that we had about 900 replies in total, and I shall share some of the results with the House.

Of those who replied, 17 per cent. said that they had been victims of crime in the last year; a further 15 per cent. said that they knew someone who had been a victim of crime in the same period. Thirty per cent. believed that crime had risen in the past five years; 92 per cent. believed that a strong police presence was required locally; 65 per cent. believed that the Government should spend more on policing; 72 per cent. were against early release schemes; and some 92 per cent. believed that sentences handed down by the courts are not in line with public opinion.

I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk said; the question is, if everything is so rosy in the garden, why did thousands of policemen and women march on Parliament? Inspector Andrew Taylor from Wymondham police station in my constituency invited me to accompany him in the police patrol car so that I could see at first hand what happened in the area, and I was glad to accept. Things are not all rosy in the garden.

I appreciate that the Minister has a difficult task and there is much more to do, but the reforms that the Government are considering, especially those on police pay and conditions, are almost the worst possible way of going about it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) on securing the debate. As well as being a welcome opportunity for him to express his views, it enables me to put on the record how seriously the Government take the issues of rural crime and rural policing, and what we intend to do to address them. His remarks acknowledged the seriousness with which we approach the issues, perhaps the first time that any Government have done so in such a distinct way.

We recognise the widely held concern about the need for police forces to put more resources into rural areas and to look at the distinct issues that arise in policing crime in rural areas. Let me put that in context. It is clear and generally accepted from the valid studies of the British crime survey that both the fear of crime and the general level of crime are significantly lower in rural areas than in urban or inner-city areas. That does not mean that we are complacent or that we do not need to listen to what people are saying. We do, but we must start from an understanding of that context.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) talked about his survey, but the last two British crime surveys, which I hope he will accept are much more rigorous and fundamental, are repeated regularly and reveal valid trends. They show that crime levels have fallen consistently in rural areas. That also applies to categories of crime that are recorded by the crime survey, such as vehicle crime, violent crime and burglary. The British crime survey also reports that people in rural areas feel that they have a better quality of life. They suffer fewer social problems and are less fearful of crime; they are less likely to think that they will be victims of crime and are more positive about the way that crime is being dealt with locally.

Having said that, I do not suggest that there are not problems in rural areas or that we do not need to listen to the people who live there. I accept that there are distinct issues about policing in rural areas that must be taken seriously. Overall, the figures show that East Anglia is a safe place in which to live. The overall picture is that there is a lower incidence of crime, that crime is falling faster in that area than the national average and that police clear-up rates are higher. That gives us some sense that, while we have to respond to problems, things are going in the right direction.

What would the Minister say to my constituent, Mrs. Maureen Loveless, who told me at an election meeting last year that she had been burgled five times? Only a few weeks ago, she told me that she had been burgled six times in the five years of this Government.

I would express my sincere sympathies to the hon. Gentleman's constituent. One issue that we have learned in recent years by looking in detail for evidence of patterns of crime is that, unfortunately, like most things in society, crime is not distributed equally. We take the phenomenon of repeat victimisation seriously. We are putting a lot of effort into identifying how we can specifically help repeat victims. I would also say to her that, had the Government not taken the measures that we have in relation to rural crime over the last few years, her experiences might have been even more serious.

Overall, the picture in East Anglia is one of lower incidence of crime and higher clear-up rates. The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk talked about the need for resources to be translated into higher numbers of police officers, and so on. He will know that this year Cambridgeshire set a final budget on the back of Government grants that shows an increase of more than 10 per cent. In Norfolk, there was an increase of 8.4 per cent., and Suffolk set a final budget with an increase of just under 7 per cent. from last year. Those are substantial increases in resources, which I am sure the chief constable and his officers will use to good effect.

The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk made a point about the relevance of resources and police numbers. The national picture is that in the first six months of 2001–02, police numbers increased by more than 1,500 to nearly 128,000. Figures provided by the 43 police forces in England and Wales and the four main organisations staffed by seconded police officers show that police strength is at record levels. It took some time to increase the number of officers after 1997, but that was largely because there was a drop in police officers between 1993 and 1997. However, police numbers at the end of January were up nearly 1,600 from March 1997. That disputes the hon. Gentleman's claim that we had not yet made up the gap. We have more than made it up, and we did so more quickly than we anticipated.

Police numbers are an important part of a comprehensive package of measures drawn up to ensure a modern and efficient police service. That issue is as important in rural areas as it is in urban areas. The upward trend in police numbers in East Anglia is important and encouraging. There is a record number of police officers in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, and there is a sustained increase in the number of police officers in Suffolk.

Another extremely important ingredient for the longer term is the issue of pay and modernisation, which was raised by both the hon. Members for South Norfolk and for North-West Norfolk. As the Home Secretary made clear, we want a dialogue with the police to make sure that we get the matter right for both parties. We are continuing that dialogue through the police negotiation board, which includes officers from Norfolk.

It is important that the system of police pay is not excluded from the modernisation that must take place if we are to take police practices and the way that we reward police officers into the 21st century. We must tackle some of those issues. Not all police officers' jobs are the same, and we should reward the jobs on the front line that tackle the difficult aspects of policing. That, in part, is what the review and the modernisation of police pay are about.

On rural policing, I shall mention three Government innovations that are particularly relevant to the point that the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk made. First, it is the crime fighting fund as much as the general increase in police resources that is responsible for the record numbers of police officers. The fund is a mechanism that ensures that money for police officers goes towards employing officers. Before the Government instituted the crime fighting fund, with the intention of using it to employ more police officers, some of the increases in the settlement were not being used for that purpose. By providing a ring-fenced pot of money that is available to all police services, the crime fighting fund has ensured that some resources are translated into additional police officers. In the past two years, we have begun to see that through.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of closed-circuit television. I share his view that that has been an important development for both rural and urban areas. Almost £2.5 million has been allocated on eight CCTV projects across Norfolk in the past two years as a result of another innovation, the crime reduction programme, some of which centred on King's Lynn. I hear that parts of that area would like extensions of the scheme, and I welcome that. Certainly, there is a great deal of demand. We shall have to see how that goes.

The third innovation, which is very important, is the rural policing fund. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to mention the fens project, which has been made possible, along with other projects that he mentioned, because of that fund. The project is being evaluated, and I look forward to reading the proposal about its needs, which will be submitted to the Home Office after the end of the year.

The crime of rape is suffused with myths. The first relates to the true nature of rape: the rapist is a stranger, lying in wait in a mask on a dark footpath in the dead of night. That is "real" rape.

Such incidents are few. The truth about rape is that in 21st-century Britain, one in four women is either raped or suffers an attempt at some stage in her life, and 90 per cent. of those are perpetrated by partners, ex-partners or men they know.

The space between the myth and the truth contributes to a further myth—that if a man a woman knows, as one High Court judge put it to me, goes a bit too far when she does not want it, that may be misbehaviour but it is not a serious crime. As a result of that myth, the sympathy in a rape trial between parties who know each other will be with the defendant. He faces a serious charge intended for the prosecution of "real rape", of the masked and dark night sort, but is regarded as only technically at fault, in a possibly understandable way, in an existing relationship.

Much research has been done on the impact of rape on women, which all points to it being just as traumatic to be raped by someone a woman knows as by a stranger. Some such women find it harder to deal with. They feel betrayed not only by the men but by their own judgment. They suffer shock, self-blame, anger, depression and fear of being alone. The effects are generally long term: 97 per cent.. of women sampled had lasting emotional harm; 90 per cent. had ongoing family or relationship problems; and 54 per cent. reported that their education or employment had suffered. Rape, even by a man known to the woman, and contrary to the second myth, is an extremely serious and damaging crime.

On 8 April, the inspectorates of constabulary and of the Crown Prosecution Service published a report on the investigation and prosecution of rape. They agreed. The report states:

"There are few offences that impact so severely on the victim".

Yet rape is vastly under-reported. A literature review for the inspectors by Professor Liz Kelly of the university of North London shows that about 90 per cent. of raped women make no complaint. When rape is reported, fewer than half the cases even start as prosecutions. One in five reaches trial, and fewer than half those result in a conviction. All these drop-out rates are far higher than for any other crime. The conviction rate for those who report is just 7.35 per cent.

Why do women not report rape? Research shows that many believe that the police and the courts will not think that rape by someone the woman knows is "real rape". They fear that they will be blamed or disbelieved and that they will not be supported. In particular, they fear that a further myth—that a woman who has had sex with A and B is more likely to have had sex consensually with C—will persuade a court to allow C to bring up her previous sexual history in public to embarrass and discredit her. The admission of such evidence causes great distress to rape complainants, and has been known for many years to deter women from reporting rape.

The inspectors' report suggests that all those reasons for not reporting are fully justified. When investigating rape by men known to the woman, police do not follow up inquiries that might support the complaint. Police statements about previous heterosexual history show that

"victims are being subjected to embarrassment without good cause."

In deciding whether to prosecute, both the police and Crown prosecutors make

"value judgments on the credibility of the victim as a witness".

The literature review points out:

"At each stage of the legal process stereotypes and prejudices play a part in decision-making."

Of course, the decision-making process is also influenced throughout by the prospect of success at the next stage and, ultimately, by the likelihood of a guilty verdict at trial. It is clear that police and prosecutors, in making negative decisions based on those stereotypes, are giving unwitting, testimony that the courts are also subject to those stereotypes. The inspectors' report makes clear reference to similar problems in the trial process. After 25 years at the criminal bar, I can tell the House that rape myths certainly operate in trials all the time.

In an attempt to tackle the myth that previous sexual experience makes it more likely that the complainant has consented, the Government passed sections 41 to 43 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 to prevent questioning about a woman's sexual history if the object is to show that she consented. That exclusion is very important.

The Canadian researcher Catton has shown that where jurors hear evidence of previous sexual history, their view of the guilt of the accused diminishes in proportion to the amount of material heard. That is so even if the complainant denies all the material alleged. In other words, sexual history evidence contributes to wrongful acquittals. Therefore, the Government tried to rule that out.

The offence of rape is committed if a man has sex with a woman, knowing that she is not consenting or being reckless over whether she is consenting. It follows that if he honestly believes that she is consenting, even if she is not, he is not guilty. Although section 41 of the 1999 Act prevents questions about previous sexual history to show consent, it does not exclude them if the aim is to show that the accused believed that the woman consented. As a consequence, the defence of belief in consent is run in almost every case. Previous sexual history can then be, and is, allowed in. Once that subject is in the trial, it impacts on the issue of her consent just as much as on that of his belief. All the humiliation, the effect of deterring women from complaining and all the effects that the Canadian researcher noted fall into place, despite the Government's good intentions.

Judges rarely stop a defendant from running belief in consent as a defence even when, for example, the complainant says that she struggled but the defendant says that she happily consented. In that situation, there is no room for belief in consent unless the defendant is bravely arguing that he thought that the complainant's struggles showed her consent. Either she struggled or she did not—there is no room for him to make a mistake. Here is a further myth, or perhaps just a prejudice. What a man hears or knows about a woman's sexual history can make him believe that she is consenting. He might hear or know things that make him think that she might consent if he makes an approach, but how she actually behaves when he does so is a different matter, on which her previous history can have little effect. The issue can surely be evidenced on by her conduct at the time.

The inability of predominantly ma le judges to exclude their own gender bias and follow the logic of these not especially difficult arguments means that they habitually allow the defence of belief in consent and, consequently, previous sexual history. The sexism of many judges who hear criminal cases could not be better exemplified than by the recent case of the Crown v. A. That was about a woman's previous sexual history with the defendant. The defendant said that they had had sex before and she denied it. No one doubted that, under current law, his assertion was admissible to show belief in consent, but the question was whether, despite section 41 of the 1999 Act, it could also be admitted via the Human Rights Act 1998 to be official evidence of her consent.

The trial judge felt that his assertion could not be admitted in that way, but he sent the case to appeal "enthusiastically", saying that if previous sexual history were not to be admitted to show consent, no jury could be entitled to know whether any complainant were a prostitute or a nun. That utterance amply demonstrates the operation of myths at trial. It is a damning condemnation of the low level of understanding that the judiciary has of the society that it is intended to serve that a judge at the Old Bailey could, with utter lack of awareness, say such a thing today.

The case of A went to the Court of Appeal, where matters did not improve. Lord Justice Rose and Mr. Justice Hooper gave a judgment in which they found that it was common sense that a woman was more likely of having consented on the disputed occasion if she had had sex with a man before. Any woman judge—supposing there were many of them—or any woman or any judge properly trained in gender awareness could have told them that any number of factors might have made her less likely to repeat the experience and, equally, there may have been factors that made it more likely. Common sense does not point only one way.

Court of Appeal judges are very senior and set precedents that trial judges must follow. Those two judges involved are not old fogeys. They are middle aged and clever. It is a dreadful indicator of how steeped in gender prejudice the higher judiciary and that branch of the law are that the substantial intelligence of those two men was insufficient to allow them to rise above it. Such sexist attitudes mean that the defence of belief in consent can be and is used to sidestep section 41, introduce material likely to generate wrongful acquittals and contribute to women's continued reluctance to complain.

There is a possible solution. Prior to 1975, a defendant could not defend on belief in consent unless his belief were reasonable. Many pressure groups think that that position should be restored. In terms of legal precedent and principle, it is right that no one should be convicted of an offence if he makes an honest mistake, even though it is unreasonable. The report of the Home Office review team on sexual offences. "Setting the Boundaries," recommended in July 2000 that the Canadian law on the matter should be introduced in this country. The Canadian law says:

"It is not a defence to rape that the accused believed that the complainant consented, where the accused did not take reasonable steps to ascertain that the complainant was consenting."

That law focuses attention firmly on the events at the time, which must, logically, determine or, at the very least, dominate the defendant's belief. What the man believed on the basis of rumours about the woman would, rightly, be pushed to the margins and would usually be completely excluded. However, previous sexual history would be admitted if, somehow, it had influenced him. In 1995, the Law Commission also thought that that approach was right. I ask the Government whether they intend to follow those recommendations and close the loophole that gives rise to wide-ranging injustice and, if so, when. I appreciate that, in a debate of this sort, all that I can ask for is an indication from the Government.

While I am on the subject of things that can give rise to injustice, I turn once more to the judiciary. I appreciate that it does not fall under my hon. Friend's Department, but I understand that an interdepartmental working party will be set up to act on the inspectors' report. It is plain that rape myths have force throughout the criminal justice system, from top to bottom, and that the training that the inspectors recommend at their end, as it were, must also be applied to the judiciary. Will my hon. Friend urgently press for such training and for the swift recruitment of more women judges, so that male myths can be combated where they start by the achievement of a critical mass of women on the bench?

A year ago, I had a conversation with a famous female broadcaster—almost a household name—and the director of a prominent female equality lobby group. We three, confident middle-class women, decided that, if we were raped by someone we knew, we would he unlikely to report it. Now that I have read the inspectors' report and the case of the Crown v. A, it seems even less likely that any of us would report the offence. The abject long-term failure of the criminal justice system to protect women from rape must stop now.

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) on securing the debate and on making an excellent speech. I warmly commend the work that she has been doing not only today, but over a period of time, both to raise awareness of those issues and to suggest some ways forward.

My hon. and learned Friend knows that I share the concerns that she raised about the level of convictions, the way in which women are treated and the issue of previous sexual history, which can mitigate against women feeling confident about bringing such experiences into the criminal justice system.

My hon. and learned Friend referred to the joint inspectors report published earlier this month. We certainly share her concern, and that expressed in the report, at the small proportion of rapes recorded by the police that result in a conviction. As she and the report said, there are few offences that impact so severely on a victim and, as with other aspects of personal crime—child sexual abuse would be another example—there is undoubtedly substantial under-reporting.

It is against that background that the Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate and Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary have undertaken a joint inspection into the investigation and prosecution of cases involving allegations of rape. As my hon. and learned Friend said, we are presently considering how best to take the project forward following that report, and there will be an interdepartmental working group. I have no doubt that as the process of work unfolds, some of the issues in the report for which she has called to be examined will be at the forefront of recommendations for training people throughout the criminal justice system.

As has been acknowledged in the debate, the Government took steps in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 to try to ensure that victims of rape were provided with protection if the case reached court, where they should be facilitated and enabled by the court process. Since September 2000, there has been a ban on defendants without legal representation cross-examining rape victims personally. That has put an end to rape victims being put through the appalling situation of the accused sometimes reliving his crime in court when he questions the victim. Under that provision, only a lawyer can question rape victims. If an unrepresented defendant refuses to instruct a lawyer, the court has the power to appoint one to conduct the cross-examination on his behalf.

My hon. and learned Friend mentioned section 41 of the 1999 Act, which relates to previous sexual history. It limits the questions that a rape victim can be asked under cross-examination about their previous sexual history in order that they do not have to go through the distressing and unnecessary ordeal of being cross-examined about their history. One of the difficult issues relating to that section is the balance that has to be struck between protecting alleged victims and ensuring that the defendant has a fair trial. I was a member of the Committee that considered the 1999 Act, and the intention behind that provision was to ensure that the number of cases allowing the introduction of previous sexual history was kept to an absolute minimum. It was specifically designed to eradicate the practice of impugning a victim's credibility as a witness by introducing such evidence.

As my hon. and learned Friend pointed out, the House of Lords judgment on Crown v. A has had a bearing on the way in which the courts are now interpreting the legislation. The case involved a challenge to the compatibility of the section 41 provisions with article 6 of the European convention on human rights, the right to a fair trial. As my hon. and learned Friend said, the judgment was delivered in May last year.

At its core were the strict limits that section 41 places on admissibility of previous sexual history evidence, and particularly on previous sexual contact between the defendant and the complainant. I am pleased to say that the House of Lords acknowledged that women who alleged that they had been raped should not be harassed unfairly, or at all, by questions about their previous sexual experience. It was felt that assumptions had too often been made that a woman who has had sex with one man is more likely to consent to sex with other men, or that she is less worthy of belief. The judgment also accepted that sexual behaviour between the complainant and other men could only in the rarest of cases have any relevance, and that section 41 deals sensibly and fairly with questioning and evidence about a complainant's sexual experience with third parties.

However, the House of Lords was not prepared to accept that the blanket exclusion of evidence of prior sexual history between the complainant and the accused, subject to certain exceptions, was a proportionate response. Contrary to the apparent intention of the legislation, the court took the view that as a matter of common sense, a prior sexual relationship between the complainant and the accused may, depending on circumstances, be relevant to the issue of actual consent, or belief in consent. The judgment left it to trial judges to draw the line between cases in which previous sexual experience between a complainant and an accused would be irrelevant, and those in which relevant sexual experience of that kind might be admitted under section 41. In leaving the judgment to trial judges, the House of Lords judgment has altered the structured way in which it was envisaged the section would be implemented by the courts.

Section 41 is a relatively new provision, and has needed time to bed down. I accept my hon. and learned Friend's view of the way in which decisions have generally been made tinder the provision. The inspection report says that there are different views on how well the provision is working; there will be few surprises about the different constituencies of opinion. Such concerns need to be examined, and we are planning a study, in light of the report from the inspectors and the House of Lords judgment, to evaluate the impact of section 41.

The overall aim of the research will be to examine the impact of section 41 on the prosecution of sex offence cases and the handling of such cases by the courts. We are finalising the details of how the research will be conducted, and we will consult key interest groups about our plans. The research will specifically examine the question of attrition, and involve interviews with participants in the process, including victims and victims groups. It will also consider a sample of cases, and examine issues such as the effect of the values and attitudes of decision makers at points along the criminal justice process. We expect the evaluation to start this summer and to report next year. Following the evaluation we shall consider whether any further changes to legislation are necessary.

Another important element in the 1999 Act includes special measures to help vulnerable or intimidated witnesses to give evidence more effectively in court, such as by having screens in court and live TV links. The national implementation of those measures starts in July this year in Crown and magistrate courts. That more sympathetic court environment will also be of great assistance to victims of rape.

My hon. and learned Friend also referred to the sex offences review. All sexual crimes are truly dreadful crimes that deeply affect the lives of victims and their families and, sometimes, whole communities. The review was set up in January 1999, with a view to introducing modernised and strengthened legislation that reflects today's world.

What is needed is a clear and comprehensive range of offences that provide for the adequate protection of all victims of sexual offences, especially children and the more vulnerable members of our society, underpinned by a schedule of penalties that enables the appropriate punishment of abusers. The general principle being applied in the review process is the need to increase the protection offered by the law, whilst ensuring fairness to the defendant. The question of consent is arguably one of the most difficult issues a jury is asked to consider. One of the proposals made by the independent review body is that a clear statement on the key principles of the meaning of consent should be incorporated into legislation.

We are currently analysing all the recommendations made by the review. My hon. and learned Friend asked several questions in relation to that. Ministers are going through the recommendations in great detail, considering how the sex offence laws should be changed and the issue of penalties. I am not in a position to say what our thinking is on her questions because we are not in a position to make it public. We need further time to consider matters. We are taking those issues, and the views expressed by the groups she mentioned, very seriously. We intend to legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows.

The whole context of the perspective and experience of victims in the criminal justice system is extremely important. The Home Secretary is working hard to bring that to the fore right across the board. Last October, we gave many victims the opportunity to make a personal statement about how crime has affected their lives. That will ensure that they can be given the right level of protection and support, and that their needs are taken into account at every stage of the process. Later this year, we will be announcing our detailed plans for a bill of rights for victims, and possibly a victims' commissioner. We are considering those ideas in relation to the proposed White Paper on criminal justice. That entire White Paper will be written from the starting point of understanding the needs of victims and witnesses better. We must ensure that the whole of the criminal justice system is re-geared to place those issues at the fore at every stage of the way in which the justice system works.

I welcome my hon. and learned Friend's contribution to an important issue. I have heard keenly what she has had to say, and I can assure her that the issues are under active consideration and are being taken seriously by the Government.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise directly with the Government in Parliament an issue of the most pressing concern to my constituents, those of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) and those of other hon. Members. I want to try to get some answers.

Two weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a letter from the court service, informing me that the Lord Chancellor's Department intended to close Knutsford Crown court and end 700 years of history of the administration of royal justice in the town. No forewarning was given of the decision, although the Government have clearly been planning it for some time. The Government have explicitly denied in the past that closure was imminent on several occasions.

When a reporter from the local newspaper, the Knutsford Guardian, asked the Lord Chancellor's Department last month about rumours that it was planning to close the court, he was told by its press officer:

"There has been no date or discussions about a public consultation for closing Knutsford Crown Court. I do not think it is something that will happen in the near future. I'm sure I would have heard about it".

What the Department said was, charitably put, a lie. A fortnight later—the near future by anyone's standards—a "public consultation" on the closure of the court was announced and it became immediately clear that the Department had been working on those plans for some time.

"Public consultation" is the phrase used by the Lord Chancellor, but there is no real consultation with the public. Only one option is offered; closing the Crown court and moving all cases 20 miles away to Chester. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton correctly describes that approach in her submission to the Court Service as

"making a mockery of the so-called consultation process".

I am grateful for her support today.

Only one argument has been advanced, which is that the courthouse needs expensive refurbishment. I note, in passing, that that argument is a little rich coming from our present Lord Chancellor. Only one month has been given for responses; one month to preserve seven centuries of tradition. The consultation document gives no estimate of the cost of converting one of the Chester magistrates courts into a Crown court. It makes no assessment of the impact of moving the court 20 miles away on getting witnesses to appear, on getting people from east and mid-Cheshire to do jury service or on access for disabled people. It gives no answer to the question of how people from Congleton are supposed to get to the Chester court, when the Court Service itself admits that there are no public transport links. It provides no breakdown of the suspiciously high estimate of £4.9 million that has been put on the cost of refurbishing the Knutsford court and no explanation of why the Lord Chancellor's Department has allowed the court fall into such a state of disrepair.

Not a word is said of what shall become of the magnificent 19th-century courthouse once the Crown court leaves. That landmark has dominated Knutsford since it was built and its future use is a hugely sensitive issue for people who live in the town. The Court Service has made virtually no attempt to let the public know that they are being consulted. Unless one happened to be a local MP, a local judge or a manager of Group 4, or had by chance seen the notice pinned up in the courthouse itself, one would not have been aware that a consultation process was under way.

Thanks to the efforts of the local media and Knutsford's elected representatives—I pay particular tribute to the town council and the mayor, George Walton—the public now know that a consultation process is under way. During the last seven days, more than 1,000 people have signed a petition urging the Lord Chancellor not to close the court. I hope to present that petition to the House next week.

The only argument so far advanced by the Court Service for closing the court is that it will cost too much to refurbish the courthouse. Forced to choose between abandoning a 700-year history of local justice and repairing the roof, it has chosen to abandon our history. How tragically short-sighted.

There has been a court in Knutsford since 1294. Quarter sessions were held in the town from 1575 until 30 years ago. The imposing sessions house that is home to the Crown court today was built 200 years ago. All that history, all that tradition, is being thrown away because the roof needs repairing, the wiring has to be replaced and the building could do with redecoration. Can one imagine our forebears, who invested so much in building the sessions house two centuries ago, coming to the same decision?

Saving Knutsford's Crown court is about much more than respecting the history of our country and my county. It is about the future of our present criminal justice system. The Crown court is in use day in, day out. Last year, it sat for 268 days, which, allowing for weekends, was almost every working day of the year. This year, according to the Government's figures, some 280 cases will have been received for trial, 60 more cases than two years ago. In short, it is a hard-working court. The Court Service thinks all that activity and work can simply be transferred 20 miles away to a converted magistrates court without cost to local justice. I must say to the Minister that the professional users of the court do not agree.

The chairman of the Macclesfield bench has written to me, and says:

"I argue against the closure of the Knutsford court. Not because it is a listed building or that I have any feeling of sentimentality, but because it served a 'local need'. Knutsford is more easily accessible from more major centres of population in the county than any other Crown Court".

The secretary of the Chester and North Wales Law Society says:

"I cannot see the advantage of moving the Crown Court. Where are the estimates for the costs of creating a new court in Chester? We were promised justice at a local level and this will not be justice at a local level. This is all being done for the convenience of the Court Service."

A constituent of mine, Joan Birchall, who works for the witness service, sent me an e-mail that said:

"I come into daily contact with witnesses who have had to borrow money from family/friends in order to make the necessary journey to Court from say Macclesfield or Wilmslow. They have attended with great reluctance because of cost and time involved. Has anyone taken these sort of problems into context? These kinds of witnesses will not be prepared to travel further to Chester."

That is what professional users of the court are telling me. I see no evidence that anyone in the Lord Chancellor's Department or the Court Service has answers to those concerns and others.

We are already half way through the consultation period, and this is the only chance that I foresee to challenge the Government's case directly. I am not trying to make a party political point. I imagine that the administrative decision has been passed up to the Minister from the Court Service, and I note that the number of Crown courts in the country has remained remarkably steady for many years. I simply ask him to use his ministerial discretion, and to do what he is there to do, which is to sometimes reinterpret what is put in front of him. He should consider the decision made by the Court Service.

I ask the Minister to provide me with the answers to eight simple questions. First, when did the Lord Chancellor's Department start preparing the proposals for the closure of Knutsford Crown court? Secondly, may we see a copy of the feasibility study that puts the cost of refurbishing the courthouse at £4.9 million? Thirdly, how much of that refurbishment is regarded as absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the Crown court, and how much is for things that the Court Service would like to do if it had the money? The Court Service says that it would need to improve access to the courthouse in Knutsford for disabled people. That is one of the arguments in the consultation paper. How is moving the court 20 miles away supposed to improve access to justice for disabled people?

Fourthly, what is the estimated cost of converting the magistrates court in Chester into a Crown court, and what is the estimated total extra cost of relocation, including reimbursing the travel and accommodation of jurors, witnesses and some local members of the legal profession? Until we see those figures, we cannot make a judgment on how much money will be saved by closing the court. Fifthly, how will people from Congleton and other areas with no public transport links to Chester be expected to get to the new court if they do not have access to a car?

Sixthly, what assessment has been made of the impact that moving the court will have on jury service, and on persuading witnesses to appear? Will that make it more difficult to secure convictions? Seventhly, what is the Court Service planning to do with the historic Knutsford courthouse when the Crown court moves? Eighthly, and most importantly, if the response to the public consultation is overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the Crown court, will the Department listen, or is the consultation just a charade? If that is so, will the Minister please say so before we jump through all the hoops, organise a petition, try to get a local campaign going and try to secure further such debates? Please will the Minister be honest about how far down the line we are with the decision.

If the Minister cannot answer all eight questions instantly, will he assure me that I will receive written answers from his officials as soon as possible, preferably by tomorrow? They are not particularly difficult questions, and I should like to have the answers. The thinking behind the decision to close the court is painfully weak and wholly misguided. Faced with a repair bill to a building that it has failed to maintain, the Lord Chancellor's Department thinks that it has a good excuse to move the Crown court to Chester, which is much more convenient for court staff.

I am sure that the Minister agrees that justice is about more than convenience and cost. It must not only be done, but be seen to be done. Closing Knutsford Crown court removes yet another link between local people and our justice system. It makes the laws of the land even more remote from people. It undermines a powerful deterrent to criminal behaviour; the fear not only of being caught and tried, but of being caught and tried before the eyes of the community.

In places such as Knutsford 30 years ago, law and order was rooted in the community. The local policeman on the beat knew everyone, and everyone knew him, because they were neighbours. When wrongdoers were caught, they were hauled before the town's magistrates court and tried by magistrates who were themselves local people. If the crime was serious, they were sent to the Crown court, a stone's throw away. Those convicted could be sure that it would be all over the local newspaper, because local reporters would be sitting in the public gallery. If a person committed crimes locally, everyone knew about it.

In the past, justice was done, and seen to be done. Over the past 30 years, under Governments of all political persuasions, that has changed. The police operate out of squad cars and live anywhere. Local magistrates courts have shut, and everyone in my constituency, for example, must now go to Macclesfield. As the head of the Macclesfield bench told me when I recently visited the court, it is much more difficult to recruit magistrates who live in my constituency to serve in the magistrates court in Macclesfield.

Local newspapers cannot afford to send a reporter to the local magistrates court, so local criminals have a good chance of keeping their names out of the press. Now the Crown court will be moved to the other side of the county. The only connection that most of my constituents will have with the criminal justice system is when they watch soap operas. The major trials of "Coronation Street" characters Jim McDonald, Terry Duckworth and Jez Quigley all took place in Knutsford Crown court, and even that connection will have gone. Indeed, I am relying on that crucial "Coronation Street" connection to whip up a mass public campaign throughout the country.

Is it any wonder that people's respect for the law is declining and that fear of crime is increasing when the criminal justice system no longer seems to have any connection with local communities? Closing Knutsford Crown court would be a tragedy for Cheshire. Instead of the great principal that the justice system should come to the people, the people will have to go to the justice system. Seven hundred years of tradition is being thrown away because of the cost of repairing a courthouse roof. I urge the Lord Chancellor and his Ministers to listen to the public, use their ministerial discretion, preserve access to local justice and save this Crown court.

I am delighted to be able briefly to contribute in support of my hon. and young Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) and the excellent and strong case that he presented about the retention of the court facilities at Knutsford. He mentioned the long history that has gone before and the good modern reasons why these facilities should be not only retained but enhanced.

In the almost 19 years that I have represented Congleton, there has been a tremendous diminution in the local administration of justice. Before I was first elected, I attended the magistrates court in Congleton—not, I hasten to add, because I was up before the magistrates, but because I wanted to become a magistrate. I sat in and listened and met court staff and magistrates. Since then, Congleton magistrates court has closed, as has the one at Sandbach, an important town in my constituency. The south Cheshire bench is now at Crewe, although some of my constituents still go to Macclesfield.

Knutsford Crown court has been extremely important in the administration of local justice. If the Minister examines a map of Cheshire, he will see the distances involved in travelling from the east of the county from the constituencies of Congleton and, indeed, Macclesfield, to Chester.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton pointed out the difficulties of public transport. Although many people own cars, from Congleton, no practical public transport is available. From Sandbach, Macclesfield and Poynton, there is a train, but at times it is almost impossible to get to those trains. I wonder whether the indications are accurate and that the trains run at a time convenient to get people to Chester in time for the beginning of court proceedings.

We feel that the closure, which is happening so quickly that it is almost being bounced through, is all down to cost. The Court Service has owned the premises since 1993. The case has not been presented properly, as my hon. Friend said, because we have been given only half of it—we do not have the costings of any alternatives in Chester, and no local alternatives have been presented.

It does not say much for the court system if it is now believed—I would like to see the estimates—that almost £5 million will have to be spent on a beautiful building, which has served a practical purpose for everyone in east Cheshire for hundreds of years. The costs and convenience of those who work in the court have been put before the service that they provide to local communities. I note that more cases will sit on fewer days. What does that tell us? I support every word uttered by my hon. Friend in defence of a local justice system for east Cheshire. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) is also supportive, because this proposal, about which there appears to be no meaningful consultation, will equally adversely affect his constituents.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) on securing this debate. Both he and the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) made their points extremely cogently. The hon. Gentleman managed to get almost all the way through his speech without making the partisan comments that he said he would avoid. He asked eight questions, most of which were perfectly reasonable. Rather than answer them now, or write to him tomorrow as he requested, I offer both hon. Members a meeting, if that is acceptable—he nods. My office will be in touch to arrange a time in the next few days when we can deal with all the points in detail. I hope that I will be able to provide reassurance.

I assure both hon. Members that I will approach the meeting with an open mind, as I always do. I am prepared to listen carefully and constructively, and I ask them to do the same. As a backdrop to the meeting, I will set out some of the background to the decision. Although both hon. Members made their points with great force, they did not give the entire picture, and I would like to give some context to the decision to go to consultation on the closure.

The proposed closure of the Crown court at Knutsford is currently subject to public consultation, which began on 10 April when, on the same day that I answered a question to the House from the hon. Member for Tatton, the group manager for north Wales and Cheshire wrote to all court users in the locality setting out the reasons for the proposed closure. He invited comments to be returned by 8 May, four weeks from the date of the letter. It would be inappropriate to second-guess the outcome of the consultation, as we are only halfway through it.

As a matter of process, the circuit administrators of each of the Court Service's six administrative regions determine how many courthouses and what other accommodation are needed locally. They are required to undertake regular reviews of accommodation requirements in fulfilling their responsibility. Each circuit must provide an efficient and effective service to their court users while maintaining secure, well-equipped court accommodation and ensuring full utilisation of court facilities. That seems reasonable, and I hope that the hon. Members for Tatton and for Congleton agree.

Will the decision to close the court be made by the regional manager of the court service or will it, ultimately, be a ministerial decision?

I am just about to come on to the next stage of the process. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me.

In August 1988, the Lord Chancellor's Department issued guidelines for the closure of Crown court centres. If hon. Members do not have those to hand, I am happy to provide them. It is acknowledged that the potential removal of local services, particularly in more rural areas, will always be controversial. I shall return to that theme later. The guidance states that when circuit administrators contemplate the closure or re-siting of a court centre, they should not base their decision on financial considerations alone.

Initial consideration will consider the views of the judiciary, the state of the accommodation, the work load of the particular office, where the work would be dealt with in future and the implications for Crown court availability, including any increased difficulty of access for the general public by private and public transport as a result of the changes. Obviously, there will also be an assessment of the cost and savings generated by the proposed changes.

If, having considered those issues, the circuit administrator believes that there is a justifiable reason to take the proposal forward, a submission will be sent to the Lord Chancellor asking whether he or she is content with taking the proposal to public consultation. In the case of Knutsford, the Lord Chancellor approved such a move, and the consultation is now under way.

A formal submission will be sent to Court Service headquarters if the circuit adminstrator believes that the responses received during the consultation, which includes local discussions that arise, indicate that the closure of the court is still the most appropriate course of action. A decision will then be made as to whether to invite the Lord Chancellor to consider formally closing the court.

As the guidance clarifies and the president of the Law Society recently wrote, it is of the utmost importance that the closure of any court should be based on an overall strategy and not done on an ad hoc basis or simply because of cost. It is also important that we assess what impact any closure is likely to have on local users. Therefore, it is important that Court Service officials do not lose sight of local concerns. Equally, it is important that local concerns do not lose sight of the needs of the criminal justice system as a whole.

All court users deserve an efficient service that is delivered in well-equipped and secure buildings. The Crown court estate contains an assortment of buildings. Some were built in the 19th century, others were built in the 1990s. The oldest listed building in the estate may have historical or social significance but, in itself, that does not justify its continued use as a court building. On its own, an old building does not make a court. The Court Service and the world have moved on since the 19th century. Secure accommodation, separate waiting areas for victims and witnesses away from defendants and access for disabled people are basic standards of accommodation that people expect from their courts today. Improvements must be balanced against other factors, such as local transport difficulties—we heard a little bit about that today.

The Government are particularly concerned to provide courtrooms that enable cases to be listed in a manner that will achieve our aim of reducing delay in the criminal justice system. Users want their case to be heard on the day that it is listed. Transferring the work load to better-equipped centres is one way to modernise and improve the overall service that the Court Service provides. Circuit administrators and group managers have local knowledge and are best placed to make judgments about how to make the best use of all their resources, whether finance, staff or buildings.

Why has Knutsford been brought forward? Hon. Members will be aware of the case, but I think that it is worth setting it out. The Crown court at Knutsford is a historic building. It is a third-tier centre, which hears class 4 work, including cases such as wounding or causing grievous bodily harm, robbery or assault with intent to rob, crimes of conspiracy and any either-way case; in other words, cases that can be heard in either the magistrates court or the Crown court. At present, all preliminary hearings in class 1—the most serious cases, including murder, which are generally heard by a High Court judge—class 2, which are also usually heard by a High Court judge and include cases such as manslaughter and rape, and class 3, which can be heard by a High Court or a circuit court judge and include all indictable-only cases other than those mentioned under classes 1, 2 and 4, such as aggravated burglary, kidnapping, death by dangerous driving and cases requiring video-link access, are already heard at Chester. Of the 72,000 cases committed for trial in England and Wales in 2000, only 265 were sent to Knutsford.

As we have heard, the court is a grade II^* listed building and was purchased from the local authority in 1993. The accommodation is what one would expect of a building of that age, and does not meet the requirements of a building that we expect to deliver court services in the 21st century. For example, it is not compatible with disability discrimination legislation.

Despite reports in the local press and the suggestion by the hon. Member for Tatton, the building has been maintained in accordance with grade II^* listed building requirement. We have had advice from our specialist conservation consultant, and have spent in the region of £130,000 to maintain the building in the past five years. That said, significant investment of about £5 million will be needed to bring it up to standard. That is not a negligible sum, nor is it for negligible work. It is not only for a new roof, but for a new heating system—justice is not best dispensed with inefficient and inadequate heating. New ceilings, total rewiring, air conditioning, improvements to cells, secure areas, and separate waiting areas for vulnerable witnesses are not nothing, but essential to the dispensation of justice in the age in which we live. I hope that hon. Members agree on the importance of such things.

So surely it is reasonable to ask whether it is a sensible use of limited public funds to spend so much money on works when alternative and more modern accommodation is available. I ask hon. Members seriously to consider that central point before the meeting.

Travel, to which both hon. Members referred, must be considered carefully, including the provision of details of public transport to alternative venues and its additional time and cost. We will go through that in detail when we meet.

The Lord Chancellor is committed to making the best use of the physical estate. We must make better use of joint working between all courts—magistrate, crown and county. Joint use of courthouses can create more justice centres in which hearings of different types of case can be conducted. We need to consider how we can benefit from closer working. If two courthouses—a magistrates court and county court—are close, perhaps all their work can be accommodated in one place, and only one courthouse will need to be closed. The best use of the estate must be considered in a business-like way.

I understand the deep attachment that many people have to the court system as it has grown up over the years, and to their local courthouses. That is evident whenever there is a proposal to close a courthouse, whether it be in Knutsford or elsewhere; we hear the same passion that we heard earlier. However, justice is not just about where a courthouse is situated. That is important, but it is rather about the Government's commitment to modernising the services that courts provide. We said in "The Way Ahead" that

"a criminal justice system must be: effective at preventing offending and reoffending; efficient in the way it deals with cases; responsive … to the needs of the victim and the law abiding community; and accountable for the decisions it takes".

In other words, a criminal justice system must deliver justice for all. Decisions about the estate, and everything else, must be seen in the context of pursuing those aims. The local crown court is not the only place involved in delivering justice, and we are doing much work to bring all the disparate elements together.

I shall bring my remarks to a close because I am against the clock. I assure both hon. Members that we take their concerns seriously, which I hope they will recognise when we meet. I hope also that they will approach the meeting with an open mind, as I will. I understand the worries of local people in Knutsford about the proposed closure. However, I hope that they will consider the interests of the criminal justice system as a whole, and carefully consider, sentiment apart, how the people of Knutsford can best have justice dispensed.