in the Chair]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss the important subject of debt relief. I shall set the scene. Like many hon. Members, my interest in the subject stems from personal experience, particularly my memories of a recent trip to India. When visiting Gujarat—the site of the earthquake earlier this year—we were shown the reconstruction work, and two memories stand out.

My first memory illustrates the difficulties and dangers of aid programmes. I recall having a difficult conversation with someone from a non-governmental organisation who was complaining about the problems of money reaching the ground. I was told that it was disappearing in bureaucracy, and sometimes into people's pockets. He could see the potential uses of that money, but it was not reaching the ground.

My second memory is of one the real highs of aid policy. We visited the Self-Employed Women's Association, a trade union of more than 400,000 women in Gujarat. They formed themselves into a group to cut out the middle-man—it was always a man—by providing export help, credit services and distribution for women who worked for themselves by producing clothes and growing agricultural products. By acting as a company, those women have increased their earnings by a factor of 10.

That is the hard-headed reality of aid policy. If it is sustainable, if people are given the power to control their lives and if they can create jobs for themselves, aid can have a transforming effect. That is why today's debate is so important. Aid policy needs to be scrutinised and discussed, and I hope that our debate will play a part in that. There can be no more important subject.

We live in a world in which, each day, 30,000 children face death from diseases that could be prevented. We live in a world in which 100 million children have no schooling; in which 150 million grow up malnourished; and in which 600 million people live in conditions of extreme poverty. All of us in developed countries have a moral responsibility to act. I trust that the Financial Secretary—we are delighted to see him here—will go back to the Treasury and argue the case for increased funding for the Department for International Development in the next spending review.

The goal of achieving 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product for aid is most important. Not only will it revive people's faith in politics, but it will show that the Government can make a real difference by spending money wisely and increasing the amount that is being spent. In that respect, I pay tribute to those who have put pressure on the Government—and on Governments in all developed countries—to raise their commitment to the issue. We have all seen the effect of the work of Jubilee 2000 and of the drop the debt campaign by hundreds of churches across the country.

My hon. Friend rightly said that several aid agencies have played an important role in promoting Government policy on debt. I draw his attention to early-day motion 736, which has cross-party support and has been signed by more than 340 hon. Members. I should also draw to his attention to the Trade Justice Movement event on Wednesday 19 June, which promises to be the biggest mass lobby of Parliament. Does he agree that it is important that parliamentarians show their commitment to ending the problems of world poverty by giving that campaign their full support?

I wholeheartedly agree. I cannot say off the top of my head who introduced the early-day motion, although I believe that it was my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown). I was about to congratulate her and the all-party group on Jubilee 2000 on the way in which they have raised the issue in Parliament. Parliament has an important role to play, and hon. Members, among many others, have put pressure on the Government, just as constituents have put pressure on us. I thank the all-party group and its officers for their support in preparing for today's debate, and I encourage everyone to go to the lobby that my hon. Friend mentioned.

It is worth paying tribute to those who have worked from the ground up to put pressure on the Government to act on this issue, and Labour Members can be proud of the Government's record. Only last week in New York, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yet again urged industrialised nations to take action. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has also done much work on this issue, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made a personal commitment to Africa. We have completed the first stage, which has involved moving the issue up the agenda and demonstrating political commitment to it. The question now is how we find the money to deliver on that commitment and ensure that it is wisely spent. I shall concentrate on those issues, because how the money is spent is just as important as how much money is available.

The first issue is the heavily indebted poor country process. It is important that we place conditions on the way in which money is disbursed, because the present situation was partly caused by the cycle of unsustainable borrowing, by bad governance and, sometimes, by corruption in the countries that borrowed the money. Equally, developing countries and multilateral institutions lent to projects that were not properly researched or pro-poor.

Although I understand why the international community is creating conditions to ensure that the money will be effectively spent, such conditions will affect the pace of progress. More than 40 countries may qualify for the HIPC process, but only five have completed their journey through it. The great worry is that those who are suffering are the poorest people in the world, who could be benefiting from the money that is available.

I am glad, therefore, that moves are being made to review the HIPC process. I urge the Government to consider the issue of countries that reach completion point, but which still end up with unsustainable levels of debt. The change in commodity prices has badly affected Uganda, for example, which is coming out of the process with levels of debt that may be unsustainable in the future. There must be a review of the issue.

My hon. Friend mentions the extra help that is needed at completion point. Does he agree that help should be levelled up at decision point if it is already clear at that stage that commodity prices have changed? We could then provide very poor countries with the help that was intended when the process started, rather than always having to wait until completion point.

I entirely agree. It is important to consider commodity prices and the growth rates on which the World Bank bases its work. Overall, those rates seem unduly optimistic, and they will affect calculations of the level of sustainable debt if they are cut in half or three quarters.

The second issue relates to opening markets to developing countries, which is vital. When we met the Self-Employed Women's Association, we asked what its top priority was; it was not aid, but access to EU markets and for that access to be on fair terms. Every day, £1 billion is spent on subsidising farming, hugely more than is spent on aid; that is an astounding statistic. We in the west should consider that. We have a moral duty to enable people to compete in those markets on fair terms. I know that the reform of the common agricultural policy is a difficult issue in this country. However, it is incumbent on all EU countries to take a long, hard look at the way in which the money is spent. Many of the people who suffer as a result live in the poorest countries in the world.

I want to concentrate particularly on the third issue, that of countries that are excluded from the HIPC process. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it is not included in the definition of highly indebted poor countries. I shall return later to the issue of definition. Even if we accept that categorisation, Bangladesh—half of whose 130 million people live below the poverty line—spends as much on servicing its debt as it does on health. In absolute numbers, Bangladesh has more people in poverty than any country apart from India and China, yet it does not qualify for the HIPC initiative. The incidence of malnutrition there is the highest in the world. Every day, in addition to those whose development will be stunted by malnutrition, 700 children die of diseases caused by malnutrition. Add to that the depressing regularity with which natural disasters occur there, and there is an unanswerable case that Bangladesh should be at the top of our priority list.

I have two worries about the exclusion of Bangladesh from the HIPC process. First, a direct consequence is that it does not benefit from some of the debt cancellation and rescheduling. More generally, because it is not part of the process, it is not automatically included in people's assumptions about which countries deserve the most help; it is falling down the pecking order. The problem is illustrated by the fact that south Asia receives about $10 per person in aid, compared with nearly $1,000 per person in north Africa and the middle east. My worry is that the way in which Bangladesh is defined is contributing to that process. We must examine the way in which the flow of aid and debt cancellation are organised, in order to ensure that countries such as Bangladesh, where the need is so acute, benefit.

Recently, I wrote to the Secretary of State for International Development about the matter. She was able to reassure me that Bangladesh was one of the greatest priorities for her Department and that the budget had increased. That is welcome. I was delighted to hear that we had written off all our bilateral aid debts with Bangladesh; they totalled about £1 billion when we came to power in 1997. Despite that, Bangladesh finds itself in a catch-22 position. It cannot qualify for HIPC because it is not sufficiently indebted, yet the international community is wary of further investment in the country. The Secretary of State went on to say:

"There are substantial additional donor resources available to Bangladesh. We and other donors have made it clear to the Government of Bangladesh that we are keen to increase our expenditures in Bangladesh…However we require the Government to put in place an appropriate policy environment in order to make such expenditures worthwhile."

That is the catch-22. Bangladesh cannot access that aid until it improves its policy framework; yet without the extra aid, it will find it difficult to address the very problems that the international community has identified.

I should like to make two appeals today. The first is to the Government of Bangladesh, to convince the international community that the country is committed to change. In particular, Bangladesh has one of the lowest rates of public revenue raising anywhere in the world; it raises only about 9 per cent. of GDP to spend on public services. I urge the Government of Bangladesh to consider ways to increase that and to ensure that as much as possible of that money can be spent on public services and help for the very poor. At present, a high proportion is spent on supporting domestic industries and it does not reach the poorest in society.

My second appeal is to the British Government and the international community to help to find a way out of the catch-22. The people who are paying for it are the poorest people in Bangladesh; the three quarters of the population who live on less than $2 a day. Unless we end the stand-off, the prospects for Bangladesh are bleak. The International Monetary Fund used to assume that Bangladesh was growing at between 6 and 8 per cent. It then revised that down to 5 per cent. Last week, it changed its forecast for 2001–02 to 3.75 per cent. For a developing country, that is a worryingly low rate of growth. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said last week in New York, on such rates of growth Bangladesh will start to become poorer. It will not be a matter of failing to reach the millennium goals, but of falling further behind them.

I support the Government's efforts to ensure that aid is well spent. However, we should not let the best be the enemy of the good. I urge the Minister to consider the ways in which this catch-22 situation can be dealt with. Could we consider spending money through NGOs, as these are particularly well developed in Bangladesh, which has a great history of micro-credit and self-help? Could we ensure that, if Bangladesh demonstrates a commitment to change, the money will not be withheld indefinitely until that process has been shown to succeed? There should be a route with staging posts along the way at which Bangladesh can receive the extra aid.

Finally, I shall address the definition of a heavily indebted country. Priority for international help should be based on a combination of debt payments and poverty indicators. Debt sustainability is only part of the question. According to different definitions of debt, Bangladesh has a debt stock-to-export capacity of about 180 per cent., which is much greater than the level that the World Bank considers sustainable. Even setting that to one side, the indicators used to qualify countries for the greatest aid should include their progress towards the millennium development goals and levels of absolute poverty because, as I have argued, Bangladesh is in danger not just of missing the millennium goals, but of sliding away from them.

I urge the Government of Bangladesh and the international community to break the deadlock in which the country finds itself. The tragedy is that the money is there, but cannot be released because of that deadlock. Those who are suffering are the poorest people in Bangladesh.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) on securing this debate. The debate is important because Members in all parts of the House strongly support the jubilee debt campaign. We are aware that after the big push to relieve debt in 2000, it has been hard to keep the issue high up on the agenda. One of the ways in which we can demonstrate to the many thousands of people in our country who support that campaign that we have not forgotten about the issue and that we do not believe that it has gone away is by having a debate such as this, which enables us to keep the issue in the public domain.

There is no room for complacency in this area. Jubilee debt campaigners and other organisations have pushed hard for the country's attention to be focused on debt relief. Those campaigners are aware that media interest moves away very fast. Once it has gone, it becomes difficult to keep the public imagination captured by the issue. Debt relief is not something that one does once arid for all. Unfortunately, it is more of a process of debt relieving, over time. In 2000, we took a snapshot of the state of indebtedness of various countries, but several months later their situation may well have deteriorated. That is why we as politicians have to keep on our toes with the current situation.

Of the £23 billion in debt owed to this country by developing countries, heavily indebted poor countries owe only £1.3 billion, so the HIPC initiative is just the tip of the iceberg. The hon. Gentleman referred to Bangladesh; there are many other countries that do not qualify and are struggling to manage their debt relief payments. That is inextricably linked to the question of overseas aid—I am sure that this argument is attractive to the Treasury—because, in a crazy situation, we pay overseas aid to Governments and they use it to pay off their debts to us. The Treasury's response to the debate is correct, but the debate must deal with the question of balance with overseas aid.

We should place on the record the success of the jubilee debt campaign in January. A poster was launched for the drop the debt campaign that highlighted the fact that only 15 per cent. of unpayable debts have been cancelled. That shows that we cannot afford to relax and that the situation has not been sorted once and for all. In fact, we are only beginning to get the moneys through to where they are intended to go. However, we should not forget the strength of support given to that campaign; no fewer than 24.3 million people signed up to the debt relief campaign. That is a remarkable achievement; indeed, it is one of the most successful political campaigns that I have seen in my short career in the House.

The hon. Gentleman is right to refer to the question of debt sustainability. I want to impress that particular point on the Minister; the heavily indebted poor countries initiative is, without question, in trouble. In fact, the jubilee debt campaigners went so far as to produce a document, the front of which read "Heavily indebted poor countries initiative is dead." That goes further than I have gone, but I certainly agree with the analysis that the initiative is in trouble. Significantly, the Canadian Foreign Minister has also said that it is not working. That is significant, because his country will host the G8 summit at which the situation will be debated.

Many criticisms have been made of the HIPC initiative, mainly related to the use of the decision point in the calculation and the analysis of what amounts to a sustainable level of debt. The hon. Gentleman referred to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund calculation of 150 per cent. as a sustainable level of debt, and said that many countries that do not qualify for HIPC fall well outside that. Since the present level of sustainability was calculated, there have been serious events and exogenous shocks. The events of 11 September had a major impact on the global economy, which is especially acute for countries with heavy burdens of debt that are dependent on cash crops for their revenue. There has been a collapse in commodity prices across the board for crops such as coffee and cocoa, and many countries utterly depend on such crops. On that basis, Mozambique and Tanzania are the only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa whose debts are sustainable, because both those countries export gold, which was one of the few commodities to increase in price after 11 September. That gives a measure of the seriousness of the situation.

I support the hon. Gentleman's point about the need to review the debt sustainability index to take account of the collapse in commodity prices. That is the position of the International Development Committee, which is calling for a recalculation that takes account of the unforeseen shock to the capacity of those countries to repay their debt on the basis previously calculated. The figure of $1 billion has been placed on that, although that may be approximate. To put that in perspective, we should note that the American Congress has recently passed a new farm Bill giving financial support for its own farmers that will cost the American taxpayer an initial $100 billion. It is important to put such figures in perspective.

On 18 April, the American Congress passed a Bill that would make a positive contribution to recalibrating the debt sustainability analysis, which called for account to be taken of the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Some countries of sub-Saharan Africa may be decimated by the infection. Some 35 per cent. of the population of Zimbabwe, for example, is infected with HIV/AIDS. Botswana is in the same position, and 21 per cent. of Malawi's population has the disease. That catastrophe not only awaits but already affects the continent of Africa, and it is bound to have an impact on countries' capacity to repay their debts.

I urge the Minister to respond to the American proposal that a new definition for countries afflicted with an HIV/AIDS epidemic should be that if more than 5 per cent. of a heavily indebted poor country's Government revenue is spent servicing the debt, that debt should be regarded as unsustainable. I should be interested to hear how the Minister responds to those proposals. The first response would take account of the collapse in commodity prices, and the other would take account of the impact of HIV/AIDS.

I do not want to speak for long on debt relief. I am conscious that Westminster Hall gives an opportunity for many Back Benchers to speak, and I may be regarded as slightly usurping that, but I feel passionately about the subject. My final point is to ask the Minister for his view on a proposal for resolving international debt crises, the jubilee framework for international insolvency. It is a new method of arbitration produced by the jubilee debt campaign that would deal with countries that struggle under their capacity to repay debt.

The framework proposes that a heavily indebted nation could file for a standstill on debt repayments, or its creditors could declare it insolvent. It also considers a new form of regulation for international capital flows, which would discipline lenders and reckless borrowers. The jubilee debt campaign rightly thinks that those who lend money are also judge and jury on the capacity for repayment, hence the call for greater independence of calculations of a country's real capacity to work its way out of debt. My party is considering those issues, so I should be interested to hear from the Minister about them.

In relation to indebtedness and the growing inequality between the richest and poorest nations, we have to face up to an awful truth. As a member of the G8, we are getting richer, and there is no question but that the G8 is getting meaner to poorer countries.

I am pleased to be able to contribute to this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) on bringing it back to our agenda.

The issue remains important for many of my constituents. Those who actively campaigned for Jubilee 2000 are well aware that it was a starting point. It raised the issues at international settings with the G8 and the World Bank, and began a process of debt cancellation. The continuing work appears to be both delayed and complex, so I welcome the opportunity to assess where we are now. Some of the issues on which we must concentrate have been clearly set out, especially that of reassessing sustainability in terms of debt in the heavily indebted poor countries, and the inclusion of counties just outside that category.

I want to use Tanzania as an example for congratulation and caution. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) referred to it as one of the two countries where the debt was sustainable. By comparison, that is true, but even there lessons can be learned. I want to consider what has happened a little more carefully.

Tanzania is one of the five countries with a great deal of support, and its Government worked hard to achieve its status. They got their act together in terms of governance, the first aspect of HIPC definition, and worked hard on the millennium agenda. As we have heard, it is still one of the poorest countries. Even with 54 per cent. of its debt cancelled, Tanzania still spends more on its debt servicing than on education and health put together. That situation cannot take it out of poverty in the long term.

Last November, Tanzania went on to achieve full HIPC status, and its achievements are impressive. Overall, Tanzania has made substantial progress in carrying out specific structural reforms and institutionally strengthening governance and financial management in the authorities identified at the time of the decision. In addition, important steps have been taken to improve transparency, which include publishing and disseminating the national action plan for the control of corruption. Significant progress has also been made in tax reform, improving the business climate and strengthening the performance of the utilities. In the health sector, Tanzania has successfully implemented a programme to ensure the immunisation of at least 75 per cent. of children under two against measles and diphtheria, and has implemented a national campaign against HIV/AIDS, including completion visits to three quarters of all districts.

The Government have undertaken important initiatives in co-operation with donors to improve, and to increase access to, education. The Government have launched an education initiative with the chief aim of increasing access to schools, especially in poor and under-served areas, while trying to alleviate the cost burden on householders, so progress has been achieved, especially at primary level. The budgets have been increased and school fees have been abolished, although those who have worked in the country recently say that other ways are being found to ask parents and others for money. A school mapping exercise is also under way.

Exports are improving. Gross domestic product has increased to 4 per cent. and 6 per cent. in recent years, but that still leaves Tanzania with the huge problem of paying back a debt that forms a higher percentage of its GDP than the amount it spends on education and health. In that context, we need to ask the World Bank and the G8 to reassess what is happening as a result of Tanzania nearing completion of the process. I want to emphasise the importance of the trade campaign and the need for a country such as Tanzania to see real benefits from the sale of agricultural produce, which forms about 85 per cent. of its exports. It has a developing tourist industry and some gold for export, but those are minimal by comparison with the need for fair trade for agricultural produce.

Let us briefly consider the case of coffee. I am not an economist and I do not know the detailed background, but I buy coffee and have worked in Tanzania. When I was there, the late President Nyrere told a neighbouring village that if it could double its coffee output, it would be possible to establish a clinic there. The village doubled its output and received exactly the same price on the world market that year. It was a boom year and the Americans who controlled output on to the world market were able to establish a mean price—mean in both senses of the word.

Tanzania has struggled for many years, and we are now told that the price of coffee has plummeted. Do hon. Members recognise the plummet in the price of coffee? Has the price in the shops or coffee bars gone down? No, it has not. Indeed, the prices in Starbucks or any other leading coffee shops would stun a coffee farmer in any developing country in the world. We pay more for a cup of coffee than the coffee producer will receive for the produce of many of his bushes on the small shambas, certainly in Tanzania. That is a shocking indictment. The added value, which producers of coffee in the developing world do not receive, increases while the world market price goes down, and the coffee producer gets less.

If we are not careful we will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The produce—the coffee—is the key element in the coffee trade, but the benefit of the boom in coffee shops in London and any other city one might go to is felt by the developed world. The developed world promotes the known fact, mentioned by the hon. Member for Meriden, that the coffee price, plummet though it may, is still increasing the added value to the richest countries, which get richer while the poorest get poorer. Even Tanzania, which has reached completion point under the HIPC initiative and has benefited from the cancellation of 54 per cent. of its debt, will get poorer unless something significant happens.

I must mention the military air traffic control system, an interesting subject from which we can learn many lessons. My recent copy of Tanzanian Affairs, which is produced by the Britain-Tanzania Society but gives a fair viewpoint, mentions how indignant President Mkapa is that we are still trying to interfere in Tanzania's affairs. As we know, the air traffic control system means that new debt is incurred by Tanzania while we are selling it produce and cancelling its debt. That is a vicious cycle that must be broken. I challenge what we are doing. I do not believe that we should grant an export licence. Those are issues that we must consider in great detail.

I urge the Financial Secretary to recognise that thousands in my constituency and millions throughout the country are deeply concerned at the lack of progress in reaching debt cancellation for HIPC countries, and at the complexity that surrounds such debates. There is also concern that the new campaign should urgently press the case for fair trade, which it considers a much more honourable way of ensuring that countries can enter international markets with dignity to pay their own way and no longer be truly indebted.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) on securing this important debate. I am glad that at least some hon. Members are here this morning; would that there were more. I certainly think that some years ago there would have been more.

It is years on from the beginning of the debts campaign and the gatherings in Birmingham and Cologne, and we are still discussing debts. I shall state a fact that puts all our efforts into context. Christian Aid argues that if poor countries' Governments are to have sufficient resources to meet their millennium development goals and other essential expenditure needs, such as those of law and order and developing the civil service, the 42 heavily indebted poor countries cannot afford to make any debt service payments. That is a significant argument. They need not only the cancellation of their debt service payments, but $16.5 billion more in aid to meet their millennium development goals.

I look forward to the lobby on 19 June, and I hope to welcome people from Wales into this very Room. I hope that many thousands will come from Wales; certainly, there will be many thousands outside the House on that day. I shall not give too many detailed figures this morning. They are obscene, and the message that they give is clear. I am sure that several hon. Members have rehearsed the figures, and that others will rehearse them later.

I shall give a small example. In spring this year, I had the opportunity of welcoming Abdon Senne from Senegal to my constituency. He is an aid worker who works on one of Christian Aid's partner projects. He works in agricultural development and education, and uses creative methods, such as drama, in small rural communities, to get his message across. I welcomed him to my mountainous Welsh constituency during one of the wettest weeks of the year. Abdon said that Senegal is a dry and flat country. The experience was instructive for both of us.

The two populations' circumstances are generally different. The west is relatively well off while Senegal is one of the poorest countries in the world. However, Abdon's visit was very valuable. He got to see a little of how we use drama in education and the community. He also saw agricultural production and processing, and he was particularly impressed by an agricultural co-op in my constituency that is involved in meat packing. That was the nitty-gritty of his visit, and he saw how meat packing occurs—unfortunately, so did I, because I did not find it a very interesting or pleasurable experience.

I got a lot out of the visit. I met a person who is working creatively and face-to-face with people to counter poverty. I heard directly about his, and others, efforts. I learned about the conditions that are faced by people involved in agriculture in Abdon's country. I discovered that there is common ground between conditions there and the problems that are faced by marginalised and economically stricken farming communities in my constituency.

I turn to farm subsidies, and I shall highlight one argument of the many that one could choose. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) mentioned the current US farm Bill. That will involve huge expenditure. A small part of the Bill commits the US Government to provide about $8 billion of aid to rice farmers. That money will go to people who are well off by even the standards of the west. If we consider the incomes of the poorest people on the planet, the rice farmers of the United States are fabulously wealthy. A sum of £8 billion will support agribusiness and that will undermine the economic stability of rice growers throughout the developing world. Hon. Members will have heard about the Africa campaign that was launched last week. Ghana faces a catastrophe in rice production because of the effect of imports.

The United States is giving $8 billion to support agribusiness, but the cost of cancelling debt repayments from the countries that are most heavily indebted over the next five years is $6.8 billion. These figures show the balance that we must measure when we in the west examine our priorities. Clearly, the weighting is wrong. Debt relief must go hand in hand with trade reform, especially when calamities strike, when there is overproduction or if natural disasters occur. The organisation of the world's trade hampers the efforts of people such as Abdon Senne and the hundreds of thousands of others who are using their own efforts to develop their communities. Yesterday's help is available from western Governments and non-governmental organisations, but Abdon Senne and others want and need the opportunity not only to receive, but to create a better future through their own efforts.

We must open markets in the west, but that will not provide sufficient help. Indeed, there is an argument that the effect of opening several such markets would be purely marginal, if not cosmetic. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund prevent developing countries from supporting their agricultural industries, which is fundamentally unfair. That prevents people from developing their own countries, and countries are prevented from exporting finished goods, although the arguments about that are mixed. Therefore, I hope that the Minister agrees that debt relief must go hand in hand with trade reform. It must go hand in hand with reform of the support for agriculture. That is the case with regard to all countries; the United Kingdom and the United States of America are not excluded from that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) on securing the debate. He presented a good case, and it is always heartening to see that hon. Members are interested in this subject.

Progress has been made on the debt issue in the past five years. However, we should remember that the initiative was started by the last Conservative Government. John Major and his Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), had a great deal to do with starting the HIPC initiative, and it has been enthusiastically carried forward by the present Chancellor, the Secretary of State for International Development and the Jubilee 2000 campaign.

The UK, the USA and Canada have promised to cancel 100 per cent. of all bilateral debt for countries, once they qualify under the scheme. That is excellent news. We have also promised that the debt repayments of countries that do not have a poverty reduction scheme will be held in trust to pay for poverty relief, once they reach the qualifying point. I am slightly concerned about that; I am unsure whether I understand how it will work, and I seek clarification about that from the Financial Secretary.

Although progress has been made, the other G8 countries have not made such promises, and neither have the multilateral creditors, who are the largest creditors: 33 per cent. of debt is owed to the World bank, and 11 per cent. is owed to the International Monetary Fund. Only 23 per cent. of debt is bilateral. On top of that, there are all of the export credits, which form debt for developing countries. Therefore, there is still a long way to go.

The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and I helped to form the human chain that encircled the G7 meeting at Birmingham several years ago. She was accompanied by her children; they are lovely, and I envied her for having them. I remember that we spoke at meetings. There were tens of thousands of people in Birmingham on that day; it was inspirational.

Jubilee means forgiveness, and that was the great aim of Jubilee 2000. It was created to mark the millennium, and it was the idea of Professor Martin Dent of Keele university. It is a great idea, but I fear that it is turning into a damp squib, because so little progress is being made. Only 15 per cent. of the debt has been cancelled—as the hon. Lady said, in a great speech, to which I have almost nothing to add.

I share the hon. Lady's concerns about debt sustainability, and the way that it is assessed. That is a huge problem at present. Conditions move so rapidly that we must not have a fixed way of assessing it; that was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde. The assessment is measured with regard to the debt export ratio, but that does not necessarily mean very much, because exports might not lead to a lot of revenue coming into a country. Therefore, that is not a fair way of assessing the situation. Even by the World Bank's criteria, many countries have unsustainable debt after they have reached the decision point of HIPC. We must do better with regard to that.

Commodity prices were mentioned by the hon. Member for Meriden and other hon. Members. That is an important issue. A fall in the price of coffee triggered the genocide in Rwanda. We must never forget that. One million people died because we ignored the importance of falling commodity prices in a poor and struggling country.

As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said, access to markets is extremely important. We must support the trade and justice campaign that is being started by more or less the same non-governmental organisations that combined to create the great Jubilee 2000 campaign. Developing countries must have better access to markets. Subsidies to agribusiness are having a terrible effect on the ability of developing countries to export their products, as the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) said. We must examine all those problems. Debt sustainability should be thought of as a fluid and flexible thing to be measured, and not something written in stone that stays unchanged for a decade. The hon. Member for Meriden also mentioned a Congress Bill. It is an interesting one because it appears that the USA recognises the problem. I am glad about that. The Americans are suggesting a big change to sustainability criteria.

I am still unsure whether the world realises what a problem the HIV/AIDS crisis will become. In previous generations in developing countries, scourges, plagues, epidemics and endemic illnesses have affected the weak, newborn and elderly. Like the effect of a great storm on a forest of trees, such scourges cut out the weak and unproductive members of society. That was always what happened in developing and poor countries that had no medical care. However, HIV/AIDS affects the productive members of those countries—the young, fit, active and intelligent. That is why it is such a different crisis, and why the world should take it much more seriously. It will affect the productivity of developing countries in an enormous way that is only just beginning to be felt. I hope that the Minister will accept that we must address this crucial problem.

As the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) told us, there is little point in providing countries with debt relief if they immediately fall into the greater debt of unproductive expenditure the minute that they qualify. There have been assurances that the Government have imposed a unilateral ban on export credits for unproductive expenditure, and the phrase "sustainable development" has been packed into every Bill and debate that we have had over the past few years. Why then was the air traffic control system for Tanzania approved, which will plunge that country back into debt the minute it qualifies?

I hope that the Financial Secretary will be able to clarify the issue and explain what will happen in the future. Many hon. Members feel that everything that the Government have preached in recent legislation has been completely thrown away by the single act of approving the Tanzania contract. I understand that the contract may be under review, but the Government must still carry the can for approving it.

We must always put sustainable development before any benefits that might accrue to British industry, which was the golden rule in the International Development Act 2002. We must remind ourselves of that rule. We must also exert more pressure on the international community to force greater debt relief from the World Bank and the IMF. They are not moving fast enough and the state of the poorest people in the world is becoming a world emergency that is affecting us directly. That could form the subject of another debate, so I will not go into it now.

The HIPC scheme must be reviewed again. Debt sustainability should especially be re-examined and the scheme must be widened to include more countries, as the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said. Countries in conflict should be considered, because conflict is not the only problem faced by those countries. Bangladesh is a curious example of a country that superficially appears to be prosperous, doing well and accepted as such. However, as the hon. Gentleman said, Bangladesh has so much poverty. We must look again at the problems.

We must be careful not to make debt relief available for political purposes. I was disturbed that debt relief was recently dished out to Pakistan and I wondered what precedent that set. Given the news today, I worry even more about what effect that will have. We must think carefully before debt relief is ever used for political purposes in the future.

The point that I feel strongly about and with which I hope that the Minister will deal is that debt relief must not be paid for by a reduction in the development assistance budget. It must he funded additionally from the Treasury budget for the G8 countries. In the other place, in answer to a question from the noble Lord Williams, Lord Grocott said that, in fact, the rise in the percentage of GNP going to overseas aid—which is expected to increase to 0.036 per cent. in the next couple of years—is due mainly to the increased impact of the HIPC initiative. That smells of double counting.

We cannot trumpet, on the one hand, that we are giving more aid to developing countries because we are increasing the GNP, and trumpet, on the other hand, that we are leading the world in debt relief when we push everything into one budget, which is only one sum of money. We must be careful not to claim that we are doing more than is being done. The Government have much to be proud of, thanks mainly to the Department for International Development and the Secretary of State, helped by the Chancellor. They must not spoil things by making false claims.

I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) for the tribute that she rightly paid to the former Prime Minister, John Major, and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). I am sure that her expressions were not motivated at all by her recent experience of the local elections in her constituency—

A mere blip.

I accept the hon. Lady's remark in the spirit in which it was intended. She referred in passing to debt relief in Pakistan and to today's news, which is that I million Indian soldiers are massing on the Kashmir border, yet India has the second largest number of poor people in the world. Is it any surprise that many of us find it extremely depressing to debate such a subject, when so many of the actions taken by individual Governments and the priorities that they set for their expenditure bear no resemblance to the needs of their domestic populations?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) on being lucky in the ballot and introducing the debate. He drew on his experience and expressed his worry that money did not necessarily reach the targets and said that we must ensure not only that we make a political commitment but that the money is well spent. He made a heart-felt plea for opening up European Union markets for access on fair terms to wider trade; and so say all of us.

Given the mass lobby on 19 June, I hope that the Government will spell out in specific terms exactly what progress has been achieved in reforming the common agricultural policy. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry visited Doha with an upbeat message that was full of good intentions about delivering on that important subject, but I fear—not because of reluctance on the part of the Government or the country, but because of the lack of influence that the Government have over some of the other countries in the European Union—that we are not making the progress that is fundamental to widen access to the European markets for the producers of food and agricultural products in the developing world.

The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) made the valid point, borne from her experience of Tanzania, that 85 per cent. of that country's production is in agricultural goods. It must be able to export its goods to markets. Although farmers in this country are protected against substantial falls in the market price of agricultural produce, if, as the hon. Lady points out, the world market for coffee changes dramatically from one year to the next, farmers in Tanzania, despite doubling production, may be no better off in real terms. That must be a pretty depressing prospect for farmers in Tanzania, and we congratulate them on their efforts to improve the economy in their country.

The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde discussed the definitions of heavily indebted poor countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) picked up that point and once again showed her passionate interest in the subject. I shall try to imagine the spectacle of her and her children joining hands with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge).

It is the sort of thing that women do.

Is it? In that case, neither I nor the Financial Secretary will be able to comment on it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden made two telling points. I hope that, in what will be ample time to respond, the Financial Secretary will answer the points that have been made. It seems odd that only 15 per cent. of unpayable debts have been cancelled and that there is insufficient recognition of what happens in the event of a fall in commodity prices and of the problems encountered as a result of HIV/AIDS.

My hon. Friend asserts that the G8 are getting meaner. I am not sure—

That is statistically correct.

If that is so, it is sad that we, as a G8 member and one of the richest countries in the world, cannot persuade other G8 members to be equally generous in the contributions made to resolve issues relating to poverty in the developing world.

In an interesting speech, the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) referred to Senegal. He is not in his place now, but I do not agree that opening up markets would be merely cosmetic. I thought that there was a consensus in the House that it would be a good idea to open up markets and that that would be the best long-term and sustainable way to help people in indebted and impoverished circumstances.

I am sure that the Financial Secretary will refer to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said at the UN General Assembly held earlier this month on financing a world fit for children. Partly to steal his thunder, I quote from the Treasury press notice of 10 May, in which the Chancellor is quoted as saying:

"We have gathered here together—governments, non-governmental organisations, parents—because of:

our shared concern for all these children who live on the knife's edge of bare existence;

our shared responsibility to end the senseless tragedy of young lives lost to disease and deprivation;our shared belief: that just as each and every child has a right to realise their potential we have a duty to help make it happen;

and most of all, we are here because of our shared conviction that what can be achieved together by unity of purpose is far greater than what we can ever achieve acting on our own, and that is it our duty, from New York onwards, to form a partnership for children so wide, so powerful and so determined that no obstacle should be allowed to impede its path of progress."

He goes on to discuss the Zedillo report, estimating that

"if we are to succeed in achieving these goals, an extra $50 billion will be required each year until 2015."

I agree with all those sentiments, as, I am sure, does everyone in the Chamber. However, is it not extraordinary that Mr. Robert Mugabe was welcomed at that gathering in New York? Why was he not given the cold shoulder? How can we be serious about such issues if we are not prepared to confront Mr. Mugabe, who has single-handedly done more to bring poverty and deprivation to children in Zimbabwe than any living being? He was able to attend that United Nations General Assembly special session on children and was recently elected to the 15-member United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Surely the Government should take a stand when it comes to Zimbabwe. In general, the issues that we are addressing are so enormous and of such mind-boggling complexity, but we can see that matters are regressing rapidly in Zimbabwe. That is a country in which, by virtue of historical connections, we are in a position to influence matters to a greater extent than we do.

If all our wise words and rhetoric are to add up to anything, surely they should add up to taking effective action in Zimbabwe. The country has become a recipient of United Nations food aid, and its agricultural crisis is deepening. The famine is getting worse, and we are entering a cycle in which it will need more food aid in future. The collapse of that country's agriculture is not because of drought, but because of the political corruption of the Mugabe regime. A country that once had a strategic grain reserve of 1 million tonnes now finds itself without maize or the foreign currency with which to buy it. Are we listening to the opposition parties in Zimbabwe? Earlier this month, Mr. Nyati, a leading Zimbabwean opposition parliamentarian, was in London. He said:

"Most of the food aid is being distributed to government officials, which means it is either being sold for profit or it is going to Mugabe's supporters. I know that it is not reaching supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change in the rural areas."

He continued:

"There seems to be confusion about what to do about Zimbabwe. The MDC's position is that until there is an agreed upon distribution network which brings in independent bodies like the Church, food aid should be withheld. If food aid is being used to legitimise Mugabe's party, it serves no useful purpose to Zimbabwe."

I hope that we shall today hear details of the action that is to be taken by our Government on Zimbabwe. We have heard a host of words; we now need some serious action. So long as we continue to bestow legitimacy on the destructive dictators who have, for so long, been at the centre of Africa's ruination, bailing them out with tranches of aid is not the answer.

I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am not quoting from the Chancellor merely to use up the time available for the debate. The Chancellor recently said that the UK was committed to the target of raising development assistance to 0.7 per cent. of national income and that he will significantly raise the amount of our development aid in the spending review covering 2005–06. I should like to give some power to the elbow of the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) in her bids for a future Conservative spending review. Does the Conservative party also aspire to a 0.7 per cent target?

The hon. Gentleman makes a helpful intervention. Surely the issue, as he has said, is to look at time scales and to ensure that value is derived from the extra expenditure. My challenge to the Financial Secretary and his Government extends not just to third world aid. It extends to expenditure on the health service and other public expenditure programmes. More important than the total amounts of money being thrown at those topics is that we should ensure that our money is well invested.

That leads me from Zimbabwe to ask about Malawi; again, I hope that the Financial Secretary can answer me. The right hon. Gentleman may have seen an article in The Guardian earlier this month about the disasters occurring in Malawi. Britain has enormous influence in that country because of historical connections. I understand that Malawi is suffering serious shortages of food but, according to The Guardian, it seems that the crisis has been made worse because of international politics and the actions of NGOs.

The NGOs and the Malawi Government are said to have accused the International Monetary Fund and donor countries of forcing them to sell last year's food reserves for ideological and economic reasons. Malawi is under pressure to meet IMF targets and to reduce its expenditure. It costs the Malawi Government more than £3 million a year to store almost 200,000 tonnes of food, much of which was said to be deteriorating. The donor countries, backed by the IMF, said that only 60,000 tonnes was needed as a strategic reserve, but the Government sold all but 4,000 tonnes without refilling the silos. The result is that Malawi has had to borrow in order to obtain grain on the international markets.

Earlier this month, the IMF refused to allow Malawi debt relief, saying that money for food security must come from further budget cuts, although not from education or health. Is what is happening in Malawi good enough? Or, as is said privately, is the explanation that donors despair because Malawi is governed by a small elite who have tied up the economy and done little to help the very poor? I should be interested to hear the Financial Secretary's response.

Finally, what does the Financial Secretary think of the suggestion that debt relief should be extended to the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union? Does he go along with the argument that Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kurdistan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan should receive debt relief in order to help them become richer? If so, where does that fit in with the Government's overall policy? I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would respond to that question.

I am sure that the Financial Secretary and I agree that, although the problems are enormous, the fact that individuals are unable to do much is no reason why we should not do as much as we can, whether individually or through the Government. Indeed, we are all humbled by the knowledge that, every week, many of our constituents give money to the charities, churches and other agencies that are trying to bring some relief to the people suffering in the developing countries.

This has been a good debate on an important subject. We owe a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) for enabling us to address an issue that is of real concern to many of our constituents, and of grave concern to the millions affected by the decisions made throughout the developed world on aid and debt relief that might allow developing countries better to respond to the crisis that has so many of them in its grip.

The debate has been characterised by an almost total absence of party political rancour and partisanship, and characterises the House's approach to the issue. There was one entirely characteristic fall from grace on the part of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), but I shall gloss over it as far as I can, and look instead to the early preferment of the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman). She demonstrated a clear grasp of the subject, and has a distinguished track record. Indeed, that is true of all those who participated, and that enriched the tone and content of the debate.

It would be a mistake to present HIPC and the important initiative before us as the answer to the problems that hon. Members mentioned. The HIPC scheme makes an important contribution, but it is not the answer to poverty in a world in which so many live on so little and in such conditions. It is an important starting point on which we can build, but it was never designed to release enough resources to meet the human development needs of low-income countries. Rather, it was intended to allow heavily indebted poor countries to achieve a sustainable level of debt, and the question for us in the developed world is how we meet that objective and what more we can do in terms of development aid and trade to tackle global poverty.

The hon. Member for Meriden, referring to the Jubilee 2000 research documents, asked whether HIPC was dead, and the only fair answer is, "No, it isn't." We must, however, take steps to ensure that it delivers on its objectives. The latest IMF and World Bank analysis shows that more than half of HIPC countries will reach completion point with unsustainable debt levels. The Government acknowledge that problem, and will continue to argue that countries should exit the HIPC process with sustainable debt levels.

We must build on the approach taken in the Monterrey consensus, which agreed that

"future reviews of debt sustainability should also bear in mind the impact of debt relief on progress towards the achievement of the development goals contained in the Millennium Declaration".

Those important words recognise the fact that more needs to be done, and give us some hope of developing an international response to the debt crisis.

We should not, however, overlook the fact that, in 2001–02, the scheme increased social expenditures by $1.7 billion in countries that received HIPC debt relief. That is equivalent to 1.2 per cent. of GDP. On average, health and education spending accounted for 65 per cent. of the funds made available under HIPC debt relief. Those are substantial benefits, but we know that they will not be enough of themselves.

Poor countries have a role to play in achieving macroeconomic stability, improving their policy environment, prioritising poverty reduction and investments in education and health, and improving governance and accountability. To judge from what hon. Members have said, there are no illusions about what the developing nations need to do if the issue is to be addressed. Anyone who has lived in Africa, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) and I have, knows that good governance has to be fought for. It needs to be developed, and that can be done only when civil society is given the opportunity to contribute.

The history of the HIPC initiative shows that one of the most important developments was the way in which civil society was freed up in the countries, so that it could contribute to the development of poverty reduction strategy plans. Plans that emanate simply from us in Whitehall or the capital cities of the heavily indebted poor countries themselves are unlikely to deliver on the ground. There must be a sense of ownership and involvement from local people who live with the consequences of poverty and struggle to combat it.

Women are vital to that work. All the evidence suggests that they are the best agents of development. When women are empowered through organisations—faith groups, local community development organisations and trade unions—to contribute to the development of local poverty reduction strategy plans, those plans are more likely to deliver their aims.

The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned Malawi. I travelled there a few months ago to participate in a Commonwealth Finance Ministers conference on HIPC. There I met representatives of civil society who had been engaged with the Government of Malawi in developing a poverty reduction plan. I was enormously heartened by their approach. Trade unionists, church people, women's and youth organisations and rural village community development associations come together to monitor what their Government are supposed to deliver with the moneys coming on-stream as a result of HIPC.

Those people took a direct and practical approach to the monitoring of the impact of poverty reduction plans. Their Government had told them that a certain sum had been spent on education, so they visited schools and villages to ask what had been received recently from the Ministry responsible for education. They would then take an inventory of what had been received. They would ask how many teachers worked in the school, and how many had been appointed recently; they would follow the flow of money to the point where it was supposed to make a difference. Then they would compile a report and share it with donor agencies and countries.

That was practical monitoring of plans. It was a hands-on engagement with the development of anti-poverty strategies, and, therefore, that much more likely to make a difference by changing the conditions under which people live in Malawi. I am heartened by that but, at the same time, deeply disappointed by the circumstances in which the current food crisis in that country has been allowed to develop. To pretend that that crisis is the result of any action taken by the IMF, the World Bank, the UK or other donor nations is beyond belief; that is simply not the case. That food crisis, I fear, has its origins in corruption and abuse of power.

Our concern about that corruption and abuse of power made it necessary to suspend direct budgetary support to Malawi. I was obliged to make clear to the Malawi Government our concerns about the way in which the crisis had developed. That has not stopped us continuing to deliver effective programmes of support to the people of Malawi where we are satisfied that that support will go directly to reduce poverty. It has not stopped us from providing the necessary support to the people of Malawi in addressing the food crisis, but there are important lessons to be learned from the experience of Malawi about how effective poverty reduction plans are formulated and put into effect, how they are monitored and how good governance should be developed and grown.

Other aspects of the situation in Malawi, including visible demonstrations of a commitment to democracy and civil society, give cause for hope for the future. It is dangerous to allow ourselves to be sucked into a vortex of defeatism and cynicism when tackling this problem.

The scale of the crisis in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world is made that much worse by HIV/AIDS, and the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) is right to draw attention to the scale of that crisis. In Malawi, I visited schools where the teaching population had been decimated by AIDS. I visited a village where one in three families was in the process of losing or had lost someone through AIDS. The response of NGOs and local people to that crisis in those countries is heartening and worthy of our support.

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the signals that we send to very poor countries; the refusal to give budgetary support to Malawi is a signal of our unhappiness with the corruption in the Government there. However, does he accept that we are sending a strange signal to the people of Tanzania as a result of his Government's decision to sanction the purchase of an air defence system and the decision of the Secretary of State for International Development to withhold overseas aid from the Tanzanian people? What signal does that send?

I am not going to go down that path, for good reasons that the hon. Lady ought to understand; not least as a result of the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West. There are serious issues there and we understand them. However, it is a mistake to confuse them with issues of good governance or with those arising from the HIPC initiative.

Much has been done, but there is still more to do. Our debate assists in that process, and we owe a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde for enabling the debate to take place.

Order. Before calling the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) to initiate the debate, I should point out that the Chair has received a lot of written requests to make speeches. I see that many more right hon. and hon. Members are occupying seats in the Chamber, so I remind the House that the debate will last for only 90 minutes and that the longer hon. Members take for their speeches, the less time is left for the Minister to reply and for other Front-Bench Members to speak. I should add that the more interventions that are tolerated, the longer those interventions are and the longer the time taken to respond to them, the less time is left for the rest of the debate.

With those words in mind, I add that the subject of the debate is extremely complex and arouses various sensitivities. I intend to speak briefly, but hon. Members must forgive me if I seem to go on too long.

The Government's statistics reveal that TB is an increasing problem rather than a diminishing one. In my constituency, farmers have been struck by an enormous increase in positive testing. It has been suggested that as many as 17 farms in my constituency have been hit by TB in the past two months. The total number of new herd incidents has risen to 80 in the region since the beginning of the year, and 52 of those are considered to be new TB incidents. The figures given by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs state that the total number of confirmed new incidents in Herefordshire and Worcestershire in the whole of 2000 was 145; the results for 2001 are inconclusive.

If the increase of reactions continues at the same rate as at the start of the year to March, we shall see an enormous difference by the end of the year. Recent press reports focus on the increasing spread of the disease in Wales, which borders my constituency. North Wales' divisional veterinary manager, David Pugh, said that the situation could be as serious, if not more serious, than the foot and mouth epidemic.

In January 2001, the Agriculture Committee called for Government action in response to farmers' growing sense of despair and desperation over the continuing spread of the disease. Since then, farmers in my constituency, some of whom are here today, have had no assurance from the Government that they can expect support. Given that the industry is still shuddering from the foot and mouth epidemic, the lack of positive Government action is harsh, to say the least.

Immediate action is needed because at least three herds a day are succumbing to the disease. Areas previously free from the disease, such as West Sussex and parts of Wales, are now discovering new cases. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who is responsible for animal health, said that the comments were misleading but agreed that the disease remained a serious and growing animal health problem. Although bovine TB may not have an effect on the food chain, it has a serious and potentially fatal effect on farm businesses. I wonder why Ministers have done so little to calm the fear among the farming community that the disease could have the same effect as foot and mouth.

At Question Time last week, the Secretary of State denied a greater incidence of bovine TB. The testing programme was suspended throughout the foot and mouth crisis, and she suggested that therefore

"it is a little early to conclude that some major unforeseen development is in progress."—[Official Report, 16 May 2002; Vol. 385, c. 901.]

That attitude is complacent.

In the meantime, farmers in my area are hit by the enormously crippling task of working with the subsequent restrictions that come with a confirmed case of TB. The Government have made few attempts to ease the pressures facing the farming community with the eradication of the disease. Farmers whose livestock have been given inconclusive or positive reactions to testing must wait 60 days before DEFRA officials come to undertake further testing. If those second tests are clear, another 60 days must pass before the final test is taken. Only when the third test proves negative can the farmer begin to sell and buy livestock.

The Government are showing as much complacency over the issue of animal welfare as they displayed in the initial stages of the foot and mouth crisis. That attitude is setting alarm bells ringing across the farming community in Herefordshire, and I can give farmers in my constituency no assurance that they will not be treated as badly as they were over foot and mouth disease. Farmers in my constituency have been faced with restrictions only recently, but still find them financially crippling. I can only imagine what farmers are going through in other rural areas, such as Gloucestershire, where some farms have been under TB restrictions for years.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that at least the Labour Government introduced 100 per cent. compensation for destroyed animals, something that the Conservative Government failed to do?

I am sure that the hon. Lady is absolutely right, but the 27,000 cases awaiting testing are more of a comment on the way in which the Government are handling the disease.

Given the question of animals in need of testing, is my hon. Friend convinced that sufficient resources have been given to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to deal with the crisis and cope with the backlog of cases?

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. That is the kernel of where the Government are going wrong. It is not necessarily fair to blame the Government's allocation of resources for research into vaccination, for example. The kernel of the problem is our whole understanding of the disease and the way in which the veterinary service is reacting to the crisis.

Will the hon. Gentleman comment on the Krebs report? When I was elected Member of Parliament for Hereford in 1997, the Herefordshire National Farmers Union expressed concern that the Krebs report had not been published quickly enough, which had delayed the whole process of dealing with TB. Does the hon. Gentleman share that concern?

The hon. Gentleman was elected considerably earlier than me. Publication of the Krebs report was certainly a step in the right direction, but there is a serious problem in the hon. Gentleman's constituency—particularly in Aconbury—because the disease has passed not only between badgers and cattle, but is now appearing in cats and possibly even in deer.

My hon. Friend might like to catch up on the history. The hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins) claimed that what the Labour Government had done was right. However, the first thing they did when they came to power was to abandon the interim control strategy that was previously in place. In the first year of the Labour Government, the incidence of TB in cattle increased by 43 per cent. Farmers were less concerned about the level of compensation when there were fewer incidents of TB.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all that helpful factual information.

During questions last week, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs promised to keep the situation under review. Using my own constituency as an example, that seems to be a shallow promise. The last quarterly TB statistics showed that 920 tests were overdue in Herefordshire and Worcestershire alone. What resources are being allocated to facilitate the removal of the 27,000 cases awaiting a test? The backlog is enormous and there is a desperate need to sort it out.

In November 1996, Professor Krebs and the independent review team began a scientific review on behalf of the Government of the link between bovine TB and badgers. The Krebs review concluded that the evidence that badgers were a significant source of TB infection in cattle was compelling. However, there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate how much of the disease in cattle originates from badgers. The Krebs recommendations included a randomised badger culling trial to test the effectiveness of different strategies, to provide unambiguous evidence of the role of badgers in cattle TB and to aid the development of improved strategies to reduce outbreaks. The NFU claimed that the Government's delay over the badger culling trial proved disastrous to thousands of farmers.

In my discussions with Dr. Elaine King of the National Federation of Badger Groups, she said that she was not convinced that the disease could move back from badgers to cattle. Because of lack of evidence, thousands of farmers are convinced that badgers are responsible for the spread of the disease. The Under-Secretary, the Minister with responsibility for animal health, said in Westminster Hall earlier this year:

"Badgers and TB constitute a difficult subject. It is difficult for the Government because we are lobbied on the one hand by people who believe that the case against badgers is indisputable, and on the other hand by people who argue equally vociferously that the case against badgers is totally unproved; and both groups ask us why are we wasting our time with the Krebs trial.

However, I believe that it is a proper, sound and scientific way of examining the epidemiology of bovine TB. We need that experiment, as it will answer many of the unresolved questions that have been debated for more than 20 years."

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman in his quote, but I must say that I entirely agree that we need evidence from which to derive any future strategy. That is what the Krebs trial represents. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, along with that essential research, there must be an increased emphasis on international research into diagnostic and vaccination techniques, both for cattle and feral species such as badgers?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and shall come to that subject later. I shall finish the quote:

"We cannot go on like that, which is why the scheme has been restarted. The survey is currently under way—it is the closed season for the culling of badgers—and we recognise that we need to get the scheme back on track. Professor Bourne of the independent scientific group is confident that the disruption of the foot and mouth epidemic will not knock the trial off-course." —[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 25 March 2001; Vol. 382, c. 683WH.]

The Under-Secretary, who also deals with animal welfare, has said that the Krebs trial is the proper scientific way of examining the epidemiology of bovine TB. I agree with him that there is need for in-depth research and analysis, but I point out the increased losses experienced by farmers due to the delay in Government action during the foot and mouth epidemic last year. Time is very much of the essence for farmers affected by this latest threat to their livelihoods.

I draw hon. Members' attention once more to the feelings of my constituent, Matthew Oliver. The closed herd at Ode court in my constituency has recently suffered a bovine TB outbreak. The herd at Ocle court were all home grown and home fed, and had no contact with other cattle, yet my constituent was left to watch and weep as his suckler cows were shot as TB reactors. Mr. Oliver told Farmers' Weekly recently:

"I am definitely not anti-badger, but if cattle are not to disappear from some areas, we simply cannot afford to wait for the results of the badger trial."

Past president of the British Veterinary Association, Francis Anthony, said:

"In Herefordshire we have cases of bovine tuberculosis coming out of our ears. It goes against every principle of disease control to cull one species and do nothing about a proven feral pool infection."

In Aconbury, as I have mentioned, the same strain of TB bacteria is being found in cattle and badgers, and has spread to cats. It is also likely that the deer in Wye valley have it. Although we all dread another food scare, I sensitively point out that the disease can be passed to human beings.

Reactors are now being found in 70 per cent. of farms tested in Herefordshire. Waiting for results of the current trial tests on badgers is no longer an acceptable step. Testing must now take place on badgers in farms where there are known reactors. Farmers will continue to link TB with the badger population, but it is right that tests are carried out to ascertain whether or not that is true. The longer and more in-depth those tests are, the more the disease will spread, the greater the number of cattle that will have to be destroyed and the more farmers that will go out of business.

How many of those badgers killed on the side of the road—an increasingly common sight in the countryside—have tested positive for tuberculosis? A vet that I spoke to in my constituency recently asserted that those badgers killed on the roadside were hit by cars because they were too sick to move quickly enough, but that is refuted by the National Federation of Badger Groups. I suggest that a greater focus on dead animals—instead of the testing and, possibly, slaughtering of cows alone—may provide us with an increased understanding of the disease and how we should deal with it.

While my hon. Friend is on the subject of dead badgers at the side of the road, would he agree that, even in the seven counties where independent scientific work is going on, there is insufficient publicity? When people find a dead badger, they do not necessarily know what to do with it, or to whom they should report it.

My hon. Friend is right. People are always sad when they see dead badgers at the side of the road. This would provide a useful extra source of information, particularly in hot spots.

I know that the Under-Secretary responsible for animal health has a soft spot for badgers because he said:

"I have a particular interest in bovine tuberculosis and badger control. It is a major area which deserves a debate on its own. I know that it has been proposed to refer the issue to the Select Committee, which would be a welcome step forward. At this stage, the Opposition remain unconvinced that the badger culling policy is either acceptable or, indeed, effective. I know and sympathise with farmers who are facing the problem and the financial impact of the outbreak of bovine TB. Nevertheless, there are a great many anomalies in the approach to the problem. The science is really shaky, because it has not been scientifically proved that badgers cannot be infected by cattle. That needs to be considered very carefully and, at the moment, too many people have set their faces against examining it."—[Official Report, 13 July 1995; Vol. 263, c. 1184.]

The Under-Secretary said that in 1995, but there has been little improvement in the subsequent seven years. It appears that the disease is spreading faster. I hope that it will now be accepted that this matter must be given a higher priority.

The Minister should make it one of his first priorities to tackle the situation that is facing the state veterinary service. It is a crucial service and it has excellent vets, but they are being prevented from delivering on what they know to be good scientific practice. I am told that the Department's vets are bogged down with paperwork, and that they are struggling with inconclusive tests. They are also getting an increasingly hostile response from farmers, which is hardly surprising. Morale is falling, and although the vets are happy to do the tests, the process must be improved.

In Herefordshire, we are finding that the paperwork takes so long to do that cattle that are positive reactors are still on the farm by the time that the next test is due. If the Government are serious about bovine TB, they must back their vets, cut their paperwork and speed up the process. Money is always helpful, but these problems are not merely financial.

If this disease spreads only from cattle to cattle, it is crucial that the problem is sorted out faster. That will appeal to badger groups and farmers alike, and I know that the Minister is keen to appeal to those groups. In a reply that I received to a remark during the dairy debate, the Minister said that an announcement on bovine TB would be made in May. It is now 21 May, and I wish to know when the announcement will be made. I hope that it will be made today—if not, that he will make a statement to the House—and I hope that he will announce that the new gamma interferon tests will be piloted. If that is the case, I wish to know how effective the new tests will be, what will be the likelihood of false positive results and how many positive results they will miss; the tests will be different from the current skin tests, as they are blood tests. Will they be run in parallel, so that the new tests complement the current skin tests?

The Krebs report stated that it would take about 10 years to find the vaccine. For the past 20 years, everyone has been saying that. We now need to consider whether any of the existing vaccines can improve the situation. The Government have admitted that the cost of bovine TB research and control has risen from £16,100,000 in 1997 to £35,900,000 in 2000. The compensation paid for cattle has risen from £2.386 million to £7.074 million, and that is only in 2000. The cost of the disease to individual farm businesses in particular, to the 27,000 farmers currently awaiting bovine TB tests who are trapped by movement restrictions—is rising by a similar proportion. However, only £1.4 million is spent on vaccination research. The rest of the vaccination research comes under the human medical TB research. What trials are the Government providing to see whether the current available vaccines might help to reduce the crisis? What lessons are we learning from abroad?

The Krebs report concluded that the best prospect for the control of TB in the British herd is to develop a cattle vaccine. I cannot believe that it would hurt the Government if they were to increase the £1.4 million that is spent annually on vaccine research, although I accept that money cannot buy everything.

It is essential adequately to resource the research, and to ensure that the backlog of overdue six and 12-month herd tests are dealt with. The disease itself must be focused on if we are to find a decent long-term solution to the problem. There is much debate about the spread of the disease; I have already covered the points that relate to the great badger debate. If the disease could be prevented from entering the cattle pool, we would need to worry far less about the disease carriers. It would be possible to introduce an extended and freely available biosecurity advisory service for farmers that could be operated by their own vets and targeted on high-risk TB areas.

TB breakdowns may affect entitlement to subsidy claims and the milk quota, and perhaps force majeure should be applied in such cases. TB breakdowns damage further the sensitive operation of marketing stock, and facilitating trading among businesses with the same disease status should be considered. The NFU believes that DEFRA could take several actions immediately to help to ease the immediate pressures that are imposed on producers who are under movement restrictions. That does not imply in any way that the NFU is prepared to live with the disease at its current levels.

In all probability, the long-term solution to controlling the disease may be vaccination. Cattle and badgers are the primary targets for that, and the Government must maintain full funding for research into effective vaccines. The Country Land and Business Association says that adequate resources must be provided to ensure that DEFRA's target to remove reactors from farms within two weeks is met.

Is my hon. Friend aware of the resources that have been given to collate information from other countries, especially Ireland, which has done much research? Does he think that the Government should make putting resources behind the scheme a priority?

That is essential. No one can afford to ignore lessons that are learned elsewhere. If we can take a step forward, I can think of no better time to do that than now. I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend.

Flexibility must be sought when interpreting the European Union ruling that farms with an inconclusive reactor that have had a confirmed case of TB during the previous three years should be put under a movement restriction. The NFU believes that that ruling is too severe given the poor sensitivity of the skin test that is used to identify TB. Producers under the TB2 restriction who wish to claim extensification payments may multiply the number of livestock units on their holding by a coefficient of 0.8 to allow leeway on stocking densities. As a consequence of tightening stocking density requirements under the extensification payment scheme, the coefficient should be reduced to allow producers who are under restriction a greater opportunity to meet the required stocking densities.

The comprehensive TB99 questionnaire is put into use after a TB herd breakdown to investigate all possible sources of infection. The exercise assists epidemiological investigation and must be properly resourced to ensure maximum benefits from the results. The questionnaire is time consuming for farmers and vets, and the NFU suggests that DEFRA should consider introducing a shorter and improved version to ensure that the exercise is carried out.

The spread of the disease since the publication of the Krebs report has resulted in hotspots that are not included in the trial areas. That emphasises the need for an interim strategy to contain the spread of the disease. Reactive trapping, which happened in the Krebs trials, should be started immediately in known TB hot spots, allowing a suitable cordon near trial areas. In new areas in which several farms have been put under movement restriction without obvious imported infection, a wildlife survey should be carried out and trapping should be undertaken if TB is found in the wildlife.

The short-term solution to the crisis will not be a magic bullet vaccine. Sadly, even if such a vaccine could cut the disease by more than 60 per cent., it would take time to reach the market. Better diagnosis will certainly help, as will better biosecurity whereby infected reactors are removed from the farm as quickly as possible. We need better research into husbandry factors such as cropping, and we must start pulling together the policy that will halt the spread of the disease now.

Finally, and most importantly, we should give a much-needed boost to the state vets who had trouble with foot and mouth and require massive support from the Government so that they can make the improvements happen and work.

Right hon. and hon. Members who were present at the start of the debate will recall the admonition that I gave at that time. I add to that advice that in this Chamber it is customary to start the first of the three wind-up speeches from the Front Benches 30 minutes before the conclusion of the debate. Therefore, we have about 36 minutes for debate before that point.

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin). Let me start with a confession. His area has real problems, and we in Nottinghamshire are fortunate that that scale of problem does not exist there. I note the increasing incidence of TB in cattle and draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to Cumbria, in particular, and Scotland, where new cases have developed out of the blue. That raises questions about the link that many farmers have made between badgers and TB.

Although the problem is enormous, we must put it in context. My impression is that about 9,000 cattle are infected in a national herd of about 8 million. The incidence rate is, therefore, less than one tenth of 1 per cent. Nevertheless, I agree that the incidence seems to be rising. We must examine the figures carefully. The veterinary service effectively faces a two-year backlog of work that must be carried out in just one year. No doubt it has targeted resources on the worst affected areas. It is not surprising that current figures show a peak that may not reflect the underlying trend.

I accept that it is hard to find consensus and common ground. In introducing the debate, the hon. Gentleman referred to the views of farmers and the NFU. Jan Rowe, vice-chairman of the NFU, recently said:

"The case is well proven that the badger is responsible. I think there is absolutely no doubt"

about that. I contrast that with the remarks of Dr. Elaine King, chief executive of the National Federation of Badger Groups, who said that this

"ridiculous campaign has no basis in science or logic. Calling for badger culling is no better than calling for witch burning."

Given such comments, it is hard to see a consensus on the way forward, as the hon. Gentleman recognised in his opening remarks.

The Krebs trial gives us a basis for going forward. I strongly believe that we must examine the science to try to find solutions. I caution against those who call for greater culling now. It is important that the Krebs trials are given a chance to deliver the goods.

How long will the delay caused by foot and mouth disease delay Sir John Bourne's work? My impression is that the delay will not be great. I hope that we shall receive his report by 2005. In the meantime, there will be real problems. However, given the strength of argument and feeling, it is important to try to establish the science and not be taken in or taken down a false road by siren voices.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it is also important to build on the gamma interferon test. I regard it as an additional and supplementary test, but it seems to be a useful step forward. Does the Department intend to use it more widely in the Krebs trial?

The ultimate solution must be to move towards vaccination. I have followed the debate for 20 years, and, as the hon. Gentleman said, vaccination is always 10 years in the future. However, I feel that we may now be getting somewhere. I note the work of several partners in developing the M. bovis genome sequence. That may be the breakthrough—not an immediate one, but one that will take us forward. It is an important piece of work.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the need to invest in vaccine research 10 years is too long to wait. I question his figures on the amount spent on research. My own information is that approximately £9 million is being spent on vaccine research, however, I join him in pressing the Minister to increase that amount and to develop the tests.

We must find consensus on the way forward to build on the science, develop and get the results of the Krebs test, use the new testing and, most importantly, to develop the vaccine. At the end of the day, we cannot be blown from the course that has been adopted. Everyone has welcomed Krebs, although it is hard. Farmers will not like me saying that the important thing is to see the research through in its entirety. It will give us a springboard for the future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) on securing this important debate.

We should put the quote from the north Wales vet in its context. The hon. Gentleman quoted him as saying that the problem was as important or worse than foot and mouth for the individual farm. That is an important point to make in reply to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), who suggested that it was not such a great problem because few cattle had been affected. It is not a question of the cattle that are affected, but the herds and, therefore, the farms.

When the hon. Gentleman quoted the numbers affected, I had a quick look at DEFRA's website, which shows that 2 per cent. of herds in Wales were affected by TB last year. Unfortunately, that figure has increased considerably this year. We had 128 new incidents in Wales last year but, in the first three months of 2002, there have been 127. Not all have yet been confirmed, but it would suggest a two to three times increase in the incidence of TB in herds in Wales. Undoubtedly, an animal health problem is waiting to explode in Wales.

Considering Wales has approximately 20 per cent. as many herds as England, one wonders why 40 per cent have been slaughtered because they are reactors to TB It suggests that the likelihood of TB in cattle in Wales is twice that in England. There is also the problem of hot spots within Wales. Of the 1,467 cattle slaughtered last year in Wales, 1,044 were in Dyfed. Unfortunately, the figures are not broken down between the new counties, but Dyfed is one of the milk-producing area of Wales and includes areas such as Caernarfonshire and Ceredigion my own constituency the south of which has recently experienced an alarming number of so far isolated TB outbreaks. I fear that a hot spot could develop in Ceredigion in the near future.

Dealing with the TB and brucellosis outbreaks is one of the few animal health matters devolved to the National Assembly for Wales. However, we cannot get the full picture because the Assembly can work only with the state veterinary service—a non-devolved service and therefore works only with the concordat of DEFRA. The state veterinary service is under strain and stress in Wales. Nearly 5,400 TB tests are outstanding in Wales, which is having a huge impact on farmers and animal welfare. As the hon. Member for Leominster said, if one cannot move the cattle off the farm within a maximum of three days, there is potential for infection and a breakdown in hygiene. Perhaps that is one reason why hot spots are not being eliminated and TB is being recycled.

There are no Krebs trials in Wales. Although that is not significant in itself, it is important to know that those that are taking place some 30 throughout England—are in areas that reflect the topography of Wales. In his winding-speech, will the Minister confirm that the Krebs trials will be applicable to Wales?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not give way, because I must conclude my remarks.

We have a good area in Wales for trialling the new gamma interferon blood tests. Because most of Dyfed was not affected by foot and mouth, it has been put to me by the farming unions that if the Government are looking for an area to trial gamma interferon blood tests outside of the Krebs trial area, Dyfed would be ideal. I met both farming unions in my constituency yesterday and I want to put some of their questions to the Minister, one of which concerned the testing of road-kill badgers. It is unfortunate, but many badgers are killed on the roads. I apportion blame for that to the speed of cars, not the speed of badgers; nevertheless why are the badgers not tested for TB? That is outside the Krebs testing areas.

Will the Minister say more about vaccination? As the hon. Member for Sherwood said, we have always been told that such matters are for 10 or 15 years hence, but we must know that the Government are working properly on such a strategy. What about flexibility and trading between restricted farms, particularly pedigree stock? The current state veterinary service is under extreme pressure, and that is exacerbated because skin testing is inconclusive in so many cases. The testing and clear-up rates must be improved and we may need some additional farm hygiene measures. The key message from Wales is that there is an increasing prevalence of TB within the bovine population; that incidence rate is increasing and it must be urgently dealt with by the Minister and the National Assembly if we are not to see a serious outbreak of hot spots of TB in areas such as Ceredigion.

We would do well to remember that, according to the siren voices that sounded in the foot and mouth outbreak, science is crucial to the provision of advice during the development of our policy. Quantitative epidemiology provided a sound scientific basis for decision making. Operational research provided the means to assess the logistics of performing tasks. Regular meetings of scientists, the Departments and the foot and mouth science group kept the advice up to date throughout the epidemic. Some say the development of the science saved the Government's skin. There was a dramatic change in policy; they took the science by the scruff of the neck and asked, "What can it tell us and what can't it tell us?" The Government's action was a success.

Epidemiology looks at causation, transmission and control of disease within populations of horse species. That is a key discipline in the bovine TB studies that are being undertaken. People argue that the disease is getting out of control and reaching the same level as foot and mouth. I do not agree. I accept that there are problems and that multiple drug-resisting strains are developing, but that happens with any organism. It always tries to cheat humanity; there is always a battle, at which point science comes in and gets ahead of the game.

Many arguments are beset by dogma. The data is not good enough, which is why I welcome the Krebs development of badger experimentation. TB may be in other organisms in other countries and other wildlife developments—who knows? For example, in New Zealand, possums carry the TB bug. There is no doubt that there is a correlation between the development of TB in badgers and in cattle. Whether or not they are the same bug, much has to be done. Few tests have been carried out on live badgers; many have been carried out on dead badgers and there is no doubt that tuberculosis bacillus can be found in badgers in every county in the United Kingdom.

We cannot just say that vaccines are the answer, but there have been dramatic changes in vaccination and its development in this country. There has been a huge influx of money from the Government into vaccination right across the board, from humans to cattle. It is difficult to predict what kind of vaccine will emerge, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) said, there have been dramatic results in the last few months, which were announced at the end of March. The mycobacterium bovis found in cattle and the mycobacterium tuberculosis found in human beings are 99.9 per cent. similar in their DNA. That means that a whole body of research into human vaccine production, which has been successful in eliminating tuberculosis, will now be applicable to the bovine situation.

I do not think that the development of a vaccine is years away; we may yet get a shock and find that comes about within six to 18 months. People are working extremely hard to develop that vaccine and with the new developments in the production of vaccines—including peptide technologies—emanating from the molecular biology in which we are pre-eminent in this country, who knows what will happen? We should be much more positive about that area.

Despite the undoubted potential of the vaccine, did not the Select Committee on Agriculture point to a flaw in the Krebs report, in that it did not spend sufficient time on the potential for improved husbandry? The Government responded to that by saying that they would initiate a report, but they have not done so. Does my hon. Friend hope that the Minister will say something about improved husbandry?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and was moving on to that subject. Vaccines on their own will not be enough. We cannot sit back and wait for a vaccine to appear, whether tomorrow, next week or whenever. That has been confirmed by an independent scientific group.

There are many other kinds of research going on. A recent meeting in docklands, at which the Food Standards Agency considered the incidence of the bacteria in particular milk herds, brought Government activity into this arena on all fronts. Such a level of activity is bound to lead to a breakthrough in vaccine research.

There are major questions relating to factors influencing the prevalence and persistence of the disease in cattle and wildlife. On animal husbandry it is argued that, because of the way in which they treat animals, some farms are predisposed to tubercular infections. Some suspect husbandry goes on in this country and that is being investigated.

There are many other areas of research dealing with the transmission routes and the pathogenesis of the species, and others that deal with how the mycobacterium infects and how it moves among cattle. There is a huge arena of activity. I put my trust in science and I hope that other Members will.

In a research context, does my hon. Friend support the testing of badger roadside casualties, not just in Gloucestershire but nationwide?

That is an amazing project. I hope that people are applying to do that through the grant-giving system. The technology is there, and we could examine the particular species of the tubercle bacillus that is present in badgers and correlate it with that found in humans. There is a huge argument about how humans got tuberculosis and whether they gave it to badgers or vice versa. That affects the debate about the origins of the different species. That may be a little academic in relation to the current situation and farmers' plight, but research into that would add to our knowledge and develop vaccination procedures that could eliminate the disease from our herds and our farming communities.

I am pleased to have had a chance to speak in this debate and to say that I believe and have confidence that science will provide the answers much sooner than many of us think.

I want to be brief and simply to add a point that has not yet come out in the debate. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) for having missed the first seven minutes of his speech.

The dairy farmers in my constituency are—I do not think that this is hyperbole—on the brink of extinction, as I have pointed out to the Minister and to his predecessors on several occasions. However, the situation has merely moved from bad to worse. The possibility of a serious national level of bovine TB is not merely or mainly a problem for farmers, as it will have ricochet effects on the customer. Under the present conditions of near hysteria about food and its quality, it is all too likely that the killer blow to the dairy industry in West Dorset and large parts of Britain could come from that source, even if the scale of the outbreak were much more limited than would justify such a disaster.

Everything that has been said today should be attended to in a different way from how DEFRA and its predecessor frequently acted in the past, which was with care and diligence, but a certain leisure. I hope that that is not unduly uncharitable. There should be a certain urgency, and I profoundly hope that there will be early vaccination. We all have much to be hopeful about.

In the meantime, our farms and farmers are showing reactors, as has been increasingly reflected in other contributions. Many of the dairy farmers who suffer from that and the restrictions that it entails are on the brink of going out of business, and will almost certainly be driven out of business if no interim action is taken. It is on that action that I want to press the Minister. I asked the local branch of the National Farmers Union to produce a wish list of actions, on which there are 16 items. I will not trouble hon. Members by referring to all 16, but shall pick five. I would be happy to send the Minister the full list, but am sure that he will have received representations directly from the NFU on the subject.

First, we could introduce a system to allow easier movement of stock between farms under restriction. Secondly, we could have a much better and quicker updating of the information available for my farmers. Many of their farms are relatively small, with many farmers who are not expert on the science, unlike the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson). We would like the booklet entitled "Dealing with TB in your herd" to be updated more regularly. Thirdly, a specific TB helpline could be set up for those under restriction, so that they could get through to a specialist quickly. Fourthly, arrangements could be made for store cattle markets from farms under restriction, with sales only to finishers under restriction or who are guaranteed not to move the cattle on. Fifthly, priority could be given to the slaughter of reactive cattle, with removal from the farm within three days, my correspondent suggests. I do not insist on the three-day limit, but removal is clearly dilatory at the moment.

I give those as examples. I hope that the Minister will explain that DEFRA will attend urgently to the interim problem of farmers in West Dorset and elsewhere who are likely to go out of business, not because of the national scale of the outbreak, but because they have been affected and because no interim measure sufficient to relieve the pressure on them has yet been taken.

I shall be brief. I made a speech on the subject two years ago, so I have cut out a significant amount of what I was going to say so as not to repeat it.

My key message is for a commitment to the science. The hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) was right that the prospects for fulfilling at least the promises of the 10-year success, if not his much more optimistic expectation, are better than for many years. Commitment to the Krebs trials is important, as they should provide a better scientific basis for understanding the relationship between TB in badgers and cattle.

Two years ago, I suggested a number of additional steps. The first was to increase the frequency and scope of testing for TB. That has a straightforward resource implication, and I support the hon. Gentleman in highlighting the need for additional veterinary resources. We must put more effort into identifying and, as several hon. Members have said, removing the source of TB as rapidly as possible. Those are reasonable proposals.

Secondly, as hon. Members have suggested, we should widen the scope of the road traffic accident tests on badgers. It should be possible to find out whether badgers that are knocked down on the side of the road are carrying TB, and that would provide useful intelligence. Restrictions have been placed on the number of counties covered by RTA tests, but we should broaden their scope.

Thirdly, I still believe that it would be wise to increase the level of compensation to farmers who face restrictions as a result of a TB outbreak. That is partly because the 100 per cent. value compensation is insufficient to meet the economic effects on farmers, and we should be concerned about that. There are, however, also straightforward practical reasons. We expect a high level of co-operation from farmers on other measures that will be required in their areas. It is reasonable to recognise that such co-operation will be necessary for the control measures that we seek to put in place. Discussions are under way on how to assist farmers affected by TB with their income flows, and I would be open to suggestions other than simply increasing compensation, although that is probably the simplest step.

Finally, we must support further the measures to improve husbandry and bio-security. The Department took quite a long time to produce its helpful leaflet on the subject, but simply producing a leaflet is not enough. It is reasonably clear that costly measures are sometimes necessary to improve bio-security in high-risk areas, and we should be prepared to fund an increase in our armoury of appropriate measures so that we can reduce the potential spread of the disease.

The implications of not taking action have been spelled out in personal terms, and are obvious. We shall, however, face a major national problem if we are affected by a further animal disease, and the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) rightly said that the impact on consumer perceptions is important. Much more significant, however, will be the impact on UK trade. We are resuming trading in the world, and a further animal health restriction would put off export customers and persuade them to place further restrictions on us. That can only be negative.

I draw hon. Members' attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests and to my interests in agriculture. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) on obtaining the debate. It is said in my constituency that all the good farmers in Herefordshire originated in Brecon and Radnorshire. That illustrates that this issue transcends local authority and even national borders, and huge commitment will be needed if we are to get to grips with it.

It is a tragedy that this country's terrific reputation for animal health has been afflicted by a series of problems, which have brought it almost to an all-time low. In previous years, Britain exported pedigree stock throughout the world, but now, because of our problems with BSE, foot and mouth, TB and sheep scab, those exports are non-existent and show little likelihood of being resumed.

However, Britain has proved that when it is committed to eliminating a disease, when it makes full use of all the scientific and technical information at its disposal, it is capable of eliminating such diseases. I am sure that we could eliminate TB if we committed ourselves to making the effort, but the farming community fears that such commitment and effort are lacking.

The hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said that certain differences in management could mitigate the problems faced by farmers under restriction, and I am sure that we would all support that. Mention has also been made of the gamma interferon test and improved diagnoses, but doubts have been expressed about that. However, if it was integrated with a skin test, we might be more certain about the status of infection of various animals.

I want to focus on the key to addressing the issue, which is the state of the veterinary service in Great Britain in both the private and the public sectors. It is a sad fact that the falling profitability of the livestock sector has led to a fall in the profitability of the large animal veterinary service. That has happened to such an extent that places in Wales are finding it very difficult to get a veterinary surgeon to attend farm animals in emergencies such as calvings or accidents, because large veterinary practices have gone out of business or do not attend outside office hours.

The Minister may wish to write to hon. Members if he cannot answer now, but it has been suggested that the Government might tender for the provision of routine testing for brucellosis and TB rather than allowing the farmers' veterinary surgeons to undertake it. If so, the service could be provided not only by people from outside the area but from other countries. That would be disastrous for our veterinary practices. If the Minister could assure us on that point, it would give some comfort to our veterinary practices.

The state veterinary service has been under enormous pressure for a considerable time, and under Governments of both parties. The number of veterinary surgeons employed by the state veterinary service has declined. It was once a local service provided by local vets, but it has now become centralised. Indeed, it could be called the central veterinary service. That has not added to its effectiveness or to its reputation among farming people.

Finally, we must commit ourselves to science, but we need a commitment from the Government as well. The feeling among the farming community is that the Government are denying the science because they will otherwise be faced with difficult decisions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) on securing this debate. He represents a border constituency similar to mine, which was recently similarly affected by TB. It is what one might call a hot spot, but it was not included in the Krebs trials, as there are no Krebs trial areas in Wales.

There has been a serious outbreak of bovine TB in the Raglan and Llantrisant areas of my constituency and in the Usk valley. In the past, those areas had a thriving dairy industry, but it has sadly diminished during the past 20 years. Some farmers have had their stock culled as a result of TB, and others are either unable to trade or face serious movement restrictions on their livestock. One of my constituents, Mr. Colin Pritchard of Llantrisant, has had his herd destroyed; Mr. John Biggs of Raglan has been under movement restrictions for two years; and Ms Carol Jones of Hardwick farm in Abergavenny wrote to me to say that although her herd of pedigree Fresians had been clean for over thirty years, a third of the stock had been slaughtered as a result of TB.

I recently addressed the Raglan farmers association, where I was given a warm reception. The dominant issue in discussions was TB in cattle. I understand that the Minister for Rural Affairs in the Welsh Assembly, Carwyn Jones, also attended that meeting. Mr. Alastair Mitchell, a veterinary surgeon in my constituency, is clear that, whereas Monmouthshire was virtually TB free in the early 1990s, the problem has now become very serious. He says:

"I am concerned that TB in cattle in this area has risen to epidemic proportions."

I have written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the matter, enclosing Mr. Mitchell's letter, and I am grateful for the reply that I have received. I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to continue to work with the National Assembly for Wales and the Ministry for Rural Affairs in Wales to do all that can possibly be done to overcome the problem—to support the farmers who have been affected by ensuring that they are compensated for the hardship that they have experienced; to speed up testing, especially the gamma interferon test; to continue research into live testing on badgers; to develop a vaccine for cattle and, if possible, for badgers as well, and to ensure that the Krebs trials are completed as soon as possible and that the results are made available.

I hope very much that the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) is right that science has an answer just round the corner, but we have been being assured of that for a long time and I am not as optimistic as he is. We need to consider what can be done now. A number of hon. Members have put forward proposals to deal with testing. However, two matters have not been raised. The first is the frequency of testing. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) referred to the debate two years ago in which I advocated moving to annual testing, certainly in the parts of the country that I term the frontier counties, into which the disease is spreading, in order to curtail its spread—that remains important.

The second relates to the developments since foot and mouth. In the last seven or eight months, we have seen a vast movement of breeding stock around the country while farmers have restocked. The hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) referred to outbreaks that occur for no apparent reason. I would lay a lot of money on there being a reason: the movement of stock around the country. There are no prizes in politics for saying "I told you so," but I did advocate two years ago that all stock should be tested within three months of movement. I hope that the Minister will, in today's conclusion and beyond, address the matter of the spread of disease through the country due to cattle movement. It has happened more often in the past few months and I am convinced that it is a major reason for further outbreaks.

I and fellow occupants of the Chair are very disappointed that other hon. Members who were keen to speak have not been able to participate in the debate.

This has been a useful debate and there is broad agreement in all parties. We have sympathy for all farmers who have been afflicted by the misery and morale sapping that disease brings, let alone the financial cost. The issue is becoming topical in all farming groups. I have a Krebs trial triplet in my constituency, and there are others in the south-west. Confidence in the value of the Krebs trials is diminishing, not least since foot and mouth. If we are to have the sound science that will drive future policy, it is essential for the trials to be able to continue, for them to be monitored and for us to receive the right information. Unfortunately, there is a lot of worry in the areas where they are being conducted as to whether sabotage—on both sides—might have an inordinate effect on the results.

Clearly, current policies are failing to control the spread of the disease we have heard that from many quarters—and, having heard about post-foot and mouth restocking incidents, we know that areas that have been free of TB for many years are now experiencing it, which is a huge shame.

Will the Minister comment on the current state of the Krebs trials? Is additional research being collated, or will we be entirely dependent on those trials and on the vaccine research when formulating policy in a couple of years' time?

We may need a meeting between those who conduct the Krebs trials and hon. Members who are interested in the issue. I attended two meetings that were held by the Minister's former colleague, Baroness Hayman. She brought along Professor Bourne, and we discussed what was happening. I hope that the Minister will consider holding such meetings so that hon. Members with TB problems in their constituencies can discuss the value of the Krebs trials and their current status.

As the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said, we must consider relaxing the movement restrictions, although without compromising disease control. The restrictions have huge financial implications for all farms, and I would not like dairy farmers who have got through foot and mouth to be torpedoed by TB.

Additional resources will clearly be necessary if we are to reduce the backlog of overdue six and 12-month herd tests. We must get on top of that issue, particularly given the problem of postponements during foot and mouth.

As with foot and mouth, we need regular reports and detailed statistics to be published. We had such reports throughout the period of the problem with foot and mouth, and bovine TB, too, is important. It may not be quite as significant as foot and mouth, as has been said, but it is a growing feature, and statistics should be published regularly so that we can see exactly what is happening.

We certainly need an interim strategy to contain the spread of the disease during the period of the Krebs trials, and the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) mentioned a buffer zone. We need a buffer zone so that we can detect, almost farm by farm, who is likely to be in the next round of TB. Plotting such things is not rocket science.

In the light of the problems with foot and mouth and low milk prices, I urge the Minister to consider consequential loss compensation. As has been said, compensation is not simply a matter of the value of the animals. Problems can have a huge effect on the financial operation of many farms, a lot of which are only now recovering from foot and mouth.

There are examples of huge personal problems that can derive from delays in the testing process. A constituent from Aller is trying to dispose of his farm and his herd for pressing personal reasons. As a result of two testers, however—one was okay, but the other must be repeated—disposal has been delayed, which could have a crucial impact on his future wellbeing and prosperity. The Ministry must deal with such issues.

That scenario could probably be repeated m several places. People are even prevented from undertaking diversification plans that have been approved and for which grants have been made available. Suddenly, because of a reactor, everything is held in abeyance, and people can do nothing.

Finally, only 8,000 animals out of about a million have been affected, but, as has been said, it is herds that are important in retaining this country's disease-free status. It has been suggested that the national herd is getting perilously close to losing its TB-free status. Will the Minister comment on these issues?

Like other hon. Members, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) on raising this important issue. I also extend our sympathies to those farmers and their families who have been directly affected by it. The hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) said that there may not be a national crisis, but, as several hon. Members have said, particular families face a crisis. There is a danger that the phrase "Crisis? What Crisis?" may rebound on us all in a few months' time. I do not intend to rehearse all the points made by hon. Members. The debate has been an excellent one, attended by 20 hon. Members of whom some 11 or 12 have made speeches. Clearly, hon. Members recognise the seriousness of the problem.

I want briefly to tease out one aspect of the problem. Having read the reports of the old Agriculture Committee—now the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee—and answers to parliamentary questions, I cautiously suggest that the Government have a problem giving a definitive answer to many of our questions. That problem was epitomised yesterday, when Lord Whitty attempted to answer a number of questions put to him in the other place. He often failed to give any answer, or he gave answers that simply raised more questions. For example, Lord Whitty said:

"Approximately 10 per cent. of all cattle herds have been affected. The total number of individual cattle affected thus far is quite low—some 9,000 in a national herd of 8 million—but the incidence of the disease is growing in a worrying way."

Why is it growing? The Government do not know.

In the same exchange, Lord Whitty admitted:

"It appears that the growth in the incidence of TB in cattle has been greater here than in other European countries."

Why should that be so? Do we have any knowledge? He further stated that

"there is a correlation between the growth in the number of badgers and the growth in bovine TB, but not area by area. Correlation does not mean cause."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 May 2002; Vol. 635, c. 51–17.]

What does it mean, in that case?

Concern has been expressed in both Houses and by the farming community over delays in veterinary testing caused by the priority given to controlling foot and mouth disease. I urge the Minister to consider the resources available in his Department. The Secretary of State may have to press the Chancellor on the matter, because the problem seems to be one of resources as much as anything else. The position of the state veterinary service has been raised in the debate by several hon. Members. Given what has happened with animal health in the past five to 10 years, it may be wise to assume that we will face an outbreak of another animal health problem, which could mean that bovine TB testing must again go on the back burner. Therefore, I urge the Minister to consider the problem.

I shall not discuss the problems facing the farming community, as vividly described by hon. Members, but I shall address a crucial issue that was raised here and in the Select Committee. The Government have installed a long-term scientific strategy that may or may not produce the required results, but there is no plan B, in the words of the old Select Committee. There is no interim strategy, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), and there is no short-term strategy to deal with the immediate problems that appear to be escalating. I urge the Minister to state clearly and categorically what the short-term strategy might be.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) put it to the Secretary of State during last weeks parliamentary questions that although the long-term strategy is scientifically based and stately as a galleon, it may be overtaken by the increasing spread of bovine TB. That is not an easy question for the Department to handle, but if the Department does not develop a short-term strategy it will not only be overcome by events but lose the confidence of the farming community and the consumer.

Finally, I urge the Minister to answer our questions. I realise that he does not have enough time for that in the debate, but perhaps he will write to hon. Members. Will he and his hon. Friends consider making a statement on the current state of bovine TB? Many hon. Members feel that getting information out of the Department is like pulling teeth. I am waiting for a reply from the Secretary of State. I have given up telephoning her private office. A piece of statistical information was promised to me by this morning, but I have given up on it now. Such delays must be even more frustrating for members of the farming community.

I urge the Minister to issue an interim report in the next few weeks to establish the current facts and to admit, where possible, that there are problems. We all understand that this is not an easy issue. Perhaps we should do what has been suggested by the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed), who speaks on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, and update the statistical information. If the Minister did that, he would draw out the fire from the criticisms made not only by those outside Parliament, but by many of us present.

In the short time available, I shall do my best to do justice to an excellent and wide-ranging debate on a topic that the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) rightly described as difficult and complex.

I should say to the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) that it is difficult to come up with simple answers unless such simple answers exist. We need to be more politically mature in our approach to difficult issues than to seek to pluck answers from the air, especially as the complexity of the issue has been made evident in today's debate. As he and the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) suggested, I shall write if, in view of the time available, I am not able to cover all the topics raised in the debate.

I appreciate that the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk may still be experiencing delays in some of his correspondence with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is difficult for anyone who has not been involved to understand just how bad the correspondence situation was in DEFRA, but I assure him that it is continuing to improve dramatically. I can offer him hope for the future.

Will the Minister give way?

Order. The Minister is not giving way.

As my noble Friend Lord Whitty said yesterday in the House of Lords, tuberculosis in cattle is one of the most difficult animal health problems that we face. The increase in its incidence continues to give rise to considerable concerns. The Government are seeking to proceed on the basis of sound science drawn from independent scientific and veterinary experts. That is very much the approach argued for by my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) and for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson).

The causes of the disease are complex, but there is evidence to suggest that the badger plays a role in bovine tuberculosis. The badger field trial is designed to identify and quantify any such role and, if it exists, to find out whether culling badgers has a part to play in controlling the disease. That was the focus of discussion in the other place yesterday, and I hope to have time to return to that subject.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North referred to badgers found dead on roadsides. They are being collected from seven counties, and the results of the post-mortem examination of those carcases is being validated against the more representative results obtained by examining badgers killed in the Krebs trial. Interim results of the trial are not yet available. My hon. Friend also referred to developing a vaccine and the importance of animal husbandry, and I echo his remarks.

I should also mention the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards). A potentially promising candidate auxiliary test is that known as the gamma interferon test. Only last week, the UK voted in favour of that test being given recognition in the European Union. We hope to begin testing its applications more extensively in limited trial areas this year.

The hon. Member for Leominster quoted views put forward by the National Farmers Union and the Country Land and Business Association. It is worth mentioning that both organisations are fully involved in discussions with DEFRA to tackle the problem. Officials do meet industry representatives; I believe that a meeting to discuss proposals put forward by both organisations and the National Beef Association and other representatives is imminent. The hon. Gentleman suggested that restrictions are crippling. Farms that are under restriction may not move cattle from one farm to another. However, cattle may be moved direct for slaughter under licence. Additionally, the state veterinary service will consider other licensed movements, such as to summer grazing, on a case-by-case basis.

The hon. Gentleman also suggested that the 60-day period between tests is too long. That period is required to ensure that cattle respond properly to skin tests because shorter periods cause cattle to be desensitised to the tests. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman shares my concern that the test should be carried out in circumstances that give certainty to the outcome of the tests and ensure the quality of the results.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) rightly set the remarks of a Welsh vet in context. It is right that attention should be focused on the tragedy of individual farmers and their families rather than on exaggerating industry-wide implications of the disease. I shall not stray on to issues on which the Welsh Assembly takes the lead, but DEFRA and the Assembly's officials are working closely, and I commend the co-operation that is taking place to deal with the matter.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned overdue tests in Wales and the role of the state veterinary service, as did the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire. The number of overdue tests in April this year was 4,300. A total of 1,204 tests were cleared in April, and 567 more overdue tests were added. Hon. Members can appreciate the way in which the backlog is reducing—I shall return to the figures for England in a moment. We should maintain the testing effort throughout the summer period, which will require farmers' co-operation while cattle are at summer pasture. I hope that such co-operation will be forthcoming.

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) mentioned the need to avoid the spread of TB after foot and mouth disease and he rightly referred to the risks that are associated with cattle movement. Steps have been taken to prevent the spread of TB following FMD. Movement restrictions were imposed on several high-risk herds and additional TB testing of restocked herds after FMD is being undertaken. That testing has successfully identified 122 incidences, which has reduced the risk of spread. The hon. Gentleman rightly drew attention to that, and I hope that although I have illustrated the point that he graphically made, he is reassured.

The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) queried statistics. Statistics are published monthly on the internet, and the April figures will be available there early next week, I hope.

Ministers certainly share worries about the rising incidence of bovine TB in the south and west of England and south Wales over the past 20 years or more. The high numbers of herds, and cattle within herds, that have tested positive to the tuberculin skin test since the resumption of testing in December 2001 especially worries DEFRA and Ministers in the Welsh Assembly.

There are two reasons why those high figures should be treated with caution. First, in many herds, the state veterinary service is effectively doing two seasons' testing in one. If testing had occurred a year ago, rather than being precluded by foot and mouth disease, infected animals might have been identified at that stage and removed. Therefore, the spread of infected animals might have been curtailed. In such circumstances, it would have been odd if current testing had not discovered higher numbers of infected animals.

Secondly, the restart of testing was specifically targeted at herds that were suspected of having a higher risk of infection. Both factors tend artificially to raise the number of incidents disclosed. Therefore, it is too early to say whether the suspension of TB testing under foot and mouth disease controls to reduce the risk of bringing the disease on to farms has caused a step-change in the annual increase in the incidence of bovine TB, or is simply a continuation of the previous trend.

Surely you are not trying to suggest, with regard to all the animals that have been slaughtered under the foot and mouth scheme—

Order. I am not trying to suggest anything.

I am sorry. Surely the Minister is not trying to suggest that animals that were slaughtered under the foot and mouth scheme were unlikely to have bovine TB. That is the corollary of what he is saying.

No, I was not referring to animals slaughtered as a result of foot and mouth disease; nor was Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The trend was already running at 22 per cent. per year throughout the 1990s. Although the initial base was small, the size of those annual increases is worrying and unacceptable. The suspension of testing left a backlog of 27,000 overdue TB tests. That is being reduced; at the end of April, the backlog had fallen to 22,500. That is a tribute to the hard work and dedication of the state veterinary service and its local veterinary inspectors. I have indicated why it is unsurprising that those numbers are high at present.

It must be remembered that, if infection is detected more tests are triggered, because testing of the herd, and in the vicinity of the herd, is conducted more frequently. The reduction of the backlog will continue as quickly as is possible, and that will be helped if farmers co-operate with the proposals that have been agreed with industry representatives to continue testing throughout the summer, even though the cattle will have to be called in from pasture for the tests to take place. I appreciate that that will involve additional work, but I hope that the industry will accept that it is important to undertake the tests, for the reasons that have been raised in this debate.

There is little agreement between the various groups on the causes behind the increased incidence of bovine TB in cattle. The public debate on the role that badgers play in the spread of bovine TB in cattle is emotional and polarised. Many farmers and vets are convinced that wildlife—in particular, the badger—plays a significant role in the transmission of bovine TB to cattle. Many of them are also convinced that killing badgers represents the best method of limiting the spread of the disease.

However, badger ecologists and animal welfare and wildlife groups are equally convinced that the badger plays little or no role in the transmission of the disease. They believe that the badger has been unfairly targeted in the past, and that that continues to be the case today. They hold that cattle-to-cattle transmission plays a far larger role, and that that has not been given due recognition.

It has proved difficult to find common ground between those two groups, and to find scientific research that is acceptable to both of them. However, dialogue is being actively encouraged through the TB forum. DEFRA is putting a lot of effort into trying to find common ground between groups that have differing views on a variety of issues.

After the badger culling policy of gassing was deemed to be inhumane, it became clear that the badger culling strategies of the 1980s and 1990s were failing to control the spread of bovine TB. That is why, in 1997, we declared a moratorium on the use of badger culling as a general bovine TB control tool.

Since then, the Government have not stood idly by. We have sought to put in place research that will deliver the sound scientific base that is so desperately needed to avoid the circular arguments on how TB is spread from continuing for another twenty or so years. This scientific research makes up three of the five points of the Government's five point plan for tackling bovine TB: the development of a TB vaccine; the carrying out of research into how TB is spread; and the carrying out of research involving limited badger culling in trial areas.

The independent scientific group on bovine tuberculosis, under the chairmanship of Professor John Bourne, has taken a leading role in overseeing the badger culling research trial, which is also known as the Krebs trial. The badger culling trial took longer than expected to set up, and it was affected by the foot and mouth outbreak, but it is important to note that Professor Bourne has stated that neither of those delays has compromised its statistical integrity. He has advised Ministers that it is likely that results from the trial will be put back by about four months, and that he expects to be able to put advice before them in 2004–05. In the meantime, we are actively pursuing the final two points of the Government's five-point strategy—protecting human health and strengthening controls.

Current hygiene controls on milk and meat have recently been reviewed by the Food Standards Agency, which accepted that current controls on milk—the most likely route of transmission of bovine TB to humans—are satisfactory, and that the risk of transmission from meat is very low. It is important to note that human cases of bovine TB do not mirror the geographical spread of bovine TB in cattle.

Order. I am sorry, but time is up.

One of the most moving experiences of my life took place several years ago when I stood on a beach in Normandy with my father. It was the beach where he had fought his way ashore when he took part in the D-day landings. As I stood there, I could see it all and imagine what he and thousands of others went through. It is what I now think of when I remember my Dad. That experience changed my thinking about war, and I realised fully what it meant to serve one's country—to risk or give one's life as a member of Her Majesty's armed forces.

Men such as my father did not get much by way of reward, and most returned to modest livelihoods. They were, however, awarded a medal or two, which is important. For most of his life, my father never talked about the war or his part in it. Like many others, I suspect, when he retired and looked back at his life, his contribution to that war was his most important achievement. That is why medals mean so much to veterans. Medals recognise their courage, the service that they gave and the sacrifice that they made, which is why they wear them with pride, as my father did.

A group of veterans who did all the things that constitute serving their country, however, have no medal to wear—veterans of the Suez canal campaign from 1951 to 1954. It is a disgrace that those men have been so treated. Although Suez was not D-day, any objective assessment would conclude that a medal should be awarded, and that the overwhelming majority of ordinary people in this country would want one to be given.

The Suez canal zone operation began in October 1951 and, soon afterwards, the garrison was increased from 20,000 to approximately 80,000 troops and stayed at that size. It was no small operation. October and November saw the swiftest build up of the British Army outside a major war. Cabinet minutes of November 1951 declared that it was "active service". As they landed in Egypt, many troops reported that they had been advised to make wills.

The operation involved the use of artillery, including a set-piece battle at the police barracks in Ismailia on 21 January 1952 that involved a tank. Sir Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, is recorded in Hansard in January 1952 as referring to the conflict as "war".

Grimly and sadly, we often measure the scale and significance of a conflict by its death toll. An official memo from the British middle east office to the Foreign Office, dated 10 June 1954, provided information for a parliamentary question. It confirms the number of service men killed from 16 October 1951 to 1 June 1954 as 47, with seven missing presumed dead—a total of 54 fatalities. Many more service men have been recorded as having died, and were buried in Egyptian graveyards between 1951 and 54, giving a total of more than 300. I am told that that is the basis on which the Ministry of Defence has counted the death toll relating to similar operations since the second world war.

The conditions that the men suffered were clearly harsh. It is a matter of record that General Sir Brian Robertson, Commander in Chief of the Middle East forces, applied for a general service medal to be awarded on 18 January 1952. It is not hard to see why. As he said in his letter,

"we have got beyond the stage where our clashes with armed Egyptian thugs and police can be classed as incidents and it has become necessary to mount properly coordinated operations to deal with organized attacks on our troops and installations".

Indeed, individual awards for service in Suez were given out of the military ration in the Queen's birthday honours, and others were published separately for gallantry, including a George medal. Yet no campaign medal or general service medal clasp has ever been issued. That is staggering and upsetting, especially when comparisons are made with other campaigns in which our armed forces have been involved since world war two.

I asked the Library to look into the matter. The research paper that I was given states that

"the absence of such an award appears somewhat anomalous given that bars were awarded for related end of colony campaigns, such as Palestine and Cyprus. Moreover, a bar was affixed to the later Campaign Service Medal for service in the Multinational Force in Lebanon…an operation in which not a single British serviceman was killed nor was the force the subject of hostile fire."

The comparative facts are neatly summed up in a report issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in November 2000, when he announced that a monument would be built to all our service men who have fallen in conflict since 1945. Each of the 16 conflicts listed, except that in Sierra Leone, which still continues, attracted a campaign medal, except Egypt 1951–54—the Suez veterans.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on not only having secured the debate, but on the campaign that he is waging on the issue, with which I entirely agree. As he knows, my brother served in Suez during the period, so I have a personal as well as a constituency interest. Does he believe that the peculiarity that has given rise to the anomaly is subsequent events in Suez, in 1956, which were embarrassing for the then Government, who did not want to know?

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I know that all the veterans involved in the campaign will appreciate his support.

Grimly, when we consider the league table of deaths in those 16 conflicts, Egypt comes in eighth highest.

One of my colleagues at Stonyhurst was killed at Suez, and my father was killed in the last war. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate with another Member whose father was involved in those wars.

In debating awarding medals, the real question is, did those involved not do just as much as anyone in any other war? It is not their fault if the politicians got something wrong. It is therefore essential that my constituent, Mr. Collier, of Cheadle, should, like the other distinguished gentlemen, receive a medal in recognition of service. It was not their fault that things went wrong.

I entirely agree. Our case is overwhelming. In light of those grim fatalities, it is incredible that Suez has missed out on recognition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) is present. One of the arguments advanced by the then Minister of State for the Armed Forces, my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), in a debate on 14 March 2001 was that

"the case must be considered against the standards of the time. Policy on medals changes over the years, and it is for each generation to consider whom it should honour."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 14 March 2001; Vol. 365, c. 300WH.]

Let us consider other so-called anti-terrorist operations that took place in the 1950s. In Palestine, 233 people died; in Malaya, 340; in Cyprus, 79; and in Kenya, 12. Medals were issued for all those campaigns. Medals were later awarded to those who served in not only Lebanon but Rhodesia and 17 United Nations operations in which no one died.

Given the evidence, any fair-minded person would conclude that Suez vets deserve a medal. It is a double injustice that none was ever awarded and that 50 years later the mistake has not been rectified.

Why has that happened? Justice seems to have become locked up in procedure. What went wrong in the early 1950s was either cock-up or conspiracy. I believe that the former was more likely, which gives us more cause to put things right. It has never been entirely clear what exactly happened after General Robertson requested on 18 January 1952 that a medal be granted.

At various times down the years, the Ministry of Defence has made several assertions. First, it said that the Army council considered the matter in 1952 and rejected the claim, but I have seen no evidence of that. That assertion was made on the basis of unsigned and undated handwritten short notes. Proper documents that appeared finally in 1999 show that those notes refer to applications for individual awards also requested by General Robertson.

It has also been asserted that the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals—the HD committee—considered the matter in 1956. The evidence is that it did not examine the case. That is because the proposal to institute such a medal came from a member of the public. The HD committee was unable to act on it because it can only consider formal submissions from Government Departments, not members of the public.

It is clear from all the evidence that the matter was not properly dealt with at the time and that full consideration has never been given to the case for a medal. Why has the matter not been sorted out since then and why cannot we correct it today? We are told that authorities cannot second guess a decision that should have been made in the early 1950s. I contend, however, that the MOD has repeatedly attempted to second guess what happened procedurally in 1952 and 1956 on the basis of unclear evidence. For example, it was claimed in 1956 when a member of the public suggested an award—a suggestion that the committee could not act on—that the committee

"had ample opportunity to take the hint and to prepare a case for a medal…should they have considered it to be justified. Presumably they did not feel it to be necessary."

Those are words of a letter from a MOD official. If that is not a classic case of second guessing, I do not know what is. It is trying to maintain years later what was in the minds of the committee. It is really saying that the committee was always right and that it could never get anything wrong.

We are told that the committee now has a policy of no retrospection and that that is an iron rule. Who made that policy? No one seems to know. Did the committee make the policy? In a matter of such import, should such a committee be making its own policy in a modern democracy? Who sets the policies for the HD committee? To whom is the committee accountable? The House of Commons Library said:

"There appears to be no legal impediment to the retrospective creation of a campaign medal or the addition of a particular bar to an award."

Does the HD committee stand above the law? Even criminal justice cases can be reopened as we have recently seen. Both Australia and Canada have created retrospective awards for prescribed operations between 1945 and 1975. I have said that the matter seems to be locked in procedure; in fact, it seems to be locked in arcane procedure. The Library said that

"this process was not necessarily logical and is sometimes bureaucratic."

It has been claimed that there is a five-year rule beyond which retrospection cannot occur. It was said that King George VI decided that rule, although it has now been conceded that there is no proof that he did. Indeed, an HD committee official admitted in a letter last year that

"we do not have any record of the Committee's initial formal agreement to operate this rule".

Interestingly, I have been told that there are two instances when retrospective awards have been approved by the committee, although not actually made by it. They involve a Russian award that was made to British service men in 1985 and an award from Malta in 1995. The HD committee allows those medals to be worn.

Since the campaign for a medal started, the MOD has carried out reviews. It continues to say that it will look at new evidence. I ask the Under-Secretary to publish full details of all hitherto reviews so that we know what evidence has been looked at and what has not. Such matters need to be looked at again. In 1991, Sir David Ramsbotham, a member of one of the previous review teams, put in writing that the issue should be re-examined and that natural justice must be allowed to prevail. It has now been referred to Sir Richard Wilson, the head of the civil service, who is chairman of the HD committee. I am glad that he wrote at the beginning of this year that

"the issue is indeed still alive."

I hope that he has asked to find a way forward and I hope that it will be confirmed this morning that the MOD supports that aim.

Will my hon. Friend accept that it is important for Sir Richard to make a decision before he retires, rather than leaving the matter as a hot potato for his successor?

That is absolutely right. Will my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris) clarify exactly what Sir Richard has been asked to do? All that my inquiries revealed was that he was to consider all representations from the campaign by Suez veterans and from veterans involved in other campaigns where the non-award of a medal was an issue, and that he would report in due course to the Prime Minister and the Queen but that no report would be published. I am told that he will see a group of Suez veterans in the next month. Such a report should be published, and so should the minutes of the HD committee, as it should be accountable.

For too long, Suez veterans have been denied by procedure. People should not hide behind procedure, and we should not let it stand in the way of applying fairness and the basic human need to right a wrong. We do not ask that history be rewritten, but that it be properly acknowledged. I sense that the authorities are worried about opening the floodgates of retrospective awards with the case, but that is the worst of arguments, because cases should be decided on their own merits. The case has never considered properly, and the Government have a duty to ensure that proper action is taken and that mistakes are corrected. If no procedure exists to put matters right, such procedure should be established.

I acknowledge Mr. David Podd, a constituent of mine who brought the matter to my attention, as well as Mr. Charles Golder and Lt. Col. Ashley Tinson for the information and material that they have provided. They are serving the Suez veterans' campaign well.

The campaign will not go away. This is the third Adjournment debate on the subject in 15 months. There have been early-day motions, and a petition with 20,000 signatures was handed to a Defence Minister. The campaign would go away only if all the veterans died before justice was done, which would be a disgrace. The veterans march to the Cenotaph, but they have no medal to wear. Why do we deny them that? What do we have to lose?

This year, we celebrate the Queen's golden jubilee. The occasion is a rare opportunity that should be taken to rectify the injustice, and it would be a fitting tribute to all those who served their country in the Suez from 1951 to 1954.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) on securing the debate. He will be aware that this is the second debate on the subject this year, the previous one having taken place on 16 January. I think that I am right to say that it is the fourth Adjournment debate on the subject since 2000, so it has been well debated.

In the January debate, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence said that he could add little to what had been said in previous debates. I must offer the same apology, as I am in the same position. He is not here today, as he is on Government business in north America, but he will be keen to read Hansard and discuss the debate with me on his return.

The disturbance in the Suez canal zone in the early 1950s lasted more than two and a half years, with about 64,000 troops stationed there at the peak of the troubles. The men were on declared active service and 40 were killed as a result of terrorist action. Why, then, was no campaign medal awarded at the time, and why have successive Governments resisted demands for one?

Recommendations on the institution of medals are made to the Queen by the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, known for brevity as the HD committee. The committee is interdepartmental and is chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. Since the end of the second world war, the HD committee has maintained a policy that it will not consider the institution of awards and medals for service given many years earlier. Specifically, it will not consider operations that ended more than five years previously.

There are reasons for the policy. The committee is not qualified so long after the event to say that those who were in a position to submit a case but did not do so were wrong, if no contemporary claim were made. If a claim were made but rejected at the time, either by a Department or by the committee itself, those who rejected it would have had access to the full facts and their judgment would have been based on contemporary understanding of the situation. That is the policy governing this issue. Nevertheless, veterans continue to ask whether a case was made at the time and if not, why not?

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate what complete rubbish he has just enunciated? One does not need a comprehension of what he has described as a policy in order to know that people who went on active service, or were involved in a "disturbance", as he called it, have put their lives on the line for their country. It seems inconceivable that this policy can be pursued.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I do not accept the tone in which he made it, but perhaps points that I make later will deal with the issues that he is concerned about.

Veterans continue to ask whether a case was made at the time, and if not, why not? If a case were made, was it properly considered? Why was it rejected? It is no secret that little documentary evidence on these matters has survived from the 1950s. We know that the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Land Forces wrote to the Military Secretary in January 1952, some three months after the troubles started, asking about the award of operational gallantry decorations. Unfortunately, the letter has not survived and we do not know whether he also mentioned a campaign medal.

We do know that when the Military Secretary replied, he said he would sound out the Adjutant-General about the possibility, so it is a reasonable supposition that the Commander-in-Chief had raised the question. It has been claimed that the Military Secretary did not in fact mention a campaign medal to the Adjutant-General, and that the matter was not discussed by the Army council. In the absence of documentary evidence, the case cannot be proved either way. There is no mention of a campaign medal in the minutes of the Army council, but consideration would not necessarily have been in a formal meeting, where minutes would have been taken.

There is no doubt that the Army council was well aware of conditions and circumstances in the canal zone; it was, after all, the largest British forces base in the eastern Mediterranean and middle east. The Secretary of State for War had visited the area and spoke about it at a meeting of the council. We know that the council considered operational gallantry awards and decided that the scale and scope of the operations did not justify them. That conclusion may well have weighed against the question of a campaign medal being taken further.

Having been told that the Adjutant-General would be sounded out about a campaign medal, the Commander-in-Chief would obviously want to know the outcome. Again, documentation is unfortunately lacking, but no evidence has been found and it has never been suggested that the Commander-in-Chief ever raised the matter again. The obvious conclusion is that he accepted that it had been dealt with properly and conclusively. A few years later, consideration of a clasp to the general service medal for the 1956 Suez operation provided an opportunity to re-open the question within the period governed by the HD committee's five-year retrospection rule, but nobody took up that option.

I have suggested what seems the most likely reason for no case being taken forward; that the scale of operations was not considered to be great enough. It should be remembered that, at the time, the second world war was a recent memory. During the period since that war, internal security operations in Palestine had resulted in about 260 servicemen being killed over a three-year period, compared with 40 in the canal zone. I should mention that much higher death figures are quoted for the canal zone, but the figures that I have given are for deaths from terrorist action only. They do not cover death from other causes, or death of non-military personnel.

The Korean war was still going on, with far more intensive military operations and a much heavier loss of life. It is true that service in the canal zone was unpleasant and at times dangerous, but that was very often the lot of British troops stationed overseas during that period. I should admit to an interest in that my uncle, Brian Norris, was stationed in the canal zone in 1954, so I have had personal discussions about the conditions that prevailed then.

Will my hon. Friend say where the figure for deaths, which was quoted in a previous debate by the Under-Secretary, comes from? I have seen the memo from the middle eastern office, which referred to 54 deaths. If that is a mistake, the Ministry should publish the evidence that shows that the figure is 40, because an official document states that it is 54.

I understand why my hon. Friend would raise that point if there appeared to be a discrepancy. As I understand it, the figures are worked out carefully from all the documentation that has been made available in previous reviews of the matter, and they are robust, so we should be able to rely on the figure of 40. However, I shall look into the matter and ensure that my hon. Friend receives a written response regarding the figure of 54.

It is also true that active service had been declared, but that in itself is no argument for a medal. Declarations of active service are made when, for example, it is necessary to increase disciplinary powers. The declaration of the General Officer Commanding in Egypt emphasised that it was

"a purely administrative decision in order that the status of troops regarding Courts Martial shall remain unchanged."

In other words, it was the legal status that was important.

Other reasons have been suggested. A wish to avoid embarrassment is often mentioned. It is claimed that the War Office would have been embarrassed by the institution of a medal, which would have drawn attention to what was happening in the canal zone. However, that was public knowledge at the time. Opinions varied about the British role there, but whatever view might have been taken, there was nothing dishonourable about what the troops were doing. They were there to ensure the safe passage of shipping and to protect a limited British presence, which existed in accordance with the treaty with the Egyptians. In the best tradition of the British services, the troops carried out their duties successfully and with minimal force.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I shall not because time is of the essence.

Order. I hope that hon. Members will appreciate that the hon. Gentleman has some ground to cover yet in this important debate.

It has been alleged many times over the years that the Foreign Office anticipated the likelihood of embarrassment, and therefore interfered to block a medal-awarding process before a case could be put before the HD committee. There are two suggestions about what the potential embarrassment might have been. One is that the award of a medal could have constituted an admission that we were, in effect, at war, and would thus have jeopardised delicate negotiations with the Egyptians.

The other is that the award of a medal would have pleased the Egyptians by elevating the status of their actions from terrorism to a military operation. Both cannot be true. In fact, there is no reason to believe that either consideration carried any weight. Such issues clearly did not prevent the award of medals for other security operations at about that time, such as in Palestine and Malaya. No evidence whatsoever has been found to suggest that there was any consultation between the War Office and the Foreign Office, or that the Foreign Office intervened formally or informally.

Leaving aside the factors that may or may not have affected the decisions of fifty years ago, many canal zone veterans argue that a medal is justified by comparison with subsequent military deployments, including those of the present day. The claim is often made that the canal zone was the only action after the second world war for which a medal or clasp was not awarded. That is not correct. During the period from the end of the war to the mid-1950s, there were more than a dozen internal security deployments for which no medal or clasp was issued, such as Libya in 1945, Burma from 1945 to 1948, Singapore in 1950 and Hong Kong in 1956. Comparison with the present day is not relevant. Policy on medals changes with the times. For example, three medals were awarded for the first world war, but 10 were awarded for the second world war.

Notwithstanding the non-retrospection rule, and despite continual accusations to the contrary, the Ministry of Defence has kept an open mind on this subject. The claim for a medal was effectively launched in 1974, and its supporters have been especially active since about 1990. During the latter period, there have been several reviews by successive Adjutants-General, and two Chiefs of the General Staff have also looked into the matter. In 1998, the then Under-Secretary of State for Defence set up a full review of all available documents, including those held by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Public Record Office. The following year, some papers dating from 1952 came to light.

Canal zone veterans have been assiduous in searching old records, and anything brought to the Department's notice receives appropriate study. Nothing, however, has given us any reason to think that the matter was dealt with insufficiently or improperly in the early 1950s. We remain willing to consider anything new that offers a different slant, and an undertaking to that effect was given as recently as the Adjournment debate on this subject in January 2002.

At the outset, I said that there was not much new to say. However, I can add something. In reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey), the Prime Minister said that he would make sure that the HD committee carefully considered any further representations, including the one made to him at that time. I can confirm that the HD committee is indeed reviewing the question. I would not wish to anticipate what the outcome of that review might be, but I hope that, in due course, it will satisfy all concerned that the subject has received full, fair and conclusive consideration.

In closing, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney for putting his case so clearly and congratulate him on securing the debate.

I am sure that the authorities will have heard the comments made by hon. Members during the debate.

I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to draw to the Government's attention once again my constituents' concerns over the level of illegal immigration through the channel tunnel. The English terminal of the tunnel is situated in Cheriton in my constituency. The facilities for the freight terminal are situated at Dollonds moor, also in my constituency. As my constituents know only too well, the situation is now completely out of control. It is the gravest possible indictment of the Government that they have failed totally to get to grips with the problem.

It is worth reminding ourselves of what the situation was in 1997. As a result of a combination of measures taken by the previous Government, when I was Home Secretary, the number of people seeking asylum in this country had fallen by 40 per cent. The backlog of outstanding asylum applications was coming down fast. There was in place an agreement between France and the United Kingdom, under which France agreed to take back those who came from France to apply for asylum here. There was no camp at Sangatte. There were no stories of people seeking nightly to break into trains coming through the tunnel in order to get to this country.

Five years on, there is no agreement with France. There is a camp at Sangatte, which exists simply and solely as a staging post for those who seek illegal entry into the United Kingdom. There are nightly reports of people breaking into the trains coming through the channel tunnel, endangering their own safety and the safety of others by doing so. The number of people seeking asylum in this country has tripled during that time. The situation is completely out of control.

Nothing that I say today bears upon the entitlement to asylum of those fleeing persecution. That principle was certainly adhered to throughout the period in office of the last Conservative Government. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that the Minister for Asylum and Immigration, Lord Rooker, said last week that only one in 10 of those who apply for asylum in this country are entitled to it and get it. Indeed, if any of those seeking to enter this country illegally through the channel tunnel are fleeing persecution, there is no reason whatever why they could not apply for asylum in France, or in any of the other countries that they have to travel through to get to the United Kingdom.

The reason they are here, as they told me when I visited Sangatte just over a year ago—apart from the English language, about which I accept the Government can do nothing—is that they think that they can get more money and better accommodation in this country than in any other country in Europe. That is doubtless why the number of people seeking asylum in this country has, in the lifetime of the present Government, exceeded those seeking asylum in any other European country. Given our geography, and the lengths that people have to go to in order to get into Britain to claim asylum, that statistic is truly astonishing.

It is worth examining in some detail the Government's lamentable record in dealing with the problem. Instead of pursuing the benefit policies that had, in part, contributed to the reduction in the number seeking asylum in this country prior to 1997, they refused to do so. Indeed, they did nothing at all for three years until the Home Secretary's predecessor introduced his ill-fated and wholly unsuccessful legislation, now entirely disowned by the present Home Secretary.

Less than two years after those measures were introduced the present Home Secretary acknowledged that they had not worked. He is introducing his own measures to deal with the problem; the signs are that they will be no more successful than those introduced by his predecessor.

To cap it all—almost incredibly—we hear reports that the Government have agreed to surrender their veto on European Union decisions relating to asylum. Those reports emanate not from a statement to this House, nor from an answer to a parliamentary question, but from a speech made by the Foreign Secretary to Dutch dignitaries and politicians in The Hague on 21 February. He called for the national veto to be scrapped in some key areas such as asylum and immigration, arguing that majority voting by EU countries would speed decision making. The sheer irresponsibility of that argument beggars belief. It means that decisions could be taken, against the opposition of the Government of the United Kingdom, that had far-reaching consequences for communities in our country.

The Government will have rendered themselves powerless to deal with one of the most serious problems we face. Let us examine some of the consequences of that extraordinary capitulation. It has always been accepted, at least in principle, that those who claim to be fleeing persecution should seek asylum in the first safe country that they enter. In the EU, that has meant applying for asylum in the first member state in which they find themselves.

That was the principle underlying the Dublin convention, agreed as long ago as 1990. I entirely accept that the convention, which did not come into force until summer 1997, after the general election, has not worked well in practice, but at least it was based on the right principle.

What if, now, a majority of member states of the European Union decided to agree a different principle? What if they decided that asylum seekers should have complete freedom to choose in which country to make their claim? We know that more of them want to come to this country than to any other, for reasons that I have already given. If the Government surrender their veto, we will be powerless to resist such a change.

What if a majority of members of the European Union decided to realise the long-standing ambition of many of them to introduce a quota system for dealing with claims for asylum, and that quota system was grossly unfair to the United Kingdom? The Government of the United Kingdom will be powerless to resist.

I cannot recall a more irresponsible, unnecessary and wanton surrender of power than that. I cannot imagine what possessed the Government to contemplate taking that step. I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will deal fully with that astonishing decision, which remains wholly unexplained, and give Parliament, for the first time, a full account of why the shift in the Government's position has occurred.

Meanwhile, on the ground, things go from bad to worse. The number of freight trains operated by English, Welsh and Scottish Railway Limited continues to fall. That means that more goods have to be carried by lorries on our roads, adding to the congestion and the environmental detriment that we all wish to avoid. The future of EWS as a going concern has been called into question. It faces great uncertainty; the number of trains that it can run through the tunnel has been severely reduced and the basis of its operations is uncertain. The number of asylum seekers on the freight trains that they operate has reached unprecedented heights, and approached 200 in one week last month. Those are the ones who were caught.

I pay tribute to my constituents. Fortunately, my constituency has not witnessed a significant number of difficulties or incidents of trouble between asylum seekers and local residents, and I hope that that continues. However, my constituents feel considerable and mounting frustration, as they see evidence all around of a situation that is wholly out of control.

It is clear what the Government should do. They should reconsider some of the measures that make this country a relatively attractive place for asylum seekers. They should reinstate the bilateral agreement with France, which was so helpful in dealing with the problem before 1997. They should persuade the French Government to close the camp at Sangatte, and urge them to instruct French railways—which, after all, remains a nationalised company—to put in place at Fréthun the security arrangements that it has promised for the past two years.

The Government pretend—I hope that the Minister will not persist in this pretence—that they cannot reinstate the bilateral agreement with France because the Dublin convention has come into force. The convention was signed in 1990, when asylum was much less of a problem in this country. It is true that it has not worked as effectively as it could and should have done. As I said, its underlying principle is that asylum seekers should apply for asylum in the first European Union member state in which they find themselves. If that principle were respected, the problem facing this country and my constituents would be much less severe.

There is nothing in the convention to prevent a bilateral agreement from being concluded. Germany and Denmark are both signatories, and have put in place an agreement that is similar to that which I negotiated with the French before 1997, when I was Home Secretary; so much for the Government's paper-thin excuses.

The Government are constantly telling us what wonderful relations they have with our European partners. If they are only half as good as the Government say they are, it is about time that they used them. It should not be too difficult to put in place arrangements similar to those that I have precisely identified.

The truth is that the political will is lacking. I have no great hopes of the Minister's reply, although I shall leave him ample time to deal with all the points that I have raised. Against all expectations, my constituents are looking for a belated indication that the Government are not as lacking in political will as their record on this issue demonstrates.

I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) on securing this Adjournment debate and on raising a series of serious issues on which he has invited me to reply. He outlined four issues that I should seek to address. The first is the question of the bilateral agreement with France, the second the issue of Sangatte, the third that of security at Fr^thun and the fourth the objectives of Government policy with regard to co-operation in the European Union on issues of asylum.

I should like to start with the bilateral agreement, or so-called gentleman's agreement. That agreement, to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman so often refers, allowed for returns of asylum seekers to France only in limited circumstances. It covered arrangements for the return of asylum seekers, refused passengers and illegal entrants arriving at the channel ports or via the channel tunnel.

The agreement was always going to be superseded by the Dublin convention once the latter was implemented. The first paragraph of the agreement on the bilateral arrangements with France, reached when the right hon. and learned Gentleman's party was in power, states:

"it shall be superseded by the relevant provisions of the Dublin Convention once that convention has entered into force."

In other words, the ending of the bilateral agreement was planned for and put in place by the previous Conservative Administration. It makes no sense to suggest that it is simply a matter of political will that the agreement is no longer in place.

Having reached a gentleman's agreement, the previous Administration at the same time ensured that it would cease to operate when the Dublin convention came into force. That means that the agreement was effectively in operation for only a short period of time. When it was first in place in 1996, between 150 and 200 people were returned to France. It gives a wholly misleading impression of what the bilateral agreement did to suggest that the return of between 150 and 200 people is the answer to the challenges that we face with asylum. The issues are serious and they require serious responses. It does not help the debate to suggest that an agreement that returned between 150 and 200 people in an entire year somehow holds the key.

The following year, the total number of people returned under the agreement reached 516. That was it. By that stage, the system was becoming bogged down in the process of judicial review, by which asylum seekers who did not wish to be returned could thwart the system.

Does the Minister not understand that the deterrent effect of the agreement was wholly disproportionate to the numbers to which he referred? If people knew that they were going to be returned to France from this country, they did not bother to make the efforts that they are now making in order to get into this country. The Minister must face up to the fact that on the ground, the situation before 1997 was nothing like what it is now. The agreement was not the only factor, but was one of the most important factors that led to that completely different state of affairs.

Does the Minister not also appreciate that although it is true that the agreement was to come to an end when the Dublin convention came into force—everyone hoping that the Dublin convention would be effective—the existence of the Dublin convention has not prevented Germany and Denmark, who are both signatories to the convention, from reaching an agreement similar to the one that existed between Britain and France? Why cannot we do the same?

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is wriggling in the face of the fact that he has made claims for the impact of the bilateral agreement that are not justified by the facts. With regard to the agreement between Denmark and Germany, my understanding is that that is an agreement for the facilitation of the Dublin convention, not as an alternative to it or a provision separate from it.

Will the Minister give way?

I will, but I am aware that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe asked a number of questions.

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be very brief.

Will the Minister reverse up a bit and address the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard)? What is important is not that the bilateral agreement got between 150 and 200 people back to France, but that it sent out a message that Britain is not a soft underbelly on immigration and that we had agreements in force that meant that we would be harder to approach across the channel. The issue is the positive signals that we give out.

I do not believe that there was the impact that was claimed. The substantial numbers of people who seek asylum throughout Europe reflect developments in the wider world rather than the existence, or otherwise, of the agreement. It was clear that people soon realised that its effect—I do not say that it had no value—could be thwarted through judicial review.

I turn to the situation at Fréthun. We are worried about the disruption to train services and the number of illegal immigrants who come through the tunnel. We have repeatedly stressed to SNCF and all levels of the French Government the need for rapid security improvements. We are aware of the serious effect on UK business that has been caused by the disruption to freight services through the tunnel. That is why we will continue to monitor the situation and we will take further concerted action until the overall policing and security levels are adequate.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told the House that he will begin immediate discussions with the French Government on the situation in northern France when the French elections have finished in June and a new Administration is formed. He has spoken with Nicolas Sarkozy, who is the new French Minister of the Interior. I understand that they had a constructive discussion last week that especially focused on the problem of clandestine immigration in the Calais region.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe discussed the continuing problems at the SNCF freight yard at Fréthun with the French ambassador last week. He made it clear that the situation is intolerable. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport has raised the issue with his new French counterpart, and contacts have been made at official level. In response to our representations, the French Government have agreed to increase police cover at Fréthun. Since March, an additional gendarme squad of 50 men who are dedicated to the security of Fréthun has been in place at the freight yard.

It is essential to restore a viable rail freight service and to deter would-be stowaways. We continue to press SNCF to complete the physical security improvements to its freight yard. We welcome last week's announcement by the head of SNCF that tsshe company is to spend 7.5 million euro on improved security measures at Fréthun. They will include greatly improved fencing with razor wire, detection equipment, improved lighting and closed circuit television monitoring. We welcome even more his statement that the measures, some of which have been promised for more than a year, will be put in place over the next two months. The improvements should reduce the likelihood of the site being overrun by clandestines as occurred in the past.

However, at the same time, it is essential that the level of police cover is maintained. Recent newspaper reports that the French police were pulling out of Fréthun were untrue. Regrettably, one squadron of gendarmes was temporarily assigned to other duties and replaced only several days later. The new French Minister of the Interior gave my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary his personal assurance that that will not happen again.

We are grateful for the French Government's efforts on improving security in the Calais area. We know that a combination of effective anti-intrusion measures and effective policing works. For example, the measures taken by Eurotunnel at its Coquelles terminal reduced the number of clandestine entrants arriving in freight shuttle trains from 808 in July 2001 to seven in April 2002. That shows that it is feasible to implement effective measures to deter would-be illegal immigrants. We are also grateful that the French Government have assured us that there has been no change to their overall policing policy at Fréthun. However, during all our contacts with the French authorities we will continue to stress the need for the police presence at Fréthun to he continuous—all day, every day.

The civil penalty and carriers' liability regimes are important and successful elements of our border controls and they will remain important parts of our strategy to prevent illegal entry. Prior to their introduction, the number of clandestine entrants being dealt with at Dover increased at a rate in excess of 170 per cent. a year. That upward trend has been halted and reversed, and the number of entrants detected at Dover in 2001 was down 27 per cent. from the previous year.

We believe that it is the fundamental right of any nation to require those who enter it to say what goods or people they are carrying, and to bear responsibility for goods or people that they should not be carrying. Although we welcome the Court of Appeal's recent findings that this important regime is lawful and valid, it is our intention to modify the civil penalty regime to ensure that it is fully compatible with the European convention on human rights. In order to comply with the Roth ruling and maintain the strength of our borders, a new system of variable penalties for carriers and hauliers will be introduced. The revised regime will retain all the important elements of the existing one and will be tough but fair.

The United Kingdom is also deploying new technologies to good effect in strengthening us in our fight against illegal immigration. Various forms of sophisticated detection equipment are already in use at our ports, and we are in local discussions with the French authorities about partnerships to share our expertise and equipment.

Addressing cross-channel illegal immigration, and the unsatisfactory case of Sangatte in particular, is a priority for the Government. The existence and location of the Red Cross centre in Sangatte is clearly not helpful. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made no secret of his wish that it should, ultimately, be closed down. We also recognise the social impact of the 1,500 migrants in the area. Together with French colleagues, we are considering solutions to the problem of large numbers of would-be illegal immigrants congregating in northern France.

Those issues will be at the top of the Home Secretary's agenda when he speaks to the new French Minister of the Interior after the elections in France. He will make it clear, as he has done before, that we are keen to work closely with the French to combat the flow through the channel tunnel and to help to create conditions in northern France that would render the centre unnecessary. I do not suggest that that will be easy, particularly as many of the immigrants are not returnable to their country of origin at present, but we are determined to find ways of alleviating the problem. A key concern is ensuring that any arrangements between the UK and France do not result in attracting even more immigrants to northern France.

As well as considering specific bilateral solutions, an important part of the process will be co-operation within the European Union. Sangatte is a symptom of a shared European problem of people-smuggling and illegal immigration. The occupants of the Sangatte centre must have crossed several of the European Union member states to reach northern France. We need to work with our European partners to strengthen the EU's borders, to address the root causes of illegal immigration, and to return those who do not, or no longer, have a right of residence in the EU.

The comprehensive plan on illegal immigration and people-trafficking in the EU was adopted by Ministers at the Joint Home Affairs Council on 28 February. It covered several matters that are to be implemented by February 2003 in the short term, and by February 2005 in the medium term. The UK considers all the issues to be important but is particularly keen to make progress on the subjects of return and operational co-operation on the EU's current and future external borders.

We think that there is a strong need to work with the border services of member states to combat illegal immigration into the EU. The UK-led initiative to assist the state border service of Bosnia-Herzegovina is an excellent example of what that type of co-operation can achieve.

I hope that the Minister will deal with the veto.

I intend to set out the practical measures that we would like to agree with our European partners and have in place to deal with the problems that we are debating. It is important that the EU continues its work with source countries of illegal immigration. We have to address the root causes of illegal immigration. We support the continued strengthening of the approach of the high-level working group on asylum and migration. It is important to stress the strong lead that the UK is taking in pushing the issues forward; it has asked that they be included on the agenda for the Seville European Council.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister wrote to the Spanish Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar, to underline the need for the EU to redouble its efforts on speeding up progress on asylum measures and on joint work on returns, and on taking rapid action to strengthen the EU's external frontiers. It has been well publicised that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister met the Spanish Prime Minister yesterday to discuss these matters and to underline the importance that we attach to them.

There are other issues about which I will write to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I am unsure whether it will be a point of order, but I shall give the right hon. and learned Gentleman an opportunity to speak.

I seek your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as to whether it is in order—especially when the Member who has initiated a debate of this sort has taken less time than the allotted 15 minutes—for the Minister completely to ignore in his reply one of the most substantive points—

Order. I must ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to resume his seat. The Minister's response is his responsibility; As the Chair, I am not responsible for it.

I welcome the opportunity to initiate this debate on consumer protection and the sale of holidays.

For most of us, the purchase of a foreign holiday is our largest annual financial outlay. These holidays are eagerly looked forward to, and, frequently, carefully saved for. Most of us dream that, in our retirement, we will be able to take more frequent breaks at the time of our choosing, because we will be free from the constraints of work. Foreign holidays account for 30 per cent. of the holidays that are taken each year; the annual worth of that business is £29 billion.

The vast majority of those foreign holidays are booked with reputable companies, which provide a first-class product, to the satisfaction of their consumers. However, the growth of the foreign holiday market has led to practices that can only be described as unscrupulous—and, in some cases, downright fraudulent.

One sector that earned such a reputation was the sale of timeshare holidays. Following much publicity and complaint, regulations were enacted by European institutions, and they were added to by the Timeshare Act 1992 and by timeshare regulations in April 1997. They have rightly given consumers protection, and they have done much to clean up a sector that had a bad reputation.

The issue that I wish to highlight in this debate is the sale of holidays through what are known as holiday clubs. Many of the techniques that are used to sell membership of such clubs are identical to the worst sales techniques of the bad days of timeshare selling. Though many holiday clubs are selling access to timeshare accommodation, they are not covered by current legislation governing such sales. One could come to the conclusion that the sale of membership of holiday clubs is a new way for those involved in the more disreputable end of the timeshare market to avoid the regulations that now govern the timeshare industry.

To highlight the problems, I wish to draw attention to a company called On-Line Vacations, which has been operating in north-east England. However, as I will explain, that is just one of the names that that company trades under. It has left many of my constituents feeling dissatisfied, and out of pocket by many thousands of pounds.

On-Line Vacations first appeared in the north-east, where it traded as G M Leisure from an office in Monkwearmouth in Sunderland. It then moved to Vermont house in Washington in Tyne and Wear, and its name was changed to On-Line Vacations. After having disappeared without explanation at the beginning of this year, the company is now based at 2 Deemouth centre, South Esplanade, east Aberdeen where it is trading as Dream Vacations Ltd.

Although the company has often changed its name, it is one and the same company; the common individual throughout is a director, Mr. William Millar. The company's product is membership of a holiday club. For a fee of between £1,950 and £4,800, customers receive a PIN number that gives them exclusive access to an agency website offering discount accommodation in "holiday exchange properties"—a new name for timeshare accommodation, I am reliably informed. The accommodation itself was not provided directly by On-Line Vacations but by a company ironically called either Qualycon or Qualyeurope. Again, the name changes throughout the saga depending on the company with which one is dealing.

As I said earlier, many of the techniques used to sell membership are reminiscent of the worst techniques used in the sale of timeshares that resulted in legislation. One such method is to cold call individuals by telephone using the classic bait and trap tactic—individuals are offered a free holiday in return for attending a company's presentation. Once at the presentation, all who have complained to me state that the technique was hard sell. Mr. Martin Alexander and his wife of Seaham, County Durham attended a sales session. They said that

"the pressure was unrelenting, at no time did a member of their staff leave you alone during the three hour session.

Mr. Alexander and his wife signed an agreement with the company in order to be allowed to leave the room. Very wisely, they did not hand over any money, saying that they wished to have time to think about what was on offer.

On further investigation, Mr. Alexander discovered information that questioned the legitimacy of what was offered. Although the company claimed to be long established, the consumer credit licence was only five days old. Also, no mention was made of the fact that On-Line Vacations was acting as an agent for Qualyeurope. On making inquiries, Mr. Alexander found that the trading standards department in Durham county council had received numerous complaints about the company's activities.

Mr. Alexander wrote to the company declining to take the matter further and what followed over the next few months can be described only as a heavy-handed and threatening approach. Threatening letters and telephone calls stated that the bailiffs would be instructed if the Alexanders did not pay £3,500 to On-Line Vacations. All credit to the Alexanders, they stood their ground and, with the help of their solicitor, did not give in.

Alas, some of my constituents have not been so fortunate. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, of Chester-le-Street, attended a presentation in May 2000 at On-Line Vacations' Washington offices, following an invitation sent to them by post promising a free holiday in return for attending. They paid £4,000 to On-Line Vacations for the unique PIN number that enabled them to book discount accommodation. The sales person stressed that it was not timeshare accommodation. They received the PIN number but could not access the website, so they went to the company's offices in Washington to try and book their free holiday, only to be told by a member of staff that there were problems with the computer, so it was not possible.

To date, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper have received nothing in return for their £4,000 some two years after being signed up by the company, which was called GM Leisure at the time. They were left to pay off the loan that they had taken out to pay their joining fee. That is one of many cases reported to Durham county council's trading standards department. I pay tribute to its representatives, especially Sue Constable, for their persistence in trying to unravel the web of dishonesty that surrounds the activities of that company in Durham.

Clearly, the activities of On-Line Vacations has left many honest, hardworking people in the north-east out of pocket and feeling that they have been victims of a sophisticated con. That does not stop at those who have purchased membership. A constituent who has a holiday cottage in the village of Plawsworth in north Durham is owed outstanding rent from On-Line Vacations, which used the cottage to house staff while operating in the north-east.

The web of companies involved in the operation of On-Line Vacations is complex. On the face of it, it appears that those involved are avoiding their responsibilities. The main director, Mr. Millar, signed a trust deed on 10 April 2000, effectively signing his assets to a trust deed to be realised in favour of his creditors. The only problem for those owed money by On-Line Vacations is that they do not appear as creditors, despite Mr. Millar's numerous promises that they would receive their money back in full. The trading standards department of Durham county council told me that Douglas Cooke, who was involved in On-Line Vacations, is now running a similar operation in Coventry. The other director, Ronald Mathews, is still in the north-east. It is ironic that, as of yesterday, the website of On-Line Vacations was still up and running, and giving a local telephone number for people to contact.

This week, I have again written to Durham police asking them to look into the case of On-Line Vacations. To date, both they and Northumbria police have considered it a civil matter, but clearly the work undertaken by the trading standards department of Durham county council raises serious questions about whether the operation was not an elaborate fraud from the start. Will the Minister's Department investigate, as a matter of urgency, the operation of the company? One question needs to be answered: why was a credit licence issued to the company by the Office of Fair Trading, despite objections from the trading standards department of Sunderland city council?

At present, the activities of holiday club operations such as On-Line Vacations seem to fall outside the law or regulations. They are not covered by the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours Regulations 1992 because they are not package holidays as defined under the regulations. Likewise, although in many cases such operations trade in timeshare accommodation, they are not covered by the Timeshare Act 1992 or the Timeshare Regulations 1997. To the credit of the trading standards department of Durham county council, it alerted the Office of Fair Trading in April 2001 to the fact that no appropriate OFT code covers that type of holiday club.

The Department of Trade and Industry has produced a leaflet warning that holiday clubs are not cancellable agreements and has consulted on proposed changes in the law. Clearly, the case of On-Line Vacations demonstrates the urgent need for laws or regulations to protect consumers. Regulation of the timeshare industry has done much to clear up its reputation. It seems that holiday clubs have been used as a way in which to avoid such regulations. It is interesting that one of the companies supplying accommodation to On-Line Vacations, Timelinx.com, is based in Spain, an area that was notorious for the mis-selling of timeshare accommodation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Will the Minister consider the points that I have raised in today's debate and ensure that legislation or regulations are brought forward urgently to prevent more hardworking, honest people such as my constituents from being defrauded of money that they can ill afford to lose?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) on securing a debate on such an important issue, which is of great worry to his constituents, especially Mr. and Mrs. Alexander and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. The cases that he outlined are extremely distressing and show the fraudsters' guile in trying to bypass consumer protection legislation. I shall start by describing existing legislation.

The Timeshare Act 1992 regulates the timeshare market in the UK, while the timeshare directive of 1994 ensures that consumers throughout Europe are protected. The legislation gives consumers important protections at the point of sale, when they are often most vulnerable. It insists on a 14-day cooling-off period in which to cancel the contract. In the rest of Europe, the period is a minimum of 10 days. It also insists on a ban on timeshare sellers asking for or taking deposits during the cooling-off period, and on the right to a brochure and written contract with basic information on the timeshare property in the consumer's own language.

The legislation has been very successful. In a way, the emergence of new scams designed to avoid the law is testimony to how successful it has been. It has greatly helped to tackle the unscrupulous practices that have tarnished the timeshare industry in the past. However, the Department of Trade and Industry has been made aware of several new products that have been introduced to the market that have similar characteristics to timeshare but are often not covered by timeshare legislation. In many cases, as my hon. Friend said, they seem to have been deliberately designed to get round the legislation.

In the case of holiday clubs, the schemes involve consumers purchasing what amounts to a promise by the club to provide them with holidays for a long period into the future—sometimes a lifetime. As membership of the club does not give rights to purchasers for a particular property, it is not covered by timeshare legislation. Indeed, as my hon. Friend said, many companies use the fact that the product is not timeshare as a selling ploy.

Although the products are not covered under timeshare legislation, they may be covered by other consumer legislation. The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 also provide protection. Indeed, consumers have successfully pursued court cases against holiday club companies using the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991. Protections are also provided for sales promotions that take place in hotels away from a company's business premises under the doorstep selling regulations.

My Department issued a consultation paper in April 2000 to find out more about how the timeshare legislation had worked and the extent of any problems experienced in the sector. The European Commission recently announced that it will review and amend the timeshare directive by 2003 to ensure that consumers are fully protected.

Extending the scope of existing timeshare legislation to cover holiday club products is best done at EU level. British consumers are often targeted while on holiday in Europe, or the company is registered in Spain. My Department will work closely with the Commission during the review to ensure that British consumers are better protected, as my hon. Friend suggests.

The Government are also asking for more rigorous enforcement by the Spanish authorities of timeshare and other relevant legislation, such as the misleading advertising directive. As my hon. Friend said, part of the problem is tracking down people who set up different companies in different countries.

Officials from the Office of Fair Trading recently returned from Madrid, where they presented evidence to the police on the perceived fraudulent activities of certain Spanish companies involved in the sale of holiday clubs and timeshare resale. Working closely with their Spanish counterparts, the police authorities in Spain and Interpol, the OFT is trying to protect UK consumers who choose to purchase timeshare products, and to improve consumer confidence in the market through the eradication of unlawful practices.

Under the gloriously named Stop Now Orders (EC Directive) Regulations 2001, which came into effect on 1 June 2001, the Office of Fair Trading has the power to apply for orders to stop traders in the United Kingdom and other member states infringing legislation implementing 10 specific European Community consumer protection directives, including distance selling, doorstep selling and timeshare if the collective interests of UK consumers are harmed. That gives the OFT even more power to crack down on fraudulent companies targeting UK consumers.

Some of the more disreputable companies that engage in fraud will be covered under criminal law. Company investigations in my Department are also able to investigate companies under the powers of the Companies Act 1985 if fraud or misconduct is suspected. If the public are at risk, the Secretary of State may ask the court to stop a company trading at once by appointing a provisional liquidator. If there is evidence of misconduct by a company's directors, the Secretary of State can also ask the courts to disqualify them. In other cases, my Department may use the information that it has obtained to prosecute offenders, or it can pass the information to the Crown Prosecution Service for further consideration. The DTI has recently wound up other holiday clubs, such as Diamond VSI Ltd, Somerville Leisure plc, Hever Worldwide Properties plc and Expanding Horizons Ltd.

I urge my hon. Friend to forward any details or information that he has about such companies for my Department's further consideration. My hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for consumers, competition and markets will look carefully at the points raised in today's debate. However, my hon. Friend will appreciate that investigations conducted by my Department are strictly confidential and are never disclosed to any party except for the statutory purposes provided under the Act, such as for the institution of civil or criminal proceedings. It is departmental policy not to confirm or deny that such investigations are taking or have taken place, for the obvious reason that a company under investigation might be found innocent.

My hon. Friend also raises the question of consumer credit licences, and he cites a situation in his area. I emphasise that licences are awarded by the Office of Fair Trading if it is satisfied that the trader is a fit person to engage in the activities covered by the licence. The OFT can refuse or take away a licence if a trader is considered unfit. It is entirely a matter for the OFT, and I am unable to disclose details of particular cases.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that prevention is always better than cure. Well-informed consumers are the best means of tackling bad practice and of preventing problems before they arise. Last June, the Government relaunched the leaflet "Timeshare—Making the Right Choice". That leaflet informed consumers about developments in the market and the undesirable practices at the margins of the industry, some of which have been mentioned today. The leaflet was distributed with the help of the industry, and it is included in UK holidaymakers' airline ticket wallets in order to draw such scams to their attention. The responsible timeshare industry is working hard on developing robust codes of practice. Holiday clubs, vacation packs and sellers of timeshare points who belong to the main trade association voluntarily provide consumers with the same protections afforded under the timeshare directive.

I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates that rogue traders will always seek ways to avoid legislation in order to exploit the unwary consumer. The Government will be working closely with the European Commission on its forthcoming review of the timeshare directive in order to ensure that a future definition of timeshare encompasses new products such as holiday clubs. The DTI will also continue to work with the Office of Fair Trading and other enforcement bodies to ensure better enforcement of existing legislation. It will also continue to encourage the industry to develop more effective self-regulation, and to work in partnership with the industry in order to improve information and publicity for consumers on their rights under the law.